This week the President kicked off his 2020 reelection campaign with a rally in Orlando, a rally that had 20,000 supporters inside the arena and thousands outside in the rain.  It’s hard to imagine any of the candidates in the Democrat field, a field that resembles the crowd in the Star Wars bar scene, being able to defeat the President.  The Democrat problem is that, even at this late date, they still regard Donald Trump as a joke and a mistake can never happen again.  They should have stopped laughing after the 2016 election, but they didn’t.  They doubled down.  The Dems assured us that the Trump victory would result in a stock market crash.  They were wrong.  The market is up 50% since Trump’s election.  The Dems said Trump’s trade policies would destroy the economy.  They were wrong; it’s stronger than ever.  The President has ended NAFTA with new agreements with Mexico and Canada, he’s gotten better trade deals with Europe and is bringing the Chinese to heel.  The Dems said Trump would start wars and possibly destroy the world.  Wrong again!  He’s gotten NATO countries to pay their fair share (I thought Democrats were in favor of the rich paying their fair share), and he’s made progress with North Korea.  Rather than starting wars, Trump has been criticized for removing troops from Syria.  The Dems, led by Il Duce Obama, dismissed Trump’s promise to create manufacturing jobs with, “What’s he going to do, wave a magic wand?”  Trump’s policies have created more than 5 million new jobs, the manufacturing sector is booming, and there are more job openings than available people to fill them, pushing unemployment for all workers to lows not seen for 50 years.  In spite of 3 years of constant attacks in the media, whose coverage of Trump is 95% negative, and 3 years of phony investigations, the President’s approval ratings are up.  You’d think the Dems would have figured out by know that Trump bashing won’t make him go away.  They’ve hit Trump with everything they have, and he’s still standing.  By now, they should have realized that the traditional means of destroying a political opponent won’t work on Trump.  He’s not a traditional politician, who tip toes around trying not to offend anybody, and who will rush to the microphone to apologize whenever criticized.  He’s the bull in the china shop that this country has needed for so long.  With no help from the Congress, Trump is continuing to build the border wall, and even Democrats have had to stop lying about a manufactured crisis on the southern border.  He’s enacted the prison reform that other presidents only talked about.  There is no aspect of the political landscape in which things are not better now than they were in 2016.  It is against this backdrop of Trump achievements and promises kept that the Democrats lurch into the 2020 campaign.  The conventional wisdom was that Trump only won because Hillary Clinton was such a bad candidate.  The remedy would seem to be a reasonable, moderate candidate as a counterpoint to alleged madman Trump.  The problem is that the Democrats are woefully short of reasonable, moderate candidates.  I think the problem stems from the internal divide in the Democrat Party.  In 2016, the Dems were divided between the crooked Clinton faction and the socialist Bernie Sanders faction.  The Bernie supporters correctly believe that, had Hillary not fixed the 2016 primaries, he would have won.  Accordingly, they now think it’s Bernie’s turn.  Moreover, the media is embracing the socialist stylings of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, an ignorant imbecile who continues to expound on subjects about which she knows nothing.  Recently, AOC alleged that the Trump administration is putting illegal aliens in concentration camps, which she likened to the Nazi death camps, about which she vowed, “never again.”  In so doing, AOC proved that those who fail to learn history are doomed to say something stupid.  She’s managed to insult Holocaust victims, and even comrade Bill DeBlasio said she was wrong.  All this would be unimportant, but for the fact that, since the Dems don’t have real issues, real policies, or real arguments to run on, AOC has become the face of the Democrat Party.  Nothing about the Democrat Party is real, because the Left exists in a world where the facts simply don’t matter.  In Leftist Land, you don’t need facts, all you need to do is to keep repeating the talking point (a/k/a lie) of the day.  So Trump is a criminal, without any evidence, and Trump is a racist, without any evidence, and Trump is against women, Hispanics, gay people, etc, etc.  No facts required.  There are some 24 Democrats running for President, and they all look like pygmies alongside President Trump.  The media is relying on polls 17 months from the election to convince themselves that any of the pygmies will beat the President.  They’re delusional.  At this point in 1996, Bob Dole was ahead of Bill Clinton.  How did that end?  At this point in 1984, Mondale was 10 points ahead of Ronald Reagan.  Mondale lost 49 States, and came within 3,700 votes of losing all 50.  No Dem candidate stands out.  Bernie’s a washed up Marxist.  Kamala Harris hasn’t gained traction.  Cory Booker is a whining joke.  Elizabeth Warren, who may be the winner, will not play on the national stage.  Then there’s Joe Biden, who is ahead because he’s best known.  Joe the human gaffe machine doesn’t have the energy to go the distance, and as liberal as he is, he’s too reasonable and moderate to win the nomination.  So far, all he’s done is apologize for his past positions.  As this is written, he’s under fire for saying he worked with segregationist Senators to get things done.  The Left is appalled, as they know resistance is preferable to accomplishments.  Proving that the truth has no place in the media, a television “journalist” reported it as “Biden cooperated with segregationist Republican colleagues.”  Herman Talmadge and John Eastland were leading Democrats, but it’s the lie that counts.  The truth is that the Dems have nothing to offer.  They were counting on Trump to fail.  Lies won’t elect their candidate.

For more than two years, Democrats and their media lapdogs have been lying to the American people about President Trump.  We now know that the “Trump colluded with Russia” claim was a hoax, concocted by Hillary Clinton’s hench-persons, orchestrated by John Brennan at the CIA using foreign intelligence sources, and fed to the FBI.  James Comey, acting in an undercover capacity, treated Donald Trump like a criminal suspect.  Comey selectively fed information to Trump about the phony Steele dossier, leaked to the media, and reported back to the Justice Department, “mission accomplished.”  Throughout this shameful period in our history, President Trump has been regarded as the equivalent of a mob boss, being targeted by law enforcement.  Because Trump has been declared guilty by the establishment, anything goes in the efforts to bring him down.  For this reason, Mueller could resurrect charges against Paul Manafort, already passed on by federal prosecutors, could hold Manafort in solitary confinement for years, and have him sentenced to what amounts to life in prison.  Ordinary mob bosses can’t grant pardons, so it was necessary for New York State to indict Manafort for the same offenses to keep him locked up.  Bringing down Boss Trump justified setting up General Flynn.  It justified using a SWAT team to raid Roger Stone’s house to arrest an old man in his pajamas.  It justified a two year Mueller anal exam of all things Trump, a probe which found nothing.  But that didn’t stop Congressional Democrats from continuing to lie about the President.  Liars like Adam Schiff (Heel) continue to claim they have evidence of Trump collusion.  Jerry Nadler is using the Mueller Report (the gift that keeps on giving), to push the claim that Trump obstructed justice.  Mueller wouldn’t make a legal judgment on obstruction because he knew it didn’t exist.  Part II of the Mueller Report is an Andrew Weissman fantasy.  Weissman has a history of rewriting statutes to create new crimes.  The obstruction of justice statute prohibits actions motivated by a corrupt intent.  Mueller/Weissman wrote, “We concluded that Congress can validly regulate the President’s exercise of official duties to prohibit actions motivated by a corrupt intent to obstruct justice.”  So – a President is guilty of obstruction if he’s guilty of obstruction.  Genius.  Obstruction is a cover up of wrongdoing.  A reasonable person might fairly conclude that, if there is no underlying crime to cover up, no person, and no President, can possibly have the corrupt intent required to make one guilty of obstruction.  Mueller’s Report even suggests this.  That’s not good enough for the lying Dems in Congress, however.  They must bring Trump down, and because they have decided Trump is a mob boss, they are using the usual prosecutorial methods.  The FBI used killer Sammy the Bull Gravano to get John Gotti.  The FBI used killer Whitey Bulger as a paid informant.  Congress is following the same plan.  The first witness called by Congressional Democrats to depose Trump was his lawyer Michael Cohen, who had been convicted of lying to Congress (lying to liars).  This week, Jerry Nadler brought in an expert witness on obstruction of justice.  John Dean of Watergate infamy.  Dean is doubly qualified.  He has denounced President Trump, only the last of a series of Republican presidents he has denounced.  More importantly, Dean really is an expert on obstruction of justice, having been convicted of that crime.  John Dean has done a good job casting himself as the savior of our democracy –  the man who exposed the crimes of the Nixon Administration.  The truth casts Dean as a less noble actor.  The Dean legend is that he learned of the Watergate break-ins after the fact, and exposed the crimes when he found out, to his horror, that Nixon and high-ranking members of the Administration were complicit.  In fact, the FBI, at the time, referred to John Dean as, “the master manipulator of the coverup” in the Watergate scandal.  And that must have been true, because FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, a/k/a “Deep Throat,” was illegally leaking that information to the press.  The former attorney general said that Dean “was at the center of the criminality” of Watergate.  The special counsel at the time found 19 material discrepancies between Dean’s sworn testimony and the White House recordings.  Dean’s lies were provable because there were actual recordings that contradicted Dean’s statements — 19 times!  Being a serial liar, who was convicted of lying makes Dean the perfect witness for Democrats.  The Watergate break-ins were planned by G. Gordon Liddy.  Dean hired Liddy to work on the Nixon reelection campaign.  Dean accompanied Liddy to meetings with Attorney General John Mitchell, who was responsible for approving and funding the plan.  The night the burglars were arrested at the Watergate was the second break-in, planned and approved by the campaign.  Dean not only knew in advance, according to the late G. Gordon Liddy, Dean wanted the Watergate break-ins to be done to look for information in the possession of the DNC linking Dean’s wife to a D.C. prostitution ring.  Frankly, Liddy’s claim is a bit hard to believe, but the point is that John Dean was far from an innocent who saved the nation from Richard Nixon.  Dean’s job was to protect the President.  Instead of protecting the President,  he lied to Nixon, Haldeman and Erlichman, and got the White House directly involved in the coverup, which he was running.  When the Schiff hit the fan, Dean ratted all of them out to get himself time served.  Since then, Dean has made a career of phony moralizing.  Simply put, John Dean is a fraud and a whore.  His expertise derives from a lie.  Being a fraud, whore and liar makes Dean the perfect witness for Democrats.  Birds of a feather, I guess.

George Santayana’s quote, “Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it,” comes to mind more and more often these days.  We live in a political climate in which the masterminds of the Left are in the process of erasing history.  There are demands in Maryland to remove statues and busts of Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of the Dred Scott decision.  Statues of Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee have been pulled down in New Orleans.  Simple-minded college students, whose parents are paying $60,000 a year supposedly to educate them, have toppled statues they deemed “racist” in displays of self-righteous zeal that would have made the Nazi Brown Shirts proud.  Author Tony Parsons,  has argued in GQ Magazine that the statue removals are shortsighted at best, censorial, and “a monumental mistake” at worst.  Parsons argues that once statues and monuments are torn down, who is to say the documents and textbooks that tell the true story of a nation’s history won’t soon follow?  That’s already underway.  Parsons’ conclusion is that historical correctness does not change the past, and it does not improve the present.  It’s really hard to blame the students for their follies though.  Having been educated in American schools in recent years, they simply know not what they do.  In the schools where history is still taught many were forced to read Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of the United States.  Zinn, an avowed Marxist, took a dim view of the United States.  The premise of his history text is that U.S. history is “a history of genocide,” brutally and purposefully waged by our rulers in the name of progress.  Zinn’s textbook is used in the majority of our public schools, so what chance do the students have?  The irony of the push by progressives to remove uncomfortable history, is that by doing so, they already are repeating the history that they never learned.  Consider historian Victor Davis Hanson’s 2017 National Review article, Our War Against Memory.  In it, Hanson reminds us that the ancient Romans had a practice of removing all traces of the statues and monuments dedicated to deposed despotic emperors.  The Roman Senate would proclaim a damnatio memoriae (a “damnation of memory”).  “All prior commemoration was wiped away, thereby robbing the posthumous ogre of any legacy and hence any existence for eternity.”  However, the destruction of  Roman statues did not cause succeeding emperors to be “kinder or gentler,” to coin a phrase.  Piling irony upon irony, today’s progressive social justice warriors, who like to call any dissenters “fascists,” are themselves mimicking the practices of the worst totalitarian dictators and murderers the world has ever known.  The Nazis burned books that were declared “un-Aryan.” Victor Davis Hanson reminds us that Josef Stalin came to power with the help of Leon Trotsky, then obliterated every word, every photo, and every memory of Trotsky.  More recently, ISIS members burned and destroyed documents, monuments and artifacts that date back thousands of years because they offended fundamentalist Muslim values.  ISIS blew up historical sites, such as the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, Syria, which had stood for more than 2,000 years before being erased in the name of God.  Not satisfied with simply blowing up the Temple, ISIS thugs also beheaded the 81 year old archeologist who maintained the site.  Anybody think that murders and desecrations by these Islamic crazies will usher in a world dedicated to social justice?  The real and present danger is that, once begun, there’s no telling where the abolition of our history will end.  George Washington and his subordinate, Light Horse Harry Lee, the father of Robert E. Lee, were slave owners, as were five of our first seven presidents.  Should we simply erase them, and renumber our chief executives, making President Trump president 40?  No, that would only confuse Maxine Waters, who would have to learn to chant, “Impeach 40!” instead of 45.  Then again 40 was Ronald Reagan, so she probably wouldn’t miss a beat.  And if all segregationists must be erased, what about out-and- out racist Woodrow Wilson?  Princteon’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs might have to be renamed.  Maybe we should just remove the Woodrow and keep the Wilson.  That would avoid the expense of changing all the signs.  How about the Flip Wilson School of Public and International Affairs?  He was a lot more entertaining than Woodrow ever was.  Maybe we’re on to something.  That would solve the problem of Washington & Lee University in Virginia.  George Washington owned slaves, and Robert E. Lee fought to preserve slavery.  I’m surprised the school’s name has lasted this long.  I mean, if we have to remove the statue of Kate Smith, and ban her rendition of God Bless America from Yankee Stadium because of supposed racist lyrics in a song she didn’t write, but had the temerity to sing 80 years ago, then Washington and Lee clearly have to go. We could still call it Washington & Lee though.  Let’s just rename the school for Denzel Washington and Stan Lee.  This will appease both Black Lives Matter and the Super Hero-loving students who surely know more about the life of Stan Lee than that of old Robert E.  The real danger of historical cleansing is that the removal of all traces of of the past that are offensive to snowflakes takes away the distant warning system that serves to remind us of the path to which zealotry leads.  Victor Davis Hanson warns that, contrary to progressive orthodoxy, the arc of history doesn’t bend toward our own perceptions of moral justice.  Instead, human advancement tends to be circular.  What happened before happens again, and contrary to expectations, the world is not becoming more civilized as time goes by.  The march of history has resulted in ever more devastating genocides, not in a reduction in violence.  Hanson warns progressives that future generations may disapprove of progressive “advancements” such as late-term and genetically driven abortion, euthanasia, and racially segregated dorms and “safe spaces,” finding them as immoral as they find Robert E. Lee.  They could well find themselves erased.  Not a bad idea at that.

In the 1930’s, Aldous Huxley published his novel Brave New World, which described a dystopian society that controlled every aspect of the lives of the inhabitants of the World State.  In the 1930’s, the ideas that the government would ban live births, dictate how many  and what type of children would be born, or “decanted,” would indoctrinate children in schools to do the bidding of the State, would do away with privacy, regulate every aspect of people’s lives, and would keep the citizens sedated to control them, was a fantasy.  In today’s America, it is becoming fact.  We now live in a world where so-called progressives prefer abortions to births, and where they encourage abortions for reasons such as gender choice.  Our public schools and even colleges have been turned into indoctrination factories, run by anti-American and anti-capitalist fanatics.  The advent of the 24 hour news cycle, cell phones, robo calls, internet search tracking, GPS tracking, and eavesdropping by Alexa and Siri, have effectively put an end to any notion of privacy.  And now, under circumstances hauntingly reminiscent of Huxley’s Brave New World, the government is pushing drugs on its citizens.  In Brave New World, the government supplied citizens with the drug Soma.  Not only supplied it, but actively encouraged the use of this tranquilizing substance.  Soma was ingested daily by the citizens of Brave New World as it offered what Huxley called a “holiday from reality.”  Depending on the dosage, it stimulated feelings of euphoria, pleasant hallucinations, or acted as a powerful sleep-aid.  It also served to heighten suggestibility, thus increasing the effectiveness of the propaganda to which the citizens were continuously subjected.  The inhabitants were trained to rely on Soma, and to repeat aphorisms such as, “A gram is better than a damn.”  In other words, don’t get mad, get mellow.  Our governments aren’t pushing all drugs, just marijuana.  The government is against opioids, and is trying to incarcerate drug manufacturers and doctors for making and prescribing them, but it’s pushing marijuana.  At the risk of sounding cynical, maybe that’s because there’s big money for the government in marijuana.  When they legalize it, as about half our States have done, they get to raise revenue from taxing the weed.  No revenue from opioids, so they’re bad.  Here in New Jersey, we have medical marijuana, and are attempting to legalize recreational marijuana.  Although our Legislature failed to pass that measure, its going on the ballot in 2020.  We’re actually going to be asked to amend our Constitution to permit marijuana use.  I didn’t know there was an anti-pot provision in our 1947 Constitution.  But picture that.  The citizens of New Jersey will be asked to amend the Constitution to permit the population to legally render itself stoned and stupid.  Our Founding Fathers would be so proud! But who cares, we can tax pot at $42 an ounce, and business is business.  I recently attended a legal education class on marijuana legalization.  The panel was comprised of lawyers from firms that stand to make a lot of money representing the cannabis industry, and assorted progressive hopheads, who’d just like to get stoned.  At the class, they complained that the medical marijuana dispensaries sell pot at prices $100 an ounce more than the dealers on the street.  They suggested that adding more dispensaries would promote competition and reduce prices.  That was the first time I ever heard a progressive imbecile suggest that capitalism might be a good thing.  It’s odd that the same government that prohibits and demonizes the use of tobacco, is now promoting the smoking of pot.  Both practices involve smoking.  Three or four marijuana joints a day can produce the same risk of bronchitis or emphysema as twenty or more tobacco cigarettes. Marijuana smoke is also filled with many of the same chemicals as tobacco smoke, including ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, and formaldehyde; chemicals known to cause cancer.  Marijuana use kills brain cells and damages the thalamus, the part of the brain that’s involved in consciousness, long-term memory and information processing.  Long-term marijuana use may reduce blood flow to a part of the brain that increases the susceptibility for Alzheimer’s disease.  If you’re thinking its crazy to use marijuana to treat glaucoma, only to expose users to cancer, brain damage and Alzheimer’s disease, so am I.  But it’s even more insidious than that.  A nation of pot users provides the State with a sedated, compliant, and apathetic population.  If you’re not paying attention and aren’t interested in anything other than finding your next joint of Maui-Wowie, then the government can get away with just about anything.  Plus, having all of us lying around stoned is good for the economy.  Think of what the marijuana munchies will do for the snack food industry.  GrubHub would have to hire thousands of new drivers just to deliver pizzas and donuts to potheads.  It would be tough to find enough drivers who weren’t too high to drive, though.  Marijuana legalization will make it easier for the government to oppress us.  Maybe I’m just too suspicious of the government’s motives when it comes to pot.  Then again, we’re now learning that the Deep State has been, and is still, attempting to reverse a presidential election just to remain in power.  A stoned population would make that sort of thing a lot easier.  Nah!  Just fire up another doobie.   Don’t worry, be happy.  The government prefers you that way.

If you ever doubted that there exists a Deep State, which perpetuates the status quo regardless of elections, think again.  The only thing the entrenched Democrat and Republican members of this cabal agree on is that, no matter who gets elected, they must stay in power.  The Deep State is comprised of political insiders.  These are elected officials, lobbyists, former officials who aspire to be lobbyists, fixers, contributors who buy influence, and the assorted thieves and charlatans who gladly accept dirty money to thwart the will of the people.  The Deep State hates President Trump because he’s not one of them.  They get stronger as government grows ever larger, taxes more, spends more, and exerts more control over our lives.  Meanwhile, Trump arrived on the scene promising to cut the federal workforce (blasphemy), cut taxes (insanity), cancel regulations (heresy), and prohibit former officials from cashing in as lobbyists (downright treason).  It’s no wonder showing Donald Trump to Deep State denizens was like showing vampires the cross.  The irony is that the Deep State is responsible for making it possible for Donald Trump to become President.  For decades, thieving politicians whispered sweetly in our ears about how much they shared our views.  Then we elected them, and they ignored our wishes, until the next election.  If the Deep State bastards had delivered what they promised, even once in a while, they could have continued their game.  But instead, all they ever gave us were empty promises, lies, half-truths, financial solicitations, and then the back of their hands, until it was time to vote for them again.  We finally had enough.  In a field of 17 Republican candidates, 14 were from the Deep State.  The deepest Deep Stater, the one most solidly embedded in the establishment was Jeb Bush.  He also was the best funded, and he was the first to be eliminated.  Of the three non-establishment candidates, Ben Carson (a good man) didn’t have the political chops to go the distance.  The other two, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, were the last two standing. When I wrote, in February 2015, that a conservative populist could win, I had Cruz in mind.  Evidently, Donald Trump had come to the same conclusion.  Trump is the Deep State’s worst nightmare come true.  He wasn’t a creature of the establishment.  He owed them nothing.  For the Deep State, it’s all an act.  They are behind the curtain  pulling the strings.  As I’ve said before, Trump is like Rocky, “He doesn’t know it’s a damn show, he thinks it’s a damn fight.”  And worst of all, Trump isn’t even for sale.  He has his own money, so he doesn’t need theirs.  They did all they could do to stop him.  Hillary bought the phony dossier from the Russians, by way of a British spy, by way of Global Fusion, by way of her lawyer (information laundering?).  She gave the crap to the Obama Justice Department.  Former DNI James Clapper has said it was Il Duce Obama who ordered the Trump/Russia investigation.  No surprise there. (The fish stinks from the head).   The CIA got in the act, the FBI got phony FISA warrants to spy on Trump.  They cleared Hillary without an investigation.  After Trump was elected, Comey withheld information from him, set him up, set up General Flynn, and orchestrated the Mueller investigation, which, 2 years and $35 million later, came to nothing.  So now, unending unconstitutional Congressional investigations, into the President’s private affairs, his family, his closest advisors, and his businesses.  I’ve never been accused of being naive, but is it too much to ask that a President of the United States be treated with the common decency due any American citizen, much less the chief executive?    It won’t happen.  Too many Obama officials broke myriad laws constructing their “insurance policy” to end the Trump presidency.  Bill Barr cancelled that policy.  Now he’s doing the latest remake of Double Indemnity, investigating the underwriters who sold the policy.  But the Deep State thugs will never give up.  They have to protect their phony baloney jobs.  Harumph!  They can’t let the peasants with pitchforks, the smelly Walmart people who elected his President, get the idea that their votes actually count.  That’s why they must fight this President tooth and nail, whatever the cost.  And consider the costs.  Trump has the economy humming, unemployment at historic lows, wages rising, inflation nowhere to be seen.  They don’t care.  They want a big fat infrastructure bill, but not from Trump.  They want amnesty for the Dreamers, and Trump offered it.  They refused. Nobody deported more aliens than Il Duce Obama.  He actually did lock kids in cages.  Nobody complained.  But if Trump doesn’t ignore immigration laws, if he doesn’t lodge illegals in Trump Tower, or if HUD won’t violate the law and place illegals in public housing, he’s a racist.  We have a Legislature that will not legislate.  They can’t pass a budget.  It’s their job to fix the immigration laws.  They won’t.  They don’t care about you.  They don’t care about the border, U.S. sovereignty, Americans’ jobs, or our national security.  They and their media lapdogs bitched and lied about “Russian collusion” for nearly 3 years.  Picture it.  They bought Russian lies about Trump, and used it to try to frame Trump for consorting with the Russians.  In so doing, the Deep State has given aid and comfort to the Russians.  Putin’s goal was to sow the seeds of chaos in America, to weaken our government.  With the help of the Deep State, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.  The Clintons took money from the Russians.  Joe Biden and son took money from Ukrainians allied with Russians, and from the Chinese, who Trump is fighting on trade.  Deep Staters pretend to be Americans, but business is business.  They sold you out before, and they’ll do it again.  All this proves that the Deep State is really a shallow cesspool.  Trump must be destroyed.  He’s costing them money, and he’s proved we do much better when we take the boot of the Deep State masterminds off our necks.