Posse Incitatus

The First Black Astronaut

Time to take a break from bashing Sleepy Joe, the deep state, and the progressive policies that are wrecking our cities. It was June 30, 1967 that Robert Lawrence became America's first black astronaut. More on that shortly.

Longtime readers of the Posse may recall that I have come out in support of Black History Month. While some bash it as just more PC balderdash, I am all for promoting history of all types. And even though February is Black History Month, any day is a good day to call attention to an American hero -- whether he or she is black or any other race.

In fact, I believe one of the maladies afflicting our people is their lack of appreciation for what an incredible nation we have. When we learn more about the hardships and atrocities people have endured throughout the ages; when we realize the sacrifices and suffering so many endured to birth and support this great nation, we have a more mature perspective, less tendency to whine and complain, and perhaps a newfound desire to work for realistic, substantive change.

I dare say even some of the young, naive people who think socialism is the answer would be converted if they could just learn more about how much misery and genocide centralized left-wing governments have inflicted through the ages.

Robert Lawrence is a stellar example of how hard work and determination can help one achieve great success. He graduated from high school at age 16, earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at age 20 and became an Air Force officer and pilot. He later earned a Ph.D in physical chemistry from Ohio State University in 1965.

On June 30, 1967, the U.S. Air Force selected Lawrence to be a part of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), a project to obtain high-resolution photographic imagery of America’s Cold War adversaries. Sadly, he died at age 32 in a training accident.

In addition to demonstrating how hard work and self-discipline can pay off, Lawrence underscores the importance of K-12 and post-secondary education offering rigorous classes in the hard sciences, mathematics and fundamental English grammar and usage. Today's watered down and dummied down curricula won't turn out many Robert Lawrences, I'm afraid.

Kudos to Robert Lawrence and others like him who have strived to live up to their God-given intelligence and abilities, and who made sure they took advantage of their blessings rather than complain about what they lacked.

Space to Burn in the Summer of Love

You gotta hand it to progressives. Their egos are so enormous, their delusion and narcissism so out of control, that they continue to point the finger at others for their massive policy failures.

Starting early in the Biden administration, Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Vice President Kamala Harris and others blamed Donald Trump for the crisis at the southern border. (For a few days, Psaki didn't even want to use the word "crisis," but that ended quickly.) It didn't take long until they were just about laughed out of the White House, so they toned it down on the language nitpicking and pivoted toward another favorite lefty talking point: climate change.

When Harris made her disastrous trip to Guatemala a few weeks ago, she talked about root causes of the outflow of hundreds of thousands of people from Central America. Climate change is one of them, she claimed. Floods, severe storms and droughts are to blame for taking away farmers' livelihood and spiking unemployment, Harris says.

Obviously, the problems in Latin America stem from massive corruption, no rule of law, and the absence of respectable institutions and ground rules. When the police, judiciary and legislature have been thoroughly compromised; when there's no solid contract law; when private property rights are not held in high esteem -- this is the ideal breeding ground for gangs, drug cartels, sex traffickers, graft, hyperinflation, poverty, drug abuse and many other ills. This is a freakin' no brainer.

But liberals just won't come right out and say it, lest they be branded....wait for it.... RACIST!!! Yep; they've created such an uber-PC environment and have twisted themselves into pretzels, making it virtually impossible to call a spade a spade. The first solution to solving a problem is acknowledging it, then discussing it candidly, directly and pointedly. But alas, this type of communication is nearly impossible in today's walk-on-eggshells PC environment. The garbage media is fully compliant in this never-ending folly.

The meltdown of so many of our cities, with spiking crime, violence and lawlessness, and businesses fleeing for greener pastures, is in large part due to the George Soros-supported leftist prosecutors who stand down rather than do their job, no or low bail policies, and the idiotic defund the police movements that the progressives support.

In a preposterous example of grasping at straws, the thoroughly disingenuous hack Psaki tried to blame Republicans for failing to address the spiking homicide rates and increased gun violence in cities. Her "rationale" (a terrible abuse of that word) was that Republicans opposed the so-called "American Rescue Plan," which could have funded law enforcement.

The GOP opposes this pork bill because it's just another example of Sleepy Joe showering billions of wasteful spending on Democrat special interest groups -- AND piling trillions more debt onto our children and grandchildren. The plan includes funding that cities may use for law enforcement. Not that they would be mandated to use to bolster police, or even that they would likely choose to do so. Only that they would have that option. This is a real stretch.

The Democrats also announced that the Department of Justice would sue the State of Georgia for its election integrity legislation signed into law by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. No coincidence, this announcement came a day or two after the GOP stood in the way of the Banana Republic Voting Bill (my name for it) -- HR1, which would federalize elections and implement loose standards that will open up the fraud floodgates like we've never seen.

The Democrats wail about black voters being disenfranchised by simple restrictions like containing voting to a few days rather than six weeks, requiring voter ID's, and prohibiting corrupt ballot harvesting. What they're too dense to realize is that by facilitating massive voter fraud, they are disenfranchising the conservative voters, whose votes would be drowned out by many thousands of illegitimate votes.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't explain today's headline. Stupid, asinine, ludicrous proclamations seem to flow out of Democrats' mouths like Niagara Falls.

The "Summer of Love" portion can be attributed to Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan last summer. She was referring to the takeover and occupation of several downtown city blocks by Antifa, Black Lives Matter and other assorted rif-raff. The area was called "CHAZ" (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.)

The first part of the headline is a paraphrase of something uttered in 2015 by the failed mayor of a failed city: Baltimore's Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. Following the Freddie Gray riots, she said, “...We also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.”

Haven't we had enough of defining deviancy down?

The Voter ID Flip-Flop

Incredible that it's taken this long, but Democrats are finally realizing that the majority of Americans support voter ID requirements. They are backing off from their asinine position of the past: That obtaining an ID was some kind of hardship for minorities and thus was a form of voter suppression.

Can you think of anything more demeaning and insulting to blacks than to suggest they don't have the gumption or intelligence (and/or, are too broke) to obtain a photo ID for purposes of voting? It is breathtakingly stupid and patronizing.

A recent poll showed that about 80 percent of Americans support requiring voter IDs. Significantly, this includes 62 percent of Democrats polled.

The egregious demagogue Stacey Abrams and her fellow leftist Georgia Democrat, Sen. Ralphael Warnock, are now making the rounds claiming they never opposed voter ID requirements. This is a blatant lie; do these fools not know about video and the Internet? How stupid do they think we are? Oh, and by the way, what happened to Jim Crow? 

And for that matter, how insulting that The Washington Post, a Democrat propaganda rag, has couched Ms. Abrams' position as having undergone an "evolution." Talk about insulting. This disgraceful newspaper probably thinks many of its readers are dense, and they may be right.

This reminds me of the way Sleepy Joe Biden all of a sudden came out against the rioters last fall and had a few positive words of support for law enforcement. For months, he, Kamala Harris and the Democrats had praised the so-called "peaceful protests" and downplayed the violence. They ignored the fact that many minority-owned businesses were being burned and looted. And they absolutely refused to acknowledge that far more blacks are killed by other blacks than police.

But once the polls showed they were declining because of these beliefs, Biden and Harris backtracked. Unprincipled is too nice a word for these hacks.

The Democrats are as fraudulent as HR1, an attempted hijacking and federalization of elections, which the U.S. Constitution clearly stipulates are to be run by the states. The Democrats' pompous title for HR1 is the "For the People Act." In truth, it's the Screw the People Act, or another name for it might be the Advocacy of Banana Republic Voting Act.

This abominable legislation would do away with voter ID requirements, implement universal mail-in voting that drags on for weeks, permit same-day voter registration, allow felons to vote, and permit the corrupt practice of ballot harvesting. This bears repeating: The longer the election process is carried out, and the more hands ballots fall into, the greater the incidence of corruption. Because it helps them grab and hold onto power, Democrats want this anything goes free-for-all, which is tantamount to an open marriage.

Sometimes it takes months and months of outrageous, insane behavior -- of galling, in-your-face hypocrisy and double standards -- for the public to realize when a politician or political party is utterly fraudulent and full of it. That seems to be the case with the Democrats, as so many millions of Americans are apathetic, ignorant, and/or doped up on pot or prescription drugs.

But on the positive side, the Democrats' font of chutzpah, gall, audacity and conceit is ever-flowing and endless, because they just can't help themselves. Eventually it will sink in.

Guantanamo vs. the Washington, D.C. Jail

I have noted repeatedly that Democrats often lionize dirtbags and criminals, and demonize good people. They are also frequently guilty of selective indignation and blatant double standards. The garbage media, so thoroughly corrupt that it is pretty much an appendage of the Democrat Party, never calls them out on their hypocrisy.

One of the more appalling double standards -- something you absolutely won't read about in the abysmal mainstream press -- is the way Democrats whined, wailed and complained bitterly about treatment of Islamic terrorists in the Guantanamo Bay detention center during the Iraq and Afghan wars and for several years afterward, yet remain silent about the fate of hundreds of conservative political prisoners in our nation's capital.

The liberals have no problem knowing that participants in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot are rotting away in a wretched jail for committing mostly nonviolent misdemeanors. Many of them have been kept in solitary confinement, and there are reports of beatings by the guards. Alleged rapists and murderers are treated better. This jail is just another Democrat cesspool, I guess. They're a dime a dozen.

Let's consider a few facts. First, many of the Guantanamo suspects had killed innocent civilians and American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many would kill again if given the chance. Yet their Democrat defenders filed multiple lawsuits to fight for due process and the writ of habeus corpus.

As prison camps go, Guantanamo was a veritable country club. Granted, there probably were a few isolated incidents of cruelty and minor transgressions such as feeding them an improper diet. But one only needs to do a cursory study of history to realize that prisoners of war and political prisoners often are treated harshly in nations across the globe. I've mentioned before that I recently read a book about a man who spent 20 years in Fidel Castro's gulag. The brutal conditions were truly a hell on earth, and I wouldn't wish them upon my worst enemy.

So Guantanamo was virtually a best case scenario for captured Middle Eastern jihadists, but you'd think they were being tortured daily the way the left carried on. Yet the Democrats have no such concern for the Jan. 6 prisoners -- every day Americans who mostly committed misdemeanors, and who did far less damage to the Capitol than left-wing protesters did to the Wisconsin Capitol during a 17-day occupation in 2011. Such is the extreme hatred the left has for Donald Trump and his supporters. Go to bat for the bad guys; loathe and demonize fellow Americans.

Under the Fifth and 14th amendments, inmates are entitled to know what they're being charged with and have a reasonable bail set within a few days -- not six months later (it may be 
longer than that). The D.C. prisoners are being kept indefinitely confined without knowing what they're being charged with, when charges will be brought, and without having bail set. Many of them are people of modest means, and cannot afford the kind of high-powered attorneys needed to do battle with the vicious deep state.

Moreover, one of the fundamental rules prosecutors must follow is to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. But there are thousands of hours of video tape of the Jan. 6 events that have not been released to the public. Why is that? Most likely, because there are many scenes that detract from the corrupt media/deep state/Democrat narrative that his was an "insurrection" by lunatic white racists and revolutionaries. (Sorry to be Captain Obvious, but has an insurrection ever taken place in which not one of the insurrectionists had a firearm or fired a shot? This is stupidity on stilts.)

I've juxtaposed the D.C. prisoners with the Guantanamo Bay prisoners; now, let me compare them to hundreds of non-prisoners who committed far more serious crimes: Black Lives Matter, Antifa and countless other lawbreakers were out raising holy hell for months last summer, and many of them either never were charged with a crime, or were given a slap on the wrist, or were released on low bail or even no bail.

What crimes did they commit? Well, there were a few homicides, and many assaults against police officers and Trump supporters, among other people. There was burning and looting of buildings; attacking and defacing federal buildings; tossing Molotov cocktails at businesses; shooting fireworks at police; overturning vehicles; obstructing traffic; taking over several city blocks for weeks at a time; forcing police to shut down precincts... The list goes on.

Once again, a flagrant double standard -- the sickening result of warped progressive policies -- rears its hideous head. People had better wake up and demand that our side fight back hard.

The Federalist Society and other conservative organizations surely have some connections with wealthy conservatives who would be willing to contribute generously to the legal costs of the Jan. 6 prisoners. But who knows, maybe some of these wealthy conservatives are leery of putting a target on their back, with a rogue IRS ready to pounce at a moment's notice. Audits can make life a living hell, no doubt. But someone's got to have some spine. This injustice must not stand.

Biden's Pathetic Response to the Deadly Crime Wave

Ever since last summer, crime rates have escalated in cities across the nation. 

Heartbreaking stories, like the seven-year-old Chicago girl killed in a McDonald's drive-through in April when a gang banger intended to shoot her father, are too numerous to mention. A particularly gut-wrenching assault happened this past Saturday in Chicago when a young man was shot and murdered, and his wife beaten and also shot. She died on Tuesday. 

Gyovanni Arzuaga, 24, and his wife Yasmin Perez, 25, were participating in a Puerto Rican Day parade when their car came under attack. They leave behind two  young children. Fortunately, there is ample video, and there's no doubt in my mind police will find the perpetrators. I'll bet most of them were repeat offenders.

Today, President Biden finally woke up. His team decided that they could no longer ignore the elephant in the room -- that Hey, maybe crime is of more concern to millions of people than heavy-handed race and transgender propaganda! The president issued a public statement and held a brief press conference.

Biden said his administration will have "zero tolerance" for gun dealers who willfully violate the law. He also made some vague promises about beefing up resources for police and increasing intervention efforts to prevent crime. Same old tired bromides.

As usual, it's all about the guns. Never mind that many of the guns used in felonies were stolen or illegally obtained on the streets. And forget about the fact we already have thousands of gun control laws on the books. More gun control is about all Sleepy Joe can do without pissing off his far-left base of support.

But the major factors in this horrendous violent crime surge are obvious to those with a brain, an ounce of critical thinking skills, and no fealty to the misguided liberal/progressive groupthink: Demonizing and inhibiting police, while coddling criminals. It's that simple.

It started with Barack Obama's critical words about police -- sometimes he couldn't even stop himself from criticizing law enforcement during the funeral of a deceased police officer. That, my friend, is a sick obsession. While he was president, Obama regularly hosted demagogues like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Black Lives Matter in the White House.

The police hatred receded a bit for the first three years of the Trump administration, but picked back up with a vengeance after the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Biden supporters from coast to coast have urged their local leaders to "defund the police," one of the most foolish and asinine ideas in the history of the world. Some cities have backed off when they learned their lesson the hard way what happens when the police are underfunded. In many cases, these cities restored or even increased funding above previous levels.

Many cities have halted "stop and frisk," which in the past preempted many crimes from taking place, and have implemented stricter rules of engagement. Biden supports efforts to weaken "qualified immunity," which protects municipal peace officers from getting sued and having their lives destroyed as long as they were reasonably following policy when they carried out an arrest or engaged in other activities.

At the same time, woke prosecutors have been declining to press charges on thugs arrested for offenses such as assault, looting stores, burning buildings and blocking traffic. Even when people are charged, it's often for a minor crime. Bails are either nonexistent or pitifully low. So repeat offenders are a dime a dozen, and police are thoroughly demoralized.

Knowing that their local prosecutor's office, city council and garbage media won't have their back, many officers choose to simply go through the motions and frequently "look the other way" when crimes are committed. They don't want to risk getting ostracized, buried in pain-in-the-ass paperwork and hearings before kangaroo committees, and possibly being charged with a crime and having their finances destroyed.

Oh, and I almost forgot: While all of this is going on, drug cartels, gang bangers and terrorists are marching across our southern border every day, sure to add to the urban mayhem. And soon it won't be just big cities that suffer; it will be small, even rural towns. 

Progressive policies have been like malignant tumors on cities across the land for decades. Just as communism invariably ends in speech suppression, slave labor camps, gulags and the proverbial "mountain of skulls," progressivism turns cities into shit. It kills -- from aborted fetuses through youth, middle age and into old age (Remember Ezekiel Emanuel's heartless comments about how elderly people don't deserve life-saving surgery if it's expensive; that 75 is "a good age to aim to stop" costly medical treatments?)

America is waking up. Tens of millions of us know that if Sleepy Joe and his creepy totalitarian henchmen are left unchecked, the whole U.S.. of A. turns into a dystopian hellhole. To paraphrase John Paul Jones, "We have not yet begun to push back."

A Biden-Catholic Church Clash -- Coming Soon?

The issue of whether an ardently pro-choice president should present himself for Holy Communion in the Roman Catholic Church is heating up, and may portend a coming clash. More on that shortly, but first some context.

Longtime Posse readers may recall that I've stated we will eventually reach a time when the left declares the Bible and much Christian orthodoxy to be "hate speech," and aggressively seek to banish it from the public square.

Maybe the progressives haven't quite been that blunt so far (or at least, not all of them), but actions do indeed speak louder than words. We have definitely witnessed policies from former President Barack Obama, the current cyborg occupying the Oval Office, and state officials such as Michigan's leftist Attorney General Dana Nessel, that show a contempt and disdain for Christians and Christian beliefs.

(Editor's Note: Despite the significant doctrinal differences, I'm including Roman Catholic theology under the broad Christian umbrella -- which brings to mind another digression opportunity: Way back in high school, my friends and I had a joke about someone asking, "Are you a Christian?" The response: "No, I'm Catholic" ... I guess you had to be there...)

Let me address the state and local level first before discussing Uncle Sam. A few years ago, Nessel attempted to challenge a 2015 Michigan law meant to protect state contracts with faith-based agencies holding religious objections to assessing gay couples applying for adoption. Her office contended the law applied only to private adoption services and did not encompass contracts with the state. She had been quoted on the campaign trail as referring to supporters of the religious-based exemption as "hate mongers." The litigation involved plaintiff St. Vincent Catholic Charities.

Well, it didn't take long for U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker to rule against Nessel and the State of Michigan. In the opinion accompanying his September 2019 ruling, Jonker called the AG's position a "targeted attack" on religion.

And then there was the U.S. Supreme Court's 9-0 ruling slapping down the City of Philadelphia for refusing to renew a contract with Catholic Social Services because the agency would not place foster children with gay couples.

Of late, another brouhaha has popped up. For quite some time now, many devout Roman Catholics have harshly criticized President Joe Biden, who calls himself a "devout Catholic" yet is an ardent supporter of abortion, one of the most heinous sins in Catholic doctrine. (In fact, on his first day in office, Sleepy Joe signed executive orders broadening U.S. support for abortion in other countries and domestically. It's appalling that this was one of his most urgent priorities, but then again, I've alway said Biden was a fraud.)

Some bishops have stated they believe the president should be denied participation in the sacrament of Holy Communion. A few leftist bishops and cardinals -- e.g., Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago, who supports commie rabble-rouser Father Michael Pfleger -- favor letting Biden receive communion.

During the 2004 presidential election, Bishop Cupich said, "We cannot cherry-pick particular issues. We have to be willing to talk about all issues. Our position begins with protecting the unborn, but it doesn't end there."

If ever there were a time for cherry picking, it's with the issue of abortion. Many theologians would disagree with me, but I'm not one of those "sin is sin" believers, who fail to distinguish between the nature and severity of different sins. I fervently believe they are NOT all equally offensive to the Creator. I believe the Supreme Being is super intelligent (understatement of the year), and as such, would regard abortion as a far more grievous transgression than adultery or embezzlement, for example. Just like you would agree that someone who shoots or stabs you has committed a far more grave offense than someone who simply shoves or punches you. It's only common sense.

There are also hardliners, such as Cardinal Raymond Burke, a leading conservative and critic of Pope Francis, who has stated that politicians who “publicly and obstinately” support abortion are “apostates” who should not only be barred from receiving communion but deserve excommunication.

On Friday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted in favor of creating guidelines on the meaning of Communion and whether certain people can be denied communion based on their beliefs and actions that may come in conflict with church teaching. The draft document was approve 168 to 55, with six abstentions, and a final document would need approval by a 2/3 majority when it is brought up for a vote in the fall.

Individual bishops still would be able to exercise their discretion on dispensing communion, so the document is not etched in stone.

This begs the question: Would the pastor at Sleepy Joe's home parish in Wilmington, Delaware deny him communion? What if well over two thirds vote that he, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other pro-choice politicians are ineligible for communion? Would Biden be as petulant as his former boss Obama?

The massive federal bureaucracy, chock-full of nameless, faceless, and unaccountable bureaucrats (the vast majority of them leftists), is a powerful weapon that Democrats love to use to persecute their political enemies. I can see further weaponization of the IRS to go after the Roman Catholic Church if it dares offend the Big Guy -- perhaps by denying tax-exempt status to the myriad Catholic charities and ministries.

Why, who knows, maybe they'll even offer a generous bonus for Lois Lerner to come out of retirement? The way things are going with this train wreck of an administration, nothing would surprise me. After all, when we're dropping $2 trillion every few weeks, what's a couple million more to put some teeth into your aggression?

The iMac Analogy

I'll be the first to admit: Although I love to concoct metaphors and analogies to make my point, they don't always work. Sometimes they're awkward or cumbersome, and I wish I had approached a topic differently. But creativity is fun, even if things don't always pan out.

So here I go again...

As a nostalgic, aging Baby Boomer, I love to reminisce. Let's start out by traveling back in time to 1998. Apple Computer, then on the critical list after several disastrous years, began its long and impressive march to dominance by rolling out its iMac series. At the time, desktop computers dominated, and many of them shared the bland, beige, squared off looks that caused people to refer to them as "boat anchors."

Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, Dell, et al, were the most common brand names of a boring, unimaginative group. But the iMac shattered the pathetic paradigm. How so? Because the iMacs were rounded off and came in funky colors with funky names: lime, strawberry, blueberry, tangerine and grape. They were actually stylish and broke the mold. It was cool to have one on your desktop, whether at work or home. (Being a longtime Mac user, I happen to think the brand's operating system and user interface are superior to PCs, and that also had a lot to do with iMacs' popularity.)

But here's what stood out for me: There was no floppy disc port in the iMac. Only a slot for CDs and DVDs. It was as if a manufacturer of automobile stereo systems decided, in 1980, to totally eliminate cassette players and instead include capability for playing CDs. (Okay, this is not totally accurate, since CD's didn't come on the scene until 1983, but you get the point). The cassette stuck around for many years after CD's arrived, but the floppy disc died a quick death once CDs and DVDs arrived -- largely because its storage capacity was minuscule. Yet for perhaps 5 or 6 years after the first iMacs came out, the beige boat anchors still came with floppy disc ports. Can you say "clueless"?

In recent years, I've seen plenty of other "skip ahead" moves by companies, artists and organizations that have their finger on the future pulse.

The nation's largest grocery store chain, Kroger, owns its own food processing plants and dairies, as well as several other major supermarket chains including Harris-Teeter, Food Lion, and Farm Fresh, as well as department and jewelry stores. Recently I read that Kroger is making inroads into Florida, but not in traditional brick-and-mortar sense. Publix was founded in Florida and dominates the state, so perhaps Kroger is wise not to compete on Publix' terms.

Instead, Kroger is taking a page from the Amazon playbook. It is opening massive fulfillment centers with advanced robotics for sorting, storing, selecting and grouping products. Delivery by small trucks (think Amazon Prime) will be the M.O. At least in the Sunshine State, Kroger will focus on home delivery of groceries to people who order them online. That seems to be the growing trend. While Kroger and Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Meijer (among many others) have offered a service for several years in which their employees grab your ordered goods off the shelves, bag them and load them into your vehicle at the stores, the pandemic accelerated the home delivery model.

In the music industry, CDs are still around, but greatly diminished. The old paradigm, from vinyl to cassettes and 8-tracks through CDs, was for artists to record albums consisting of anywhere from six to 16 or even 20 songs for a double album. Enthusiasts of groups and singers would willingly buy these package deals just as we accept cable and satellite TV companies bundling together channel packages. If you were lucky, you loved every song (or almost every song) on the album. But too often, there were duds you could do without.

But with mp3 so dominant for at least the past decade, many artists simply bypass putting their music on physical, tangible objects and instead sell digital versions over Apple's iTunes, Amazon Music, Google, and many smaller sites. Gone are many of the large record or CD collections -- replaced by smart phones full of music apps and mp3 files. (Some folks, including yours truly, pay for cloud storage because we've already exceeded our smart phone's storage capacity.)

Turning to talk radio, one of my all-time favorites, the irascible and irrepressible Michael Savage, recently ended his longtime radio contract and now does exclusively podcasts. He claims it is because the corporate suits were getting insufferable and he could no longer be himself under their yoke, and maybe he's right. But then, he is getting on in years, and a five-day a week program (scaled down to three days a week in his final few radio years) is a bit much.

I believe more and more talk radio folk -- especially those who are not in the same league as Hannity and Mark Levin, will end up doing podcasts and bypass the radio paradigm. Who wants to put up with so many commercials and be restricted to a certain time frame and day of the week? Many podcasts are free, and listeners have the option of speeding up the talking to 1 1/2 or even 2 times if they can't spare 2 or 3 hours of listening time, and to skip commercials as well.

I've been a big satellite radio fan for many years, and am aware that millions also prefer streaming music such as Spotify and Pandora. Sometimes I wonder whether broadcast radio is in serious jeopardy.

We'll be seeing a lot more of these paradigm changes soon -- for transportation, work, healthcare, insurance and many other areas.  The change is coming so fast, there are bound to be a few albatrosses like the late Blockbuster, cluelessly trying to pedal DVDs when the world was moving rapidly toward streaming video.

Companies and organizations that don't want to be left in the dust had best put some futurists on their payrolls.

Score One For Religious Liberty

Sometimes even when things seem exceedingly dark, there are glimmers of hope. We received such positive news on Thursday, when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that a Philadelphia foster care agency's policy of not placing children with gay parents is indeed constitutional.

Like the high court's green card ruling on June 7, this one was unanimous -- a huge and unexpected surprise. According to the Wall Street Journal, Catholic Social Services (CSS) has been providing foster care in Philadelphia for more than two centuries. The city and CSS had a contract for 50 years. Until recently, no gay couple had ever approached CSS seeking certification as a foster family.

Maybe that's because there are 27 other foster agencies available -- or then again, perhaps it's because leftists these days love to poke opponents with the proverbial stick in the eye. Religious groups don't try to shove the Bible or threat of hell down the throats of LGBTQ and gay people, but the left often feels it necessary to aggressively impose its belief system on Christians. The First Amendment means nothing to them.

Things came to a head when the City of Philadelphia refused to renew the CSS contract on grounds the agency's practice was discriminatory. Many foster parents sued the city, including Sharonell Fulton, a black foster mom who has cared for 40 children over 25 years.

Remarkably, even the liberals on SCOTUS could see this was a clear case of a local government attempting to trample on the First Amendment right of an organization to practice its religious beliefs without governmental interference.

In my mind, this case is almost as significant as the 2014 SCOTUS ruling in Burwell V. Hobby Lobby, in which the justices held that a business can be exempt from a regulation its owners religiously object to. In this case, it was an Obamacare mandate that contraceptives be included in health care coverage.

Recall that the militant Obama administration attempted to force-feed abortion and contraceptives on unwilling Christian businesses and institutions through the cudgel of Obamacare. Courts slapped down Obama on numerous occasions, and apparently are still willing to wield their power in defense of the First Amendment. Hallelujah!

With the avalanche of disheartening and appalling developments emanating from the Beltway cesspool in recent months, this is wonderful news. A breath of fresh air amidst the leftist fascism. 

Time to raise a glass -- not just because it's Friday night, but because SCOTUS still has a pulse!

Condition Critical: More Pushback Needed!

Over the past year, totalitarianism and Marxist groupthink have been creeping into our institutions, dialogue and policies. A growing number of those who recognize the very real threats to our liberty and way of life have responded aggressively. But sadly, millions of Americans are ill-suited to the moment. Ignorance of history, naiveté about government intentions and apathy blind them to the growing danger.

I have discussed pushback by state legislatures regarding the attempted federalization of elections, Big Tech censorship and other matters, and I have also mentioned locally-based pushback, including parents' protestations about Critical Race theory at school board meetings, and residents of many cities opposing defunding the police.

What I haven't delved into much -- a matter that deserves immediate attention -- is the need to push back hard against federal agencies such as the IRS, Department of Defense and Securities & Exchange Commission. Many of them are like a runaway truck with no brakes, careening downhill on the Wokeism highway. (We all know what eventually happens to that vehicle.)

Although some of their actions result directly from federal legislation signed into law by Sleepy Joe Biden, many of their actions are of the administrative and regulatory nature (with the Big Guy's blessing, of course). I've heard or read about a few examples of Uncle Sam beefing up its gargantuan deep state bureaucracy to wield multiple cudgels against political enemies.

First, there's Sleepy Joe's plan to hire hundreds more IRS bureaucrats to ensure the voracious agency is collecting every penny it has coming. This is a sham act to make it look like the administration is demonstrating some fiscal responsibility -- i.e., paying lip service to the need to raise enough revenues to fund the obscene spending that's been ongoing since Jan. 20. The reality is, these lunatics will blow through the extra revenue in a few hours. They have no clue about the long-term, dire consequences of spending trillions of dollars we don't have.

But enough on fiscal matters. Let's discuss the Department of Justice (DOJ), which has nearly ruined its reputation in the past five years with the Russian collusion bullshit that has destroyed lives and reputations and shattered millions of Americans' faith and trust in their government. Attorney General Merrick Garland just announced he plans to hire many more attorneys to bring the DOJ's full force against alleged "voter suppression" (that's a leftist term broad enough to drive a Mac Truck through -- often, it simply means requiring Voter ID's or prohibition of the corrupt practice of ballot harvesting). Bottom line: Sleepy Joe's legions have declared war on Republican state legislatures and governors that are trying to prevent the banana republic style voting the egregious HR1 would create. To paraphrase the Big Guy, "HR1 is a banana republic on steroids!!!"

And then there's the Securities and Exchange Commission, which under leftist Gary Gensler has announced an ambitious program to pressure corporations to toe the line on wokeism. Gensler, a bank regulator for the Obama administration, played a key role in guaranteeing sub-prime mortgages to millions of unsuitable borrowers who should not have qualified for a mortgage due to such factors as bad credit, low income, a sporadic employment history, and too high a debt-to-income level. So he was one of the ones responsible for the 2008 stock market crash. Oh, but he's woke, and skin color ranks higher than everything else on his radar screen. That's all that counts to the Delaware Destroyer.

The Department of Defense has also been running at breakneck speed toward all-encompassing indoctrination of its employees -- both military and civilian -- with Marxist wokeism. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin intends to play hardball, and those who dare oppose him had better watch out.

There's much more where this came from, but I'm not going to drag this out. I just wish to emphasize that Americans need to get involved and put pressure on federal agencies that are attempting to destroy our economy and way of life through severely misguided, ideological policies and programs.

On the positive front, I have noticed some encouraging signs of late regarding the judicial branch not cowering when it has the opportunity to rein in leftist lunacy. 

A U.S. District Court judge issued a temporary restraining order suspending a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to pay off black farmers' debts because of a lawsuit by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative group based in Milwaukee, who filed the suit on behalf of white farmers who said it was discriminatory toward them.

In Louisiana, a U.S. District Court judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Biden administration from pausing new oil and gas leases on federal land. Judge Terry Doughty ruled that the administration doesn’t have the legal right to stop leasing federal territory for oil-and-gas production without approval from Congress.

And in a pleasant surprise last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled -- are you sitting down? -- 9-0 that a law barring people who enter the country illegally from seeking green cards is constitutional. (The green card shows that an individual is a lawful permanent resident.)

So already, some of the courts are slapping down Biden administration overreach. Simple minded Sleepy Joe thought that when he signed stacks of executive orders to overturn policies of the hated Donald Trump, it was as easy as waving a magic wand. Alas for him and his fellow Democrats, there is still some semblance of the rule of law in our nation.

It's up to us, those who cherish liberty, the rule of law, and limited government, to continue pushing back. Not just by protesting at school board meetings, speaking out on talk radio and pressuring our state legislators to act. But also by putting big-time pressure on our members of Congress and the U.S. Senate to stop the federal government's destructive descent into totalitarian darkness.

The Bill Maher Benchmark

A while back, Posse Incitatus founder K.N. McBride announced he would be dramatically scaling back his posts, in part due to his having many other things on his plate, but also because of his exasperation with the lunacy going on in today's politics. If I recall correctly, he said that arguing with idiots is wearying -- it can be like spinning your wheels.

Sometimes I feel the same way. Trying to use facts, logic, history and rational thinking to persuade people who are all about imagery, emotion and idealism -- let's be blunt: they're often delusional -- is a fool's game. But I keep on, because it's good practice and it is a challenge that helps prevent me from succumbing to the unproductive "junk food" pastimes -- watching movies or sports, posting on Twitter, indulging in music, or just shooting the shit on the phone with an old friend. All of these activities have their place, of course, as long as they're done in moderation. We all need balance in our lives.

But on to my main point: I sense that there are some who identify as liberals or progressives that are not a lost cause. I know from comments I have read and heard from relatives, friends and strangers alike, that there are grave concerns about the chaos unfolding in our society.

It's so obvious that when leftist city councils, mayors, police chiefs and prosecutors coddle criminals and demonize police, destruction and violence prevail. Serious crimes escalate; longtime businesses -- many owned by minorities -- are burned to the ground or forced out of business by anarchists like Black Lives Matter and Antifa. (By the way, of all the insanely stupid and idiotic things liberals say, one of the most asinine is that "Antifa is an idea" rather than an actual organization of violent scumbags.)

In recent weeks, we have seen viral videos of parents lambasting school boards because they don't want the toxic and racist Critical Race Theory to be taught to their children. We've witnessed state legislatures taking preemptive action on election integrity and border control, among other issues.

But what has really been a refreshing surprise is that left-wing comedian and talk show host Bill Maher has, on numerous occasions, pointed out the absurdity of leftist views, statements and actions on a number of issues. A couple months ago, he fully acknowledged that it's ridiculous for the left to demonize governors like Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas with regard to their states' policies on masks and lockdowns, when these states have performed much better than deep blue states. He added it's nonsense to heap praise on the likes of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose state has an abysmal record on COVID19 and many self-inflicted wounds.

Just the other day, Maher pointed out the absurdity of many progressives' statements, tweets and actions regarding the need for Critical Race Theory and the supposed deep, systemic racism and sexism that exists in America. He pointed out what I've stated numerous times in this blog, to race baiters including former President Obama, Sleepy Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Al Sharpton and others: IT'S NOT 1955!!! BULL CONNOR IS DEAD! WE DON'T HAVE FIRE HOSES AND GERMAN SHEPHERDS TURNED ON BLACK PROTESTERS! WE DON'T HAVE SCHOOL SEGREGATION; NOR DO WE HAVE SEPARATE DRINKING FOUNTAINS AND RESTROOMS. WE'VE HAD A BLACK PRESIDENT, AND NOW HAVE A BLACK FEMALE VICE PRESIDENT. BLACK DOCTORS, ENGINEERS, LAWYERS AND CEOS ARE COMMON! WOMEN OFTEN HOLD SIX-FIGURE AND SEVEN-FIGURE CEO JOBS. EXCELLENT WOMEN DOCTORS, LAWYERS AND ENGINEERS PROLIFERATE!

Sorry for all of that shouting, but like my old friend K.N., I get damned frustrated having to repeat and emphasize OBVIOUS facts that progressive leftists A) Ignore; B) Deny; or C) Are too dense to see. When you look at the America of the 1950 and compare it with today, this underscores the outrageousness of the whiny left. Now one of their own is calling them out for their stupidity, and I'm loving it. Maybe, just MAYBE, the light bulb will turn on inside for some of these folks.

Maher is a highly intelligent guy, albeit a major league egotist and narcissist. For many years, I have disliked Maher for his smug, condescending attitude toward conservatives, and the mocking tone he often takes toward people of faith. But even in the bad old days, I noticed a few positive signs. While many leftists twisted themselves into pretzels trying to defend Islam and acting like Islamic terrorism was a rare outlier (it certainly wasn't in the 2001-2015 era), Maher called out Islam for not policing and reining in its kooks. Meanwhile, dim bulbs like Joy Behar actually stated that fundamentalist Christians were every bit as dangerous as fundamentalist Muslims. 

Maher's willingness to call out the stupidity on his own side of the political spectrum is highly encouraging, and just might be an impetus that encourages other liberals and progressives to break out of their silly groupthink. One can only hope.