Words Matter - The Left’s Use of False Narratives

 Left wing progressives continue to use inflated, false branding  in their goal to move the country further and further towards a socialist regime. Using the term “racist” for anyone who disagrees with their extremist views is one example.  Another is calling the January 6 protestors “insurgents.” Yes, they were disruptive, yes, lawbreaking was involved.  But Words have to have meaning, and the continuous mislabeling of the U.S. Capitol breach as an “insurrection” is an example of how a false narrative can gain currency and cause dangerous injustice. 

The latest attempt at a false narrative Is the calling HB1557 the “don’t say gay” law.   The bill supports the right of parents to be involved in decisions regarding their children's well-being and to limit discussion of gender and sexuality issues in classrooms.  No matter how many times they call Florida’s HB1557  "don't say gay" it does not change the fact that there is a huge difference between acceptance of adult gay couples and the attempt to normalize the idea of young children changing their gender. 

Words matter. I hear Republicans and even so-called conservative news broadcasters use these terms created by the left.   Republicans need to stop mimicking this language — as long as we do, they win.  It’s the “Parents Rights” law, nothing else.  

How to get Rid of RINOs

How can you get rid of RINOS? Support strong candidates running them in upcoming primaries. Here is one that needs your help.  

Constitutional attorney Harriet Hageman is the candidate running to unseat Liz Cheyney of her congressional seat representing Wyoming. Hageman has deep roots in the state and grew up on a ranch in Wyoming where she and her siblings had to move cows and fix fences, while Cheyney has spent most of her life in Virginia and bought a home in Wyoming in 2012, so she could run for the Senate  (dropped out of this race) and in 2016 run for the US Congress. She is a hawkish Bush-era Republican who  later supported the 2nd impeachment of Donald Trump and has been one of the RINO members of the Democrat’s January 6th Commission. 

It is important to note here that Cheney who has no real connection to this state is the only US House Representative for  Wyoming. While she is a so-called Conservative Republican, she has not been deeply engaged in policies that would support the State.  She has been busy politicking with Democrats like Nancy Pelosi. Meanwhile Bush-era RINOs and Democrats are funding her campaign. Money is piling up in Cheney’s re-election fund — more than $7 million last year. It’s roughly 10 times as much as her Trump-backed primary challenger Harriet Hageman drew. And it’s so much cash from so many unexpected places that seasoned campaign operatives aren’t sure she can even spend it all on a House race in Wyoming.

Hageman  has been been sounding the alarm on Biden’s "30 x 30" initiative, also known as "America the Beautiful," which aims to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s land and waters by 2030.  She argues it’s a "land grab," a threat to Wyoming and an attempt by Democrats to hasten the decline of rural America.  She says “ The federal government under Joe Biden and radical Democrats are intent on taking over and federalizing our private property rights under the auspices or claim of combating climate change.” She champions  the people of Wyoming in rejecting burdensome and onerous government overreach. 

To contribute to Hageman’s caampaign go to https://www.hagemanforwyoming.com

Biden’s War on Oil and Gas Production Fuels Putin

Vladimir Putin realizes what we all know, which is that a good chunk of allies in Europe are highly dependent on Russian oil and natural gas. 

Two years ago, the U.S. was the world’s largest oil and gas producer, making the U.S. self-sufficient in energy and a major exporter. Mr. Biden’s war on oil and gas production has helped enable Putin.  Putin realized that reliance on Russian petroleum and natural gas would make it difficult for the West to put economic pressure on him.  Moreover, the rising price of his major export was providing the capital to wage an invasion.  

Given Biden’s election promises and left flank push for eliminating use of fossil fuel, Biden is now caught between an angry electorate watching  oil and gas prices rise even higher after months of rising costs and the cry for cutting off Russian oil imports.  The dynamic gives Putin important leverage in his invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's invasion has sent oil prices soaring to their highest levels in more than a decade. They've also crushed hopes of a strong global rebound from the coronavirus crisis.

Ukraine and Biden – A Story of Failure and Corruption

In 2014 when Russia annexed  the Crimea and went on to back Russian separatists in the Ukraine’s east, then Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. pressed President Barack Obama to take action, and fast, to make Moscow “pay in blood and money” for its aggression.  Fortunately President Obama , a Biden aide told the New York Times, was having none of it.

Biden continued to press  to increase lethal aid, backing a push to ship FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles to Kiev.  The president flatly rejected the idea and dispatched Biden to the region as an emissary, cautioning him “about not overpromising to the Ukrainian government,” Biden wrote  in a memoir.

Biden began pressing the Ukraine’s leaders to tackle the rampant corruption that made their country a risky bet for international lenders — and pushing reform of Ukraine’s cronyism-ridden energy industry. “You have to be whiter than snow, or the whole world will abandon you,” Mr. Biden told the country’s newly elected president, Petro O. Poroshenko, during an early 2014 phone call, according to a New York Times article. 

Just as these efforts were happening Biden’s son Hunter joined the board of a Ukrainian gas company that was the subject of multiple corruption investigations, a position that paid him as much as $50,000 a month which in the view of some Obama administration officials, including the ambassador to Kiev — threatened to undermine Mr. Biden’s agenda.

A look back at what the former vice president actually did in Ukraine reveals that his work in Ukraine did not accomplish much nor did it  “fundamentally change the overall institutional corruption,” said Edward C. Chow, an expert on geopolitics and energy policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “And having his son doing what he did was a distraction that undermined his message.”

In 2015 Biden, while he was pushing for stronger anti-corruption moves in Ukraine, would not even discuss steps that could make all questions vanish: asking his son to quit the Burisma board, as editorial boards and Ukraine experts were suggesting. 

And this is the guy, the one who failed miserably in the region and still has his son’s suspicious involvement there in his shadow, who we have at the helm during a crisis that could push the country into a war with Russia over the Ukraine.

Democrats Now Take Aim at Voter Integrity

Because of Joe Manchin’s refusal to go along with their disastrous Build Back Better  bill, better labeled Bring us Back Broke, Democrats have shifted gears and are pushing forward with their radical election legislation.  They often scare their base by they falsely claiming that Republicans are trying to dilute the minority vote and return to an era of Jim Crow laws.  They market these election bills as “protecting voting rights.”  What they truly are our bills to protect Democrats seats in Congress and keep Democrats in power. The bill currently proposed  would exponentially degrade election security and raise the potential for fraud. 

This bill needs to take the same path as the BBB bill into the trash can of history.  We need to encourage our Governor and other elected officials to fight this.  

Good Intentions, Unintended Consequences - Leftist Policies Destroying Cities

Progressive policies by focusing on caring without accountability and by victimizing groups are destroying our cities and aiming further to destroy our country.  

Progressive policies have led to many people believing that they deserve rights without any responsibilities.  Illustrations of unchecked compassion include San Francisco streets dotted with homeless encampments, over-compensating workers for not working resulting in severe labor shortages, open borders that allow migrants to stream into our country unvented, without requirements.  

Democratic politicians use compassionate rhetoric much more often than their Republicans do.  Republicans are portrayed of as “not caring.”.  This despite of evidence of the opposite. Studies reveal that Republican give more to charity.  Using voting and IRS data for the residents of 3,000 counties across the nation, a four-professor research team found, according to the according to the New York Times that counties which are “overwhelmingly Republican” report higher charitable contributions than Democratic-dominated counties.  Arthur C. Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute, published "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism." Brooks made a data-driven case that, even after accounting for income differences, conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than liberals do, and that residents of red states volunteer more than those of blue states do. 

Caring about people is a good thing.   Republicans fail to proclaim their own sense of caring enough.  They do care that all people should be free and afforded the opportunity to pursue their dreams.  They do care that people are given help in times of personal, local or national disasters.  But free stuff without accountability is reckless and dangerous to our civilization. Movements such as “Defund the Police” and “Black Lives Matter” are  examples  of efforts of caring without accountability. It becomes ok to loot, steal and destroy in the name of vigilante justice.  

Change has to come. Change towards freedom and caring with responsibility. 

<Theresa Murtha>

Free Speech Protected

 

By  Bill Abatematteo

Justice George Sutherland said, “If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned.” Punta Gorda ignored his advice and created a First Amendment controversy with its new sign ordinance. Let’s take a look why this ordinance is constitutionally flawed.

At their May 19th meeting, City Officials stated the ordinance was content neutral. However, the Supreme Court said in Reed v Gilbert, that if you have to read a sign to determine whether it is prohibited or not, then it is not content neutral, but content based, and such laws are thus unconstitutional, no matter how noble the intentions were. People have been cited after authorities read their signs and determined the words were banned. This ordinance is content based.

The Supreme Court ruled in Cohen v California (1972) that Mr. Cohen had a constitutionally protected right to wear a jacket with the words “F*** the Draft” into a crowded courthouse. The court ruled that no matter how offensive that word was or who saw it, it was constitutionally protected political speech. Absent evidence that he was trying to start a fight or incite a riot, which he wasn’t, they declared that his words couldn’t be suppressed, regulated or made illegal. But that’s exactly what Punta Gorda has done. They criminalized political speech.

Which words? You know, the “indecent ones”. What they exactly are, we don’t know. We can only imagine and guess. And this point is crucial because that is another reason courts prohibit the banning of words, because they too have asked, which ones – who decides – and where does it end?

In Cohen, the Court declared the “F-word” is not obscenity but was simply an emotional expression of protest, thus clearly distinguishing profanity from obscenity. Justice John Harlan famously said, “One man’s vulgarity is another man’s poetry”. So why were code enforcement hearing officers having discussions that a political sign containing the “F-word” was obscenity when Harlan ruled it wasn’t?

The Minnesota Supreme Court stated, “Curses, expletives, and the whole vocabulary of insults are not intended or susceptible of literal interpretation. To attach greater significance to them is stupid, ignorant, or naive”. So why the confusion?

Furthermore, Section 11.4 of the ordinance established the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as the final authority of a word’s meaning. One of its definitions of the “f-word” is vulgarity of a “damning sense”, i.e., to condemn vigorously, publicly object/criticize, or to swear at. So why wasn’t Merriam-Webster used to adjudicate this matter? But in fairness to the hearing officers and enforcement authorities, this is what happens when elected officials make bad law. And that’s why these laws are struck down.

In ruling that government can’t pass laws that prohibit the mere expression and display of speech people find offensive, including vulgarity, Justice Harlan stated, “If you don’t want to look at a word you don’t like – then look the other way”. Punta Gorda needs to read that memo.

On their June 2 meeting, one councilperson noted “while the Sign Code was being drafted to ensure free speech, many individuals perceived it as limiting free speech”. No, it suppresses free speech as determined by the Supreme Court. The Cohen case clearly reaffirmed extra protections that are afforded political speech and hyperbole, including the use of salty language. Yet, instead of protecting the rights of protestors, the City approved an ordinance that was designed to placate those who objected to the display of political speech they didn’t like. Perhaps our officials didn’t see it that way, but that’s what they did.

At that June meeting, another councilperson spoke on the “difficulty of balancing the right to free speech with the public’s desire for civility”. No, it’s not difficult because you have neither the responsibility nor

the authority to control what words people use. Of course we want a civil society, it’s just that government’s role is limited in shaping it. California, in defense of its action likewise thought it was appropriate for government to legislate civility. The court disagreed and said it was not the job of the state to set up a code of etiquette, courtesy or to maintain a suitable level of public discourse.

Several lawsuits are on the horizon. Some City Council members said they are not "backing down". Sadly, it will be us taxpayers, and not them, who will be responsible for these legal fees and settlements. It is so easy to roll the Constitutional dice when you’re playing with taxpayer’s money.

Paul Cohen was given the right to wear a jacket that said, “F*** the Draft” in a crowded courthouse. But anyone who wears that same jacket on the sidewalks in Punta Gorda will be in violation of the law. This is unacceptable. Please explain how a law that is so constitutionally problematic will stand?

Communities and states have been repealing laws that ban speech, but Punta Gorda enacted one despite the many decisions prohibiting such laws. The City Council needs to do what responsible leaders do, i.e., be contrite and admit they made a mistake, and rescind this ordinance so we can put this issue behind us.