Category: Trump Presidency

       As 2017 fizzles out, we evaluate the past year and plan improvements for the next. Total readership is robust but hard to pin down because most of the growth comes from other blogs that pick up our posts and from an incredibly large number of forwards – in some cases, four generations of forwards. We had 50,000 visits to our website in 2017. Our commercial email service reports we have one of their highest open rates. We have a strong presence on social media. Our Red October series achieved primo placement on Google’s search engine – competitive with that of The Wall Street Journal.

       We are taking a short holiday break from publishing; hence, this is our penultimate post for 2017. The final post likely will be in late December when the final outcome of  tax legislation is known. That will be the last part of our series: Taxation in America. Our weekly blog will resume in mid-January. Thanks again to all of you for your loyal readership, forwarding and financial support during this past year.

      Changes are afoot. Most of our posts have followed a pattern: we identify issues, marshal facts, draw logical inferences and present perspectives not often found elsewhere, always fact based and principled. We will continue doing some of that but plan to take more of a cosmic approach. In addition to issues, we will write about the juxtaposition of man and state – sometimes from a highly personal perspective. We will reprise our popular Montana Moments segments during the summer and will continue shamelessly flogging what has become our signature issue – climate change.

      The US has suffered many mass casualty attacks and after each one, gun control advocates engage in the same kabuki. They espouse antediluvian bromides that would be palliative, ineffective and would not save lives. Proposing futile laws apparently is therapeutic for liberals. Not one law they ever proposed would have prevented any mass casualty attack. They mask their real goal of banning and confiscating all guns.

       The mass casualty problem is – first and foremost – one of untreated mental illness. WND News has compiled a list of 24 mass shooters with untreated mental illness during the past 20 years, which accounts for a large percentage of such events. In recent shootings in Sutherland Springs,TX and Charleston, SC, the killers were able to obtain weapons because of government failure to post data to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Progressives’ solution is to place more trust in government – the very same government that failed abysmally in TX and SC.

     The dirty truth is that progressive beliefs are responsible for the large number of people with untreated mental illness roaming the streets. Liberal dogma forbids forcing treatment or institutionalization. The number of hospital beds for psychiatric patients in the US is down over 95% in the past 50 years – thanks totally to progressive ideology.

      My liberal friends like to complain about the lack of dignity and decorum of The Donald. They often ask if I too am turned off by it; here’s my answer to them.

       In the 1970s you called Richard Nixon “tricky dicky” and mocked him incessantly. During the 1980s you labelled Ronald Reagan, arguably the best president of our time, an “amiable dunce“. During the 2000s you referred to George W. Bush, a man of quiet dignity, as stupid and evil. You called him a chicken hawk, liar and an international embarrassment. You savaged John McCain, a man who sought collegiality. You turned Mitt Romney, a genuinely nice human being, into an unrecognizable monster.

    Now you come and attack Trump as evil incarnate. We have repeatedly tried collegiality, dignity and decorum; where has that gotten us? We are locked in a bitter, divisive culture war and, unlike the others, Trump is fighting back. Yes, sometimes he can be short on decorum but I am not shedding crocodile tears over it. Trump is our president during the midst of the culture war and he is a fighter. Get used to it!

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