An Olio of Potpurri

I'm a lot smarter than the majority of the people, but this isn't
a point of contention, considering it is depressing and not some
thing to be proud of, realizing how much I don't know. Which
doesn't say much about the majority of the people.

If we are to praise modern technology for its achievements, we
must also count the harm it is causing through social media in
its irresponsible miss use of this aspect of it, that has contributed
to the decline of moral values.

It is also a medium used by the manipulators to reach clueless
and disgruntled masses, like those whom I profess to know more
than they do, uniting them into mobs for destruction, and by their
use, stand to gain from the chaos under pretense of protest.

This is allowed due to another miss use; the abuse of the First
Amendment and misinterpretation in its meaning. The wording
must be honed to prevent or correct its flaws by adding an
amendment to the First Amendment.

Feel good liberals are a hinder toward better governance due
to their adherence to political correction, standing in a circle,
holding hands, singing kumbaya and hoping redistributing the
wealth earned by the productive will solve all our problems.

By patronage for open borders, they are compounding additional
problems. We cannot control the influx of illegal immigration and
undesirables who will never assimilate into American culture, but
form enclaves and barrios with no intent to follow our laws, as
shockingly witnessed by other countries who have opened their
borders without weighing the consequence of losing their identity
as a nation.

They will never become the "Little Italy" or the "China Towns"
that are now a part of our culture.

Conservative column from George Giftos

Whatever Happened to the Music?

I grew up during an age when music was melodic and when people were able to relate to the songs and were able to dance with one another. The musical artists during this time included such luminaries as Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, Dion, Neil Diamond, the Bee Gees and Neil Sedaka to name just a few. That kind of music lasted up until the early 90's and then it all seemed to disappear from the airwaves and in nightclubs and stage productions.

From the 90's to the present, we have replaced melodic music (I'm not counting heavy metal “music” of the 70's and 80's) with gibberish, gyrations, street rants, and vulgar lyrics cloaked in the name of “rap” and “hip-hop” music.

During the past 30 years of this change of musical tastes, there hasn't been anything of note that could be classified as a musical standard. None of this “garbage” (music) is sung or hummed by people like the older standards of yesteryear, songs that are still sung and hummed today, generally by older people.

An exception to this trend away from melodic music has been the genre of music called “country”. This type of music has now come to be looked upon in a totally different light than it was 40 or 50 years ago. Back then, country music, which was popular in the South and Southwestern states, was considered hokey, twangy, and was stereotypical of red-neck music. Over the past 30 years, country music has morphed into a type of music that combines the old country, homey, nasal style with the popular music of yesteryear to create a blend of music that is melodic and also tells a poetic story in understandable English. Some of the biggest musical stars today, such as Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, Rascal Flatt's etc. are based in the genre that is referred to as Country/Popular music.

Some people have said that this decline in “music” today is another example of the “Dumbing down of America”. Crude, course, vulgar, unintelligible lyrics is not what I consider being considered music – but it has, and it's not a pretty sight to the eyes or ears of a discerning person. What is needed is another revival of music that can be sung, hummed, and danced to by everyone, not just a group of tattooed, unkempt, skin pierced freaks contributing to the decline of civilization.

I know I will be considered an “old fogy” and out-of-touch for making such pronouncements, but someone has got to say it instead of just thinking about it. Good taste and common sense should be universal and not just the purview of older people who are stuck on nostalgia and yesteryear.

Again I ask, “Whatever Happened to the Music”?

Conservative commentary by Chuck Lehmann

The Irony of Being in a Political Cycle

I am a follower of congressional hearings and White House briefings and
I will say, I'm baffled how anyone can possibly come to conclusion about
anything, when the tone of inquiry has become so hostile.

No one appears to be interested in arriving at the truth, but to cater to their
constituents grand standing, or trying to gain political points in a gotcha
game, or follow their media bosses agenda.

It is a miracle how the country can remain a gem of democracy with so much
incompetency from those in power and spheres of people in position of
influence whom we rely on for information.

Truth is diminished in the mire of politics turned corruptive for personal gain
and competitive edge. And the attempt to drain the swamp has been thwarted
at every turn by false innuendo and made up unnamed sources with
unsubstantiated accusations.

Hopefully we are merely in a political cycle, like climate change, without lasting
dire consequences, that will soon pass and bring sanity back to the country.
After watching the Senate hearing before former FBI director James Comey a
little while ago, I am adding a rider to my article expressing the irony of what
I've stated above.

The director said the President's "hope" that he would put an end to investigating
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn because he is a nice guy, intimidated him, so he
documented his conversations with the president; which he later leaked to the
New York Times via a friend, to cover his back.

When DOJ Loretta Lynch urged him to refer to the Hillary Clinton probe as a
matter, not an investigation about the misuse of her unsecured personal
computers, he didn't think it prudent to document this, among other improprieties.
In heading a department such as the FBI, a person who can be so easily
intimidated has no business being in that position.


Conservative column from George Giftos

The George Giftos bio:

Service: U.S. Air Force

Retired travel agency executive.

In management for agencies by

Fugazy World Travel

U.S. Industries

Carlson Companies

Liberals and the Demise of Cities

Look around the United States at the various “loser” cities and notice they mostly all have one thing in common - they are run by Democrats (liberals). Yes, that is a damning blanket statement, but let's look at the facts.

Go down the list, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago, New York City, New Orleans, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Oakland, San Francisco etc., etc. They are all run by Democrat (liberals) politicians who pander to the mostly minority poor, ethnic constituencies that make up the majority of its citizens.

Take the City of Chicago (as comic Henny Youngman used to say, “Please”), it has one of the strictest gun control laws in the country, but it has one of the highest murder rates in the country. Most of the schools are under performing and the financial condition of the city is in dire straits. Who runs the city - the Democrats (liberals) under the direction of former Obama aide, Rahm Emanuel (a liberal).

Another city basket case is the City of Detroit. Once one of the wealthiest cities in America, it is now in bankruptcy and it has lost over half its population over the past few years. Many of its former mayors have been convicted of corruption and some are presently in jail. What political affiliation did these former mayor's have - they were all Democrats (liberals).

Just recently, we've seen the the chaos and lawlessness raise its ugly head in the City of Baltimore. The city is mostly minority in population and the political machine is made up of mostly black (liberal) politicians, and they have a police chief who is also black. They have screwed up the handling of the latest riots and unrest that caused a good part of the city to have gone up in flames and had encouraged criminal looting of businesses which took place on a widespread basis. The Democrat-run (liberal) city has double the poverty rate and unemployment rate as the rest of Maryland and the schools are performing at very low achievement rate. Could there be a correlation with these facts and the Democrat (liberal) control of the City of Baltimore?

Another disaster area of the country, New York City, has an ultra-liberal Mayor, Bill DeBlasio, who has dropped many of the reforms instituted by former Mayors Guiliani and Bloomberg, which made the city a vibrant place to visit or to do business with. The crime rate has gone up 20% since he took office and his economic policies have scared many residents and businesses away to other more tax friendly places of the country. With a friend like DeBlasio, New York City doesn't need anymore enemies. By the way, he is a Democrat.

The one thing all these cities seem to have in common, besides being run by Democrats (liberals), is that the governing officials of these cities always seem to blame others for their failures instead of blaming their liberal policies which they have instituted. It's always somebody else's fault, not their liberal policies (I guess they have taken a page out of the Obama and Hillary playbook).

Besides the fiscal malfeasance, many of these Democrat-run cities have amnesty policies that welcome “illegal immigrants” into their cities (Sanctuary Cities) by promising not to to turn them over to the I.N.S. for violating our immigration laws. These cities, trying to be benevolent and inclusive, have caused major problems within their

cities by increasing the unemployment rate of long-time residents and by lowering the standard of living for many of its residents. But, the people still continue to elect the Democrat (liberal) politicians over and over again. They seem to validate Einstein's definition of insanity which was - “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. One ploy the Democrats (liberals) find effective in getting enough votes to get elected and re-elected is by offering the people “freebies” from the public treasury, which in turn has put many of these cities in or near bankruptcy.

So, these distressing facts about these floundering cities is only scratching the surface of the failed Democrat (liberal) policies which seem to mirror the failed economic and social policies of Marxism/Socialism.

I, therefore declare, that things will not change unless the people, in those cities revolt and throw out of office the miscreants that have engineered the demise of their cities - those miscreants are the Democrats (liberals). Case closed!

Conservative commentary by Chuck Lehmann

NPR Humor Gone Flat

This Saturday morning, I was surfing the channels to see who had
the best coverage of the President and First Lady arriving in Saudi
Arabia. It seems Fox News Channel was the only one providing full
coverage.

It was a proud moment seeing them received so respectfully.
Later, I had NPR tuned in on my car radio and was disgusted to
listen to the hosts on that program in a deluge of derogatory, bad
taste humor about the leader of our country.

NPR is now among my list of sub humans who are the mainstream
media and clueless celebrities, who are below idiot and moron
classification, sounding like Stephen Colbert, who is as funny as a
flat tire.

The whole lot of them can be described as the part of the anatomy
that discharges human waste.

Conservative column from George Giftos

Dinesh D'Souza schools liberal student how climate change policies harm the poor.

In a recent speech at Brandeis University, author and speaker Dinesh D'Souza was asked questions about climate change. D'Souza explained that global warming is not something that people experience and many interpret the findings differently. He explained how progressives see global warming as a moral issue because they would be able to change and direct the way people live. But he explained that people in India, for example, are just now climbing out of poverty and they need resources to move from starvation to eating once or twice a day. Instead, he said progressives see resources as luxuries that need regulated, making resources limited and more expensive, thereby harming the poorest of the world the most.

Is 70% Not Enough?

The liberals (a/k/a Democrats and Progressives) are constantly claiming that the “rich” don't pay their “fair share” of income taxes, but they never tell you that the top 10% of taxpayers (the “rich”) pay almost 70% of all income taxes collected. Well, it's true, but still the drum beat goes on – the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting screwed.

One might ask, how much is enough? Where would we be if the “rich” didn't pay 70% of the income taxes, we'd be racking up a much larger debt than the already $20 trillion we now owe? We must not cut off our nose to spite our face.

To try to even out the income bubble would be an almost impossible task. Some people will always succeed in accumulating money and wealth ( a fact: 90% of all millionaires did not inherit their wealth, they earned it themselves), even though we are all created “equal” under the eyes of the law, we cannot force equal outcomes in life through income redistribution (the Robin Hood syndrome). As the old saying goes, “you cannot make the poor rich by making the rich poor”.

President Trump has proposed a tax plan that will give all taxpayers a reduction in their taxes, with the “evil rich” paying the highest percentage rate. Yes, the “rich” will get a tax reduction also, but so will the middle and low income taxpayers, isn't that “fair”? The emotional fear scenario by the Democrats that the Trump tax reforms are “gifts” to the “rich”, does not meet the smell test. Most companies and businesses (both large and small) are the major employers in our economic system (a free enterprise capitalist system). If you want to create jobs and increase revenue to the government, you must not overtax the entrepreneurs and risk takers. These are the people who create the jobs and expand the economic base.

It might seem incongruous, but when you reduce taxes to a “fair” level, instead of reducing government revenue, it actually increases government revenue. History is replete with the truth of that statement. When Presidents Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and G.W Bush lowered the tax rates, government revenue increased exponentially. The caveat with that increase in revenue is that the Congress spent the extra revenue, and more, by increasing many of our social programs and “pork barrel” projects over and above the increased revenue. As a result, we now have a $20 trillion national debt, which President Trump is proposing to reduce by cutting and streamlining government programs and the bloated government bureaucracy.

To listen to Trump's detractors, he is going to kill children, starve seniors, ruin education and a host of other dire consequences, if his tax reform and budget proposals are carried out. The Democrat's are the one's who love to pass out “freebies” to the electorate in order to garner their votes at election time. The only trouble, with being so generous with handing out money from the public treasury, is that “there's no such thing as free lunch”, but as the Democrats surmise and factor in, people will be more receptive to the “something for nothing” plea as there are more people who will fall for that ploy because of greed and economic ignorance.

We should not penalize success by punishing the “rich” with unrealistic and overbearing taxes put upon them, but we should try to raise all people to become “rich” so that they can pay the taxes that the “rich” now pay, thereby increasing government revenue and reducing our enormous debt. A hand up instead of a hand out is the way to go. Too much government means more waste and inefficiency and an economic malaise, which we are finally recovering from our past policies.

So, as the headline of this editorial asks, “Is 70% Not Enough”, the answer is, “Yes”, it is enough, since the “rich” pay 70% of all income taxes, we should not overly penalize them by overly taxing them as the amount of jobs and economic expansion will decline, and we will push our national debt even higher and higher. If we have to balance our own personal finances, why shouldn't the government have to do the same? We have to start sometime, so now is the time to try to get our house in order and pass the tax proposals President Trump is proposing, the sooner the better.

Conservative commentary by Chuck Lehmann

Ignorance is the Enemy

There is no humor listening to clueless millennials and snowflakes
in street interviews, who are unable to point out our country on a
map, or identify who the portrait of a notable past president is.
It is alarming that many are going through life with their head buried
in the sand, or lost in a perpetual weedy happy hour, inducing
destructive disobedience, acting out the civic lessons taught by
hard line, leftist professors.

The reign of terror during the French revolution; Italian Blackshirts of
the 1920's and German Brownshirts of the 30's began as embers
that complacency caused to burst into uncontrollable, full fledged fires
that could not be put out.

Don't rule out it not happening here.

The greatest danger we face is not the obvious. The greatest danger is
ignorance, and it comes from the least expected places. The campuses
of our universities where free speech and contrary ideas are suppose
to be debated, but squelched by activists who think the First Amendment
doesn't apply to their opposition.

Conservative column from George Giftos

“Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics”

That phrase, in the above headline, was popularized by author and humorist Mark Twain, which is defined as: “a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. It is also sometimes used colloquially to cast doubt on statistics used to prove an opponent's point”.

The reason I bring this phrase up is the constant reference, by rabid environmentalists, to use the erroneous figure of “97% of global scientists believe in the theory of man-made “global warming”. It's use was glorified by both ex- President Obama and ex- Secretary of State Kerry, in trying to get the United States to buy into the theory of “global warming” and to push us into changing our ways of living, especially in the area of using carbon fuels to power our economy.

The people who promote this theory of man-made “global warming”, including both Obama and Kerry, actually believe that “global warming” (a/k/a climate change), is a greater threat to the national security of the United States than either ISIS and Al-Queda, two vicious terrorist groups. They actually made that statement with a straight face.

What about this figure of 97%, is it a true statistical figure or is it bogus ( a lie)? It seems that a climate blogger from Australia, John Cook, did a survey of scientists who wrote abstracts about the theory of “global warming”. Only 34% of the 1,000's of papers Cook examined expressed any opinion about anthropogenic climate change, and since 33% “appeared” to endorse anthropogenic climate change, he divided 33 by 34 and – voila- the figure 97% was born. As you can tell, it was and is a totally bogus statistic. In fact, the Wall Street Journal went as far as to say, “The assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem, is a fiction”.

Al Gore, in his discredited movie documentary ( in which he received a Nobel Prize) called “An Inconvenient Truth”, stated that the theory of man-made “global warming” was “settled science”, but that claim cannot be backed up by any reliable scientific organization or group. Most studies show that the scientific community is split 50-50 as to whether man-made “global warming” is real or is a real threat to our civilization. In other words, it is not “settled science” and anyone says otherwise is part of the “fake news” that has become quite popular lately. To quiet dissent, the environmental wacko's have labeled anyone who disagrees with them as climate change “deniers”, a group that includes prominent climatologists such as; Dr. Richard Lindzen of M.I.T; Dr. Timothy Ball of the University of Winnipeg; and John Coleman, founder of “The Weather Channel”, who all claim that man-made “global warming” is not a major problem to our way of life. In fact, John Coleman even called it a “scam” operation.

The liberal media machine (who mostly support the theory), has spent decades bulldozing anyone who tells you “global warming” is a sham theory. Remember, in the middle 1970's, the environmentalists were championing the theory of “global cooling”, predicting that in a few short years we'd be confronting a mini-ice age? Now, many of these same misguided alarmists have latched on to an opposite theory, man-made “global warming”. How ironic is that? I guess it is not so “settled science” after all.

Most scientists and NASA's RSS (Remote Sensing Systems) data, have determined that the world has warmed up a mere .36 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 38 years (they started measuring data since 1979). But, the bulk of that .36 degrees increase was between 1979 and 1998, since then, we've actually had temperatures dropping, and we haven't had any “global warming” for the past 19 years. The prediction by Al Gore (in 2007) that the North Polar Ice Cap would be gone in as little as 7 years, was grossly exaggerated, as was his Nobel Prize winning documentary.

So, when you hear that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made urgent problem, you now know that it is a fiction and it falls into the category of lies, damned lies, statistics.

Conservative commentary by Chuck Lehmann

MORT’s meanderings

Please, Mr. President . . .

give us a Director of the FBI who is a real cop.  One with a lifetime of experience at being a cop.  One with a record as a guy (not a gal, please) who has a reputation as being a tough-on-crime and really-tough-on-criminals, policeman - a cop.

(This is not a ‘politically-correct’ request nor, did I mean it to be.  I want a tough-minded man at the top of the FBI. Not gay, not soft, no specific skin color  – none of that.  But, a guy who dedicates himself to returning the FBI to its former glory days when it kept secrets but, did its job silently and efficiently, without fear or without giving a second thought as to political repercussions.)

Give us a cop who has a lengthy history of experience at leading focused investigations and one who deals only with provable, factual information. Give us someone who is impervious to political influence.   A former NYC Police Commissioner like Ray Kelly comes to mind.  So does former NYC Mayor, Rudy Giuliani. Or preferably, a slightly younger version of either of these proven, rock-solid, highly-experienced cops and/or prosecutors, who is willing and able to take on the task of heading up this backbone agency that is so vital to our national security.

And puleeeez, don’t give us  Joe Lieberman or any other shopworn, former elected representative of the people, who spent decades of his life warming a seat in the U. S. Congress or at politically-appointed posts in former administrations.  I beg of you, Mr. President - spare us that giant, backward step.  Thank you, Sir.

                                                 MORT KUFF   © 5-24-2017