Biden's Illegal Vote Buying Scheme

 

Before I even get into the absurdity of President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, let me dispel the White House’s pathetic and deceptive answer as to how they plan to pay for this scheme.  They suggest that, “the work (they) have done to reduce the deficit” is what is going to pay for this vote-buying boondoggle.  That is an utterly false statement.  In the first three years (pre-pandemic) of the Trump administration, America’s budget deficits averaged about $800 billion.  In 2020, due to the additional programs to confront the pandemic (PPP, FPUC, LWA, Warp Speed, etc.) our deficit exploded to over $3 TRILLION.  Even in 2021 our deficit was still about $3 TRILLION. 

As the expenses for fighting the Pandemic go away, of course our deficits were going to go down no matter who was President.  We ran huge deficits, for example during World War II.  In 1943 through 1945 our deficits were 10 times the pre-war amounts, but by 1947 (after the war) our deficits were actually below pre-war levels.  Did Truman run a campaign of smaller government and reduced deficits?  No.  The expenses of the war (building ships and planes and an army) simply went away.  The same thing has happened with Joe Biden.  He has done nothing to reduce our deficits.  The costs of fighting the pandemic have simply gone away, yet Biden continually tries to take credit for that inevitability.  In fact, in 2023 our deficit is projected to be over $1.2 TRILLION, an amount greater than any Trump year, and that projection does not include the Student Loan Forgiveness plan or the Inflation Reduction Act.  So, here’s the truth – Biden is not cutting the size or cost of the federal government.  Pandemic costs are simply ceasing.  In fact, he is actually increasing our deficits and debt well above pre-pandemic rates just as interest rates are increasing.  Not a good idea.

Side note – I didn’t like the deficits under Trump either and I wrote about it, but I felt I had to reveal the truth about Biden’s misleading deficit reduction claims so that you, my readers, could at least know the truth.

Now that we know that this plan is NOT paid for, we can discuss the mountain of flaws in this it.  First, notice that I didn’t call this an Act or law passed by Congress.  It is a “plan” hatched by one man.  President Biden is using a law passed to protect our service men and women from the extra pressure of student loan debt while they were deployed.  He knows he can’t get it passed through Congress because there is too much resistance even in his own party, so he is acting like a king or monarch or dictator and spending hundreds of billions if not a TRILLION dollars on his sole authority.  It’s the Nancy Pelosi approach to spending - pass it and then find out later what it costs.  Our Founders would be rolling over in their graves.

Next, this is a targeted vote-buying scheme aimed at a group of people Biden is having a particular problem with.  New polls have indicated that only 21% of young adults 18-34 approve of the President’s performance.  So, this narcissistic, short-term thinker, has decided to spend up to a TRILLION dollars of your money to buy those votes.  Who needs a campaign fund when you can just spend hardworking Americans’ money at your personal discretion.  That’s pathetic, King Biden.

This “plan” also punishes 85% of Americans who don’t have student loan debt.  Almost 60% of Americans have decided not to even go to college.  Then there are millions more who worked through college or whose parents sacrificed to send them through college without incurring any debt.  Then there are those who used student loans to get through college, but have since worked hard and pinched pennies to pay off those loans.  Where are their checks? This “plan” punishes the hard working and diligent by taking their money to forgive debt legally and knowingly incurred.

And what message are we sending to colleges and universities in America?  This is a green light to continue to raise prices, which is the real problem we are facing.  According to InflationData.com, the cost of attending college since 1980 has grown at a rate four times faster than general inflation in this country.  And the easy access to money through the student loan program has been a major factor in these excessive cost increases.

But the biggest question we should be asking is this – Is this even legal?  Just a year ago, Nancy Pelosi said, “People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness.  He does NOT.”  She added, “That has to be an act of Congress.”  I don’t agree with Nancy on much, but I do agree with her on this.  Or at least I agree with the Nancy Pelosi of one year ago.  Today, she is supporting Biden’s plan.  Maybe she just forgot her earlier statement.  She is 82.  Maybe it’s time for her to go home and take some memory classes.

And finally, this could be the death knell for the entire student loan program.  What idiot would ever pay back their student loan in the future?  Debt forgiveness will become the expectation, not the exception. 

 

PS – Colleges like Harvard, which has an endowment of over $50 Billion, should be ashamed to have any student endure more than five years of repayment of student loan debt before THEY cancel it.  That would elevate the value of their degrees and begin to change their reputations as loathsome, elitist institutions.

Don't Be Deceived

 

It saddens me that I have to continue to remind my readers about the duplicitous nature of our government and its leaders and the media.  About two years ago, I wrote an article entitle “How Can I Lie to Thee, Let Me Count the Ways”.  It was about how politicians and journalists (so called) can distort the truth through lies of omission, exaggeration and even “in your face” boldface lies.  Well, last week there a couple of whoppers that you need to be informed about.

First, Joe Biden got on national TV and tried to tell the country that there was “Zero” inflation in July.  For the naysayers, let me quote him exactly.  He said, “I just want to say a number: Zero.  Today, we received news that our economy had 0% inflation in the month of July.”  That, of course was not true.  Just a few minutes before, it was announced that we experienced 8.5% inflation in July.  But then Joe confused his audience even further by trying to explain his claim.  He went on to say, “Here’s what that means.  While the price of some things went up, the prices of others things went down by the same amount.  The result?  Zero inflation last month.” 

What he didn’t tell you was that was a month to month comparison, and that is NOT how economists measure inflation.  Inflation is measured by comparing the current month’s prices to the same month in the previous year.  And THAT number was 8.5%, another almost 40 year high.  He also didn’t tell you that if you had done the same month-to-month comparison in June, you would have found a 17.2% increase.  I don’t remember him touting that number last month.  Plus, after a huge month-to-month gain like that, is it right to be bragging about a monthly result that was just as bad?  Either Joe doesn’t understand the fundamentals of our economy or he is trying to deceive a small number of people who will hear his claim of ZERO inflation and not question it.  Either way, it speaks poorly of the President’s grasp of the issue or his honesty.

Joe does, however, seem to have an affinity for the word Zero.  Remember, last year he claimed that his $3.5 Trillion Build Back Better bill would cost us “Zero”.  Unfortunately for Joe, the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) and fact checkers found that claim to be totally false.  Not only would it have to be paid for by increasing taxes, but it would also add hundreds of billions of dollars to our nation’s debt.  Beware of politicians who suggest that their programs won’t cost you anything.

The other “whopper” of the week was told by our Attorney General, Merrick Garland.  When speaking of the raid on Donald Trump’s home at Mar-A-Lago, Garland said that he and the FBI do not make decisions like this lightly, and that, “where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search, and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken.”  Now, what he said might be true, and by making that statement he is suggesting that is exactly what he and the FBI did in this particular case, but that is not at all true.

First of all, he could have just attained a subpoena for the materials that he wanted.  That would have been “less intrusive”, but that is not what he did.  He obtained a search warrant, which was very public, with lights flashing and 30 armed FBI agents in the pitch darkness of the early morning in Florida.  Second, the warrant, which we have now seen, was not “narrowly scoped”.  This warrant allowed FBI agents to search any room in his home not occupied by other people and to take “any governmental and / or Presidential records created between January 20/2017 (Trump’s inauguration day) and January 20/2021 (Biden’s Inauguration day).  This allowed 30 agents to search every room or other buildings for eight hours (a total of 240 man-hours).  This search allowed them to forage through his safe and Melania’s closet.  It also, somehow, included taking his passports.  I would not describe this as a “narrow scope”.  You can decide.  Don’t take Merrick Garland’s word for it.  Use your own judgement.

There have also been a couple more attempts at misdirection by this administration.  They just passed the “Inflation Reduction Act” by twisting arms in their own party and without a single Republican vote.  What an achievement!  (that is sarcasm) According to the CBO and many Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, this act will not have any impact on inflation.  In fact, there are hundreds of conservative economists who predict that this law will actually make inflation worse.  Don’t be deceived by the name.

Finally, Democrats will tell you that last night’s drubbing of Liz Cheney in the Wyoming primaries is a sign that democracy is under assault.  Actually, that is a sign that our democracy can work as designed.  The people of Wyoming voted her out of office because she is engaged in an obsession with Donald Trump and not working on the needs and desires of the Wyoming citizens.  Don’t believe the misdirection.  This is exactly how our democracy is supposed to work.  The power is in the hands of the people, not the press or the politicians.  Watch out for the deception as it will come in many forms from both DC and the media!!

Panic Right Now! We Only Have 100 Years Left

 

 

It’s hard to keep track of the hyperbolic, cataclysmic, even existential warnings that have been perpetrated by our politicians and the media about the importance and certainty of climate change – 99% of which have already been proven wrong.  And it didn’t just begin yesterday!  The scientific community has demonstrated an inability to predict climate for my entire lifetime.  Back in 1970, Paul Ehrlich, famed Stanford ecologist, warned that the world would end in 1985 if we didn’t take drastic action right away.  We didn’t take those dramatic actions and the world did not end in 1985.  Just four years after Ehrlich’s fatalistic warning on global warming, Time magazine cautioned the world on its cover about the coming “Ice Age”.  Yah, we have a real handle on climate forecasting, don’t we!

Let’s also not forget Al Gore’s famous prediction back in 2006 that the Polar Ice Caps (both of them) would be completely gone by 2010 and that New York City would be underwater by 2013.  And, of course, if New York was doomed, the Maldives (an island country with the lowest average sea level in the world) would be erased from existence. None of these predictions have come true, and Al Gore and the media have developed a convenient case of amnesia concerning them.  The Polar Bears are happy, however.  They were supposed to become extinct by now, but nobody told them as they have flourished in the face of these prognostications.

All of these failed forecasts do not deter the climate change fearmongers, however.  They simply move the goalposts.  In 2018, CNN and AOC declared that the “Earth has 12 years to avert a climate change catastrophe”.  That gave all of the climate change alarmists some breathing room and replaced an easy to check prediction with the ambiguous warning of a “climate change catastrophe”.  What exactly does that mean anyway?  Both CNN and AOC are hoping that none of us are keeping track of that 12-year prediction.  Today they are still using the 12-year number, but I’m monitoring that claim for them.  They now have only eight (8) years left on this prophesy, and I plan to be around to point out their error when their time runs out.

And I love the latest tactic that these climate change fanatics are using.  They now say that if we don’t destroy the fossil fuel industry and move to “zero emissions” by 2035 (an absolute impossibility), the world will be uninhabitable by 2100.  This would demand insane regulations and actions, like legislating the complete abandonment of combustion engine cars and the current infrastructure that goes with it, without understanding the implications on our economy or our environment.  It also moves the goal posts out of sight to a time when all of us will conveniently be dead. Here’s a good axiom to keep in mind when you think of this prediction – if anyone tells you that they know exactly what is going to happen in 100 years, they are lying!!!

The fact is, we have a rich history of erroneous forecasts and we currently lack an understanding of what this brave new world of “zero emissions” looks like.  Is this really a time when we want one man, soon to be 80, making decisions through executive orders that could destroy entire industries, our country’s economy and America’s position in the world?  Or is it a time to work collaboratively to completely understand our current situation and the best path to the future?

If you really want to understand the current situation and a reasonable approach to our future, you should read the book “False Alarm” by Bjorn Lomborg.  Lomborg is a Danish author, political scientist and President of the Copenhagen Consensus Center think tank.  He is NOT a climate change denier.  Far from it.  He is a believer, but he points out that we have a hundred years or more to react to this challenge through innovation and adaptation.  He also suggests that we are uncertain about the implications of any global warming on the Earth.  He implies that results will not be as calamitous as politicians and the media promise, and there may even be some positives aspects of any warming.

He indicates that the current campaign of fear mongering and fatalism is not the appropriate approach to solving this problem.  To quote Bjorn, “we need to stop exaggerating, stop arguing that it is now or never, and stop thinking that climate is the only thing that matters.” He adds, “We are being told that we must do everything right away…(and) this is what the science tells us.  But this is NOT what science tells us.  It’s what politics tells us.”

While I consider myself (and the late, great Charles Krauthammer) to be a climate change agnostic, I do agree with Bjorn Lomborg on this aspect of the climate change debate.  The LAST thing we need to do today is panic and allow an 80-year-old man to single handedly commit The United States to actions (policies) that could take decades to undo if and WHEN they turn out to be misguided.  It is time to bring the best minds on both sides of the argument together in order to guide us into a safe, prosperous and possibly slightly warmer future.  Then again, if the sun decides to cut back on its heat, we could find ourselves adapting to a new ice age, which we will have to adjust to in order to survive.  And I’m confident that we will!!

I'm Still Proud to be an American

 

One of the big stories over this holiday weekend was about the erosion of pride in America by its citizens.  According to Gallup, only 38% of our citizens are “extremely proud” to be an American.  That is the lowest number for that measure since Gallup began this survey back in 2001.  At first, this number left me a bit depressed, but then I asked myself – has our history changed?  Have we just recently learned about the Civil War, Jim Crow or the assassination of Martin Luther King or Bobby Kennedy?  Have we really lost freedom?  Has the sedition act of 1918 been reenacted, denying Americans the right to criticize our country?  The answer to both of these questions, thankfully, was no.

Our history hasn’t changed at all.  It is just being taught differently.  Gone is the balance where our children learn about the amazing evolution our country has gone through as a result of the wisdom of our Founding Fathers as well as the challenges and missteps that we have experienced along the way.  Today, media concentrates on the negative and constantly proves Abraham Lincoln’s famous adage – If you look for the bad in people (or countries) expecting to find it, you surely will.

Every country has its warts – China, France, England, Russia, etc.  Our country does also.  I could argue we have fewer warts than these countries, some of which continue to have HUGE problems even today.  Compared to these countries, America has a much shorter and actually a more laudable history.  I won’t even get into how we fought a bloody Civil War to end slavery here or how we saved Europe (twice).  I also won’t talk about how we put a man on the moon and established to world’s greatest economy which accounts for over 24% of the world’s GDP while representing only 4% of its population.  Instead, I will take you back to the amazing founding of our country.

Our country did not begin in 1619 as some suggest, but in 1776 with a Declaration of Independence from England sent to the King of England at the time, George III.   Thomas Jefferson, possibly our smartest President, included in that document the key principles on which our country was founded.  The first principle was that, that “all men are created equal”.  Even though he knew that was not true at that time, he was committing our country to reach that standard over time.  The second principle that Jefferson espoused was that “we are endowed by our creator (not the king or any government) with certain unalienable rights, (and) that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.  These principles empowered our citizens and delivered the greatest country this world has ever known.

For the next 10 years our country was guided by this document and the Articles of Confederation.  Then, in 1787 a miracle of wisdom and compromise occurred in Philadelphia called the Constitutional Convention.  At that time, 55 of America’s most discerning men attended the convention to pound out a framework that would shepherd the people who would run our government, and POUND they did.  There were many contentious issues in that day.  Big states and small states fought over what our Congress should look like.  This led to the establishment of our bicameral Congress with a House of Representatives, driven by population, and the Senate with equal representation.  There were commerce issues between manufacturing states and agrarian states, and of course states rights, in light of this new federal government, was a very thorny issue at that time.  Many of the 55 delegates even refused to sign the finished document until a Bill of Rights was added in 1791.  

This sense of compromise is something that we have lost recently and must reacquire for the good of our country.  Let’s take the issue of abortion as an example.  When our current Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade recently, which even Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have supported, rather than search for a solution, Democrats in particular began spreading misinformation, hate and even violence.  What we need now in this case is a spirit of compromise that existed at the very beginning of our country.

I, for example, am unapologetically pro-life, but I at least can admit that I understand the concerns of the other side.  Thus, I support exceptions for rape and incest and the life of the mother.  I even understand the “regret” some women might have when experiencing an unwanted pregnancy.  This is why I still support Bill Clinton’s well know position on abortion, which is that it should be “Legal, Safe and Rare”. I would accept, for example, early stage abortions (maybe 15 to 20 weeks) after the woman involved was informed of all of her options, including adoption, and has been presented an ultrasound image.  

Don’t tell me that the radical pro-abortion supporters can’t understand the concerns that millions of Americans might have about ending the life of a baby in the birth canal after nine months of gestation.  We, as a country, need to stop listening to these extremists and come together to develop compromise solutions that work for the entire country and not for the fringe elements of either side of our political spectrum.

The good news is that the fanatics are losing.  People are flocking to states like Florida to escape the “woke” mobs and even companies like Netflix have begun to tell their “woke” workers to get a different job if they continue to be offended by virtually everything.  The other good news can be found a little deeper in the Gallup poll that I referenced in my opening paragraph.  While only 38% of Americans are “extremely proud” of our country, another 27% are “very proud” and 22% say they are “moderately proud” of America.  Only 4% of our citizens are “not at all” proud of America, and this is with the media and politicians doing their best to run down our country day in and day out.  America is still the greatest country on earth, which is why millions of people are pouring over our southern border to get here.  If you have money to spare – Bet on America.

Where is America on the Abortion Issue?

 

The next few years will be very interesting as the recent overturning of Roe v Wade is digested by the states.  The reality is that neither political party’s extreme positions are popular with the American people.  The left’s current fanatical position of abortion on demand includes aborting a child up to the moment of birth.  Former governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, even talked about abortion AFTER birth.  Believe me, America is not there.  A recent Rasmussen poll showed that only 13% of Americans support abortion up to the point of birth, which is the true position of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat Party.  THAT is why, despite all of Nancy’s blustering, the Dems would not codify their position on abortion even if they kept the House in 2022.  It is too radical and extremely unpopular.

On the other side of the equation, a Marist poll done in 2021 showed that only 12% of American’s believed that abortion should not be legal under any circumstances.  That number only goes up to 28% when you include abortions performed as a result of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother.  These numbers are even too low to pass laws totally eliminating the possibility of an abortion in the most conservative of states.  

Bill Clinton probably had the best political position on abortion.  He suggested that abortion should be, “legal, safe and rare”.  That, I believe is where America is.  States like New York, Colorado and Oregon might be able to maintain their current abortion on demand laws, and California might join them.  We’ll see.  Actually, the Mississippi law just upheld by the Supreme Court which allows abortion up to 15 weeks of conception would be a good compromise.  We will see, but if you want to understand what that compromise might be and why, just click on the attached link to watch a video that I put together almost ten years ago on that subject.  It’s amazing how things really don’t change.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Varfz_lE9JE

The Truth About Lying

Lying and politics seem to go hand-in-hand, and everyone seems to just accept that fact.  According to Forbes magazine in 2019, members of Congress (Politicians) were the least trusted profession in America by a wide margin.  According to Forbes, 58% of the country believe that these politicians have either low or very low levels of honesty.  That number trounced the second least trusted profession, car sales people, by 14 percentage points as they were mistrusted by 44% of the country.  Politicians are clearly in a league of their own when it comes to lying.

And of course, there are many ways to lie.  Politicians can lie right to our faces like when Richard Nixon vowed that he had no knowledge of the Watergate coverup.  Then we had Bill Clinton promise that he, “never had sex with that woman” and Barack Obama assured us that, “if you like your (insurance) plan, you can keep it” which earned him 4 Pinocchios from the Washington Post.  These are just a few examples of in-your-face lies, which is child’s play when it comes to the true masters of this art.  Politicians have figured out how to deceive us even when they are stating facts.  Let me give you a few recent examples.

Today, there is a great debate about why our gas prices are so high.  Many believe it is because the current administration is strangling our oil industry in their misguided (in my opinion) transition out of fossil fuels.  I was sitting on my couch watching the news when I heard the President say that we are producing more oil today than in President Trump’s first year in office.  That sounded like an odd comparison to me.  First of all, that was over four years ago, and in any President’s first term that person’s results are mostly driven by the policies of his or her predecessor.  So, I looked into it.

And in fact, that statement is correct.  In January of 2017, we as a country were producing 8.9 million barrels of oil a day, and today we are producing about 11.5 million barrels a day.  The impression he was trying to give was that he was maximizing our efforts to produce oil now to bring down prices of gasoline here in the US and around the world.  However, in January of 2021, at the end of Trump’s Presidency, our oil industry was producing over 13.1 million barrels per day.  So, we are, in fact, producing LESS oil today than at the END of Trump’s Presidency at a time when we should be producing more.  Clever deception!

When it comes to job creation, we are constantly being told that this administration has created more jobs in its first year than any other Presidential administration in American history.  While it is true that the 14.1 million jobs created in 2021 was far more than any other year in American history.  What they don’t remind you of is that in the year before (2020) we knowingly vaporized over 20.1 million jobs as we closed down restaurants, gyms and thousands of nonessential small businesses in an attempt to curb the impact of the pandemic.  The real truth is that any President who took office in 2021 would “create” (really replace) millions of jobs as we reopened our economy.  In fact, you could argue that the 14.1 million jobs created could have been even higher with different policies, but they are not going to tell you that, of course.  Slick deception.  

Finally, we must talk about the pride that this administration is taking in their deficit reduction results.  Is it true that our national deficit went down in 2021 vs 2020?  This would suggest that this administration is being fiscally conservative.  But we have to look deeper at all the facts before we make an intelligent judgement.  In Trump’s first three years, our deficit averaged about $800 billion a year and his worst year was $984 billion.  In 2020 our country’s deficit was $3,132 billion as Trump tried to fight the pandemic and keep our citizens out of bread lines as we shut down our economy.  Billions were spent on project Warp Speed, replacing and creating Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) and an extension and enhancement of unemployment benefits.  In Joe Biden’s first year in office our deficit was $2,772 billion, only a $360 billion reduction compared to the actual year of the pandemic, and he wanted to spend TRILLIONS more on his Build Back Better (Broke) plan.  This is hardly fiscal conservatism, although that’s what he is trying to get us to believe.  Whoever is writing Joe Biden’s speeches is a real master of the art of deceiving with the facts.

I won’t even get into the data gymnastics that Secretary Mayorkas is employing to suggest that our southern border is closed while over two million illegal aliens will cross into The United States each year in his first two years. Those two years will each represent all-time records, smashing the past record by almost 25%. Here is a couple of real facts.  Our politicians will lie right to our faces, so be on the lookout for that.  Also, they will tell you the truth and suggest improper conclusions to those facts.  This is more difficult to identify, but unfortunately that is the challenge they constantly give us.

 

Heart Control vs Gun Control

             Yesterday, America was shocked and heartbroken at the news that we had experienced yet another school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.  It appears that 21 lives were snuffed out for no apparent reason and hundreds, if not thousands, will be changed forever, and not for the better.  In the immediate wake of this tragedy, it was time for the country to be shocked and to grieve over this senseless violent act and loss of life.  I think we would all argue that it was an appropriate time for the President of The United States to address the nation in an effort to soothe the aching hearts of the country and to unite us around our shared anguish and desire to help the victims; and then came Joe Biden!

            For the first couple of minutes I thought he was going to finally deliver on his inaugural speech promise of uniting the country during this difficult moment.  He was appropriately sad and spoke of the senseless loss of life and the challenges that these families would face to overcome this personal disaster.  He then quickly shifted to a message of anger, and interestingly, not an anger at the disturbed young man who killed these children and two teachers, but an anger at his political opponents.  Before the bodies had been counted and identified, before all the facts were in, he spent most of the speech dividing the country once again along ideological lines.

It is my opinion that this anger and hatred is being constantly infused into our country’s bloodstream and is, in fact, the cause of all of the escalating violence, including school shootings, in America.  From Maxine Waters’ screaming declaration that her political opponents weren’t, “welcome here (in America) anymore” to Chuck Schumer’s threat to Supreme Court Justices to Joe Biden’s condemnation of the horse-riding border guards, our political discourse has become inappropriate, hate filled and even inaccurate.  Our politicians are teaching us that it is not OK for people to have different opinions on our country’s policies.  They are training us that we must hate and condemn and demonize anyone who differs from our thinking.  And this hatred and anger is permeating our society, including our children, with tragic results.  We need heart control way more than we need gun control.

So, now that we’ve broached the concept of gun control, let’s talk a little about the origins of the 2^nd Amendment to the Constitution.  I’m not a big gun owner, but I have studied the origins and original intent of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.  The second amendment was not enumerated to protect the rights of people to hunt in 1787.  The 2nd Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights to protect “We the People” from an oppressive government which could then cancel all of our rights through brute force.

I’m not saying that there aren’t things we as a country can do to protect our schools and minimize crime and violence in our cities.  We do have some very restrictive gun laws around the country today.  Might we need more?  I don’t know, but I’m willing to listen.  How much of the $190 Billion dollars given to our schools for Covid relief has not been spent?  Could some of that be used to improve security in our schools.  I think so, and I’m willing to listen to some ideas.  The 2^nd Amendment, however, is not going away no matter how much Beto O’Rourke wants to go door to door and confiscate America’s (at least Texas’) guns.  Can we do more?  Sure, but that will require both sides of this debate to LISTEN respectfully to each other and be willing to meet in the middle.

And our children seem to be under a particularly strong assault.  They are desensitized to violence and death through video games, movies and today’s music.  Schools that teach oppressor vs victim philosophies are not uniting them but turning both groups against each other.  Finally, if you study the beginnings of the explosion of school shooting deaths in America, there is a direct correlation between those shootings and America’s effort to take God out of our schools in the 1960’s. Bringing God and optional prayer and Bible study back into our public schools would certainly offer a counter balance to the violence and hate offered up by our modern-day games, movies and music. 

Let us not forget, however, the premise of this article.  We, as a country, need a change of hearts more than a change in our gun laws.  How do we do that?  First, we must change our own hearts.  We need to listen to those who disagree with us instead of condemning them immediately before we even understand their positions.  And even beyond listening, we must seek to understand.  When we do this, we will find compromise that will satisfy both sides of any disagreement.  We must avoid the temptation to condemn, hate and dehumanize.  That change alone will enrich each of our lives and unite our country around common ground and common decency.

We must also reject the purveyors of anger, hostility and disregard for others.  If it is a politician, that’s easy.  Vote them out of office.  If it is the media, which it often is, stop reading, cancel your subscription or change the channel.  They will eventually get the message and change their direction or go out of business.  We must let our political leaders and information venues know that “We the People” are in charge and we won’t take the division, disdain and fearmongering any longer. I’m praying for our country. Amen.