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Excuse me but are these your bullets? 

An American tourist is being held in jail in the Turks and Caicos because their equivalent of TSA found four hunting cartridges in his bag. He faces up to 12 years in prison. He admitted that the cartridges were his and were from a previous hunting trip. One wonders how our TSA could have missed the cartridges. However, they did and the unfortunate tourist, rather than being faced with a fine, is in prison.

The incident brought back memories of something similar that happened to me on one of my bow hunting trips to South Africa. I landed in Johannesburg and went from the international terminal to the domestic terminal to catch my flight to Polokwane. Going through their security I was summoned to come look at the x-ray of my carryon which showed a rifle cartridge. The agent asked if he could open the bag. I said yes. From it he pulled out a .375 H&H. I told him that I was going bow hunting and did not own a rifle with that cartridge. The H&H is a big bore cartridge used for large game such as rhinos and elephants. The agent didn’t care. He said “it is in your bag so it is yours”. He said he was going to have to call the airport police who would take me to their office for questioning. That would mean that I would miss my flight. The hunt was three hours from Polokwane and the outfitter would be on his way to pick me up and due to the lack of cell phone service could not be contacted. I then asked if there was anything I could do in order to make my flight. The agent then said “walk with me.” He grabbed my bag and walking to the gate said that his friends were “very thirsty.” I took out a $100 bill and asked if he could use this to buy them a Coca-Cola. He held out his hand. I let him palm the money. He gave me my bag and said “Welcome to South Africa.” What he meant of course was “Welcome to South Africa, sucker.” I made my flight. When I told the outfitter what had happened, he said that it was a common scam played on hunters at the airport. I naively thought that when I went to South Africa that I would be greeted as a long lost brother. Silly me. I was just another easy mark.

Another incident occurred on a bear hunting trip to Canada. Although hunting is a major source of revenue, the Canadian custom agents act as though they do not like hunters. We are usually the last allowed to go through customs and are often harassed. On one trip to Alberta, the customs agent pulled a can of bear spray from my bag and informed me that it was considered a “projectile” and not allowed to be brought into the country. I showed him a list of items that the outfitter had suggested I bring with me. One of the items was “bear spray.” I then asked the agent if I could buy bear spray outside the airport. He said yes and that it was available in most every store in the province. He was going to confiscate my spray and because of the letter from the outfitter he was not going to fine me. Instead, he was going to make a record of my transgression and allow me to enter the country. As I was leaving he said “Have a good hunt.”

I posted a note on Congress failing to check the power of the executive. I mentioned that while our elected representatives in congress are fighting over trivial matters, they are failing to govern. In an earlier post I called them “gutless”. Meanwhile the republican AGs are suing the Biden Administration’s abuse of power.Here is the latest example on the absolutely insane mandates of the EPA.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/25-states-hit-biden-admin-legal-challenge-climate-crackdown-gas-cars

What checks and balances?

Harold A Black

When I was in school I was taught that the United States had a system of checks and balances where no one branch of the government could devolve into tyranny given the oversight of the other two branches. The three branches (for those who have been “educated” by our current system) are executive, legislative and judicial. Legislative is divided into the House of Representatives and the Senate who must pass identical bills that are signed by the president to become law. The president can veto the bills and it takes a two thirds vote in both houses of congress to override. The congress can pass a bill, the president can sign it but the courts can rule the bill unconstitutional preventing it from becoming law. Yet even the courts can be overridden by the legislature by passing a constitutional amendment that is approved by two thirds of the states.

In reality, we no longer have a system of checks and balances mainly because the legislators in the House and Senate have abdicated their responsibilities to the executive branch. The executive has usurped the power from the congress through the use of executive orders which do not require congressional approval. Presidents now typically ignore the congress when they feel that their wishes will not be put into law. Remember when faced with a republican congress, Obama famously said “I’ve got a pen”? He signed 277 executive orders. Bill Clinton signed 361 and Donald Trump signed 220. Biden has signed 130 thus far. In 2023 he signed 24 and his administrative state added 90,402 pages to the Federal Register. When Biden first took office, there were a flurry of executive orders as he sought to eradicate the actions taken by Trump. There was the cancelation of the Keystone Pipeline, the stopping of the border wall, and the review of all Trump actions by department and agency heads. Biden then installed pro DEI and LBGTQ policies and aggressively issued rules on climate change including banning internal combustible engines and liquid natural gas. Remember mask wearing, mandatory COVID shots, the Paris Accord, Iran appeasement, immigration, student loan forgiveness and all the rest? But Trump does not get a pass. Remember the Muslim country ban, the shutting down of the economy (with the exception of big corporations) and the tariffs on our allies?

Congress cannot overturn an executive order but they can sue the government stating that the president has exceeded his authority. Please tell me if there are any suits filed by the congress. I can’t find any. However, the states have sued the government with mixed results. Recently a federal judge in Texas found that a rule issued by the Federal Highway Administration was “unauthorized”. The state of Texas brought the suit. The Kansas attorney general and 10 other republican AGs have sued to stop the Biden’s forgiveness of student loan debt. The private sector can sue as did the steel companies who sued when President Truman ordered the steel mills to be seized by the government during the Korean War. The Supreme Court ruled that Truman had overstepped his authority. I guess the automobile companies could sue the EPA mandate that will ultimately ban gas and diesel vehicles. But the auto actually favor the EPA rule because they can dramatically reduce the amount of labor needed to manufacture automobiles and trucks.

The republicans in congress have abdicated their responsibilities to govern and would rather fight amongst themselves rather than impede Biden’s actions. I believe earlier I called them “gutless”. Perhaps they are hoping that the republican governors and attorney generals will sue the government so that they can continue embarrassing themselves. I have a suggestion: why not unite against Biden’s efforts to radically change our institutions, his attempts to divide the races via Critical Race Theory and DEI, to radically shrink the American economy with his industrial policy, to flood the country with illegals, to allow males to compete in women’s sports and emasculating our military? I guess the congressional republicans are hoping that Trump is reelected so they won’t have to do anything useful. There is no doubt that Trump spend his first few days in office overturning Biden’s executive orders and having his appointees roll back the rules of the EPA and the other federal agencies. It seems that the only hope of slowing down the runaway train of climate hysteria and federal wokeness will be Donald Trump. Let’s hope that he is not so caught up in payback and retribution that he will forget to govern.

I like Victor Davis Hanson. I find the following troubling. All of it is true and we are aware of everything Hanson writes. Only we sort of let it sneak up on us. Much like the frog put in a cool pot of water that so slowing heats up that the frog is cooked before it realizes that it should have jumped out of the pot, we are being cooked slowly but surely. The question is whether we can reverse the process or we will continue down this road. Historically, countries swing from one side of the political spectrum to the other. Let us hope that it is not too late to swing back to the side of sanity.

Is The Great Illusion In Ruins?

/ April 8, 2024

Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness

In 2021, Joe Biden was elected after a bitterly fought campaign that deposed the incumbent Donald Trump. Democrats eventually captured, for a time, both the House and Senate, ensuring the most left-wing government in modern American history.

Americans were then set to witness a great experiment. For the first time in their lives, a truly radical socialist program would supposedly fundamentally transform the way America dealt with the border, immigration, the economy, race relations, foreign policy, energy, law enforcement, crime, education, and social questions such as religion, gender, abortion, and schooling.

In a sense, we were all to be lab rats of sorts, to be experimented on by the radical left and their various critical theories. Now in the last year of the Biden term, we can see the results of that experiment—and the unfortunate disasters that followed.

But first, how was such a radical move to the left even possible in a center-right America?

The Democratic nominee, Biden, had earlier united the left, but only through a Faustian deal. The handlers of a nearly non compos mentis Biden had ushered all his 2020 primary rivals out of the primary races in unison.

But in exchange for their exits that ensured Biden the nomination, the left took over his general campaign—in which Biden was virtually relegated to his basement—and then set his agenda.

Who was running things?

The mysterious architects of White House ideology included, inter alia, the omnipresent, now-Washington-DC-dwelling Obamas, the old socialist gadfly Bernie Sanders, the fossilized tribunes of the black and Latino congressional caucuses, the DEI firebrand Squad, and the neo-socialist scold Elizabeth Warren.

As a result, for one of the few times in American history, the hard left now had undreamt of power. And it was enhanced by a chorus in our compliant media, academia, corporations, the administrative state, foundations, entertainment, and popular culture.

So we were all to embark on a great adventure led by the foot soldiers of DEI, the Chicken-Little green extremists, the critical race and critical legal theory crowd, the modern monetary theorists, the woke commissars, the transgendered zealots, Antifa, BLM, the hate-Israel lobby, and the Trump Derangement Syndrome media sorts.

Ostensibly, America was to be reset financially, economically, socially, culturally, militarily, and politically. The nation would be arbitrarily divided into oppressors and oppressed—with one caveat: hyper-rich, left-wing white architects had to be exempt from the damage inflicted on those they targeted. Thus, like Orwellian pigs who walked on their two hind legs, they were free to fly their private jets, get their kids into racially quota-bound Ivy League schools, burn lots of fossil fuels to heat and cool their massive homes, and be protected by their walls, security details, and zip codes from the crime wave they would soon unleash on others.

Now, as we enter the fourth year of the great experiment, America is $35 trillion in debt, borrowing $1 trillion every 100 days. Home mortgages are at 7 percent. Key prices for food, insurance, rent, and fuels are 30-40 percent higher than when Biden entered office.

The nation has been humiliated and emasculated abroad. Racial relations are the worst in a half-century. The military is in virtual receivership. Biden is polling about 40 percent approval and is behind in key swing states in most of the 2024 polls.

As a result, the Biden administration is furiously trying to find a way to release more of its hated oil and natural gas on the world market. It stopped refilling the strategic petroleum reserve that it had earlier drained to lower gas prices before the 2022 midterms.

So it will quietly pump more oil and gas, appease Iran in fear of a war in the oil-producing Middle East, plead with the once “pariah” Saudis, and order the Ukrainians not to hit Russian oil installations—all to get more oil produced to lower November 2024 gas prices.

It will head nod to eliminating fossil fuels, mandating EVs, banning natural gas stoves, and subsidizing more inefficient wind and solar farms. But it now realizes that its green agenda on its watch will wreck the United States economy and throw the left out of power. So it pivots to an old-fashioned “Drill, World, Drill” mantra—at least until the election is over.

Biden fulfilled his agenda of getting 10 million illegal aliens into the United States by destroying the southern border. The point was to swarm America with poor, unaudited migrants, all in need of massive federal and state assistance, all supposedly now loyal to their entitlement benefactors. Who could stop them from voting as repayment to their enablers in the new age of 70 percent mail-in ballots, same-day registration, inadequate authentication and audit of ballots, third-party vote harvesting, ballot curing, and Zuckbucks pouring into key precincts to absorb the work of the registrars?

Most of the illegals went to Texas and Florida, key swing states that the left still thinks it can flip to blue status. Long term, the 10 million will recalibrate congressional districts to favor neo-socialist agendas. Short-term, millions of new arrivals unlawfully may still try to vote in 2024.

Any who object to or publicize this agenda will be dammed with boilerplate smears of “election deniers,” “voter suppressions,” “racists,” and “xenophobes,” Yet all that said, the administration is now desperately trying to distance itself from its greatest “new Democratic Majority” border success, given that public opinion abhors what Biden had done at the border to the country at large.

So it floated a phony “bipartisan border security” bill in hopes of luring naïve Republicans to support a stealth de facto amnesty agenda that would have still allowed 5,000 illegals in a day rather than the now customary 10-15,000. The hope was that when it failed (and the left knew it would), to blame Republicans for what the left had wrought.

Biden knows destroying the border will ruin America for generations to come, costing billions of dollars in subsidies and legal and policing costs to integrate the massive influx. So until the election, it is thrashing about, claiming that it never did such a thing at all. Its duplicity is again proof that the open borders agenda was hated by the public, a human catastrophe, and not sustainable before an impending election.

Biden’s foreign policy is also in ruins. Biden destroyed deterrence in an effort to beg, appease, and buy off America’s enemies to behave and not cause an election-losing war. But the more it fled from Afghanistan in humiliation, the more it appeased Russia as it massed on Ukraine’s border, the more it snored as a Chinese spy balloon traversed the United States, the more it put early holds on aid to Ukraine, the more it assured Putin a “minor” offensive into Ukraine would not elicit a US response, so all the more it convinced Putin that he could take Ukraine without an American pushback, the Chinese to threaten Taiwan, and Hamas to prepare for massacring Jews.

So here we are in Ukraine with nearly 800,000 dead, wounded, and missing Ukrainians and Russians. The administration has no clue how to stop the Verdun that its appeasement birthed. The entire therapeutic approach to foreign policy lies in ruins.

Ditto the Middle East. National security advisor Jack Sullivan’s “quiet” portfolio that he inherited from the Trump administration simply blew up. Biden is now scrambling to stop the Israeli response to the encircled Hamas remnants, trapped in their last redoubt in Rafah.

Biden is now replaying the 1950s CIA-stereotype of the “Ugly American,” as he does his best to overthrow the Netanyahu government, and to allow the trapped Hamas remnants to escape and claim they defeated the Zionist entity, despite butchering more Jews in a single day than any time since the Holocaust. No matte: the Biden administration is stealthily communicating with the Israeli opposition concerning the best joint strategies to force Netanyahu out. Mass protests in the streets of Tel Aviv attest to the success of destabilizing the current Israeli government.

Team Biden whispers to the media about slow-walking or stopping key arms shipments, abdicating America’s once protective role in the UN, or encouraging the “international community” to go after Netanyahu for “war crimes” for accidentally hitting a civilian team in Gaza. (By such logic, are Biden and Gen. Mark (“righteous strike”) Milley equally culpable for being in charge when a US strike in Kabul blew up 10 innocent civilians by similarly mistaken targeting?). Meanwhile, Biden keeps courting Muslim-American Michigan voters, who repay his appeasement with cries of “Death to Israel! Death to America!”.

The release of violent criminals and an uptick in property crimes, murders and assault follow a similar script. The Biden administration outsourced criminal justice to defund the police/critical legal theorists at the federal, state, and local levels. No bail arrests led to violent offenders released the next day. Thousands were let go from jails and prisons.

The word spread in the criminal community that in the new Biden years, there were no real consequences, no serious punishments for violent assault or major felonies.

So in 2021-2023, crime exploded. When it reached the point of making life unlivable in the major cities and began to max out, the administration declared “crime is declining”—in the same way that hyper-inflation supposedly did so on the economic front.

After spiking the prices of key food staples, insurance, fuel, and interest rates, such hikes could not go too much higher without destroying outright the American way of life. So as the rate of inflation slowed, Biden bragged about “lowering inflation”—but not the 30-40 percent higher food prices since his own inauguration.

The common denominator for these disasters is the embrace of left-wing “theory.”

Critical legal theory mandates that jurisprudence is a construct. Laws have no morality since they favor the powerful. The latter use “white privilege” arbitrarily to invent crimes and punishments to protect their own power hierarchies. All that nonsense has now led to a pre-civilizational free-for-all in our dirty, dangerous, and dysfunctional cities.

Modern monetary theory—printing lots of money to spread around to those who have none while diminishing the value of money of those who have it—only led to hyperinflation and high interest rates.

When DEI theories were unleashed on the military, potential recruits hesitated, and thousands quit. After Pentagon grandees virtue signaled their fear of “white rage” and “white privilege,” after DEI made promotions and assessments often contingent on race, gender, and sexual orientation, and after the new military was humiliated in Afghanistan, it found it could no longer deter the enemy, recruit sufficient soldiers, or win back the confidence of the American people.

In all these cases, the woke genie left the bottle—and won’t go back in. So it will be hard for the administration to assure a long-suffering public that things are just wonderful, much less to reverse these policies, if indeed they are reversible, before November.

Expect instead nonstop distraction as the left beats the January 6 horse to death, calls for abortion on demand, and waits for its underling judges, prosecutors, and juries to jail or bankrupt Trump and therefore do what balloting cannot.

In other words, the long-awaited Great Fundamental Transformation finally got its moment, crashed, and now has torched the nation—middle-class Americans most of all.

Harold A Black

haroldblackphd.com

April 15, 2024

I have written before that one of the motivations that the democrats have for open borders is to prevent losing congressional representation when citizens leave their “blue” states for “red” ones. Since the Census is used for congressional representation purposes (and federal funding) the dems adamantly have opposed the census asking citizenship. Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty has led the charge on the senate side and Clay Higgins of Louisiana has spelled out the details on the House side. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_1CpRfh_zE

Now a congressional committee has forwarded a bill with 100 co-sponsors that requires a citizenship question on the census. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., and Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, introduced the bill in the House and Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., introduced the bill in the Senate. Of course every democrat on the committee voted against it and it likely will not even be brought up for discussion in the senate. But the democrats are no longer denying the fact, One member from New York actually said “I need more people in my district just for redistricting purposes.” https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/12/this-bill-would-prevent-illegal-immigrants-from-swaying-congressional-representation/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell

This is important stuff. As Higgins said in his speech in the House, the amount of illegals in the country equals 60 congressional districts. Mind you that these cannot be new districts because the number in the congress is set at 435 (of course the congress can change this number and I am surprised that the democrats haven’t tried). If citizens are fleeing the democrat run states and cities, then congressional seats will shift as well unless offset by illegal inflow. Note that in the last census, some democrat states did not lose as many seats as was forecast by their declining population. Also some republican run states did not gain as many seats. No one asked at the time if this was due to the influx of illegals to “sanctuary” cities and states.

Recall that Donald Trump as president called for a citizenship question on the census and was promptly labelled a racist. His commerce secretary Wilbur Ware was to comply but was stopped by democrat litigation. That litigation went to the Supreme Court where the then court’s four liberals were joined by John Roberts to stop the citizenship question from appearing. With today’s makeup of the Court, perhaps the question could be added even if Roberts joins the remaining liberals if Trump regains the White House.

Knoxville Focus

April 15, 2024

Knoxfocus.com

Happy Tax Day

I have long advocated for no mandatory withholding. Withholding should be optional. If people opted to pay all their federal income taxes on April 15 there would be a lot more pressure on our national politicians to reduce spending. Federal spending is out of control. It doesn’t really matter what party is in power, federal spending continues to grow. Once spending increased during economic downturns and decreased during periods of prosperity. No longer. Spending is completely independent from the nation’s economic health. Federal spending as a percent of GDP is steadily increasing. While on average it has been around 19% the budget submitted to the congress by Biden is a jaw-dropping 24%. While the percent of federal taxes to GDP has been around 17 percent, it is over 19 percent in the Biden budget guaranteeing a larger deficit. Biden ‘s claim in his State of the Union address “We’ve already cut the federal deficit by over $1 trillion” has to be given 10 Pinocchios. Biden did nothing to reduce the deficit. It declined due to the high levels of federal spending during the pandemic. Federal debt keeps climbing and the deficit with it to the point where the interest paid by the government on the debt will soon eclipse the budget for the Pentagon. In fact the deficit is now 25% higher than when Biden took office.

There is no political will to reduce spending regardless of which party in in the White House and which party controls the congress. Even proposals to decrease the rate of increase in spending (mathematicians call this the second derivative) are greeting by howls of indignation in the congress and amongst the lobbyists for all the special interests feeding at the federal trough. Don’t get me wrong. We all belong to special interest groups and very few of us want to give up that subsidy from the feds.

Biden’s budget is a whopping $7.3 trillion wish list with little chance of passage in the House. However, don’t be surprised if a large portion of it does pass. The budget also calls for a $5 trillion tax increase over 10 years. The resulting taxes would be among the highest in the developed world with a top individual rate of 45.4%, a capital gains tax of 49.8% and a corporate rate of 32.2% (estimates from the Cato Institute). Biden claims that over 10 years the deficit will be $3 trillion less. This is not true. What he is assuming is that the sharp increases in taxes will not decrease federal revenue growth. However, there will be increased incentives to move corporate activity offshore to lower tax countries. There will be increased incentives by individuals to shelter income. Most economists would predict a slowdown in the rate of growth of federal tax receipts due to the increased tax burden resulting in a larger, not smaller, deficit. This has often been the case when taxes go up.

I have made several proposals to control federal spending – none of which have a snowball’s chance in Hades of being adopted. One is to limit federal spending to the historic level of 19% of the previous year’s GDP. This could only go up on a one year basis if the president declared an emergency and received a two thirds vote in congress. I would institute a flat tax at 20 percent of income with no exemptions. That also could only change with a declaration of emergency from the president and a two thirds vote in congress. 

I also know how to radically reduce federal spending while increasing the well-being of the poor. Generally, any proposal to reform welfare is met with howls of “You are trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor!” Well currently, we spend $1.7 trillion on welfare programs. The poverty level for a family of four is $27,750. There are around 38 million poor in the United States. Thus, we spend $42,105 per poor person! I propose that we eliminate all welfare programs and administrators and simply give each poor person $10,000. A family of 4 would receive $40,000 with the amount decreasing for each additional child eliminating poverty in the United States. If every poor person received $10,000 the total expenditure would be $380 billion rather than the $1.7 trillion we currently spend. Voila! Federal spending is decreased by $700 billion! So Happy Tax Day.

Ok. What happens if we don’t buy them?

The Biden Administration is out to get your truck. The newly mandated EPA standards can only be met if 25% of truck sales by 2032 are electric. The standards mean that automakers can produce large vehicles such as SUVs and pickups but will have to balance them with hybrids, plugin electrics and totally electric cars. Automobile manufactures lose thousands of dollars on every EV they sell and are only profitable because of the gas and diesel powered SUVs and pickup trucks. 

There is a reason why pickups are the best selling vehicles in America. We love our trucks.  I thought Biden liked autoworkers? Seems to me that this is a sure fired way to get them laid off. Regards, the only vehicle that American automakers build that is really popular is the full sized pickup. While car sales of American manufacturers have fallen, only the full sized pickup holds its own. No manufacturer can meet the standards if the current ratio of truck sales to auto sales holds. This would mean that the government would force the auto companies to make fewer trucks. Zowie! Our congressional politicians are gutless and won’t sue the EPA for exceeding its authority. Perhaps, like before, they are waiting on the republican AGs to sue for them.

Maybe the American public will sit on its hands and meekly accept the EPA forcing you to buy electric trucks. Talk about white rage! Well to be honest, that rage will be colored in that I own a F-250 diesel. The EPA will kill the travel trailer industry. I pull a 35 foot fifth wheel behind my truck. If I had a Ford F-150 Lightening I would hitch it up to the fifth wheel and spin out the tires. I guess I would have to camp in the RV storage lot. The motorhome industry is seeking an exemption because the heavier batteries and limited range will effectively kill that industry as well.

I hope that these mandates are repealed because they will have virtually no impact on the environment. They will raise inflation in the country as prices on everything will rise given the increase in purchasing vehicles and the cost of transporting them. I predict a robust market for used pickups. My car it is a decidedly nongreen Mercedes cabriolet and my SUV is a Mercedes GLS 430. I am proud of my carbon footprint. What the new EPA standards mean is that I will keep my pickup, car and SUV forever. I pity future generations and in particular my grandkids for having to deal with the crap put on them by this current crop of politicians.

Are you a RINO?

I hate the term “RINO” (Republican in name only). As I have noted before, the voting records of the most conservative – or should I say least liberal – Democrat in the Senate are more liberal than the voting records of the least conservative senators. Yes Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are vilified by those on the far right, but those three senators all voted for Trump’s supreme court nominees. They also have consistently voted against left wing bills in the senate while those in the Democrat caucus have had a united front.

I am a Republican because I am a laissez-faire, free market, free trade, government with a small “g” economist. The Wealth of Nations was the most influential book in my college years and shaped my thinking. Subsequent empirical evidence has confirmed most microtheory and shown Adam Smith to be correct. Government interference in market decisions are always suboptimal. Industrial policy is a failure. Economic freedom, private property and the freedoms enumerated in the Constitution have led to the lifting out of poverty and economic advancement of millions, perhaps billions. Yes this country is not perfect but rather than being ashamed of its faults – to err is human, I am proud of its accomplishments. Yes, my African ancestors were enslaved, survived the middle passage and were dehumanized but their fortitude and bravery made me what I am today. If they had not been brought here, I would likely be scraping the soil for cobalt in the Congo for $5 per day.

I see the Democrats and the so-called progressives as the major impediment to economic progress of all people, not just minorities. The climate “existential” threat agenda, public schools, the welfare state, the administrative state all conspire to keep minorities impoverished. Their policies are anathema to what I believe and know to be right. I feel that to be a Republican one must have similar values although I wonder sometimes. Our Washington politicians are mostly big government, tax and spenders regardless of party. The Republicans just a little less so than the Democrats. Republicans should unite around those basic priniciples rather than carry on internecine warfare amongst themselves over issues that are trivial in comparison. It is a tragedy that social issues have come to dominate Republican politics. One’s fealty to the party is now judged on issues such as abortion and gun control rather than economic ones. We can no longer disagree and those who do are deemed less than pure and are called RINOS. That is a disservice and leads to the wildly dysfunctional Republican caucus in the House of Representatives. Isn’t it ironic that the small group that considers itself “pure” has found itself voting with the Democrats to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership and with the Democrats on killing the FISA bill? Now some of that same bunch who once touted Speaker Johnson as a “true conservative” want to oust him because he actually wants to govern and the only way to do that is to work with the Democrats.

I have three modest proposals. First, any motion to vacate should have with it a nominee for Speaker. Second, the splinter group of Republicans should change parties and cross over to the Democrats. Then they can create havoc among their true adversaries. They could then prevent any Democrat from becoming Speaker. They could torpedo any leftist legislation. They could finally do some good. The third is for the Republicans to unite around the issues that are truly important and sue the executive over the border, Biden’s abuse of executive orders, the out of control Federal agencies, budget reform, the federal debt and the issuances of mandates that exceed their authority. But no, they are letting the Republican attorneys general sue instead rather than acting like responsible adults. Some are more interested in news clips and publicity. Surely interviews on Fox News and CNN shouldn’t be more important than governing.

Lastly, to me any Republican that does not believe in the basic principles I outlined above is the true RINO. Now RINO is being used to label people who do not agree with Donald Trump who has called otherwise conservative politicians who disagree with him as “RINO”. But what about someone who hates free trade, imposes tariffs on our allies, threaten national security by trashing our alliances, allows big businesses to stay open while shuttering small ones during a pandemic? That is a person opposed to conservative principals. Is that person a RINO? If so, then Donald Trump is a RINO.

April 9, 2024

Andy Enfield left USC for SMU before he could get fired. Enfield who rode an upstart 15 seed Florida Gulf Coast team to the Sweet Sixteen in 2013 to big bucks at USC never could duplicate his earlier success. After a 14-16 season despite having Bronny James on his team Enfield bolted for SMU. Now leaving California for Dallas is a smart move regardless. Enfield is going to a no income tax state to a school with zero expectations of being competitive in the “Atlantic” Coast Conference. Enfield was replaced by Eric Musselman who had been at Arkansas. One must question Musselman’s sanity. Perhaps he would rather live in glitzy Los Angeles than Fayetteville, Arkansas but why? Surely it is preferable to coach before sold out crowds of 20,000 at Arkansas than before a half full arena at USC. But Musselman is a gypsy and probably got bored living in one place for five years. He had modest success at Arkansas reaching the Sweet 16 three times. However, this year Arkansas was only 16-17 overall and 6-12 in the SEC. So perhaps he left before being asked to leave. Musselman is being replaced by the legendary John Calipari who had worn out his welcome in Lexington. The Big Blue Nation is not very happy with UKs failure in the NCAA tournament in recent years. I think that Arkansas will re-energize Calipari who will continue to recruit 5 star players and will have plenty of NIL money with the Walmart family, Jerry Jones and the Tyson chicken folks as backers. Look for Arkansas in the Final Four within the next three years. What is interesting is that Arkansas is supposed to have offered Ole Miss’ Chris Beard and Kansas State’s Jerome Tang the job and was turned down. One must wonder about the sanity of those two. Obviously, Calipari was not the third choice but became available and fell into Arkansas’ lap. Who will replace Calipari? Mitch Barnhardt the UK athletics director knows that he must make a splashy hire. It is not hard to imagine that the next UK coach will have already won a national championship. Some have said to go after UConn’s Dan Hurley. But Hurley is too prickly for UK fans and will instantly grate on southerner sensitivities. Others mentioned are Scott Drew and Jay Wright. Some have mentioned Bruce Pearl -who doesn’t have a championship and would be a controversial hire. But what about Bill Self, Tom Izzo or heavens forbid Rick Pitino? I think Izzo would be a spectacular hire. Although Barnhardt would not dare do it, I think the perfect hire would be Seton Hall’s Shaheen Holloway who may be the best young coach in the country. But given the reaction of Big Blue Nation to the hiring of Tubby Smith from Georgia even after he won them a national championship, Barnhardt will play it safe and hire one of the old guys.

Harold A Black

April 8, 2024

It is not inconceivable that the “winner” of the presidential election in November might not become president. The Founding Fathers were fearful of the tyranny of the majority and established the Electoral College. One of the purposes of the College was, along with the Senate, to keep smaller states relevant in the political process. Each state would have two senators regardless of population and the president would be elected by the Electoral College and not by popular vote. The number of electors would be determined by the number of representatives and senators for each state. 

I would bet that 99.9 percent of the American population have no idea what the January 6 “insurrection” was all about. Perhaps they think that it was an organized plot to overturn the results of the election of Joe Biden. But how could the results be overturned? Indeed, Donald Trump had been alleging all along that the election was stolen and he has been investigated for inciting the storming of the Capitol on January 6. Because civics is seldom taught in our schools, few realize that the president is not elected in the November election. Rather, the voters vote for electors and the electors vote for the president. The electors form the Electoral College and cast their votes for the president and vice president on the first Monday after the second week in December. The results are sent to the president of the US Senate – who is the vice president of the United States – along with the Archivist of the United States. The “insurrection” took place on January 6 because on that date, the Congress meets to certify the winner of the election. Each state announces its votes. Again, the number of vote in each state is equal to the number in its congressional delegation. The vice president as president of the Senate presides over the proceedings. After the vice president announces the results, any member of Congress can object to the results. The Democrats in the House tried unsuccessfully to block the election of George Bush in 2001. Democrats also objected in 2005 and 2017 and failed again to overturn the votes of the Electoral College. I don’t recall any of the Democrats being indicted for trying to overturn these elections. Recall that Trump did not want his vice president Pence to certify the results? If Pence had not, then the House and the Senate would vote on whether the objection were valid. 

Let us suppose that Trump – like before – loses the popular vote but wins in the Electoral College. When the results go to the Congress let us suppose just like in 2001, 2005 and 2017 the Democrats object and call for a vote in the Congress and Kamala Harris refuses to certify the results of the Electoral College. What happens next? Here both the House and the Senate will vote as to whether the objection is valid. If they vote differently, the objection fails. But if they both agree that the objection is valid then the House will vote for the president with each representative getting one vote. The Republicans have a very slim majority in the House but the Democrats have the majority in the Senate. It is not inconceivable that the Republicans who squabble amongst themselves more than they govern, might have a few deflections and elect Biden. There would be no doubt that the Democrats would be united in voting for Harris for vice president. On the other hand, if the Republicans hold firm and elect Trump, the Senate might still elect Harris! Can you imagine that? Donald Trump as president with Kamala Harris as his vice president? Some small part of me would love to see it.