Not that he didn’t try; his amendment to a new “journalism” bill would have prevented censorship but Amy Klochbar threw a legislative temper tantrum
In the battle for the First Amendment, under a new bill that allegedly promotes “journalistic competition,” the “providers” – Big Tech – become the customers, or the buyers, and the “providers” become the suppliers, putting the ball square in Big Tech’s court. And as we know, “the customer is always right.” Even when their Leftists.
Breitbartnews.com reported that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz – usually one of the most reliable Conservative Republicans – has signed onto a Democrat-driven bill that would allow Big Tech social media giants to censor Conservative voices.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has caved in to the Democrats on legislation that would allow media organizations to create formal cartels to negotiate with Big Tech companies, several congressional aides and others familiar with the process told Breitbart News on Wednesday.
If Cruz goes forward with his plans to back—and allow the Senate to advance—the legislation, then he will immediately become one of the biggest enablers of the establishment media and Big Tech giants and he could seriously jeopardize his political future.
Cruz, who had previously jammed up a committee mark-up on the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) a few weeks ago, has now decided to give Klobuchar what she wanted and allow the Democrat proposal to proceed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee to eventually be considered by the full U.S. Senate.
Several aides on both sides of the JCPA fight familiar with the matter told Breitbart News on Wednesday that Cruz caved to Klobuchar and has agreed to changes to language he offered in an amendment to allow the bill to advance. When questioned repeatedly about it on Wednesday, Cruz’s office did not deny these aides’ characterization.
Cruz himself has not replied to inquiries from Breitbart News sent over text directly to the senator. Several Cruz staffers have refused to answer whether he cut a deal with Klobuchar, and they have refused to make the senator available for an interview to explain himself.
A Cruz spokesperson would only provide, when asked detailed and serious questions about the possibility of a deal and what form the deal would take, a generic statement claiming that Cruz opposes censorship of Conservatives–something that would be inherently untrue if he votes for or simply even just enables Senate consideration of this legislation.
“Sen. Cruz is a fierce defender of the First Amendment and free speech and he will always fight to prevent Americans from being censored or silenced,” the Cruz spokesperson told Breitbart News.
Despite Cruz’s office’s refusal to answer specific questions about this, the Senate Judiciary Committee is considering the JCPA again—for the third week in a row—on Thursday. Late Wednesday, the committee circulated a clarifying amendment that does exactly what the various committee aides told Breitbart News that Cruz had caved to Klobuchar on: It alters the original Cruz amendment text, and removes things that Klobuchar said she could not support.
The office of Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who had previously undercut the broader bill to back Cruz’s amendment three weeks ago in committee, confirmed that Cruz caved to Klobuchar on record to the Daily Caller News Foundation. Proponents of the JCPA—like Kennedy, and now Cruz—have falsely claimed it would help Conservatives fight back against Big Tech.
The legislation does no such thing as, among the serious structural problems, it has included no favored nations clause contained in it, which means that a group of media companies could get together on their own and negotiate a sweetheart deal with a Big Tech company but that deal would not apply to every media company.
Kennedy’s office said in a statement to that publication:
We have reached an agreement that clarifies what the bill was designed to do: give local news outlets a real seat at the negotiating table and bar the tech firms from throttling, filtering, suppressing or curating content. The only reason I can see for parties to oppose this bill is that they have a problem either with healthy market competition or free speech.
The original Cruz amendment a few weeks ago complicated efforts by bill proponents to get the proposal out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The reason for that was, while Kennedy backed it—as did other GOP cosponsors of the JCPA—Democrats like Klobuchar were opposed to it.
By happenstance, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) was stranded in India infected with the coronavirus and had not designated a proxy vote for himself, so the Cruz amendment was adopted into the bill and GOP cosponsors like Kennedy and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC,) as well as supporter Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), had not been willing to vote for the bill without Cruz’s amendment. As such, a visibly angry Klobuchar withdrew her own bill—and she tried again last week to no avail. Now, thanks to Cruz’s cave, she is likely to succeed in committee when she tries again on Thursday morning.
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2021 (JCPA) would allow small and local news publishers to collectively negotiate with Big Tech for fair compensation for access to the journalistic content that generates revenue on those platforms. The following addresses the misconceptions about the JCPA made by Big Tech and their allies.
The bill, introduced by Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), according to Congress.com, “creates a four-year safe harbor from antitrust laws for print, broadcast, or digital news companies to collectively negotiate with online distributors (e.g., social media companies) regarding the terms on which the news companies’ content may be distributed by online content distributors.”
The Shorenewsnetwork.com, based in Southern New Jersey, reports that the bill appears to favor small and Conservative media organizations. Yet the bill states that any signatory to the “collective bargaining” agreement must have at least 1 billion subscribers.
That doesn’t sound very “small” to us. And what do they mean by “collective bargaining”?
The JCPA has drawn the ire of trade groups representing the tech industry including the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which represents Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon, who characterized the bill as empowering large media organizations at the expense of consumers.
“[N]ews publishers and now broadcasters would receive a ‘get out of anti-trust jail free card’ to collude against digital advertising services, likely ensuring that advertisers would pay higher prices,” Arthur D. Sidney, CCIA vice president of public policy, said in a letter to Klobuchar and Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee, the top lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, before the bill’s February markup.
Republican lawmakers have also raised concerns that the bill could endanger Conservative media by empowering larger news organizations to work against them.
“The JCPA would create a media cartel that would censor conservatives,” James Arnold, press secretary for Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, told Politico in February. “Senator Cotton believes the bill is flawed and is opposed to it.”
Cato.org gives a more understandable explanation of the bill:
This bill would carve out an antitrust exemption for news media, enabling journalistic groups to band together as “joint negotiation entities” to demand payment from major digital platforms (such as Meta and Google) for links to and previews of their publications. If the joint negotiation entity cannot reach an agreement with the platform, the journalists would be able to force independent arbitration to set the payment level.
Last month, we explained why this amounted to a government-sanctioned local newspaper industrial policy. Big tech platforms would be forced to pay to subsidize journalists, with arbitrators compelled to ignore any value that digital platforms granted news outlets for sharing their content.
But two weeks ago, it looked as if the bill might die. Republican Senator Ted Cruz succeeded in adding a content moderation amendment, which would prevent digital platforms from adding conditionality to their payments by asking news outlets to take down certain content, such as political speech.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, the bill’s sponsor, immediately withdrew her support, noting that the compromise between her and her Republican colleagues had been effectively “blown up” with the prospect of tech companies having to pay for unsavory sites’ output.
But yesterday, the JCPA returned and took its next step towards a full Senate vote. Cruz and Klobuchar struck a deal and proposed SIL22B36, effectively swallowing the same content moderation amendment that was added two weeks ago. Specifically, it prevents the negotiating parties from discussing how they “display, rank, distribute, suppress, promote, throttle, label, filter, or curate” content. The bill picked up a few more conservative votes with the addition of these content moderation provisions.
Despite this, a majority of the Republican members still opposed the JCPA. Democratic Senators Alex Padilla, Jon Ossoff, and Patrick Leahy voted in favor while maintaining significant reservations, too. They noted, as we documented before, that the bill would do nothing to promote competition. It’s instead about forcing a transfer from Big Tech to a favored industry whose revenue was eaten into by the rise of targeted online advertising.
This type of legislation has been dubbed a “link tax” overseas. In 2014, Spain enacted a copyright law that required Google and other news aggregators to pay fees to the Association of Editors of Spanish Dailies. Last year, the Australian Parliament passed the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code which delineated the terms of negotiation between media companies and digital platforms. The JCPA, similarly, uses technology companies as a scapegoat for the difficulties of local newspaper journalism, which has seen its traditional content unbundled as a result of the Internet.
As we concluded before, the JCPA would deliver a one-sided carve-out from antitrust law – and only to a specific industry. It forces platforms to engage in negotiations in “good faith,” subject to final and binding arbitration if no deal can be reached, while banning the platforms from simply delisting forms of content. This will open up a legal minefield, but the impulse is clear: to force payments to journalists from tech companies. As such, this bill is incompatible with free markets and voluntary, mutually beneficial negotiation.
Demanding that the Big Tech companies pay newspapers and other publications for posting their content online seems rather odd. But it puts Big Tech in the position of then being able to refuse to publish any particular online content that they choose.
Sen. Cruz’s amendment would have prevented them from doing that. So Klochbar then played hardball, forcing the Republicans to withdraw the amendment from the bill.
So, it seems that Senator Cruz didn’t so much “abandon” his protection for Conservative voices but saw no other choice if the bill was to go through. What good is the bill, though, to Conservative voices – newspapers, media platforms – without that First Amendment protection?
Such a stance, whether Big Tech pays or not, is inherently unconstitutional. Still, the Democrats have gotten away with its monopoly of the Media for years through network news and cable news television and radio, and in the last 20 years, on the Internet.
No one has ever threatened those Media outlets with anti-trust laws, since they’re all owned separately. They heartily enjoy their First Amendment rights. It was only when competition arose with the creation of Fox News that they became worried.
The Big Tech giants of the Internet were initially the providers, “providing” an Internet platform for content providers, both subsidized by advertising, and in some cases, subscriptions.
This bill overturns that relationship. Big Tech changes from being the provider to being the buyer. Just as news outlets like Fox depended upon advertisers for their revenue, now Big Tech will pay publishers in order to post their content. This puts them in the default of censoring content, absent Ted Cruz’s amendment. Now they can refuse to publish any content they deem “inappropriate,” in effect, worming their way around the First Amendment.
This is not just a defeat for Conservative voices (although they don’t realize it yet), but another defeat for the First Amendment, with Ted Cruz having to carry the “blame” for the passage of this bill.
Higher temperatures – and costs – for air conditioning; lower temperatures – and higher costs – for heat
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote, “It would be right for all the Ephesians above age to strangle themselves and leave the city [Ephesus] to those below age…”
He continued to explain, “for they cast out Hermodorus, the best man among them, saying, ‘Let no man among us be the best; for if there is one, let it be elsewhere and among others.’”
Hermodorus, who lived in the 4th century BC, was an original member of Plato’s Academy and was present at the death of Socrates. He is said to have circulated the works of Plato (combined Socratic tenets with the Eleaticism of Parmenides), and to have sold them in Sicily. He was driven from the city of Ephesus, along with other followers of Socrates, seeking exile in Sicily.
Heraclitus had no use for the common people and didn’t think they were worth educating, leaving his writings at the Temple of Artemis written in a cryptic language that only the educated elite would understand.
Most of you have probably never heard of Heraclitus or Hermodorus, though you may have a passing acquaintance with Socrates “Know thyself” and Plato, his pupil. But the wealthy elites have heard of them, are studied in all their writings and histories, and can even read them in ancient Greek. By the time they enter boarding school, they’re already have a working vocabulary in Latin and Greek, as well as French and – these days – Mandarin Chinese.
You do not have the benefit of a Classical Education. First of all, it has gone against the grain of Christian churches to teach the Greek philosophy. But even when public education became mandatory, the common people were sorted out from the wealthy. They were only taught what was necessary to play their working-class role in our society.
And that was okay with everyone, for the most part. The Elitists happy the average Americans didn’t want to peek into their secrets and mysteries. They weren’t interested in what fueled the Elitists’ oligarchic tendencies.
Our ignorance was their power.
In just the past few days, their intentions have become glaringly apparently. Like Heroclitus, they believe the elderly should just go someplace and die quietly and like the Ephesians, everyone should be equal. No one should consider themselves better than anyone else, meritocracy be darned.
Clearly, these Elitists believe American consumers deserve to die of heat strokes for “causing” Climate Change.
Evidently, many Republicans think we don’t have enough green fascist mandates, the U.N. doesn’t have enough power, and Americans don’t pay enough for an increasingly dwindling supply of appliances that work less effectively than they did 50 years ago. With little fanfare, 17 Republican senators joined every Democrat to advance a treaty that will make air conditioners more expensive.
Air conditioning is one of the greatest inventions of all time and contributes hugely to the amazing quality of life our grandparents developed for us. Naturally, it is on the hit list of the Great Reset transhumanists. One would think at a time of record high electricity costs, Republicans would zealously oppose any new green energy mandate, especially one that is in the form of an international treaty. But every time you think Republicans might finally discover a soul, you must think again.
On Wednesday, the following 17 Republicans joined with every Democrat in attendance to invoke cloture on the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, a 1987 treaty designed to cut down on certain chemicals, such as chlorofluorocarbons, to supposedly save the ozone layer. On Thursday, 21 Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined in ratifying the treaty, 69-27.
Blunt, Roy (Mo.)
Boozman (Ark.)
Burr (N.C.)
Capito (W.Va.)
Cassidy (La.)
Collins, S. (Maine)
Ernst (Iowa)
Graham (S.C.)
Grassley (Iowa)
Hyde-Smith (Miss.)
Kennedy (La.)
McConnell (Ky.)
Moran (Kan.)
Murkowski (Alaska)
Portman (Ohio)
Romney (Utah)
Rubio (Fla.)
Sasse (Neb.)
Tillis (N.C.)
Wicker (Miss.)
Young, T. (Ind.)
The protocol requires countries to progressively decrease their use of hydrofluorocarbons by 80% to 85% of a baseline in the treaty by 2036. Hydrofluorocarbons are the reason you can enjoy living in your home or walking into any store or commercial establishment during the summer. They are the refrigerants in any air conditioning system. The EPA has been gradually cutting levels of HFCs, which is why anyone who has recently called the AC repairman for an infusion of coolant will receive a sticker shock on the bill, as I did earlier this summer.
Originally, before this provision was stripped out in an amendment, China would have been given an extra decade over the U.S. in continued use of HFCs. As Ben Leiberman, an energy policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, notes, this treaty is essentially a handout to China:
This includes an HFC phasedown schedule that gives these countries an extra ten years. Thus, factories located in China will have access to cheap and plentiful HFCs long after supplies get tight for facilities located here. To make matters even worse, the U.S. is the single largest contributor to a UN fund that will assist China and other developing nations with compliance. So, we will be giving China an unfair advantage and sending them tax dollars as well.
The cruel irony is that HFCs were used in air conditioning to replace the original substances phased out under the original Montreal Protocol because they were deemed better for the ozone layer. But now they are claiming that HFCs are bad for global warming (which they artfully renamed “climate change”), so we need to move on to the next cronyist socially-engineered product designed to enrich a few to the detriment of billions of people.
Ultimately, the disparity between the U.S. and China was taken out (not before 17 Republicans were still willing to support it), but it doesn’t matter, because China plays by its own rules. A 2019 study published in Nature showed how chemical plants in eastern China were still producing trichlorofluoromethane, in contravention of the original Montreal Protocol.
So why did so many Republicans support it, many others didn’t exactly fight against it, nor did leadership whip against it? Because like everything else, it boils down to the giant corporations. The existing monopolies in the air conditioning business, such as Honeywell, stand to benefit from high prices. They have patented the new coolants to replace HFCs and have lobbied hard for this bill. Even when Republicans don’t ideologically support the left’s agenda, the transnational quasi-government-controlled and China-influenced corporations will land them in the same territory as the left. This is why McConnell and gang supported the $280 billion “CHIPS” bill to hand IBM and China a monopoly on semiconductors and fund our corrupt science agencies with record infusions of cash.
It is also why the Washington Postcrowed, “It’s rare for a climate change measure to win full-throated support from industry groups, environmental activists and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle.” They know Republicans are greasing the skids for Agenda 2030 rather than lying down on the tracks to stop it.
The truth is this sort of deal is not rare at all. Republicans embrace the corporate masters with at least as much zeal as the Democrats. Oklahoma Republican Kevin Stitt already admitted his state has gotten in on the Green Energy scam because that’s where the “investments” lie. Thus, even on an issue where ideologically Republicans claim to oppose the Democrat policies, they will dance to the tune of the corporate monopolies that stand to benefit from the Great Reset. So, what exactly will change with McConnell managing the flow of business on the floor instead of Chuck Schumer?
Many people will ultimately die if this measure is implemented. The bill still has to pass the Senate. As we will explain tomorrow, our representation in the U.S. is not all that secure. Formerly reliable Conservative senators are throwing in the towel and pitching in with the Democrats.
But they won’t die right away. First, the government is going to bleed them for every cent they have. It’s called “Demand Destruction.” Raise the price on electricity so fewer and fewer people can afford to run their air conditioners.
In being informed of this latest development, my sister-in-law was quite indignant.
“Why should they turn off my air conditioner?! If I want to set my air conditioner to 62 degrees, what do they care? We’ll pay for it!”
Exactly. That’s precisely what they have in mind. What she doesn’t realize is the exorbitant prices they will charge. The British are already being charged an astronomical amount of money for their home energy, a price that is going to soar even higher as winter sets in.
The prices have already risen by 54 percent so far this year. According to a report by CNBC, Energy consultancy firm Auxilione estimates the price cap, currently at £1,971 a year, could climb to as high as £6,089 [by] next April, as Britain’s cost-of-living crisis worsens.
Great Britain is fortunate in their new Prime Minister Liz Truss; she’s turned the oil fields in the North Sea back on, so that her constituents don’t suffer this winter and merchants can stay in business and transport their products. No wonder the late Queen Elizabeth II greeted Truss with such a broad smile earlier this month.
Here in the United States we’re experiencing a full-on, headlong spiral into the Hell of Marxism. Not only have our representatives turned production of air conditioners over to China (which happily pollutes their own era with impunity), they are going to regulate our temperature, as we indicated yesterday.
They’re busy indicting President Donald Trump. If they succeed, he will not be able to run a third time for president. Some say he won’t be able to afford to. Who are we going to turn to if he can’t run?
Ron DeSantis? He’s running on a Conservative agenda – now. He’s a governor, not a senator. Once upon a time, Ted Cruz was a staunch Conservative. Now, he’s siding with the Democrats. If we can’t trust Ted Cruz, then there’s no one Americans can trust.
‘People are living too long,’ according to the American Marxist agenda. The Baby Boomer Generation is huge; the last of the Boomers are just entering retirement or will be. That’s a lot of money for Social Security and Medicare that simply isn’t in the coffers because the government spent the money on illegal aliens who did nothing to earn that money.
Nevertheless, the Marxists consider Senior Citizens, with their government benefits (for which the Socialists agitated), a financial burden on the country. If by turning off the air-conditioning in nursing homes, hospitals, senior citizen housing and even private homes they can rid themselves of this ‘nuisance,’ they will do it.
Just as soon as they’ve redistributed the Boomers’ wealth to their own constituents.
They proved they had no conscience where the elderly were concerned when they pushed COVID patients into nursing care facilities.
They won’t think twice about turning off their heat and air-conditioning in order to “save the planet.”
Now, you can set your thermostat and air conditioning too low, as one unfortunate company for which I worked discovered. They set the heat 68 degrees and the air conditioner at 72 degrees. The heat and the air-conditioner were fighting one another; the air-conditioner lost the battle and blew up, leaving the company without any electricity – along with street it was on – for the rest of the day.
But setting the heat too low and the air-conditioner too high automatically through “Smart Thermostats” – or simply making air-conditioning unaffordable for the majority of American Senior Citizens – will result in a different sort of catastrophe that is completely unnecessary, based on faulty information and conclusions, and inhumane.
Seen here: An earth-mover at the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine in Nevada, which burns up to 1,000 gallons of fuel in a 12-hour shift.
The only thing “Green” about these cars is the money China and billionaire investors will make from selling them to the Big Rich
Late last month, California announced it would ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035. California leads the nation in all things green: they were the first to ban lawn-mowers, barbecues, swimming pools and even proposed to ban air-conditioning. The ban on air-conditioning came as a result of Southern California’s typically hot summers, when the pressure on their energy grid.
Ironically, one of the things Californians are being urged not to do is charge their electric cars.
Natural Gas has been California’s chief energy source for producing electricity since 2001 but that has changed in 2017 when it got overtaken by renewable sources – solar and wind. This was partially thanks to California’s reputation as a sunny state and partially due to aggressive state policies promoting green electricity.
As a result, solar and wind now account for nearly 38% of the state electricity generation, followed closely by natural gas with 37%. Interestingly, California also has the second-largest conventional hydroelectric generating capacity in the U.S. after Washington state and is among the nation’s top four hydropower producers.
However, the amount of hydroelectric power produced in California fluctuates, mainly as a result of drought seasons (notable example includes the dry year 2015 when hydropower supplied only about 7% of California’s net generation).
Nowadays, hydropower contributes approximately 15% to California electricity generation tally.
Other energy sources are negligible. The state’s nuclear capacity and generation have been on the decline ever since the government embraced solar (it now contributes only about 10% to generated electricity) and the share of petroleum and coal in the energy mix is almost too small to mention.
Even though California is a sunny state, solar power still can’t keep up with California’s demand for energy; it’s just not reliable enough and doesn’t store well. Even in California, the sun eventually sets and night falls.
Being a warm state, it’s really not subject to significant winds, except when the Santa Ana winds blow, setting the state on fire. The wind turbines don’t function about 25 mph; stronger winds rip the blades off the turbines. Those turbines, being government-sponsored, are a fantastically expensive boondoggle on the residents of California.
Spain and Denmark reportedly when bankrupt underwriting these Don Quixotish contraptions. Activists managed to convince California to close down the most reliable source of energy – nuclear power plants, which are completely clean and utterly reliable.
When these two “sustainable sources” of “green energy” fail, the state must either return to more conventional sources of energy or cut back on power usage. They choose the latter, blaming the usage rather than the unsound “green” choices the state has made.
The government will allow no dissenting voices on the matter of Climate Change. If you write that the real source of rising sea levels is the natural run-off of lakes and streams after the ancient ice sheets retreated – although property owners do have some responsibility, at least in the Northeast, for cutting down too many trees, especially in hilly country, and developers building shopping malls with miles of blacktop parking lots that cause the water to run directly off rather than being absorbed into the ground.
In the same vein, the real source of rising temperatures is the Sun – that big, nuclear furnace in the sky. This year, the Sun has really been showing off its awesome power, with gigantic solar flares blasting the Earth. Back in March, the flare could be seen from one end of the eastern horizon to the other. On the day this flare hit, our temperatures hit 95 degrees – March.
Warmer temperatures, far from being dangerous to humanity, could allow for more crops to be grown. Instead, BlackRock and other bank investment firms are penalizing farmers for using nitrogen fertilizer, forcing a 20 percent reduction in crops.
The World Economic Forum has urged people to live on crickets and other bugs, they assure us are full of protein. What they actually mean to do is invoke the same Narrowing the Achievement Gap that Obama implemented on our suburban schools by Narrowing the Economic Gap by reducing First World nations to poverty status while giving money to Third World nations.
Prince Charles, now the King of England, has said in his Climate Change championship, remarked that people in the First World are too materially-oriented and don’t need the amount of material goods they possess. Prince Philip, his father, was a role-model for him as a vanguard of Conservationism. But it was Philip’s uncle, “Dickie” Mountbatten, who served as Charles’ mentor. Mountbatten had decidedly Marxist-leanings, and even Philip and the Queen were taken aback by Charles’ political leanings and, worse, his political activism.
Planting trees and gardens was one thing. Advocating that the government raise the price of utilities, leaving his subjects unable to pay their electric bills, condoning the price of petrol to rise to the 8-pounds per liter for which British Marxists had long been clamoring, and gloating over the building of expensive wind turbines in England while closing the North Sea oil fields, leaving the country dependent on Russia for its fuel, were not the marks of a future king, but a future tyrant.
Some British balk at the expense of supporting the Royals in the style to which they’re accustomed. But according to Sky News, their main income isn’t derived from their taxpayers but from their tenants who must pay rent to live and farm on their vast estates. Sandringham, in particular, a family-owned home in East Anglia, is a massive, sprawling manor house that reminds one of the huge, now-abandoned U.S. Steel plant in Bethlehem, Pa. They don’t even live in any of these older homes, which are falling into disrepair, but in more modernized houses on the property, while the British must squeeze themselves into high-density housing.
Yet the UK Daily Mail reported, in August of this year, that 45 wind turbines would be built on Crown Estates and that then-Prince Charles was outraged. He had previously called them “a horrendous blot” on the landscape and the late Prince Philip regarded them as “useless” and “a disgrace,” according to the UK Daily Mail.
The Royal Family could soon be cashing in on dozens of wind turbines – even though they have been condemned by Prince Charles and Prince Philip.
Energy firms have been given the green light for 45 windmills on Crown Estate land, which will rake in £1million a year in subsidies.
Last night, those who will live next door to the wind farms in Wales and Lincolnshire accused the Royal Family of hypocrisy, after the Prince of Wales described them as a ‘horrendous blot on the landscape’ while his father called them ‘useless’ and ‘a disgrace’.
The Crown Estate, a £7billion land and property portfolio, is run by independent trustees, but from next year the Royal Family will be living off its profits as a result of sweeping changes to their finances.
It has agreed to lease land to energy firm RES for 15 turbines at Bryn Llywelyn in Carmarthenshire, to German firm RWE for another four at Neuadd Goch in Powys, both of which are awaiting planning approval, and to E.on for 17 at Billingborough in Lincolnshire, which is under public consultation.
Campaign groups have sprung up in opposition to the proposals.
Michael King, chairman of Billingborough parish council, said turbines would be 700 yards from homes.
‘This is very hypocritical,’ he said. ‘There’s real resentment here and people have written letters to Prince Charles. He doesn’t have it on his doorstep.
‘What’s worse is that we feel the Royal estate have really been the agents provocateurs in this, asking the energy companies to come on board, not the other way around.’
Pub landlord John Jones, 66, who set up the campaign group Save Llanllwni Mountain to fight the Bryn Llywellyn proposals, said: ‘The developers have much more money than us and a far greater say, and the Royals are happy to take the subsidies even though they’ve never come out here and seen the mountain for themselves.’
Meanwhile, back here in the states, if you recall, Former Vice President Biden promised the American people all these great, “Green” (unionized) new jobs in this new Green Energy sector. Well, he’s pulled the plug on that campaign promise (along with others):
Just the News.com has reported:
Republican lawmakers on Monday asked Department of Energy Inspector General Teri Donaldson to investigate the DOE’s alleged transfer of advanced battery technology to China.
“We are concerned that this is an overt dereliction of duty by DOE, and that this case may be emblematic of a department that routinely and flippantly permits government-funded technology to be transferred to China,” GOP Sens. Joni Ernst, Iowa, and John Barrasso, Wyo., wrote to Donaldson, according to the Washington Times.
Over six years, scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory worked to develop advanced battery technology that would allow the power sources to be charged and recharged for 30 years without degrading, the outlet noted. The development of the technology cost $15 million of taxpayer funding.
Ernst and Barrasso cited an NPR report detailing the administration’s transfer of vanadium redox battery technology to China as what prompted their calls for the investigation, per the Times.
“In the interest of both our economic and national security, we respectfully ask that your office takes the necessary steps to review this misconduct with an appropriate level of scrutiny and request that you report the findings of this review to us as soon as possible,” the pair further urged Donaldson.
The developers of the battery tech eventually found investors to produce them in China. Dalian Rongke Power Co., a Chinese firm, received a sub-license to manufacture the batteries in 2017. That license was ultimately transferred to Vanadis Power, a Dutch company, according to NPR. Vanadis has stated its plans to produce them in China.
Lead scientist Gary Yang has since acknowledged that he failed to honor the terms of his license, which requires the sale of batteries within the U.S. and that they are “substantially manufactured” domestically, according to NPR. The DOE told the state outlet that it would explore potential violations of its license terms.
“DOE takes America’s manufacturing obligations within its contracts extremely seriously,” the DOE wrote. “If DOE determines that a contractor who owns a DOE-funded patent or downstream licensee is in violation of its U.S. manufacturing obligations, DOE will explore all legal remedies.”
The “commoners” of American have been posting the truth about the Green Economy online, on what it’s really costing the environment to produce EV batteries:
On Aug., 30, 2022, someone posted this message, with a photo of an enormous earth-mover.
This machine is required to move 500 tons of earth/ ore which will be refined into one lithium car battery. It burns 900-1000 gallons of fuel in a 12-hour shift. [An image like the one posted can be seen in this blog’s cover photo].
Lithium is refined from ore using sulfuric acid. The proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass [in Nevada] is estimated to require up to 75 semi loads of sulfuric acid a day! The acid does not turn into unicorn food.
A battery in an electric car, let’s say an average Tesla, is made of 25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic, etc…… averaging 750-1,000 pounds of minerals, that had to be mined and processed into a battery that merely stores electricity….. electricity which is generated by oil, gas, coal, nuclear, or water (and a tiny fraction of wind and solar)…. That is the truth, about the lie, of “green” energy.
There’s nothing green about the Green New Deal.
Here’s another Facebook post:
An interesting take on Electric Cars, Voice of the Majority:
“As an engineer, I love electric vehicle technology. However, I have been troubled by the fact that the electrical energy to keep the batteries charged has to come from the grid; and that means, more power generation and a huge increase in the distribution infrastructure. Whether generated from coal, gas, oil, wind or sun, installed generation capacity is limited.
“IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT BE PAYING A GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES; WHICH WAS ENACTED TO MAINTAIN OUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE!
“Ever since the advent of electric cars, all you’ve ever heard about is the mpg, in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it.
“Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things. Somebody has finally put engineering and math to paper:
If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, you will face certain realities. I.E., a home-charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On a small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.
This – THIS! – is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles! Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So, as our ‘genius’ elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things, and replace our reliable & cheap generating systems with expensive new windmills and/or solar cells, we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This later ‘investment will not be revealed, until we’re so far down this dead-end road, that it will be presented with an ‘OOPS…!’ and a shrug!
“If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following. Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It’s enlightening:
“[Eric] test drove the Chevy Volt, at the invitation of General Motors, and he writes, ‘For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles, before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.’ He calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. The range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.
“It will take 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then, add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip, your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph!
“According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned, so I looked up what I pay for electricity.
“I pay approximately (and varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 Mpg = $0.10 per mile!
“The gasoline powered car costs about $25,000, while the Volt costs $46,000 plus. So, the [government] wants loyal [citizens] not to do the math. But, simply pay twice as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country!”
Pause, and calmly think about that!
Smart Meters were installed in the last ten years or so to monitor our use of water. The same kind of Smart Meters will be installed to monitor our use of electricity. It’s not enough that the utility will simply charge residents more for use of electricity – through these Smart Meters, the NGO utility can even shut your electric off (hence to rolling power outages in California).
The “recommended” settings – which will eventually become “mandatory” – are 66 degrees for heating (meaning you can’t set your heat above 66 degrees) and between 78 and 80 degrees for air conditioning (that’s how hot it has to be before you can turn on the A/C).
Elderly people need a good deal more heat than that. At concerts at nursing homes, we often found the heat almost stifling – but that’s what our audiences needed and we learned to dress lightly, even if it was cold outside.
Yet, ironically, outside heat can also be too much for them. They don’t really like air-conditioning (I speak from experience with my late elderly mother) but need cooler air in order to breathe comfortably. The hotter and more humid the air, the harder it is to breathe.
We suspect that and bathroom issues were part of the reason the late Queen Elizabeth II couldn’t attend many of her own Platinum Jubilee celebrations this past summer. Great Britain was suffering through a ferocious heat wave and someone who’s 96 can’t stay long out in the heat or be too far away from a bathroom.
Many people are going to die from this outrageous and unnecessary “Climate Change” movement. Elderly people are going to die from exposure to heat and cold, which CCers will blame on Climate Change instead of on their anti-humanity policies, while investors rake in the bucks for costly, unreliable “sustainable energy” sources.
More will starve in the ensuing food shortages, wrought by bans on fertilizer and fuel for trucks that transport the food. We are already seeing a decline in the availability of certain staple foods. The prices for the food that is available has risen alarmingly.
The deprivation will force people around to world to accept financial support from their governments, which will result in an enormous increase in unaccountable bureaucracy. We will be dependent upon our government and we will have to play by their rules – or face imprisonment.
Certain “departments” have already “weaponized,” creating armed enforcement units to carry out the regulations and arrest those who are regarded as “anti-government.” With the acceptance of “Smart Meters” and “Smart Phones,” we’ve voluntarily thrown away our Fourth Amendment rights.
Americans never voted for any of this. But they have accepted government intrusion, slowly being indoctrinated in school over the years since Woodrow Wilson and the Bolshevik Revolution, until now we don’t seem to know any better and don’t even care.
Even if there are some of us who do care, we’ve been threatened with imprisonment if we dissent against our Royal President. We can’t dispute the 2020 Election. We can’t disagree with the so-called “science” of Climate Change. We can’t disapprove of the growing immorality of our culture.
We’ve become the country we fought a revolution to be free from and worse is probably in store.
The only difference between Americans and the British is that they have the guts to publicly protest the illicit changes taking place. Even their new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, is pro-business and just announced across-the-board tax cuts. When she was accused of favoring the rich, she pointed out that tax cut was at a flat rate and that not taking as much money from the wealthy wasn’t a tax credit.
The British have a budget. Even the Royal Family has a budget (which some family members over the years have flouted: the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Princess “Fergie,” and her daughter, Princess Beatrice). Charles laid down the law to them; cut the spending or lose your royal privileges.
Where’s our budget? Our government just keeps on spending and spending and spending. With the Green New Deal, there will be no recovery at all. We will finally be completely bankrupt.
Is that what it’s going to take to get our country back in shape: installing a tyrant?
We think that’s exactly what the Marxists want and what will happen, as has happened in every single Communist country.
The Church of Ireland Archbishop delivered an inspiring message in tribute to Elizabeth II’s service to God and her people
The Church of Ireland Archbishop delivered an inspiring message in tribute to Elizabeth II’s service to God and her people
Maybe, especially as Americans, you have no interest in the late Queen Elizabeth II’s admittedly prolonged funeral service (owing to the fact that she died in Scotland rather than in London). Maybe you feel it’s almost un-American, as we fought a war for independence from Great Britain. Maybe the whole Royal Family thing bores you and you have better things to do.
If you’re British, or Irish, or a resident of one the United Kingdom’s former colonies, you actually resent all this attention on a “colonialist” monarch. Maybe you’re a British tax-payer who resents all the tax payer money that goes to support the Royal Family.
But, if you’re a Christian, if you watch nothing else from the two-week, 24/7 coverage, you should downland the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland Francis John McDowell.s Service of Reflection for her, delivered on Sept. 13, 2022.
It was moving and inspirational message. But here’s some background, first (it’s bit lengthy) so you can understand the “Troubles”:
From the Act of Union on Jan. 1, 1801, until 6 December 1922, the island of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. During the Great Famine, from 1845 to 1849, the island’s population of over 8 million fell by 30%. One million Irish died of starvation and/or disease and another 1.5 million emigrated, mostly to the United States.
Two acts were passed in 1800 with the same long title: An Act for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. The short title of the act of the British Parliament is Union with Ireland Act 1800, assigned by the Short Titles Act 1896. The short title of the act of the Irish Parliament is Act of Union (Ireland) 1800, assigned by a 1951 act of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, and hence not effective in the Republic of Ireland, where it was referred to by its long title when repealed in 1962.
Before these Acts, Ireland had been in personal union with England since 1541, when the Irish Parliament had passed the Crown or Ireland Act 1542, proclaiming King Henry VIII to be King of Ireland. Since the 12th century, the King of England had been technical overlord of the Lordship of Ireland, a papal possession. Both the Kingdoms of Ireland and England later came into personal union with that of Scotland upon the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when King James VI of Scotland ascended the throne of England.
In 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were officially united into a single kingdom: the Kingdom of Great Britain, under Queen Anne. Upon that union, each House of the Parliament of Ireland passed a congratulatory address to the Queen, praying that, “May God put it in your royal heart to add greater strength and luster to your crown, by a still more comprehensive Union”. The Irish Parliament was both before then subject to certain restrictions that made it subordinate to the Parliament of England and after that, to the Parliament of Great Britain. However, Ireland gained effective legislative independence from Great Britain through the Constitution of 1782.
By this time access to institutional power in Ireland was restricted to a small minority: the Anglo-Irish of the Protestant Ascendancy. Frustration at the lack of reform among the Catholic majority eventually led, along with other reasons, to a rebellion in 1798, involving a French invasion of Ireland and the seeking of complete independence from Great Britain. This rebellion was crushed with much bloodshed, and the motion for union was motivated at least in part by the belief that the rebellion was exacerbated as much by brutally reactionary loyalists as by United Irishmen (anti-unionists). Some dispute this assertion.
Furthermore, Catholic emancipation was being discussed in Great Britain, and fears that a newly enfranchised Catholic majority would drastically change the character of the Irish government and parliament also contributed to a desire from London to merge the Parliaments.
Complementary acts had to be passed in the Parliament of Great Britain and in the Parliament of Ireland.
The Parliament of Ireland had recently gained a large measure of legislative independence under the Constitution of 1782. Many members of the Irish Parliament jealously guarded that autonomy and a motion for union was legally rejected in 1799. Only Anglicans were permitted to become members of the Parliament of Ireland, though the great majority of the Irish population were Roman Catholic, with many Presbyterians in Ulster (a province, or collection of counties, in Northern Ireland).
In 1793 Roman Catholics regained the right to vote if they owned or rented property worth £2 annually. Wealthy Catholics were strongly in favor of union in the hope for rapid religious emancipation and the right to sit as MPs, which came to pass only well after the religiously divisive Napoleonic Wars, namely under the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829.
From the perspective of Great Britain’s elites, the union was desirable because of the uncertainty that followed the French Revolution of 1789 and the Irish Rebellion of 1798. If Ireland adopted Catholic emancipation willingly or not, a Roman Catholic Parliament could break away from Britain and ally with the French, but the same measure within the United Kingdom would exclude that possibility. Also, in creating a regency during King George III’s “madness”, the Irish and British Parliaments gave the Prince Regent different powers. These considerations led Great Britain to decide to attempt the merger of both kingdoms and Parliaments.
The final passage of the Act in the Irish Commons turned on an about 16% relative majority, garnering 58% of the votes, and similar in the Irish Lords, in part per contemporary accounts through bribery with the awarding of peerages and honors to critics to get votes. The first attempt had been defeated in the Irish House of Commons by 109 votes to 104, but the second vote in 1800 passed by 158 to 115.
From 1874 to 1880, the Irish Parliamentary Party gained prominence. This was firstly through widespread agrarian agitation via the Irish Land League that won land reforms for tenants in the form of the Irish Land Acts (English noblemen had been given title to Irish estates), and secondly through its attempts to achieve Home Rule, via two unsuccessful bills which would have granted Ireland limited national autonomy. These led to “grass-roots” control of national affairs, under the Local Government Act of 1898, that had been in the hands of landlord-dominated grand juries of the Protestant Ascendancy.
Home Rule seemed certain when the Parliament Act of 1911 abolished the veto of the House of Lords, and the Third Home Rule Act was secured in 1914. However, the Unionist Movement had been growing since 1886 among Irish Protestants after the introduction of the first home rule bill, fearing discrimination and loss of economic and social privileges if the majority Irish Catholics achieved real political power. In the late 19th and early 20th-century unionism was particularly strong in parts of Ulster, where industrialization was more common in contrast to the more agrarian portions of the island, and where the Protestant population was more prominent, with a majority in four counties. Unionists became actively militant in order to oppose “the Coercion of Ulster”.
After the Home Rule Bill passed parliament in May 1914, to avoid rebellion with Ulster, the British Prime Minister H.H. Asquith introduced an Amending Bill reluctantly conceded to by the Irish Party leadership. This provided for the temporary exclusion of Ulster from the workings of the bill for a trial period of six years, with an as yet undecided new set of measures to be introduced for the area to be temporarily excluded.
Though it received the Royal Assent and was placed on the statute books in 1914, the implementation of the Third Home Rule Act was suspended until after World War I, which defused the threat of civil war in Ireland. With the hope of ensuring the implementation of the Act at the end of the war through Ireland’s engagement in the war, the Irish National Volunteers supported the UK and its Allies.
The remainder of the Irish Volunteers, who opposed any support of the UK, launched an armed insurrection against British rule in the 1916 Easter Rising (known, infamously, as “Bloody Sunday”), together with the Irish Citizen Army. This commenced on April 24, 1916 with the declaration of Irish independence. After a week of heavy fighting, primarily in Dublin, the surviving rebels were forced to surrender their positions. The majority were imprisoned but fifteen of the prisoners (including most of the leaders) were executed as traitors to the UK. This included Pearse, the spokesman for the rising and who provided the signal to the volunteers to start the rising, as well as James Connolly, a socialist and founder of the Industrial Workers of the World union and both the Irish and Scottish Labor movements. These events, together with the Conscription Crisis of 1918, had a profound effect on changing public opinion in Ireland against the British Government.
In January 1919, after the December 1918 general election, 73 of Ireland’s 106 Members of Parliament (MPs) elected were Sinn Fein members who refused to take their seats in the British House of Commons. Instead, they set up an Irish parliament called Dáil Éireann. This first Dáil in January 1919 issued a Declaration of Independence and proclaimed an Irish Republic. The Declaration was mainly a restatement of the 1916 Proclamation with the additional provision that Ireland was no longer a part of the United Kingdom. The Irish Republic’s Ministry of Dáil Éireann sent a delegation under Ceann Comhairle (Head of Council, or Speaker, of the Daíl) Seán T. O’Kelly to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but it was not admitted.
After the War of Independence, a truce was called in July 1921, and representatives of the British government and the five Irish treaty delegates, negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty in London from Oct. 11 to Dec. 6, 1921. The Irish delegates discussion the treaty in private and made the decision was taken on Dec. 5 to recommend the treaty to Dáil Éireann. On Jan.7, 1922, the Second Dáil ratified the Treaty by 64 votes to 57.
In accordance with the treaty, on Dec. 6, 1922 the entire island of Ireland became a self-governing Dominion called the Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann). Under the Constitutioon of the Irish Free State, the Parliament of Northern Ireland had the option to leave the Irish Free State one month later and return to the United Kingdom. During the intervening period, the powers of the Parliament of the Irish Free States and Executive Council of the Irish Free State did not extend to Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland exercised its right under the treaty to leave the new Dominion and rejoined the United Kingdom on Dec. 8, 1922. It did so by making an address to the King requesting “that the powers of the Parliament and Government of the Irish Free State shall no longer extend to Northern Ireland.” The Irish Free State was a constitutional monarchy sharing a monarch with the United Kingdom and other Dominions of the British Commonwealth. The country had a governor-general (representing the monarch), a bicameral parliament, a cabinet called the “Executive Council”, and a prime minister called the President of the Executive Council.
But the Catholics of Ulster – Northern Ireland – were not at all pleased.
The Irish Civil War (June 1922 – May 1923) was the consequence of the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the creation of the Irish Free State. Anti-treaty forces objected to the fact that acceptance of the treaty abolished the Irish Republic of 1919 to which they had sworn loyalty, arguing in the face of public support for the settlement that the “people have no right to do wrong”. They objected most to the fact that the state would remain part of the British Empire and that members of the Free State Parliament would have to swear what the Anti-Treaty side saw as an oath of fidelity to the British King. Pro-treaty forces, led by Michael Collins, argued that the treaty gave “not the ultimate freedom that all nations aspire to and develop, but the freedom to achieve it”.
At the start of this new civil war, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) split into two opposing camps: a pro-treaty IRA and an anti-treaty IRA. The pro-treaty IRA disbanded and joined the new National Army. However, because the anti-treaty IRA lacked an effective command structure and because of the pro-treaty forces’ defensive tactics throughout the war, Michael Collins and his pro-treaty forces were able to build up an army with many tens of thousands of World War I veterans from the 1922 disbanded Irish regiments of the British Army, capable of overwhelming the anti-treatyists. British supplies of artillery, aircraft, machine-guns and ammunition boosted pro-treaty forces, and the threat of a return of Crown forces to the Free State removed any doubts about the necessity of enforcing the treaty. Lack of public support for the anti-treaty forces (often called the Irregulars) and the determination of the government to overcome the Irregulars contributed significantly to their defeat.
Following a national plebiscite in July 1937, the new Constitution of Ireland (Bunreacht na hÉireann) came into force on Dec. 29, 1937. This replaced the Constitution of the Irish Free State and declared that the name of the state is Éire, or “Ireland” in the English language. While Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution defined the national territory to be the whole island, they also confined the state’s jurisdiction to the area that had been the Irish Free State. The former Irish Free State government had abolished the Office of Governor-General in December 1936. Although the constitution established the office of President of Ireland, the question over whether Ireland was a republic remained open. Diplomats were accredited to the king, but the president exercised all internal functions of a head of state. For instance, the President gave assent to new laws with his own authority, without reference to King George VI, whom the Irish considered as only an “organ”, that was provided for by statute law.
Ireland remained neutral during World War II, a period it described as “The Emergency,” although according to Sir Winston Churchill’s accounts, Ireland secretly opened her ports to Nazi ships and submarines.
Ireland’s Dominion status was terminated with the passage of the Republic of Ireland Act of 1948, which came into force on April 18, 1949 and declared that the state was a republic. At the time, a declaration of a republic terminated Commonwealth membership. This rule was changed 10 days after Ireland declared itself a republic, with the London Declaration of April 28, 1949. Ireland did not reapply when the rules were altered to permit republics to join. Later, the Crown of Ireland Act of 1542 was repealed in Ireland by the Statute Law Revision (Pre-Union Irish Statutes) Act 1962.
Ireland became a member of the United Nations in December 1955, after having been denied membership because of its neutral stance during the Second World and not supporting the Allied cause. At the time, joining the UN involved a commitment to using force to deter aggression by one state against another if the UN thought it was necessary.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the IRA joined the world-wide Marxist fray, engaging in riots and battles with the British Army in Northern Ireland, killing Protestants (who did their share of murder), and bombing public places and targeting high-profile figures.
One of those figures was Louis, the Earl Mountbatten, the maternal uncle of Prince Philip, and Queen Elizabeth II’s third cousin.
Mountbatten usually holidayed at his summer home, Classiebawn Castle on the Mullaghmore Peninsula in County Sligo, in the northwest of Ireland. The village was only 12 miles from the border with County Fernanagh in Northern Ireland and near an area known to be used as a cross-border refuge by IRA members. In 1978, the IRA had allegedly attempted to shoot Mountbatten as he was aboard his boat, but poor weather had prevented the sniper taking his shot.
On August 27, 1979, Mountbatten went fishing in his 30-foot wooden boat, Shadow V, which had been moored in the harbor at Mullaghmore. IRA member Thomas McMahon had slipped onto the unguarded boat that night and attached a radio-controlled bomb weighing 50 pounds. When Mountbatten and his party had taken the boat just a few hundred yards from the shore, the bomb was detonated. The boat was destroyed by the force of the blast and Mountbatten’s legs were almost blown off. Mountbatten, then aged 79, was pulled alive from the water by nearby fishermen, but died from his injuries before being brought to shore.
Also aboard the boat were his elder daughter Patricia; her husband Lord Brabourne; their twin sons Nicholas and Timothy Knatchbull; Lord Brabourne’s mother Doreen; and Paul Maxwell, a young crew member from Enniskillen in County Fermanagh. Nicholas (aged 14) and Paul (aged 15) were killed by the blast and the others were seriously injured. Doreen, Dowager Lady Brabourne (aged 83), died from her injuries the following day.
The attack triggered outrage and condemnation around the world.
The next day, Aug. 28, 1979 volunteers belonging to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombed a British Army band about to play on a band stand on the Grand Place, the central square of Brussels in Belgium. The bombing injured seven bandsmen and eleven civilians, and caused extensive damage.
The band, from the Duke of Edinburgh’s Royal Regiment based in Osnabruck, West Germany, was about to perform a concert as the bomb was planted underneath the open-air stage. Only some of the band’s 30 members had already arrived, as the others were lucky enough to have been stuck in city traffic. Also, injuries were lessened and fatalities avoided since the majority of the band’s members were dressing and tuning up, away from the stage, at the time of the explosion.
Unsuccessful in trying to kill Royal musicians, the IRA made another attempt in 1982. A year earlier, a crazy man fired a starter pistol near Queen Elizabeth’s horse during the Trooping of the Color. An expert horsewoman, Elizabeth quickly gained control of her animal and continued with the parade. Then in 1982, another disgruntled man slipped into her bedchamber while she was sleeping. She ordered him out but as he rambled on, she realized the wisest course was to listen to him until she could signal her security. Eventually, they showed up, her pack of Corgis barking furiously at the intruder who evidently needed a drink to steady him at the intimidating sight of the snarling furballs before he was carted off. Actor Daniel Craig said the same thing of the Queen’s loyal Corgis while filming the James Bond skit for the 2012 Olympic games.
The next week, on July 20, 1982, the IRA bombed two separate groups of soldiers in Hyde Park and Regent’s Park in London, killing 11 military members, four members of the Household Cavalry and their mounts, and seven musicians of the Royal Green Jackets. Another 47 were injured. This time, the unrepentant IRA was soundly denounced around the world.
After these atrocities, the IRA began to lose public sympathy. They were so brutal that they actually trained the Palestine Liberation Organization and other terrorist groups in the art of bombing. The Good Friday Agreement, also known as the Belfast Agreement, was signed on April 10, 1998, with the referendum passing May 23 following a vote in both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. The agreement created a new northern assembly with an equal voice among unionists and nationalists.
Still on Aug. 15, 1998, an IRA splinter group called The Real IRA, carried out the deadliest paramilitary attack in Northern Ireland during a car bombing in Omagh in Northern Ireland, leaving 29 dead and more than 200 wounded.
The violence finally ceased seven years later, on July 28, 2005, when the IRA and the Sinn Fein organization finally called an end to hostilities. More than 3,000 people died during the 20th Century “Troubles.”
In 2012, in one of her most important visits to Belfast, Queen Elizabeth shook the hand of former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, who at the time was Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister and a leading Sinn Féin politician.
The gesture “almost cemented the peace process” 14 years after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement largely ended the violence, said Peter Sheridan, head of the peace-building organization Co-operation Ireland, who organized the event and was meters away when the two shook hands.
In her speech in Northern Ireland, she vowed that as Queen, she would protect the religious rights of all her subjects, Catholic and Protestant alike. Politicians signed a new peace agreement. But many believe Elizabeth II’s devotion to God, her public outreach as Queen and Christian, and her solemn vow to all the people within her realm, whether they recognized her crown or not (which Catholics, of course, would not), to respect their religious beliefs is what brought about the peace.
Belfast is still an uneasy city, and probably always will be; agitators never give up. My father’s people came from Belfast – County Armagh. When I was about six, my mother dressed me up for St. Patrick’s Day in green and orange. My father cocked a skeptical eyebrow.
“If she tried to walk down a street in Belfast dressed that way,” he remarked, “she’d never make it to school alive.”
“Oh well,” Mom scoffed, “we’re not in Ireland and she looks so cute.” Dad shook his head and walked away. I probably wouldn’t have made it to school in Dublin, either.
The Loyalists came out to greet the new King Charles in fairly sizeable numbers. Clergy of all faiths gathered at St. Anne’s Cathedral (how fitting for Britain’s “Grannie;” Anne was Jesus’s grandmother): Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, I believe. They all gave fitting tributes to the late Queen.
But McDowell’s seemed to be the most moving sermon. At one (unintentionally funny) point, King Charles put his hand over his heart. Queen Consort Camilla looked over at him in alarm, wondering, we suppose, whether the previous hike up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh had been too much for him.
McDowell said:
For many of us in the United Kingdom there were two people whose deaths we could never imagine. Our own and the Queen’s. I think that is one of the reasons why the death of Queen Elizabeth was literally felt so keenly by so many people when the news broke on Thursday afternoon. It was as though the nation’s collective grief was gathered up in those remarkable words of Christopher Marlowe’s: “If I had wept a sea of tears for her, it would not ease the sorrow I sustain”.
And if that was how those of us felt who were her adopted family through her coronation oath, how much more profound must that feeling of loss be to those of the Queen’s blood family; those who knew her best and loved her most; Your Majesty, our prayers will be with you and your family for a long time to come.
St Paul could be a bit of a gloomy old moralist at times and some of the injunctions contained in his letters are far from easy to put into practice. It is pretty difficult to “have no anxiety about anything”. But I would dare to suggest that for the family of the late Queen and for millions of others, there will be no difficulty whatsoever, when she comes to mind, in following St Paul’s command to think on “whatever is true, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious and whatever is worthy of praise”.
There were many other words used about the late Queen during her long reign. Faithfulness, care, dutifulness, love and devotion. All of these could be employed to describe her relationship with Northern Ireland (with patience binding them all together) but paying attention especially to what she said most recently, the word which I think will be most associated with Queen Elizabeth and Ireland, north and south, is reconciliation.
It is a great New Testament word and it is a great civic word; and it is a hard word. So hard in the religious sense that it was beyond the power of humanity to achieve, and God himself had to give it to us as a gift in his Son. And as a disciple of Jesus Christ, Queen Elizabeth followed where Jesus led as women often have in the elusive and unfinished work of reconciliation here in Ireland.
For where the Master is, there will his servant be also.
It has always been love’s way that in order to rise, she stoops; so the bowing of her head in respect was far more powerful than much grander gestures would have been. Love listens far more than she speaks, so a few words in an unfamiliar language and a judicious sentence or two of heartfelt regret and wisdom said far more than ceaseless volubility. Love never rushes into anything for fear of overwhelming the beloved, but when the moment is right she walked the few steps between two Houses of Prayer in Enniskillen alongside the beloved, in encouragement and affection. Although love is easily injured, she keeps no record of wrongs and extends the open hand of sincerity and friendship, with courage, to create an environment and an atmosphere where reconciliation has a chance.
And love never fails; for where the Master is there will his servant be also.
Reconciliation is about the restoration of broken relationships. And the word should never be cheapened by pretending it is an easy thing to achieve. By and large in the work of reconciliation most of our victories will be achieved quietly and in private: and most of our humiliations will be in public.
Reconciliation requires the greatest of all religious virtues, love; and it requires the greatest of all civic virtues, courage. But as the great apostle of reconciliation says:
“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace will be with you”.
And who can doubt that the Holy Spirit of the God of Peace was present in the mind and in the heart of the late Queen, when she spoke her judicious and generous words, and walked the hard road of reconciliation, in this Province, and island.
The Queen’s vocation as a Christian monarch to work for the good of all her people went far beyond the boundaries of these islands, but contained many lessons for us.
That it is Christian to be tolerant not because we believe so little about God, but because we believe so much in the importance of a free response to God’s call. Firmly rooted in her Christian Faith she was therefore firm in the belief that it is no part of a Christian’s vocation to belittle another person’s faith or lack of it.
It is only an impression, but it seemed to me that in the last years of her reign the tone and content of the Queen’s broadcasts became more overtly religious and perhaps a little more personal. On Christmas Day 2017 she said this:
“Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves – from our recklessness and greed. God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher or a general, important as they are; but a saviour with the power to forgive. Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families, it can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities. It is in forgiveness that we feel the power of God’s love”.
At her baptism Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was signed on her forehead with the sign of sacrifice; the cross. And for 96 years in a life which was a prodigy of steady endeavour she offered herself, her soul and body, as a living sacrifice to the God who loves her with an everlasting love.
So, I want to finish by reminding you of those final words spoken by Mr. Valiant for Truth in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, some of which the Queen herself used in her very first Christmas televised broadcast in 1957:
“Then he said, I am going to my Father’s, and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him who shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, that I have fought his battles who will now be my Rewarder. When the Day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the riverside, into which as he went he said, ‘Death where is thy sting; and as he went down deeper he said, Grave where is thy victory?’ So he passed over, and the trumpets sounded for him on the other side”.
All these words I have offered from an unworthy heart.
God save the King
In spite of the violence done to her family members, in spite of the incessant vitriol by activists and by the press, in spite of the many long hours she spent in service of her country, she visited Northern Ireland with the spirit of forgiveness in heart and did her part to reconcile two stubbornly divided peoples to live together, side-by-side, in peace.
In this, the whole world could learn from her example as a servant of God, a devout pledge she took upon her coronation and even before that, on her 21st birthday knowing she would be Queen one day.
Her grandsons could learn from the example their grandmother set and put aside their differences. “Love never keeps score of [transgressions]”, McDowell said. You cannot forgive someone who is unrepentant, so the honus is upon Prince Harry to make the first move. He must apologize for the controversial interview with Oprah Winfrey, which so unnecessarily scathed his family.
He must apologize for the publishing of his first book, Prince Harry: The Inside Story and immediately cease the publication of its follow-up book. His father, himself, published a similar memoir about growing up royal, in which he criticized his mother for not shaking his hand as she disembarked from the royal yacht, Brittannia. “Not you, dear,” he claimed she said. Actually, what she said, was, “Not yet, dear,” and went on to shake the delegates. Then, she shook his little hand.
Then Prince Charlese did the same thing, when he published a memoir at about the same, partly in answer to Princess Diana’s accusations, particularly the memory of his mother refusing to shake hands with him. According to Queen Elizabeth’s official biographer, the Queen and Prince Philip were very hurt by their son’s accusations.
King Charles passed up many little hands that were being held out along the “queue” lines. He happened to be looking up at the adults above them and so missed, leaving them just as bewildered as he was on that long ago day. He should ask his late mother’s forgiveness for not making that note and clearing the record. It gave the wrong impression of his mother.
All parents make mistakes. King Charles made his fair share. Prince Harry will make his. Why didn’t they bring their children along? The older one should be old enough at least, to make the trip, being about the same age as his Cousin Louis.
Becoming parents and raising children. Choosing leaders. Leading well. They’re all tough jobs. The heart of God’s law is in mercy, forgiveness and love. Queen Elizabeth II devoted herself to that teaching and for that, more than anything else, she was admired around the world and genuinely loved by her people. Commentators called it “Soft Power.”
King Charles has big shoes to fill. He’ll never be a fashion leader like his mother. Hats just won’t sit as well or look as pretty on his balding head. Whether his reign will be long or short is not a question; it will certainly be shorter than Queen Elizabeth II’s. Whether the monarchy will be allowed to continue remains to be seen.
If King Charles and his heirs continue to reign in God’s name, in faithfulness and devotion to God, and leading that example for their people, they may be allowed to continue, if God and the people consider them worthy to do so.
“A regina pacis.” That was what one of her elderly loyal subjects, from Ireland no less, judging by his accent, called her, speaking to a television news crew.
King Charles tries to smooth things over for William, the new Prince of Wales, while Wills insults New Zealand troops in Surrey
What’s the matter with this younger generation of Royals?
William, the new Prince of Wales, did not receive a very royal response from Wales when his father announced his new title, on his Day of Accession, the day after his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, passed away. Two days later, Prince William had a telephone conversation with the First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, in his first official duty as Prince of Wales.
The last time William and Kate visited Wales was in March of this year to mark St. David’s Day. But there’s a little more to the story of the Prince of Wales, the ruthlessness of King Edward I notwithstanding – and in it, a lesson for politicians here in the States as well as the Prince of Wales.
“Wills” appeared to be an earnest, considerate young man – until today, at least. Rather than remaining at the massive estate in Sandringham, Wills and Kate moved into a modest, four-bedroom house on the Windsor Estate – Adelaide Cottage -with fewer servants, although they’ve kept their home in Norfolk, – Anmer Hall – on the massive Sandringham Estate on the east coast of England, one of two private estates owned by the monarch, the other being Balmoral in Scotland. Frankly, we wonder why the new Waleses don’t take up Highgrove House as their “country home,” which is on the border with Wales.
But no matter because all this moving around took place just before Queen Elizabeth died and now, it seems, they’ll be moving into Windsor Castle itself. It’s still unclear where the new King plans to live.
William has pursued a quiet career since going to school at St. Andrews in Scotland. Upon graduation from university, William internal land management at Chatsworth House and in banking at HSBC (Interestingly, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation – hmmm).
Yeah. Right. Saving the planet, while his own people will freeze to death this winter, for which we “principally” blame his father when he was Prince of Wales and Climate Activism.
According to a CNN report in 2014, the duchy is “a £760 million (about $1.25 billion) entity established in 1337 to provide a private income for use by the reigning monarch’s eldest son”, which William inherited when his father became king in 2022.
Having decided to follow a military career, he was admitted to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (Britain’s West Point) in January 2006. William officially received his commission as a lieutenant. As “Lieutenant Wales”—a name based on his father’s title Prince of Wales—he followed his younger brother into the Blues and Royals as a troop commander in an armored reconnaissance unit, after which he spent five months training for the post at Bovington Camp in, Dorset.
William’s position as second-in-line to the throne at the time and the convention of ministers advising against placing that person into dangerous situations cast doubts on his chances of seeing combat, which increased after Prince Harry’s deployment was cancelled in 2007 due to “specific threats”. William, instead, went on to train in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, obtaining his commission as a sub-lieutenant in the former and flying officer in the latter—both broadly equivalent to the army rank of lieutenant.
After completing his training, William undertook an attachment with the Royal Air Force at RAF Cranwell, in Lincolnshire, England. Upon completing the course, he was presented with his RAF Wings by his father. During this secondment (temporary transfer from one branch of service to another) William flew to Afghanistan in a C-17 Globemaster (the same cargo plane in which his late grandmother’s coffin was transported) that repatriated the body of fallen Trooper Robert Pearson. William was then seconded to train with the Royal Navy.
He completed an accelerated Naval Officer training course at the Britannia Royal Naval College. While serving on the HMS Iron Duke in June 2008, William participated in a £40m drug seizure in the Atlantic, north-east of Barbados. He was a part of the crew on the Lynx helicopter which helped seize 900 kg of cocaine from a speedboat.
Now we know why the British commonwealth territories in the Caribbean are so anxious to be rid of Great Britain.
In January 2009, William transferred his commission to the RAF and was promoted to Flight Lieutenant. He trained to become a helicopter pilot with the RAF’s Search and Rescue Force. In January 2010, he graduated from the Defence Helicopter Flying School at RAF Shawbury. In January 2010, he transferred to the Search and Rescue Training Unit at RAF Valley, Anglesey, Wales, to receive training on the Sea King search and rescue helicopter; he graduated in September 2010. This made him the first member of the British royal family since Henry VII to live in Wales.
In June 2010, William moved into a cottage on the Bodorgan Estate in Anglesey, Wales, with Catherine Middleton, while undertaking his RAF search-and-rescue training. The pair became engaged in November 2010. After their marriage the next Spring, they returned to England.
When you’re the head of a huge commonwealth (a one-time empire until King George VI established the Commonwealth), you have to shake a lot of hands (King Charles has shaken so many hands in the last week, his own hands are raw) and answer a lot of questions from former colonists who enjoy ripping the scabs off of centuries-old wounds, provoked by Marxist opponents who promote tyrants and elitist politicians who are no better than the royals themselves.
One particularly noisy group constantly reminds the Princes of Wales of how they came by their titles. The title reserved exclusively for the heir apparent to the British throne. It dates from 1301, when the ruthless King Edward I, after his conquest of Wales and execution (1283) of David III, the last native Prince of Wales, gave the title to his son, the future Edward II. Specifically, King Edward I beheaded Prince David.
The Welsh want an apology, at the very least.
A month before his betrayal by his own Welshmen, he was addressing letters as Prince of Wales from his mountain stronghold of Dolbadarn. Eventually he was brought to trial at Shrewsbury, and there, on Oct. 3, 1283, David III (Dafydd ap Gruffydd), on account of his broken allegiance to England’s king, suffered a traitor’s death.
Dafydd was the last native Prince of Wales, but the families of Wales had been battling for years over this title, the office of which pledged allegiance to the King of England. Still the Welsh have been bitter over Dafydd’s execution ever since. They’re extremely fussy and insist on Welsh being the official language of their country, with English only second. Prince Charles went to college in Wales to learn to speak this curious, tongue-twisting language which, like Irish, defies all translation or even speaking. But he did it. The Welsh reluctantly accepted him.
All the same, you can’t just walk into a country as prickly as Wales and expect them to throw flowers in front of your limousine. The Welsh gave King Charles a fairly rousing welcome today (although nothing like the send-off the Scots gave Queen Elizabeth. But then, she had Scots blood on her mother’s side.) These things have to be done delicately.
After observing some soldiers from New Zealand perform a Maori tribal dance today, he and Kate immediately turned away without thanking them. The soldiers looked properly insulted after their vigorous dance while he and Princess Kate spoke to their commanding officer.
The couple didn’t even clap. What was the matter? Were their hands glued together? Or were they afraid they’d be branded racist colonialists if they applauded (we wouldn’t blame them for that)? Whatever the reason it was rude not to compliment the dancers. He’d better not treat the Welsh that way. We call barging into a community which you haven’t come from and then ignoring them “carpet bagging.”
Prince William might benefit from my own lesson as a community events reporter and photographer. It’s important.
Communities are very sensitive about their own backyards. For years, the Suburban Trends served as the voice of our shared community long the State Route 23 corridor in New Jersey from Wayne in the south to West Milford in the north. Its editor, Howard Ball, knew the community very well, having grown up in the town in which I now live, Pompton Lakes, N.J.
The young man who eventually succeeded him as editor-in-chief also knew the community well and they knew him. Everyone was more or less happy with the ST’s coverage. After my company’s reorganization, closing down its internal public relations department and finally, the entire office, I took a part-time job with the Trends as a reporter and photographer for the town of Lincoln Park. The Lincoln Park officials were satisfied that I was a “local” reporter, having grown up in Bloomingdale, moved to Pompton Lakes, and played with the Jacksonville Chapel Concert Band, located in Lincoln Park.
But as Obama entered his second term and began initiating his Destroy the Suburbs plan, Gannett Newspapers took over many local newspapers all around the country. They bought up many local papers here, and either fired or reassigned editors and fired all the local reporters and photographers. I had gone back to work full-time for a short period. But that didn’t work out.
Gannett reassigned the Trends editor-in-chief to the Clifton Journal, an area he had no familiarity with. Now called North Jersey.com, their photography editor (my former photo editor had been fired) asked me if I would cover Clifton for them. A previous job with a trade paper in Clifton lasted only a week because I didn’t know Clifton well enough. I suggested to that editor that he hire a high school student from Clifton H.S. instead. He welcomed the suggestion.
However, it appeared I was destined to cover Clifton – and other towns in that area for a while. If I didn’t know them, I was going to have to GET to know them. Most of them welcome me, even if I was a stranger, because they had a story to tell.
Their community neighborhoods were being overrun by immigrants, people they said didn’t give a hang about Clifton or its history. The previous editor for whom I worked said precisely the same thing.
I was only assigned as a photographer. But I had 13 years of experience as a writer as well. So I would submit short stories about the locals along with the photographs – and the newspapers accepted them.
The company was so pleased that they sent me farther and farther afield. Too far, I thought, and so did those communities. Clifton was familiar enough with northern Passaic County. But as I got sent further into Essex County, the locals began asking questions. What did I know about Nutley? Well, I told them, my godmother lived on Hill Street over there, and her children all went to Nutley High School over there. I even attended her daughter’s high school graduation in 1969.
Oh. Well. Okay.
Bur my mother only had so many family friends I could name. New Providence. What did I know about their town, they wanted to know? Well, I worked right over there at Reed Elsevier for five years.
Wasn’t that a long ride? Yeah, it sure was. Oh. Well. Thank you for coming to cover our event (it was a lot of fun and I got some good photos).
Finally, I ran out of towns that I knew. Vernon was a beautiful town with an absolutely gorgeous park to which I had absolutely no claims at all. When they openly questioned me, I had no answers left. They understandably wanted a reporter and photographer who actually knew their town. I didn’t blame them.
In any case, the arthritis in my right hip was giving me too much pain. At the last event, in Nutley, I could barely make the long walk back to my car. I had to stop and sit in front of the middle school before continuing.
Thus ended my career as a community photographer and writer.
My natural curiosity has kept me watching the proceedings over in England, even though I’m a red-blooded American. I’ve posted on their local newspapers website and even chatted with some of the British. One Brit complained about the expense of the monarchy. I wrote back to him:
Are you sure you want a republic? After we elected our representatives, we never see or hear from those on the state and local level again. At least your royals pop out now and again to shake your hands and throw a block party for you.
When a representative loses touch with the local community, they’re finished. Queen Elizabeth II knew that, especially after Princess Diana’s death. Not that she should have had to apologize for wanting to protect her grandsons.
Those of you who admired Diana, ask yourselves, especially if you’re a celebrity: if something tragic happened to you, would you want the Media sticking its cameras and microphones in your children’s or grandchildren’s faces?
No. I should think you wouldn’t. Well, that’s the why the Queen didn’t travel directly down from Balmoral in Scotland to be with “the people” right after Diana died. Her first concern was with her grandsons.
If you watched the live coverage of Diana’s funeral, which I did (it was on a Saturday), you could see just how angry Prince Harry, who was 12 at the time, was. Angry and resentful. Having to walk behind their mother’s coffin, being so young, was traumatic for them. We don’t who made the decision but it was mistake. Walking behind the coffin is a royal tradition.
For adults. William was perhaps just old enough, at 15. But not Harry. Poor kids.
Jacqueline Kenney forced a retinue of important personages to walk behind JFK’s caisson as though he was royalty, but she didn’t make her two young children (who were 3 and 6) at the time, to do so.
Princess Diana herself was partly to blame for this media-fueled demand. She was angry with the Queen, according to some biographers, for consenting to the divorce, which Diana didn’t want. Where is her royal astrologer to explain that, while it’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, all those 8th house placements indicated a rather vindictive personality.
Still, it was the Royal Family’s decision – an unsound one – to put the two boys out there on display. Queen Elizabeth II took due note in this somewhat manufactured public opinion and took it upon herself to thereafter go on “walkabout” as they call it.
Reportedly, then-Prince Charles had advised his mother to take a more community-minded stance towards the public. But according to Elizabeth’s biography, which I’ve been reading, she and her father before her, had always shown concern for and curiosity about their subjects.
On a trip to the United States in 1957, coming back from seeing a university football game in Maryland, Queen Elizabeth requested a visit to a local supermarket. The supermarket was a novelty borne of the Fifties. There no supermarkets in England and the young Queen wanted to see how a supermarket operated and how and what American housewives shopped for.
The supermarket manager gave Elizabeth (“dressed in a $15,000 mink coat” *) and Philip a tour, where they marveled over the refrigerated cases, child-friendly shopping carts, check-out counters and frozen chicken pot pies.
*”Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch,” p. 135. Smith, Sally Beddell. Randon House, 2012.
When was the last time a major political figure here in the United States took an interest in the opening of a shopping center, factory, or school? Oh yeah. Donald Trump. But I mean besides him?
Here in the U.S., we might, if we’re very lucky, see a candidate for office in a local race. Maybe. Here in the suburbs of northern New Jersey, make that never. We’re more likely to see a Martian or a UFO than see even a Republican candidate for office in these parts. Even Donald Trump won’t hold a rally here. If someone from the Garden State North wants to catch glimpse of him, they have to camp outside his golf club in Bedminster.
No Republican will ever travel West of the Garden State Parkway, much less Route 287, to visit with their constituents and we’re talking about the federal Republicans. Not here in the Metro New York media market. Our state representatives? Well, there’s a joke. The people don’t even know who they are.
The locals know their local representatives and they know us and that’s about as far as it goes. That’s why I advised our TEA Party organizers, who were considering a rally in Trenton not to even bother.
“Do you even know them? Would you recognize them or would you have to find their pictures on the Internet first?”
By the way, Queen Elizabeth also visited Ground Zero in 2010, in July of that year? Did anyone know about it? Well, she probably didn’t want it to turn into photo op. She wanted to meet with the 9/11 families, not the politicians, although they probably did show up. She did of course visit the British Consulate in New York and paid tribute to her subjects who died there on that day. The biographer noted that it was a very hot day in July. She wrote that the Queen didn’t perspire – as in she ‘couldn’t’
Now we might think that’s a great thing. But actually it’s not. The body perspires in order to cool itself when it gets overheated. She was 84 at the time. Yet she stood there, on a very hot summer’s day, consoling the 9/11 families. It wasn’t Election Day. It may have been the Fourth of July – our Fourth of July, celebrating our independence from her country – yet there she was.
Meanwhile, on the first anniversary of 9/11 in 2002, the Democrats in power at the time forbade George W. Bush, the President of the United States, to come to “their” city to mark the anniversary.
Not everyone in England approves of the monarchy. They’re forbidden to express public disapproval of their monarch. That sounds horrible to us. But the United Kingdom is a monarchy. Why do you think we fought for independence from Great Britain.
Yet now, Americans who express disapproval of the government are being arrested or being threatened with arrest. We might as well be back in England, paying allegiance to King Charles III who at least jumps out of his car to press the flesh as his subjects wave flags as he passes by.
It’s more than our tyrants deign to do. He’s expensive (98 million pounds a year) but at least the British get something for their money. They get parades with marching bands, horse troops, and colorfully costumed soldiers, fireworks, and concerts. Not to mention those fantastic herald trumpets!
Still, the Royal Family is exceedingly wealthy, with income from their vast estates and public funding. However, they know that their very existence is tenuous at best, depending on the good will of their people and Parliament. They could be put out on the street if a public referendum demanded it. No wonder King Charles leaps out of his car to shake hands before the Rolls Royce even comes to a stop.
Our elected officials, after we elect them, vanish into the swamp of Washington, D.C., and give themselves, or their constituents, our money. If we complain that there’s no budget, they make excuses and then ignore us. They call us “Domestic Terrorists.” Even King Charles, while he and his kin don’t have to pay property taxes, has vowed to downsize the monarchy (although we think giving the staff of Clarence House, the traditional residence of the Prince of Wales, their pink slips the day of his Accession was rather hard-hearted).
SkyNews gave a financial analysis of the wealth of King Charles and the clan. They showed some pretty outrageous sums of money, especially considering how the British people themselves are suffering.)
We don’t even know how much our elected officials are making outside their official salaries. Even the most useless Washington bureaucrat lives quite comfortably in northern Virginia or Maryland.
We had to hold a TEA Party rally – a peaceful protest – just to get out representatives to show up to answer our questions (Imagine that – we had to throw the party!). When they learned they had to answer a lottery of questions, they were quite indignant. They demanded that they all be allowed to answer the same question – which meant many of our questions didn’t get answered by anyone.
Our biggest question is over the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential Election. And if we ask, we’ll be arrested.
First, they dropped the charges against him regarding the murder of Daniel Pearl. Now this!
[Before we begin this most important topic, we want to apologize for an error in the previous post. In speaking in an address in Great Britain, King Charles III spoke about the “living, breathing government.” He spoke those words in an address to Parliament, not the Accession Council and was talking about the members of Parliament, not the British constitution. Although Great Britain regards their constitution in just the way, the King, in fact, did not use those words. We regret the error.]
While Americans were either fuming over the latest encroachments upon our freedoms by Former Vice President Biden and the Marxist-Democrat Party, observing the 21st anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the United States, or perhaps viewing the funeral proceedings in England and Scotland of the late Queen Elizabeth II (and admiring the magnificent scenery and historic buildings of Scotland and England), American Military news.com reported that the military tribunal may strike a deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorists who are standing trial for their participation in those ghastly events:
The accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, may avoid the death penalty with a plea deal, according to a new report on Sunday.
On Sunday — the 21st anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people — CBS News reported U.S. military prosecutors and attorneys for Mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants had begun negotiating a plea deal.
The 9/11 Commission Report, published in 2004, lists Mohammed as the “principal architect” of the coordinated terrorist attack that saw 19 Al-Qaeda hijackers seize control of four airliners. Two planes crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and a third crashed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. while the fourth airliner crashed in rural Pennsylvania after passengers fought with the hijackers.
Mohammed is the chief defendant in the alleged plea deal negotiations. The four additional defendants include Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Walid bin Attash and Ammar al-Baluchi.
Mohammed and the other defendants are charged with terrorism, hijacking and 2,976 counts of murder for the roles they are accused of playing in the 9/11 attacks.
The possible plea negotiations come as Mohammed’s trial has seen multiple delays.
The trials against the accused 9/11 plotters have also been stalled over delays in access to evidence kept by the CIA. Mohammed’s lawyers have raised the issue of his alleged torture in CIA custody so far during the court proceedings.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also contributed to the trial delays.
James Connell, a defense attorney for one of the four other accused 9/11 plotters told CBS News, “All five defendants and the government are all engaged in good faith negotiations, with the idea of bringing this trial which has become a forever trial to an end.”
Families of the 9/11 victims were angered upon hearing about the possible plea agreements.
Debra Burlingame, whose brother and pilot Charles Burlingame was killed when they crashed his plane into the Pentagon, told CBS she had spoken with family members of other 9/11 victims.
“The families are outraged,” Burlingame said. “They don’t want closure, they want justice.”
“We’ve reached a point in our country where we just don’t seem to have … the courage of our convictions,” Burlingame said.
When asked if it would be possible to have forgiveness she said, “Yes, but not for them . . . You have to truly take responsibility for what you’ve done. And they will never do that.”
We share the 9/11 families’ outrage that KSM, as he’s called, may not meet the strictest penalty that justice holds for such unrepentant killers. We’re quite certain KSM was much more personally involved in the attacks than anyone realizes or cares to admit.
That the U.S. government would willingly strike a deal with this so-called “mastermind” rather than reveal any details the CIA, FBI, or Homeland Security may have in their possession in order to avoid embarrassment or even public outrage is almost as contemptible an act of cowardice as the attacks themselves.
The U.S. government owes the survivors of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the families of the murdered, including the families of the Flight 93 passengers, and the American answers.
But providing answers has never been the government’s strong suit. Not in the assassination of JFK, or RFK. Not in the crash of Pan Am Flight 800, many feel, or in any other of a number of terrorist attacks. Not in the first World Trade Center Bombing. Not in the cover-up of the campaign against President Donald J. Trump or his two false impeachments. Not in the nefarious activities of Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden. Nor in the arrests of many peaceful citizens on January 6th or in the raid of President Donald Trump’s home. Nor in a good many other bad things.
Our bureaucratic, secretive government has a good deal to answer for.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for them to answer.
Too bad our own representatives don’t honor our U.S. Constitution; King Charles III seen here taking oath to uphold the rights of the Church of Scotland
Before we begin this very important lesson on why we are blessed to be Americans – citizens of the United States of America – let us assure you we have not forgotten all those who died on 9/11/2001. As the years pass, the space between that day and the present seem longer and longer.
Since we switched over to live-streaming television, cancelling the expensive and dissatisfying cable service, we’re no longer able to watch some of the documentaries exploring the tragedy of that day. Our favorite was “102 Minutes: The Day That Changed America.” However, now you have to pay-to-play; we ordered the DVD instead. Meanwhile, the super-excellent drama, “9/11,” starring Martin Sheen and Whoopi Goldberg, was available. The September 11th anniversary is one of those days when we should put aside our political differences. No matter what you might think of Sheen and Goldberg, they put aside the politics to portray this drama of a group of people trapped in one of the North Tower’s many elevators.
If they could put aside the politics, surely we Conservatives can. I certainly recommend you see this poignant drama of these people trapped in the elevator, cut off from the world and what was happening, with only the elevator supervisor available on an intercom to tell them what was occurring. We can’t imagine a more terrifying and claustrophobic experience.
So, now on to the present day. Last week, only two days after appointing her 15th Prime Minister, Queen Elizabeth II suddenly passed away at her estate, Balmoral, in Scotland. At age 96, her demise was expected, if not quite that quickly. Secretly, we expected it would happen and probably quickly as she would be expected to end her holiday in Scotland and return to London.
Balmoral, we would guess, was where she wanted to spend her final days. If we had such a splendid, wilderness estate, that’s where we would want to “shuffle off this mortal coil.” As we’re not kings or queens, we, the elderly, wind up dying in hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices. My own mother wanted to die within sight of her own beautiful, wildflower garden – and she did.
The Prince of Wales, immediately upon the Queen’s death, inherited her throne. But no monarch of Great Britain automatically gets to sit on the throne. The Privy Council of Parliament still has to give him (or her) their approval. If the subjects insisted upon another monarch, the Council of Accession would have put Prince William on the throne instead. Or, God help Great Britain, Prince Harry (with Meghan – uggh!) as his Queen.
But, bless their little hearts, the Accession Council gave the nod to the Prince of Wales. First, however, he had to make some solemn pledges, pledges Charles couldn’t take lightly, or they’d take that title away from him and give to someone else.
That pledge was to remain faithful to God and the Constitution of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The British Monarch had to take a sort of “oath of office.” Who knew? No wonder they kept it secret all these centuries.
Their constitution is not quite solid as our own. It’s a patched-together piece of business. The United Kingdom has been in the habit of throwing out what they don’t particularly like at the moment and replacing it with something they do. That’s how Princess Charlotte could one day wear the crown if something happens to her older brother Prince George (God forbid, of course).
Today, King Charles asserted that their Constitution was a “living, breathing document,” quoting our former President Obama, who in his turn, quoted President Woodrow Wilson.
The law is not nor should be regarded as a “living, breathing thing.” For if it is a living, breathing thing, it can also murdered. Our U.S. Constitution provided for “amendments” (rather than “changes” – the Founding Fathers wanted to make sure no future leaders could erase into oblivion the laws which they’d rewritten), The process for amending the U.S. Constitution was made lengthy and difficult for good reasons. We could not merely change the Constitution the way we might change our coats, for light and variable reasons.
Political sentiment, too easily swayed and not easily measured, could lead to amendments that would alter the nation’s course to its demise. The amendments could only be made by a certain percentage of the states. Mighty California could no more erase the Constitution than could tiny Rhode Island (both extremely Liberal states).
Obama, Biden and other Marxists would like nothing better than to completely throw out the “old” Constitution, our present “republican” form of government, and even the way we elected federal leaders via the Electoral College, replacing the Electoral College with a British-style Parliament.
We loved the Queen and historic England. We didn’t love her THAT much.
In any case, “Prince Charles’” days of meddling in climate change and other divisive political issues are now over. The monarch cannot interfere in any way in the politics of the United Kingdom. The Prince of Wales and other royals can – and did. Prince Charles, as the Prince of Wales, was notorious for his activity regarding climate change and other issues. In becoming King, he can no longer do those things. He acknowledged as much in his address to the Council.
I am deeply aware of this great inheritance and of the duties and heavy responsibilities of sovereignty which have now passed to me. In taking up these responsibilities, I shall strive to follow the inspiring example I have been set in upholding constitutional government and to seek the peace, harmony and prosperity of the peoples of these islands and of the Commonwealth realms and territories throughout the world.
In a television interview, he admitted that he would have to give up his ‘hobbies.’ “Of course, I know that,” he said in irritation, “I’m not THAT stupid.” In his address, he said he would leave those pursuit “to others” presumably Prince William and Prince Harry.
We love music and pageantry and so we had no problem, even as a freedom-loving American, watching the proceedings. The journey of the Queen’s casket from Balmoral to Edinburgh was a treat for those who’ve never seen Scotland. A helicopter followed the cortege for the entire trip. Sometimes the helicopter camera focused in closely: there was a tribute of tractors and farm equipment and another tribute from an estate by a troupe of horses, which certainly would have delighted the late Queen.
Especially touching was a moment just before the horse troupe where a grandfather, holding his young grandson’s hand, pointed to the hearse as it approached. The grandfather then led the grandson in a bow to the late Queen. We found that much more moving than ‘sweet Meghan’s’ gushing glances up at Prince Harry.
His older brother, Prince William, trying to bridge the gap between them, invited him to view the floral tributes to Queen Elizabeth outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. At one point, Prince William directed Prince Harry’s attention to some particular tribute, while Meghan was still on the other side of the driveway.
Realizing Harry had gotten out of her reach, she stood up and looked around for him. William and Harry had knelt down together for a closer inspection before standing up again. Meghan saw that they were together. Princess Catherine stood to the left of her husband, leaving the two brothers their space. Meghan began to walk over, hesitated, then directly placed herself between them.
The sooner Meghan returns to California, the better. Her behavior, that an of immature teenager, does not serve her husband well at all. We suspect it’s if not intentional, it is certainly the mark of someone both insecure and controlling. In short, she needs him to need her. Harry does not need a needy wife nor a second “Mummy.” That’s what caused problems in his parents’ marriage. Harry should immediately trash that miserable tell-all book about the royal life. It’s why Prince Charles has been going out of his way to tell his subjects how much he loved his mother. At one of the Jubilee celebrations, he referred to his still-living mother as “Mummy.”
When you only hear it, it sounds odd. The British media made sure you only saw her cocked eyebrow. When you see the full video, you realize he was just kidding. British humor is sometimes hard to understand. While that’s just the way they do things in the United Kingdom, it brings to mind how obnoxious it would be to Americans.
This was the first time in history that the meeting of the Accession Council was ever made public, much less televised. If Americans haven’t viewed this meeting, and especially the Oath of Allegiance taken by members of Parliament, they should find it and watch it because it’s an important reminder of why American separated from Great Britain, sacrificing their lives in pursuit of liberty.
Can you imagine swearing an Oath of Allegiance to Former Vice President Biden? Some people even take exception to swearing a pledge of allegiance to the American flag for that reason – they equate it with swearing allegiance to whomever happens to be sitting in the Oval Office in Washington, D.C. My parents refused to fly the American flag on official holidays when a Democrat held the presidency.
Having affection and admiration for the late Queen Elizabeth II is one thing. She was a great and beautiful lady who served her people long and faithfully, in the name of God. From before she even became Queen, she vowed to serve the people of the United Kingdom, whether her reign would be long and short.
She was, indeed, a long-lived Queen. Growing up in World War II, she watched and learned as her father, King George VI and her mother, Queen Elizabeth (a consort queen), led the British people through the ravages of World War II. They courageously remained in London as it underwent months of bombing, with Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle weathering constant bombing. They never fled father than nearby Windsor Castle.
King George VI, a shy and reluctant monarch, dutifully taking up the throne his older brother abandoned, then led his people in the rebuilding of England and Scotland (the country withstood bombing all the way into Scotland during the war). Now there was a man and a hero for you. If Great Britain puts any more monarchs up for sainthood, this one should be at the head of the list.
George VI died prematurely in 1952 at the age of 56, from lung cancer. Princess Elizabeth had undertaken his father’s duty on a tour of Africa. She was in Kenya when she was informed of his death. She left England a princess and returned as a young queen – not as young as Victoria, but young enough.
Through her long reign she served as a model of leadership not just for her nation but for the world. Those “colonialist” cars in which she and Prince Philip toured were not designed to demonstrate England’s authority over her various realms but to bring them closer to the people. Instead of being ensconced comfortably in an air-conditioned, elitist limousine away from the common, the Queen stood in the back of that specially-designed car so as many people as possible could see her (and the Prince).
For all the complaints by the Marxist Media, an awful lot of people seemed to have turned out – willingly and cheerfully – to see her, as well Prince Charles and Diana, and Prince William and Catherine. If they were so resented, why did all those crowds turn out see them and wave British flags (no less)?
Americans (AMERICANS!!) turned out to see them in great numbers. Queen Elizabeth was given a ticker tape parade up Broadway in the 1950s. They were ecstatic when Princess Diana visited New York City.
We remember when Prince Charles visited New York City in 1977 (we believe). The New York Daily News devoted its front page to him, with the headline: “PRINCE CHARMING VISITS NYC!” with a picture of the young Prince of Wales.
Inside, the story described his visit to the City, with the usually very liberal Daily News slobbering all over Prince Charles:
The Prince of Wales, the world’s most eligible bachelor, danced the night away at [various nightclubs in New York] with models and starlets and debutantes. His blue eyes sparkled under the [nightclub disco lights].
The article went on to describe his activities. On the next page, the News reminded eligible young ladies would have the right pedigree in order to win him over. They then went on to list the ladies who were in competition for the Prince’s hand.
At the very top of the list, quite inexplicably as she was already, as the article duly noted, was Camilla Parker-Bowles. Each lady’s biography was accompanied by a photograph. The picture of Camilla was the everyone has seen of her talking with Charles under a tree at a polo match. The Daily News article went something like this (as memory serves):
Long-time companion Camilla Parker-Bowles has long been rumored to be the Prince’s favorite. However, Parker-Bowles is already married. [In any case, even when she was available], the Royal Family discouraged the match as there were skeletons in Camilla’s closets. In addition, they did not look with favor on Camilla’s questionable past. Charles will need to look for a more virginal candidate. Here are some of the others.
Remember, this was long before he considered Diana as a possibility for Princess of Wales. I was only 18 at the time of his visit here and enjoyed the romantic tittle-tattle. If Camilla was already married, I wondered in irritation, why did they bother mentioning her? Why did they bother wasting our time? I thought what they wrote about her was rather nasty. But in those days, a woman’s virtue was still considered “precious.” Nonetheless, Camilla had been a teenager of the Sixties, the Age of Free Love. What did they expect?
The Media certainly did its best to promulgate the Age of Free Love during the Sixties. With a huff I went on to read about the “eligible” candidates, including, if I remember rightly, Diana’s sister.
‘That’s better,’ I thought. ‘What a waste of time reading about someone who wasn’t eligible.’
Wonder what the New York Daily News thinks of the new Queen [Consort] of England now?
So, all those people who stick their noses up at Queen Camilla because she “consorted” with Charles can remember that the press was vilifying Camilla long before he ever got engaged to Diana.
Watching the further proceedings – the Queen’s official state funeral will take place on September 19th – there were some touching sights and one very funny sight (or two) right in the midst of the funeral procession.
As the cortege was making its way up – and we do mean UP – the Royal Mile – and we do mean mile – a young fellow broke out in the middle of the crowd and began shouting something as the procession went by, breaking the solemn silence. A hand reached out to pull him back. p yanked his arm away and yelled again. This time, many hands reached out, pulled him backwards right off his feet and threw him to the ground.
Later it was learned that he had hurled invectives at the disgraced Prince Andrew. While everyone might share his sentiments, it was right in the middle of the Queen’s funeral procession. The Scotsmen who dragged him down, a burly bunch, threw him right to the ground and left him there until the police came to first rescue, and then arrest him for disturbing the peace.
I had no idea the Royal Mile was that steep – five thousand feet. Prince – I mean King Charles and the Royal Children and their spouses followed behind the hearse, which itself was surrounded by the Royal Archers. So cool.
But as the procession went on, King Charles could be seen grimacing and looking from side to side. We think he may have been huffing and puffing, as you might expect, given that he’s 73. Princess Anne, only about two years younger, marched stalwartly on, her back straight, never once seeming to falter. The younger brothers, of course, managed well enough.
Then there were the people. After all the ceremonies, St. Giles Cathedral was opened to the public so that they could view the coffin, with the Scottish crown and the Balmoral garden wreath atop it, and pay their respects to the late Queen. The men, naturally bowed. But so did the women. Not one of the attempted the curtsy, an inarguably difficult maneuver unless you’re trained to do it from an early age. Most women, knowing they’re going to bobble, just forego the curtsy and simply bow their heads the way the men do.
My mother taught me to curtsy when I was little. As my grandfather was an instructor at the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York on Long Island, I stood in many admiral’s receiving lines. There I was expected to curtsy. The admirals always expressed great admiration at how well I performed the maneuver.
Meanwhile, back to Edinburgh and St. Giles Cathedral. A disabled woman rode up on a mobility scooter. She stopped the machine, took out her cane, and stood up. She put the cane to one side and once she was certain of her stability, performed an amazingly deep curtsy. So deep, in fact that the camera had to follow her.
Just amazing. This is the kind of love and respect that Elizabeth II seems to have inspired in most, if not all, her people. The Scots are very proud of their independence. Ironically, it was a Scottish monarch, King James VI, who united England and Scotland when he inherited the throne after Queen Elizabeth I died without issue (childless).
James VI of Scotland then became King James VI and I of England Scotland, which would eventually become the United Kingdom. Today, Scotland considers itself an independent nation. They are not yoked to Great Britain by military might, economic chains, or even religious doctrine. Succeeding monarchs, if they wanted to be recognized in Scotland, had to recognize the Church of Scotland, which is Calvinist-Presbyterian.
In one of his addresses, King Charles III noted that while he is head of the Anglican Church, all faiths are welcome in the kingdom. The late Queen was reported to be quite devout. She often attended the village Church of Scotland when she was in Balmoral, rather than the local Anglican church farther down the road.
The British have speculated that these are more signs that the monarchy is “evolving.” We’re not exactly sure what it’s supposed to “evolve” into. Some critics wish it to evolve right out of existence. But the Prime Minister Australia refused to bring the matter up for referendum by the public. He said he didn’t think it would pass; Queen Elizabeth II was too well beloved and respected for such a resolution.
Many wonder whether King Charles III will garner the same respect as his late mother. The many people Sky News has interviewed have said that they think he’ll do just fine. One woman at Buckingham Palace caught the reporters off-guard when she replied, “I’ve changed my mind about Charles; I think he’s going to make a wonderful….”
“And back to our studios…”
Charles will never be able to pull off wearing a hat the way his mother did. No one was allowed to touch her; she had to initiate the contact. King Charles jumps out of his car before it had even come to a stop to run over and shake as many hands as his schedule allowed. One woman pulled him over the fence towards to give him a kiss (she did ask permission first, but didn’t give him time to answer).
We think the adoration show to Elizabeth, and even to Charles, is the British public’s response to the scurrilous way the British and world press treated Queen Elizabeth after Princess Diana’s death. The “people” wanted to see a flag – any flag, even if it was just the Union Jack – flown at half-mast over Buckingham Palace in honor of the Princess of Wales.
The Media quickly turned this failure into an aristocratic snub of the common people. The press had their quotes from people laying flowers at the gates of Buckingham Palace – “Where’s the Flag?” to something the people never intended, we suspect: “Where’s the Queen?”
As we were all reminded in the later 2006 film, “The Queen,” starring Helen Mirren (our family already knew from having visited London in 1997) that the monarch’s only flies where the monarch happens to be in residence. According to the film, the Royal Family discussed having the British flag flown over the palace at half-mast, which they soon did.
That was not enough for the Marxist Media. They’d gotten the drumbeat going, “Where’s the Queen herself?!” Well, the Queen herself was tending to her two grief-stricken grandchildren, William and Harry. It was a sentiment any family would – and, it turned out – did understand.
Family first. She was not about the parade her grieving grandsons in front the media vultures. She’d bring them when she – and they – were good and ready. In fact, Prince Harry, in his recent tell-all biography complained after that very thing.
Diana was his mother, not theirs. Who were they to be crying over her as though they knew her? And who were they to demand that he and his brother, his father, his grandmother and grandfather parade themselves in that state before the public.
Rightly expressed. What’s more, they were deeply disturbed by the tradition that they had to walk behind their mother’s casket. It was only when Prince Philip promised young Prince William that he would be right there beside him that William agreed to do it (as you see in the footage, his head was down the entire time. Prince Harry, for his part, looked annoyed, now that I recall the moment).
But the “ice” that the Media had created when a woman in front of Buckingham Palace offered Queen Elizabeth a rose. When the Queen asked her if she’d like her to place it for her, the woman replied, “No, ma’am. The rose is for you.”
As Elizabeth went along the line, women curtsied and men bowed or tipped their hats.
But her public isn’t through with her even though she has passed away. Even now, they’re not finished displaying to the Miserable their respect and affection for her. You see, they all families, too. They’ve suffered through grief. Sometimes scandal. The last thing they would want is for camera people to be shoving cameras into their faces and flashing them with blinding lights at the worst times of their lives.
To the end, Queen Elizabeth II was a smart monarch, appearing in a James Bond skit with 007 Daniel Craig at the 2012 Olympic Games in London and having tea with Paddington Bear at Buckingham Palace this past summer during her Platinum Jubilee. To the end, she showed endurance and determination, the very last photo of her giving a radiant smile to her 15th and final Prime Minister and demonstrating joy in the very face of death which we suspect she knew was just around the corner.
Even if she wasn’t our “monarch” she showed us how to live and how to die with dignity, humor and grace.
The proceedings following her death have showed us why we should be grateful for being Americans. Incidentally, on September 12, 2001, Queen Elizabeth, in a truly “noble” and kind gesture, ordered her military band to play “The Star Spangled Banner” in honor of those who died in the United States of America.
Thank you, Elizabeth (with whom I shared a birthday), for almost everything (except shooting animals and birds). Rest in peace.
They say there’s no “good way” to die. But if there is a good way to die, Queen Elizabeth II surely found it. On Tuesday, she welcomed her 15th Prime Minister, Liz Truss, to form a government in her name. Due to the Queen’s frail health, Truss and Boris Johnson, the outgoing Prime Minister, were perfectly happy to accommodate the 96-year-old by traveling to Balmoral in Scotland.
Queen Elizabeth met Truss in Balmoral’s drawing 96-year-old room. A glorious fire was blazing in the fireplace. Flowers were all about the room and there was the Queen, dressed casually in a gray sweater and tartan skirt. The fire didn’t glow nearly as brightly as the Queen’s smile.
She greeted Truss standing on her feet. Some wondered why the Queen didn’t draw a little closer to Truss when they exchanged hands. But Truss is so tall and the Queen was tiny that if Her Majesty had stood any closer to Truss, she would have been staring at the middle button Truss’ s suit.
It was to be the last photograph of Queen Elizabeth II. Two days later, on August 8, she passed away peacefully.
The signs of her deteriorating health had been there for a while, in her swollen ankles, mainly. In this last photo, her hands had turned noticeably black or blue. On closer inspection, the cuticles around her fingers were black. Either the Queen had been gardening just before Truss arrived, or something was going seriously wrong (as anyone who’s had an elderly parent knows and seen these signs).
The next day, she cancelled a virtual meeting with the parliamentary council. Commentators wondered at this cancellation since all she had to do was sit there in front of the laptop. ‘Something must be not quite right if she can’t even do that,’ one of them observed.
Then, on Thursday morning, Buckingham Palace issued a rather alarming notice to the effect that the Queen was under “medical supervision.” This message caused the entire royal family to do an immediate u-turn in their travels and rush to Scotland.
Only Princess Anne, who was probably at her mother’s side all along, and Prince – now King – Charles made it in time to be at the Queen’s bedside when she passed away. One commentator hinted Charles “only just” made it.
We’ve been an admirer of Queen Elizabeth II all our lives. As a photographer, it’s only natural to revel in the many photographs of this beautiful Queen, from her early days as Princess Elizabeth to her last photograph greeting Prime Minister Truss.
How can you not admire, as a photographer, a queen who was more radiant than the fire she was standing in front of?
In addition, she dressed beautifully. As a queen, you would expect that she would. But her suits and especially her hats were so eye-catching, her choice of colors and style so fetching, except of course on somber occasions. Even on those occasions, she was always the fashion center of attention. Only her late daughter-in-law, Princess Diana, gave her any competition on that point, and as a good mother-in-law, she no doubt was happy to allow young Diana the spotlight.
Later on, the Queen betook herself to her show-stopping style.
Then there was that smile; so infectious, so charming, so cheering. Her eyes danced and laughed in concert with the smile itself.
But of course, there was more to Queen Elizabeth than just her poise, style and beauty. She came to the throne at a young age. She was 25 when her father, King George VI died in 1952 at the age of just 56.
Her uncle’s abdication in late 1936 marked her for the throne. At 21, she addressed her nation, vowing to always serve them, whether her life be long or short. Long it was, indeed, and filled with turmoil with one family scandal after another, starting with her sister Princess Margaret and right up to her grandson, Prince Harry.
Queen Elizabeth was a rock in a constant sea of storms, holding the British ship of state steady, through no less than 15 prime ministers, with Prince Philip at her side right up until 2021 when he passed away at the age of 99. No matter the lashings – even with the fire at Windsor Castle in
1992. Later, would call that year her “Annis Horribilis.”
She received a great deal of criticism when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris and Elizabeth didn’t return immediately to London to meet with the people. Queen Elizabeth, was by all accounts a very private person. She didn’t believe in publicly displaying emotions. We know many people like that. Her first concern was her grandsons, William and Harry, who were 15 and 12, respectively, at the time.
Prince Charles was said to have convinced her to make the trip, and the film, The Queen, helped restore her reputation, deliberately damaged by the British press which was decidedly anti-monarchy. She made the appropriate tribute to her late daughter-in-law on television a short time later, a kind gesture to a troubled young woman who died too young.
This year was her Platinum (70th) Jubilee. Her health was so frail, she was barely able to attend most of the ceremonies in her honor. As heirs to the throne have done in the past – indeed, as then-Princess Elizabeth did for her ailing father, King George VI – Prince Charles stepped in for his mother. At the end of the jubilee ceremony, although she wasn’t really up to the task, he convinced to come to Buckingham Palace and see the crowds who gathered her honor.
They cheered and cheered as the military band played “God Save the Queen.” It was to be the last time she would stand on that balcony, and we suspect that she knew it. Shortly after, she traveled north to Balmoral in Scotland to spend what would be her last days in the peaceful wilderness where she’d spent so many summers.
In one of the Queen’s last acts, she graciously declared that Camilla, Prince Charles’ wife, should be accorded the title of Queen Consort after she passed away. Originally, Camilla had agreed to be titled “Princess Consort.” But it wasn’t a fact; no matter how some members of the public might feel, as Charles’ wife, she would be the queen. Queen Elizabeth noted that Camilla had earned the title through her loyalty and duty.
Hearing that the Royal Family was rushing to Balmoral was dire news. So, we turned on Sky News on Pluto TV. The network had a camera at the gate to Balmoral. As everyone watched and waited, a rather big pick-up truck, with a long bed covered by a tarp of some sort stopped at the gate
Because the truck stopped in order to talk to the guards, we were able to get a glimpse through the back of the truck. Inside was what looked like a casket. Oh dear. The commentators said nothing. They wouldn’t have been allowed to. Buckingham Palace has strict orders about such announcements, as a reporter for the BBC discovered when she announced the Queen’s death at 3:03 p.m., British time. She had to apologize to Buckingham Palace and withdraw the statement.
But, as it turns out, she was right. We noticed the truck around 12:45 p.m., EDT. With Eastern Daylight Savings Time, that put England four hours ahead: 3:45 p.m. That would be about right. Prince William and company, driving very fast, arrived 20 minutes later, but it seems they were already too late.
Speaking of driving way above the speed limit, we were driving south on New Jersey’s Route 287. We know better than to speed on that road. The police have their little hiding spots and we know them all. There wasn’t much traffic on the road when an expensive car – a Rolls Royce we thought, though it went by so fast it was hard to tell. I tried to catch up with it, but it just raced on faster.
The back license plate read “Windsor 1.” Could that be Queen Elizabeth herself? Or maybe Prince Charles? But, no. This is the road that leads to Hunterdon County, famous for its very rich people and fox hunts. A good friend of ours was once Mistress of the Hounds on some estate out there.
We thought the limo driver was out of their mind driving that fast – the far left lane or fast lane. Of course, what cop is going to pull over a car whose license plate reads “Windsor 1?” None that we know of. But listening to the tributes to Queen Elizabeth and especially how fast she liked to bounce her Land Rover over the hills of Balmoral, we can’t help but wonder now who was behind the wheel of that car?
[Note to the Royal Family: If the Queen ever chuckled about racing a red American SUV down a highway on her way to some horse farm in Somerset or Hunterdon counties in New Jersey, in the United States, that would have been me. I backed off because the Queen could afford to risk getting a traffic ticket; I couldn’t. You won, Queen Elizabeth!]
We don’t think even Elizabeth II’s stout heart could long withstand the death of her beloved Prince Philip and the ongoing drama of Harry and Meghan and her second son, Prince Andrew. It was enough to spend her final days, after a 70-year reign, amidst the loveliness of Balmoral, listening to the joyful laughter of her younger grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and the strains of the Scottish bagpipes that woke her every morning while at her Scottish estate.
She had the pleasure of performing one last royal duty in person, brining in her 15th Prime Minister, and that was a grand way to leave this long life, filled with love, dignity, duty and dedication to God, her country and her family. That’s one way to die well.
She is now with Prince Philip once more and forever, leaving behind a national grateful (finally) for a second Elizabethan Age.
We wish the new king, Charles III and his wife, Queen Camilla, a long, prosperous and prudent reign.
Will the real Republican please sit down and be quiet? Because that’s what Republicans really do best.
Sarah “Grizzly Mom” Palin is still in the U.S. Congressional race, even though Democrat Mary Peltola won the winner-takes-all primary on August 16.
The election used a new “ranked-choice” voting system. After all the ballots are collected, candidates are eliminated “from the bottom up,”
Nick Begich (R), the third-place candidate was eliminated, with his voters’ lower-ranked choices being added to the totals, if they ranked one of the two finalists below Begich.
In the 2020 General Election, Alaskan voters approved an initiative to establish a Nonpartisan Pick One Primary Election system and a Ranked Choice Voting General Election system.
This meant that some Republican votes could also be given to the Democrat candidate.
Had ranked-choice voting not been invoked in 2020 (some say with the financial help of George Soros), or if the votes had only been given to Begich’s party candidate, Palin would have won the election by 59.8 percent.
Begich, Nick 53,810 28.53%
Palin, Sarah 58,973 31.27%
Peltola, Mary S. 75,799 40.19%
The Alaskan Governor’s Mansion and the Senate have been more or less Republican for years. In 2019, Alaska’s House of Representatives was split between Republicans and Democrats. But in 2020, we know election fraud was rampant. How else to explain why Alaskan voters would almost guarantee that a Democrat would steal the election.
Republican Tara Sweeney just withdrew from the race to leave the Republican side open for Sarah Palin. They’d recently been challenging one another to withdraw. But apparently Sweeney decided to fall on her sword.
We were relieved to hear this news. We don’t know whether Sweeney was a RINO or not. But the days of Conservatives backing down in favor Establishment is over. It was over with the first TEA Party in March 2009.
We thought we made ourselves quite clear about how we felt about RINOs back then. New Jersey is a very Blue state, with Purple Republicans. RINOs are the best we can come up with, at least in Northern N.J., and usually they don’t win unless they beggar themselves to Democrat voters. We only have two Republican Congressmen and they’re both in Southern New Jersey.
The redistricting has connected Bergen County with Sussex County, which really Red, but since Bergen has a larger population, the Democrats are guaranteed a win. Morris County, formerly the haunt of Might-As-Well-Be-A-Democrat Rodney Frelinghuysen, is now ruled by “Mikie” Sherrill of Montclair. Montclair is the Democrat capital of Northern New Jersey, with all the Woke, Suburban Moms.
Trying to really “wake” these people up is like shaking awake a Northern New Jersey bear. New Jersey bears are timid. All they want is their garbage and they’ll happily go back to sleep in their dens. But try to deprive them of their free garbage, tell them that they’re bears, or tell them how to raise their cubs (or that they can’t abort them) and they’ll charge you.
Montclair Moms are perfectly okay with Drag Queen Story Hour at their local library: Ms. Harmonica Sunbeam, to be specific. Montclair is a wealthy, wealthy suburb.
How do you argue with idiots? Glenn Beck wrote a whole book on the subject, years ago. Parents who would bring their young children to a drag queen story hour will have no problem with “genderless” bathrooms and locker rooms. Critical Race Theory? Don’t make us laugh. William Ayers, the leading proponent of this method, gives lectures at Montclair State University.
Montclair is as woke as it is wealthy. The city is 62.17 percent White, 27.16 percent African-American, and 3.8 percent Asian, and 7.46 percent Hispanic, as of the 2010 Census. There is no information available on the 2020 Census. Montclair has 7 private schools with 1,913 students versus a public school population of 6,361. That’s a private school population of 23 percent (in 11 public schools) versus a state-wide population of 13 percent.
Montclair is on par with all of Bergen County and parts of Morris. That shows you, roughly, where Conservatives stand. There are many of us. But not enough to open their eyes. We’re too afraid of waking up that N.J. bear.
One evening, years ago when we were teens, my mother asked me to wake my older brother up for dinner. We were in the living room. He was asleep on the couch. I was watching in television.
I didn’t want to shake him awake.
“Wake him up!” Mom yelled. “Dinner is almost ready.”
I stood up next to him. Where to shake him? What was the best place to shake him without getting injured. I chose the over his shoulder approach. I shook him and he gave a mighty growl. His arms and legs flailed and yelled at me to leave him alone.
That’s what happens when you shake a waking bear.
But I was more afraid of Mom than I was of him. With him, it was just a matter of avoiding his arms and legs. Upsetting Mom could mean a week’s worth of yelling, muttering, scowling, and cold shoulders.
We already know what’s going to happen if we vote for the RINOs. They’ll accuse us of all sorts of -isms – racism, sexism, homophobism, transphobism, dragqueenphobism, Capitalism, injusticism.
The Republican Party in New Jersey has led the way in promoting Purple candidates. What has it gotten us? Disgruntled voters who refuse to come out to vote for their empty suits. Voters in New Jersey are strictly low-information voters. Remember: we live right outside the most Marxist media market in the nation: New York City. Philadelphia is not good, either, but Southern New Jersey voters, especially those living at the Shore, seem to have minds of their own.
Maybe the reception between Philadelphia and Atlantic City isn’t very good.
The rhinoceros, in terms of poor eyesight, is ranked as 5th in the world. At 15 feet, a rhino can’t tell the difference between a tree and a human. That would be one explanation for why New Jersey is turning blue. Maybe the former Republicans (including The Nephew) need new eyeglasses.
Or maybe they’re just plain stupid. At any rate, it’s time to drop this “non-partisan” stuff. That was the only time I raised my voice when the Morristown Tea Party was organized. They were not to include that word in their mission statement. This was a strictly Conservative movement and anyone who didn’t like it was welcome to leave and start their own rally.
Some RINO Republicans from northwest New Jersey started to argue with me. I yelled back at them that if they didn’t like it, “there’s the door – don’t let hit you in the back as you’re leaving!!”
It was one of my best-ever Mom imitations and it worked; they left.
We’ve got to take the fight to the Republican Party. We’ve got to do a little Republican-on-Republican wrestling and shouting and demonstrating. We have to go nose-to-nose with them. This compromise business doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It never will work, except for the Marxists.
No more shaking hands across the aisle, patting each other’s backs, and the hell with the voters.
They have claimed that we would both lose to the Democrats if we don’t stand together – on their side. Well, how’s that working out so far? Certainly not so well for New Jersey. People are leaving New Jersey in droves.
Even Democrats are leaving New Jersey. Montclair has been suffering a population decrease since the 1980s. Only in 2010 did they have an increase and who knows where they were after that and where they are now? Probably COVID-nervous Manhattanites and Long Islanders (all Democrats, of course) found a sanctuary in Montclair.
As for the rest of us, if the GOP keeps ignoring the Conservatives, there won’t be any Republicans left at all. None, at least, that are worthy of the name. For years, the Media and the Democrats have painted the Republicans and Conservatives with a dirty paint brush.
Last week, Former Vice President Biden used dark, blood-red lighting for his speech in front of Liberty Hall, declaring MAGA Conservatives a danger to our democracy. Except of course, we’re not a democracy; we’re a federated republic, which Biden and the Democrats a danger to our republic.
.
The purpose of the lighting was to paint Republicans, especially MAGA Republicans as a “bloody,” violent danger to democracy, all because we refuse to allow illegal immigrants and felons to vote. The protestors on January 6th were trying to “overturn” our democracy.
Or was it that the Democrats were trying to “overturn” our republic?
The visual was supposed to make any independents or establishment Republicans afraid to vote for MAGA Republicans. Given how shallow today’s voters are, the ploy just might work. All the negative coverage of Trump has made voters nervous about voting for him again.
Back in the day, the Marxists tried to instill fear in Reagan voters. It didn’t work. Ronald Reagan won by a landslide in 1980 and an even bigger landslide in 1984, in spite of the Media (television and radio, news and entertainment, commentators and comedians) hammering away at him every single day.
In 1980, we were coming out of the Seventies, a peaceful period. The last thing Americans wanted was a replay of the Sixties. Today, comedians rip at Ronald Reagan’s Eighties the way they tore at the Fifties. Eisenhower was too great a figure to attack (you’re going to mock the general who won World War II? Seriously?). So, they attacked Gen. MacArthur and Sen. Joe McCarthy.
They accused McCarthy of conducting a “witch hunt,” and he was denounced by the U.S. Senate, even though he was absolutely right. The Senate’s censorship of McCarthy effectively silenced anyone who noticed and cared to criticize the obvious Marxism in schools and colleges and in the Media (remember what we told you about Walter Cronkite – the head of CBS’ Moscow bureau in 1937), as well, of course, in labor.
Anyone who did criticize Marxism or pointed it out was deemed paranoid, demented eleutheromaniacs. The comics of the day would laugh at such crazy people, accusing them of Red Fever or Red Mania, McCarthyites.
Ironically, it was some Media planner who decided to switch the party colors, assigning blue to the Democrats and red to the Republicans. Colors always matter to Marxists and revolutionaries, reducing their cause to some “primary” color (or off-shoot of one), the least common denominator.
Republicans could no longer use red – the color the Marxists themselves chose – to identify Democrats. Now they want to use “MAGA Red” to depict Conservative, Trump-oriented Republicans as violent fanatics who pose a grave danger to our “democracy.”
We’re a danger to illegal aliens whom the Democrats believe should have the “right” to vote, to homosexuals who want the right to demand a cleric marry them even if it is against the cleric’s (or photographer’s or baker’s) faith, and to perverts who want the right to “groom” and sexualize our young children. We’re the “Far” Right that wants voter identification and more secure elections.
Thanks to indoctrination, we are outnumbered now by Montclair Moms who see no problem with any of those things and more. We, not they, are the “danger”.
By golly (not God), if they want to take their children to see Harmonica Sunbeam or have them engage in transgender transformation or abort their inconvenient children, who are we to tell them they can’t?
The weak have inherited the Earth. Or at least, the United States of America. Supporting Drag Queen Story Hour isn’t “tolerance.” It’s not “cool.”
MAGA Conservatives are enemies of the state?! What the Hell was Biden talking about?!
Trump hit all the speechmaking targets in his rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Saturday. The most important of his successful remarks was a listing of facts and he got right to it:
Our country is going to hell.
This election is a referendum on skyrocketing inflation, ramping crime, soaring murders, crushing gas prices, millions and millions of illegal aliens pouring across our border, race and gender indoctrination, converting our schools and above all this election is a referendum on the corruption and extremism of Joe Biden and the radical Democrat party.
He quoted the statistics and he made it local.
As you know this week Joe Biden came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to give the most vicious, hateful and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president, vilifying 75 million citizens, plus another probably 75 to 150.
If we want to be accurate about it, As threats to democracy and as enemies of the state, you’re all enemies of the state. He’s an enemy of the state, you know that? The enemy of the state is him and the group that control him, which is circling around him, ‘Do this. do that Joe, you’re going to do this Joe.”
Right. I think Philadelphia was a great choice to make this speech of hatred and anger. His speech was hatred and anger. By the way, the next morning he forgot what he said, you saw that.
I do like the red lighting behind him, like the devil.
But Philadelphia was a great choice because the city is being devastated under Democrat rules. Devastated. He could tell you, we love Pennsylvania. I went to school in Philadelphia, what’s happening to Philadelphia?
Fourteen people were shot last weekend in Philadelphia, 14, and the fake news will—God, that’s a lot of fake news lately. A lot of fake news.
Well, they’ll go out and check the facts for people were killed last weekend. At one point last month, seven people were shot in the span of just 71 minutes, in Philadelphia this year. Philadelphia has already seen more than 1,400 people shot including numerous beautiful little children.
Last year, the city set an all -time murder record with 560 homicides, and it’s on track to shatter that record. Again in 2022 numbers that nobody’s ever seen other than some other Democrat-run cities. Armed robberies in Philadelphia are up 62 percent. Doug, you have to take care of this. You have to take care of it, and we’ll send you the goods, I’ll send him the goods. You know what the goods are: lots of police officers. That’s what the goods are.
Retail theft is up 59 percent from last year.
There have been more than 750 carjackings this year. Anybody have a nice car, because you’re not gonna have it long. More than triple the average for 2010 to 2019. And it’s heading way up heading up in other cities that are run by Democrats also.
Instead of trying to demonize half of the population [the law-abiding half], Biden and congressional Democrats should focus on stopping the killing and the bloodshed in Philadelphia and every other Democrat-run city in America where record death and destruction is taking place every single day.
He noted that other cities like Atlanta, Ga., and Detroit, Mich., are even worse. But he kept in mind that he was speaking to a Pennsylvania audience on behalf of Republican Pennsylvania candidates for governor (Doug Mastriano), for the U.S. Senate (Mehmet Oz) and Congress.
Trump took the opportunity to attack the Democrats, the DOJ and the FBI for raiding his home in Florida. He told the shocked how the FBI even raided his 16 year-old son’s room. He listed the many times the Democrats have tried to take him down legally over the last six years; none of the charges were worth the paper upon which they were typed. He said it was disgraceful that a sitting president would order a raid on the home of a potential political candidate and that that was what Third World countries do.
That’s what Obama did Trump in 2016, if you’ll recall.
He listed Biden’s many failures, including canceling the Keystone Pipeline, canceling trade deals with China and Russia that included sanctions against those countries for intellectual property theft and unbalanced trade. Trump convinced Germany to cancel the Nordstream Pipeline which would have shacked it to Putin’s Russia.
Then, of course, there was the disastrous and vile evacuation from Afghanistan. Trump forgot to list Afghanistan as one of China’s many sources for rare-earth minerals. He also pointed out that it was under Biden that the country was shut down and masked due to the “China Virus.”
“None of that would have happened under my administration,” he said.
Naturally, the Marxist Media characterized his speech as “unhinged.”
Just in case the Media wants to cast Trump as “hateful,” the full hour before he came to the podium was filled with love songs.
We did not watch Biden’s speech in front of Freedom Hall in Philadelphia. In fact, only CNN and MSNBC even carried it. But what he said about Conservatives (“MAGA Republicans,” he called us) was heard from sea to shining to sea.
Biden was attempting to increase the divide between Conservative and Moderate Republicans – MAGAs versus RINOS. The RINOS want a suave, sophisticated, smooth-talking snake oil salesman to represent the country. They don’t care what he (or she) does, as long as he does it “nicely.” No name-calling, no mockery of physical attributes. In fact, that’s why they want a bland, good-looking but non-descript candidate who can’t be mocked by the other side.
Democrats are cringing at the sight of the hair-sniffing, gaffe-plagued Biden who can’t string two words together and has a tendency to trip over his own tongue. Then, of course, there’s Hunter and “Pop’s” involvement in his son’s business dealings.
What a perversity there is in Biden’s notions of “Democracy.” That not permitting illegal aliens from other countries to vote in our elections is not only “racist” but ‘undemocratic,’ while Conservative Republicans who challenged the election on January 6, 2021 were violent extremists who wanted to overthrow a “lawful” election as opposed to their RINO counterparts who quietly submitted to the ruling of an undoubtedly corrupt court, thus dividing the Republican Party into the “Prudent” versus the “Fanatic.”
Of course, those “prudent” Republicans might recall who set our “Democrat” cities ablaze while Media reporters, standing right in front of the burning buildings, denied that there had been any violence.
We can’t think of a former single Republican president, save perhaps for Dwight Eisenhower (how do you mock a president who won the Second World War?), that the Media hasn’t sliced, diced, and liced. You have to be old enough to remember all this and of course, younger voters don’t remember this comic tactic used on other presidential candidates, so when they hear Trump mocked, they cringe and think, “Oh, no. Guess we can’t vote for him. Maybe we’ll vote for that younger guy down in Florida.”
The newspapers of the day mocked Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president to win. But he signed the Emancipation Proclamation and then he was assassinated so that was that. Some feel even he was too much of a Big Government president. They believe he should have let the South walk away and that in fact, they had a right to secede. Well, Lincoln wasn’t about to let that happen.
Not with all the gold in Georgia and the western Carolinas.
Trump also pointed out how California was failing big time. Northern Californians have a plan to secede from the state. They’re weary of carrying the weight of San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco and all the dirty, illegal immigrant baggage of those cities.
Trump vowed that if Marciano was elected to be governor of Pennsylvania, it would no longer be a “Sanctuary State.”
The President couldn’t help making fun of California’s Adam Schiff (who is the head of the January 6th Committee) – “Pumpkin Head” as well as some other political personage with spindly legs. However, he quickly brought himself back into line.
“But that’s not what’s important here. What’s important here is their records” and how they’ve failed their states.
Exactly.
“They’re not just attack me,” he reminded the audience; “they’re attacking you.”
They’re attacking your freedom of speech, he said. They want to take away not just your Second Amendment Rights but your Fourth Amendment rights as well.
Trump also stated:
There’s only one party that’s waging war in American democracy by censoring free speech, criminalizing dissent. You see that happening? Disarming law-abiding citizens, issuing lawless mandates and unconstitutional orders, imprisoning political protesters. That’s what they’re doing, rigging elections. weaponizing the Justice Department and the FBI like never ever before. And raiding and breaking into the homes of their political opponents. I wonder who that could be.
Republicans in the MAGA movement are not the ones trying to undermine our democracy. We are the ones trying to save our democracy very simple. The danger to democracy comes from the radical left, not from the right. Not from the right.
This November, we’re going to stand up to this rising tyranny of sickness, lawlessness And death. And we are going to take back our country. We’re going to take it.
He noted that even dictators in Third World countries were shocked that a nation like the United States would do this so blatantly.
Before our very eyes, our beloved country is being taken over by the very people who turned democracies into dictatorships and into ultimately, ruination. They think they can divide us but they can’t. Can’t divide us.
The MAGA movement is the greatest in the history of our country. And maybe in the history of the world, maybe in the history of the world.
We wish that were true. While they cannot divide the Tea Party members of the MAGA movement, they can pick off those informed, those guided more by appearance rather than fact. We are a visually-oriented society and culture. It’s all about how someone looks on television.
People make up their minds about someone in a moment, by their appearance. Americans have become intellectually lazy, morally apathetic, and culturally compromised. Trump spoke about invoking the death penalty on drug dealers. Tons of the deadly fentanyl are being smuggled across our Southern border care of Communist China.
Yet states readily legalized marijuana, and having found that so easy – it was done by voter referendum not executive fiat – are now ready to legalize heroin, cocaine and fentanyl. The states legalized homosexual marriage, once it was proven that citizens were agreeable to civil unions. Roe v Wade was overturned but Blue States have voted to legalize abortion, in some cases all the way up to and even past the ninth month.
Trump said that he is no way opposed to exceptions on the abortion ban.
Legalizing pot in California hasn’t stopped the crime wave. California is in a long-standing drought. Yet pot farmers go on merrily watering their “crops.” Then again, the annual wildfires are also extinguishing their crops. Isn’t that too bad.
Executing the drug dealers would be great. Only there’s such a demand that the dealers have dealers. That’s how the drugs get introduced to the young. Some underling dealer introduces the drug to a school-age group. They stand right on the street corners and sell it to the kids, who then sell it to their friends.
Can we sentence a 13-year-old to the death chamber? They might as well because once a kid is hooked, they’re finished. At best, their brains are numbed and they turn into Democrats. At worst, they die of an overdose by age 23 or so.
Thanks to the drugs and the indoctrination, we’re turning into the Country from Hell and there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop, so long as the Democrats can get away with rigging elections with hackable Dominion voting machines, hordes of illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities, and drugged up, brain-washed Millennials.
Biden’s MAGA Maniacs speech was all about dividing the Republican Party. The Democrats know there are plenty of very foolish mainstream Republicans who are nervous about any candidate who could become a Democrat “target.”
These Republicans just don’t understand that it’s not about the candidate; it’s about the Marxists’ monopoly of the Media. They’ve been manipulating the Media for almost a century now. It’s part of The Ten Plans of Communism. They’re the gatekeepers who determine what you see and what you don’t see, and what’s more, how you see it.
They make sure that the opposition doesn’t even get into Journalism school. They control most, if not all, of the college curriculums – even Business. They control who gets admitted into the curriculum for the all-important Human Resources major.
Human Resources managers are just teachers in suits. I know – I worked with them. I attended a couple of their mandatory classes (on racism and sexism) and as an internal public relations writer and photographer covered their other classes.
Diversity and Inclusion was the mantra. Now, I have to admit, the company’s D&I Fair was a lot of fun to cover and to attend. Lots of great food, cooked by the employees themselves, dancing, music, artwork.
However, being told what you can and cannot say, or get fired, was a different matter. As a Public Affairs employee I already had to absolutely toe the line and get along with absolutely everybody. I didn’t mind that. I did get along with everybody and ten and a half years later, many are still my great Facebook friends.
Really, you shouldn’t be rude at work. There are also used to be the convention, inherited from The Greatest Generation, ‘Never discuss sex, religion or politics in mixed company’ and as an addendum ‘or at work.”
Words to work by.
But now, companies are spying on your social media accounts – Facebook, Twitter, Tik-Tok. Whatever it is people do these days. They can fire you for posts you made from home, on your own time, especially if your company is “woke.”
The Media have always been notorious for skewing articles and photographs. They’ll use the most flattering photographs of their candidate and the most embarrassing photos of the opposition. They’ll always choose the photos of their least-favored candidate and increase the temperature with commentators who make prepared jokes about the candidate. These aren’t even comments written by the station’s own writers; they’re talking points from the two leading Marxist newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Biden talks about the MAGA Republicans the way Obama spoke about the TEA Party ralliers. Obama and the Media painted us in the worst possible light. Here in the Northeast, where the country was founded, we had Revolutionary War re-enactors come to our rallies. That was a natural for us – and our Morristown audience loved it.
They weren’t wearing Halloween costumes. They were re-enactors, proud of our state’s contribution to the Revolutionary War. They stage battles. Visitors can walk around the encampment, where soldiers’ wives can be found tending to their husbands’ tents. They’re actual historians who can tell you all about the particular battle they’re re-enacting and what life was like almost 250 years ago.
What hurt us was the first videos of rallies where the people were just kind of running around and yelling. As an adjunct to the Learning & Development Department and their event planners, I knew the importance of keeping the audience occupied, interested and quiet – so they could hear the speaker.
The first we needed was a place to rally, with the proper permit. The second was speakers so we couldn’t look like “those” guys. Having a sense of humor, I wanted to do a little skit mocking Obama and his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, where the Goddess of ARRA [me] would have handed out Obama bucks to burn on a [fake] sacrificial fire. But our group wasn’t brave enough.
Too bad. It would have been pretty funny and the kids would have loved it. However, I could understand the group’s fear of optics. So I didn’t do it.
If our side doesn’t have a sense of humor, it also doesn’t have a sense of self-confidence. Decades of indoctrination, drug use, and addiction to television dominated by the Left have done their job. These generations have grown up watching subversive comedy shows, listening to subversive music, heeding subversive commentators who are supposedly on the Right.
The Democrats take their title too seriously, as witnessed by Biden’s speech in Philadelphia. The United States of America (for the thousandth time, it seems like) is not a democracy; we’re a constitutional, federated republic. We have (or are supposed to have) a representative government.
Nor do they want us to believe it’s a democracy. They want us to believe we live in an oligarchy. Thanks to a century of Progressive Marxist domination, that’s pretty much what the United States is right now. We really are a Third World country and the Democrats want us to “rebel” against the wealthy oligarchy, which they created, that has us by the purse strings.
The ancient Greek philosophers had this all figured out many centuries. We’re talking about the pre-Socratic philosophers although Plato explains the five types of government best, using Socrates’ dialogue.
The Great Resetters weren’t the first to come up with the idea of depopulating the world. Neither was Bill Gates. Or even Margaret Higgins Sanger or George Bernard Shaw, both of whom advocated eugenics.
Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic philosopher born around 500 B.C. in Ephesus believed that everything originates in strife and that opposition is good. He also wrote:
“It would be right for all the Ephesians above age to strangle themselves and leave the city to those below age [Heraclitus himself lived to 109].” He also said that “Eyes are better than ears.”
And he was also something of an elitist. He deposited his book in the Temple of Artemis (the goddess of wisdom), which he wrote in a cryptic style so that the common people could not read it and ridicule it.
But he also disapproved of the ritual sacrifices common to his time. He wrote that if you’re going to commit a blood sacrifice, you might as well try to wash off mud with more mud.
Philosophy began to be divided into branches. Finally, there arose the Sophists. Earlier philosophers accepted pay from their students; they didn’t demand it. But as the study of rhetoric became more useful to the politically ambitious, certain philosophers began to demand pay from their students. Ambitious men, the students were happy to hand over the drachmas to learn to speak “persuasively” and convince people to elect them to office.
Callicles of Acharnae, who taught that the weak control the strong, waxed particularly eloquent on the subject. When he speaks of “weak” versus “strong,” he means physical strength versus weakness. He maintained that the strong individual was shackled by the weak, who were better situated to throw off the conventions of society and morality.
For the suffering of injustice is not the part of a man, but a slave, who indeed had better die than live, since when he is wrong and trampled upon, he is unable to help himself, or any other about whom he cares. The reason, as I conceive, is that the makers of laws are the majority who are weak and they make laws and distribute praises and censures with a view to themselves and to their own interests. They terrify the stronger sort of men, and those who are able to get the better of them, in order that honesty is shameful and unjust., meaning by the word injustice, the desire of a man to have more than his neighbors. For knowing their own inferiority, I suspect they are too glad of equality. And therefore, the endeavor to have more than the many is conventionally said to be shameful and unjust; and is called injustice, whereas nature herself intimates that it is just for the better to have more than the worse; the more powerful than the weaker; and in many ways she knows, among men as well as among animals, and indeed among whole cities and races, that justice consists in the superior ruling over and having more than the inferior.
[The stronger]…are the men who acct by nature; yes, by Heaven, and according to the law of nature; not, perhaps, according to that artificial law, which we invent impose upon our fellow, of whom we take the best and strongest from their youth upwards, and tame them like young lions – charming them with the sound of the voice, and saying to them, that with equality they must be content, and that the equal is the honorable and the just. But if there were a man who had sufficient force, he would shake off and break through, and escape from all this; he would trample under foot all our formulas and spells and charms, and all our laws which are against nature. The slave would rise in rebellion and be lord over us, and the light of natural justice would shine forth.
Callicles cited the hero Heracles (Hercules) carrying off the oxen of Geryon, stating that “according to the law of natural right, and that the oxen and other possessions of the weaker and inferior properly belong to the stronger and superior.”
There’s not a Democrat mayor of any sanctuary city who would disagree with that statement. Nor any businessman who built up his own business on his own, only to have it taken away from him by the state in order to redistribute his wealth.
That’s “democracy.” Today, the superior man is the one with the advanced degree of an Ivy League school. Not for the hoi polloi is Greek philosophy.
Part Nine of Plato’s Republic describes five Imperfect Societies.
The first is a timocracy, or timarchy; that is, a military aristocracy. Socrates says that from this, where the best men ascend the ladder of success, there are still those less successful who marry poorly and beget weak off-spring. Their mother is dissatisfied and speaks against the father, as do the servants. The child, growing into manhood, decides he must do better than his father.
Since “rising through the ranks” doesn’t work for the physically work, they rise through gain, thus creating the second Imperfect Society: an oligarchy. The power is in the hands of the rich and the poor have no share of it. Eventually, the poor outnumber the rich and eventually.
In an oligarchy the rulers, owing their power to wealthy are unwilling to curtail by law the extravagancy of the young and prevent them from squandering their money and ruining themselves. For it is b y loans to such spendthrifts or by buying up their property that the rulers hope to increase their own wealth and influence.
This neglect and the encouragement of extravagance in an oligarchy often reduces to poverty men born for better things. Some of them are in det, some disenfranchised, some both. They settle down, armed with their stings and with hatred in their hearts, plot against those who have “deprived” them of their property and against the rest of society and to long for revolution.
Meanwhile, the money-makers, bent on their business, don’t appear to notice them, but continue to inject their poisoned loans wherever they can find a victim, and to demand high rates of interest on the sum lent, with the rest that the drones and beggars multiply.
Yet, even when the evil becomes flagrant, they will do nothing to quench it, either by preventing men from disposing of their property as they like, or alternatively by other suitable legislation, perhaps by putting the risk for the loan on the lender [in which case no one would ever lend out money].
But as it is, the oligarchs reduce their subjects to the state we have described, while as for themselves and their dependents – their young men live in luxury and idleness, physical and mental, become idle, and lose their ability to resist pain or pleasure.
Booze, drugs, and feasts.
And they themselves care for nothing but making money and have no greater concern for excellence than the poor.
Such being the state of rulers and ruled, what will happen when they come up against each other in the streets or in the course of business, at a festival or on a [military] campaign, serving in the navy or army?
When they see each other in moments of danger, the rich man will no longer be able to despise the poor man; the poor man will be lean and sunburnt, and find himself fighting next to some rich man whose sheltered life and superfluous flesh make him puff and blow and quite unable to cope. Won’t he conclude that people like this man are rich because their subjects are cowards, and won’t he say to his fellows, when he meets them in private, “This lot are no good; we’ve got them where we want them.”?
Democracy originates when the poor win, kill, or exile their opponents [or impoverish them through taxation] and give the rest equal civil rights and opportunities of office being as a rule by lot. Democracy is established by force of arms or by intimidating its opponents into withdrawal.
In a democracy, there is liberty and freedom of speech in plenty, and every individual is free to do as he likes and the greatest variety of character. There’s no compulsion either to exercise authority if you are capable of it, or to submit to authority if you don’t want to; you needn’t fight if there’s a war, or you can wage a private war in peacetime if you don’t like peace. If there’s any law that debars you from political or judicial office, you will nonetheless take either if they come your way. And isn’t there something rather charming about the good-temper of those who’ve been sentenced in court? You must have noticed that in a democracy men sentenced to death or exile stay on, nonetheless, and go about among their fellows, with no more notice of their comings and goings than if they were invisible spirits.
We said that non one who had not exceptional gifts could grow into a good man unless he were brought up from childhood in a good environment and trained in good habits. Democracy with a grandiose gesture sweeps all this away and doesn’t mind what the habits and background of its politicians are provided they profess themselves the people’s friends. They are duly honored.
Democracy treats all men as equals whether they are equal or not.
Socrates goes on to warn that even of freedom there can be too much of an excess as it extends into license. In order to stay in power, the lawmakers begin to break down the laws, which the people complain are hindering them. The rulers become weaker and the people lose respect for them.
Unless the authorities are very mild and give it [the society] a lot of liberty, it will curse them for [being] oligarchs and punish them.
It goes on to abuse as servile and contemptible those who obey the authorities and reserves its approval, in private life as well as public, for rulers who behave like subjects and subjects who behave like rulers. In such a society, the principle of liberty is bound to go to extremes, is it not?
That is the contention of Former Vice President Biden, who has accused the law-abiding Conservative (MAGA) Republicans of being extremists. Someone must rein them in and he wants everyone to believe that he’s the guy to do it. Only it’s his own, Democratic, illegal alien voters who have gone beyond the extremes of liberty and law and actually embrace anarchy.
As do our young people. Which is exactly what Socrates goes on to say:
It becomes the thing for father and son to change places, the father standing in awe of his son, and the son neither respecting nor fearing his parents, in order to asset what he calls hi s ‘independence;’ and there’s no distinction between citizen and alien and foreigner.
The teacher fears and panders to his pupils, who in turn despise their teachers and attendants; and the young as a whole imitate their elders, argue with them and set themselves up against them, while their elders try to avoid the reputation of being disagreeable or strict by aping the young and mixing with them on terms of easy good fellowship.
What it all adds up to is this: you find that the minds of the citizens become so sensitive that the least vestige of restraint [or criticism] is resented as intolerable, till finally, as you know, in their determination to have no master they disregard all laws, written or unwritten
This is the root from which tyranny springs.
Our education system has become so debauched that even most college students haven’t read The Republic. About the only way a college freshman might read The Republic is if they have an Intro to Philosophy class and even then, they may not be required to actually read it, or they’ll only be required to read an excerpt in a watered-down textbook.
Obviously, Karl Marx read it. I had an Intro to Philosophy class in college, but The Republic wasn’t required reading; it was only suggested, as I recall. To think, Socrates had Karl Marx figured out about 2,300 years before. Even in ancient times, teenagers were “useful idiots.”
Socrates himself was an aristocratic. He was falsely tried as an atheist. He’d supported the aristocratic families during the uprising, which democracy won. As a result, charges against him were “trumped up.” In spite of pleading logically for his life, the Athenian council ruled against him.
He probably could have fled to Sicily, where other philosophers had gone into exile. Historians believe that the Athenians weren’t particularly keen for him to die. They would have been happy if he went into exile. Nonetheless, he refused to leave, because he was innocent, but still insisted on taking the poison given to him because he considered himself a “law-abiding citizen.”
The problem with philosophers is that they think too much. College students should keep that in mind when taking a philosophy course. Don’t let your philosophy professors drive you crazy.
And don’t listen to the Democrats, either. They would tell you that Big Business is crooked while Big Government deprives you of your income because government is here to help.
Government is only here to help itself – to our tax money.
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