Category Archives: Rob Meyne

Not An Exaggeration: Civilization Itself Is At Risk

If you haven’t read anything by Michael Shellenberger, check him out, and thank me later.

He is one of a very few honest and truly productive journalists around. He is by nature a leftist and award-winning environmentalist. He is anything but a traditional MAGA advocate. He’s never voted for Trump.

Yet, perhaps unlikely, he has become a hero to people who favor free speech and, thus, to many conservatives. It says a lot about the disreputable nature of journalism today that anyone who is objective and fair stands likely to be accused of being a Trump person.

Consider Alan Dershowitz, who is a lifelong liberal and Clinton voter. He is one of the most balanced, knowledgeable, and honest people anywhere in the legal profession (that may not be too high a bar, but still). He still stands up for equal and fair justice. As a result of pointing out the many ways in which Trump has been treated improperly, or just dramatically different than his political opponents, Dershowitz has been chided, criticized, abused, and no longer invited to the cool parties on Martha’s Vineyard. To his credit, Dershowitz laughs at them and says it is their loss.

There is no longer any doubt. If you dare to do anything against the “regime,” the self-appointed elite who want to run your lives, you are putting everything on the line. You will be trashed, threatened, and marginalized just for being objective.

Shellenberger is effective at debunking the climate hysteria. Fortunately, it seems like some of our leaders, companies, and organizations are waking up. We will see if it is too late.

Even if you think carbon emissions are ruining the world, there is no good argument for suddenly dropping fossil fuels and turning to things like wind and solar power that are not capable of meeting our needs, are more expensive, and less reliable.

Without carbon-based fuels, we could not sustain our world’s population, grow, and prosper. We do not currently have technologies that can instantly replace the essential sources on which we depend. The world improved dramatically in the past generation, and it is reflected in higher standards of living around the world. You know what made all that progress possible? Carbon based fuels.

Plus, we’re already making progress. The EU’s carbon emissions peaked in the 1970s. America’s carbon emissions have declined for years and are now lower than a decade ago. Meanwhile, the two largest nations, China and India, are building coal-fired power plants and producing more CO2 all the time. Yet all you hear from the left is that we need to do OUR part. The focus is entirely on making America the villain.

Why? Because this isn’t really about climate. It is about control. The globalists who run our governments, policy organizations, and the mainstream media use climate as an excuse to restrict your freedom and build their own wealth. If you don’t understand this yet, just look at some photos of John Kerry on his private jet. Or of Barack Obama’s Massachusetts mansion, built in an area he claims will soon be underwater. You must reduce your carbon footprint, according to them, but they can’t be bothered.

The climate scare is being used to undermine western society, subvert our economies, and enrich the global elite. I know that sounds conspiratorial. But it is not a conspiracy, it is just the logical result of giving power to people who benefit from keeping others down.

Perhaps the most under-reported story of our lifetimes is that more than a billion people have been lifted out of poverty in the past two decades. The reason? More nations have successfully embraced freedom and capitalism, and nothing reduces poverty like capitalism.

Today’s leftists, and supposed “Democratic Socialists,” claim to care about you and me. They. Do. Not. They care about power. If they cared about us, they would be promoting the policies that have allowed so many to escape poverty. On the contrary, they fight daily against the things that have made us healthier, happier, and freer.

Shellenberger makes this observation: There are four key elements that have allowed economies to boom in the last half century. He calls them the “Pillars of civilization.” They are free speech, cheap energy, meritocracy, and law and order. Each of these is under attack.

The meritocracy is being replaced by policies that allocate rewards based on race. Reliable fossil fuels, nuclear plants, and natural gas are being phased out even though there are no sufficient ways to replace them today. Urban DAs and state legislators are making it harder to prosecute crimes and routinely reduce charges against felons, releasing them without bail. Most horrifying, free speech is under attack by the DOJ, FBI, and the administrative state.

Think about it for a minute. Name one of these pillars – essential elements of a free civilization – that is NOT threatened today by the nascent wokeism of the left. Name. One. I doubt you can.
It may seem a bit hyperbolic to say the left hates America, but not by much. IF the Biden team were openly devoted to undermining America, it is doubtful they could do a better job than they already are.

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The Rubicon has Been Crossed – A Long Piece on a Huge Problem

By Rob Meyne

  • Aug. 31, 2023
  • 7-min read

Yet another in a series of important, and tragic, events in American history occurred: the indictment of a former president on federal charges. This is unprecedented. Whatever you may think of former President Donald Trump, it says as much about the forces determined to stop him as it does about Trump himself. In no sense is this a good thing for the country.

It is easier to make decisions on most issues based on emotion and your own biases (factually based or not) than to make them based on facts and objectivity. This is such a case.

While we like to say we are a nation of laws, most decisions regarding who to prosecute involve an overwhelming amount of subjectivity. If you believe most prosecutions are based on facts alone then, with respect, you don’t know much about our system. Nearly all prosecutorial choices involve opinion, bias, and preferences. It is called “prosecutorial discretion.” The DA who indicted Trump in NY, for example, immediately on taking office, reduced the charges against thousands of people accused of violent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. The facts had not changed, only the opinion of the DA.

I’ll go further and say that any lawyer who doesn’t recognize the decision to charge Trump is unjustifiable based on past actions in similar cases – and doesn’t say so – is at this point a hypocrite not deserving of membership in the bar. Any political observer who doesn’t admit this is an entirely unjustified prosecution is also either uninformed, corrupt, or lying. If that is too pointed or confrontational for you, my apologies, and maybe this piece isn’t your cup of tea. The stakes are high and the time for timidity is gone.

How is that for direct? 😊 You know who you are! With love and apologies all around, the time for being afraid to express your opinion is gone. We are in many ways losing our country, and if you don’t work to preserve it you are part of the problem.

The decision to charge Trump is politically driven. Period.

From the political side, it is very likely, in my view, that leading Democrats are pushing for prosecution of Trump because the know it will inflame his base and make his nomination more likely. They WANT Trump to be the nominee because they think they can beat him. At the same time, they know moderates and non-partisans will be hesitant to vote for someone under indictment or convicted.

The political ramifications will be interesting, but the legal outline is clear.

Every executive in Washington must follow a complex system of requirements and procedures for record-keeping. It is rare for Washington’s denizens NOT to violate a procedure, either intentionally or inadvertently. In almost all such cases there is either no punishment or only minor fines. That is what makes the Trump indictment indefensible. None of his predecessors has been subject to the same level of investigation, scrutiny, or potential sanctions.

Let’s be clear: The DOJ works for the president and is taking actions to affect his leading opponent and to impact the election. Anyone who doesn’t recognize that should just, candidly, go home and stay there on election day, because they are hopelessly naïve.

Memos and emails have already shown the White House was involved in the decision to search Mar-A-Lago, even though Biden claimed he didn’t even know it was going to happen. This White House spews more lies in a week than Pinocchio did in a lifetime, and they aren’t even particularly clever about it.

Remember: Bill Clinton had classified docs in his sock drawer.

Obama took thousands of docs to Chicago and said “we have thousands of classified documents. We will get them to you eventually.” But to date he has not.

Biden has kept classified documents in several locations, including in his own garage. He even has attorneys reviewing them who are not authorized and don’t have clearance. That act itself – allowing your own attorneys to review classified information – is espionage. Yet in this era of a two-tiered justice system he has faced no charges.

And, of course, the FBI has a report, from one of their trusted sources, that Biden was the recipient of a $5 million bribe, a fact also testified to in a Ukraine court. Yet the FBI fought to keep it secret, and even lied when they said the report did not exist. They’ve known about this for years but have done nothing. They have had evidence of crimes on Hunter’s laptop and have done nothing. Does anyone still really believe the system is fair?

On another side note, the Hildebeast herself did things that could have been prosecuted as espionage and obstruction of justice, if you believe FBI Director Comey, but she was charged with nothing under Obama’s DOJ. Trump’s DOJ could have prosecuted Hillary Clinton for those very crimes, but Trump thought it would be unseemly, and bad precedent, for a president to allow prosecution of a political opponent. Got it? Trump had more respect for the system than to indict an opponent; Biden does not.

Hillary Clinton, while under subpoena, destroyed 33,000 highly classified e-mails on her private server, broke up cell phones with a hammer, had staff cut off “top secret” from documents so they could copy them for her, and communicated regularly with President Obama on a private email (again, that is espionage). Yet she has faced no charges.

Vice President Pence took classified documents home. George W Bush, George H. W .Bush, Dick Cheney, Al Gore, David Petraeus, Dan Quayle, Jimmy Carter – all had classified docs.

Obama’s AG was held in contempt of Congress, Clinton’s national security advisor stole classified documents, took them home, and destroyed them.

ONLY Trump was charged with a crime. Only a couple of the others faced any sanctions at all.

Bottom line: the tradition, the custom, is to give great deference to former office holders and not throw the book at them. None of these people had their homes raided. Only Trump. At the time of the raid, his lawyers were in ongoing, regular discussion about exactly what documents the government wanted returned, and he had already allowed one search of his home and sent at least 18 boxes of docs to the archives. He had not “refused” to comply at all.

There is also the reality that the president has unrestricted authority to declassify anything he wants at any time, and to give people clearance to view them at any time. No one else has that authority. Trump maintains he declassified the documents he took with him. To do so, you do not have to fill out forms, get permission, or check boxes. You can simply do it. Just say it. Just make the decision. That will be an important defense.

IF we are to reach a point where, as a nation, we treat violations of record-keeping rules and classified procedures as prison-worthy offenses, let’s begin applying that new standard in the future. Let’s not retroactively treat conduct as being more egregious than we have traditionally considered it.

The barbaric injustice against Trump is an unprecedented abuse of power directed by Biden & DOJ Merrick Garland. The FBI has interfered in the past two presidential elections and continues to act as a partisan organization today. We are in danger of losing our nation if we allow this two-tiered system to continue. We are running out of time.

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Biden Makes It Clear: He Doesn’t Like Us

For those keeping score at home… The “success” in Biden’s SOTU speech was that… wait for it… he didn’t fall down, soil himself (maybe he only does that when he is with the Pope), or stand for a half hour frozen without speaking. Those were the highlights.

It was not a presidential speech so much as a campaign event that revealed more than they probably intended. There may never have been a more hate-filled speech given in the well of the House. The loathing of huge swaths of Americans was palpable and hard to miss given that he yelled most of it.
If you want to give the most important and powerful job in the world to the crazy old man who lives down the street and keeps yelling at you to keep your dog off his lawn, you will have your chance this November.

Let’s add this caveat: if certain terms like “hate” offend you, or seem excessive, think of your own term. Whatever is the right word – and hate doesn’t seem too strong to me – it is clear Biden no longer even bothers to pretend he likes many of us. If he doesn’t use the word “hate,” find your own. What do you prefer? Loathes, despises, vilifies? Get out you thesaurus and have at it.

He brags about it. If you are Republican, Independent, Conservative Democrat, corporate leader, or advocate for peace or financial responsibility – just a partial list – he despises you and considers you the enemy.

The field is striped. It could not be clearer.

It is odd to me, as a lifelong political hack and campaign communications trainer, to see the Dems rejecting a clear component of any effective speech: you want to be likable. This isn’t as sacrosanct, I suppose, as it was at one time. Most people don’t find Trump warm and cuddly. Maybe we are beyond all that. But at least Trump is clearly fond of average, run of the mill Americans. Biden makes it clear he is not.

The Republican nominee is an unlikely hero for those who love freedom. Like the Kennedys or the Roosevelts, he is a wealthy man who somehow still has a link to the common person. Sometimes a lifeline is thrown to us from an unexpected source. President Trump is spectacularly right: they are coming for you and me. They aren’t even subtle about it. Please, please be cognizant enough to realize it before it is too late.

Unless you’re a Democratic Socialist (which is like being a free slave; it isn’t possible) or just a brainless sycophant, you can’t name a major human cohort he didn’t attack. He slammed businesses and their owners, the Supreme Court, and anyone who doesn’t buy into open borders and his brand of bigotry.
Basically, if you like free speech, a secure America, or a society where we know what a woman is, Biden hates you. If you are not willing to support the racist policies they promote in the name of DEI, he hates you. If you aren’t in love with the idea of another long war, he hates you.

He did nothing to build bridges. A man who has claimed he wants to be president of all the people gave most of us a middle finger. Typically, even the most partisan presidents spend quite a bit of their speech claiming they want unity. Several years ago, it was even a key part of Biden’s address. But no more.

Today, he doesn’t even bother to make a pitch for unity. He did claim the border bill, which is dying a well-deserved death, is bipartisan, except that…. Well, it really isn’t. Mitch McConnell, who is thankfully stepping down as leader this year, and his hand-picked stooge agreed to the latest draft. It wasn’t bipartisan in any significant way, and even if it were, so what? It is a bad bill. The border bill doesn’t restrict illegal immigration, it enshrines it into law. The legislation would allow nearly two million illegals to enter the nation each year, without triggering any enforcement at all. If that is your idea of sealing the border, you belong in the open borders party. Maybe you can be the first person in America to put up a Biden sign.

This just in: having one or two GOP senators support a bill does not make it bipartisan in any meaningful sense. Bipartisanship is not a useful adjective unless it represents a sample from both parties that is sufficient to affect the process.

Another example: in 2022, every Democratic Senator except one, Manchin, voted for legislation that would have removed all limits on abortion. It would have established a national law that allowed abortion through all nine months.

That is the current preference of America’s Democratic leadership. Just claim emotional, mental, or physical harm might entail if the child was allowed to live, and you could kill your kid instead of delivering it alive and healthy. Democrats think you should get to choose, right up until the last moment, whether your child is carried out of the delivery room in a pair of loving arms or wheeled out in the trash.

Every D supported it, as did Biden. But since ONLY one Democrat voted against it, would it be really fair to claim there was bipartisan opposition? Of course not.
Biden has thrown bipartisanship overboard. They have concluded their best path to victory will be to demonize Trump and all Americans who don’t support the ideas that we need more government, more spending, more control of your life, and less freedom for us all.

He said, BTW, that the threat against democracy should be defended. That is, the people who are a threat should be defended. Got it? He supported the people who are threatening us. His supporters defended him by essentially saying he just doesn’t speak well.

Lovely. We have a president who can’t intelligently mumble his way through a SOTU speech, even though he is full of whatever drugs they gave him to keep him awake.
Biden was as rational and likable as Grandpa Simpson on meth. It was the nastiest, most divisive speech of its kind in our lifetimes. He makes Donald Trump seem like Mr. Rogers.

He also pissed off swaths of the self-righteous left by calling illegal aliens what they are: illegal. Occasionally Biden accidentally speaks the truth. And he did so when he admitted that the people who have been welcomed into the country illegally are, well, illegal. If you prefer to refer to them as criminals that is all right with me. The truth can be a powerful thing.

For now, the truth to embrace is that we have two people running and one of them will be president. Choose one of them. They are both flawed, imperfect people, but one clearly loves America, while the other doesn’t seem to like you or this country very much. One wants you to be free. One wants America to be, yes, great again. One is pushing for peace. The differences couldn’t be clearer. Pick a lane.

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Welcome to the Biden Police State

By Rob Meyne

  • March 7, 2024
  • 3-min read

If you want to know what it is like to live in a police state, just look around. We’re officially there.

That isn’t to say it can’t get much worse; undoubtedly it can, and it will if Biden’s nascent fascists are given four more years.

Shamefully, there are very few in the media who are willing to stand up for their free speech rights, much less yours. If it were up to the Times, the Post, and CNN, you would be silenced and shuffled off to one of the re-education camps the Hildebeast once suggested we deploy to change the way conservative Republicans think.

It is no longer debatable that our freedoms are being chipped away. The only thing that IS debatable is why don’t more people seem to care? Most people simply don’t know how bad it is; but they will when the state targets THEM.

Most air marshals, according to the Marshal’s Service, were taken off their jobs – providing security on aircraft – and deployed to follow people who just happened to be in Washington on January 6. These people are suspected of being Trump supporters but did not even go to the protest. You read that right. Federal officers are traveling the nation, following people who aren’t even suspected of a crime. If that does not remind you of the Gestapo, I don’t know what would.

One reporter who was in the Capitol, covering the event – the news – has been arrested. Why? What horrible crime did he commit? Assault? Rape? Murder? No. He is essentially charged with trespassing misdemeanors. His real “crime” seems to be that he is an honest and objective reporter trying to find the underlying cause of what happened that day. He is not charged with insurrection, terrorism, or violence of any type. He is targeted only because he was in the building doing his Constitutionally protected job.

His name is Steve Baker. He currently works for the Blaze. He was carried off in handcuffs and leg irons and taken to prison.

Importantly, on January 6, Baker did not protest, interfere with anyone, or do anything even remotely violent. When Capitol police asked him to leave, he left. For that, he is being prosecuted. In the meantime, New York Times reporters who stood at his side have not been prosecuted.

Baker has recently been reporting on the pipe bombs found at the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic National Committees. (My old office at the RNC was within 50 feet of where the pipe bomb was found.)

There are a ton of problems with the popular narrative on this. For one thing, the timers used were basic kitchen timers, which can be set for a maximum of one hour. Yet we are told they were placed the night before. What? We are to believe terrorists placed these pipe bombs and then planned on coming back the next day to set the timers. Is anyone that stupid?

Finally, consider that an FBI informant by the name of Smirnoff – not Grey Goose or Tito’s – has been charged with lying to the FBI. He has served as a trusted, paid informant for the FBI for fourteen years. They have come to respect and depend on the intelligence he has provided. So, what happened? Why did they suddenly decide he is a crook?

It is simple. He reported that he was informed by a Ukrainian businessperson that they had paid the Biden’s $10 million, 5 for Hunter and 5 for Joe. The information came from an official at Burisma, the company paying the Bidens, and for which Hunter Biden was paid for a no-show assignment.

What is the message the DOJ and FBI want to send? It is clear. They are attempting to intimidate anyone who may have information that puts Biden in a bad light. If you deliver information that is inconvenient for the fascists of the left, you can go to jail.

Christopher Steele, who was also a paid FBI informant, delivered unverifiable dirt on Trump – all of which turned out to be made up out of whole cloth – and has faced no penalty for it. Steele got secondhand rumors from Russian sources, all untrue, and the FBI used them as an excuse to spy on the Trump presidential campaign.

If liberals did not have double standards, they’d have none at all.

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Pick A Lane:
America is At Risk, and We Can’t Afford the Luxury of Protest Votes

By Rob Meyne

  • Feb. 22, 2024
  • 5-min read

If you’re like us, you’ve probably heard a lot of folks expressing the usual quadrennial complaint that “both candidates suck.” That may be a tad inelegant, but you get the point.

Many surveys show a huge majority of voters wish we had better choices.
You can count me among them. I’d love to be able to pick between Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln. Let me know when we can work that out.

There is, however, this thing called “reality,” and it says that, barring a miracle, one of the two major party candidates will be elected president. The only relevant decision a person needs to make is this: under which of these two candidates can we reasonably expect the nation to be better off?

There is a lot of talk about the “lesser of two evils.” If one wants to look at politics in that way, be our guest. The question we would offer to inform the discussion a bit is this: in what part of life are we not faced with alternatives that are the “lesser of two evils?” Put another way, what part of your life is perfect? (My wife is perfect, and please tell her I said so.)

Most of human existence involves choosing from among two or more options, and they are never perfect. That is the nature of life, and certainly of human beings. As long as politics involves people, our choices among candidates will be imperfect. Get used to it, get over it, and next time support better candidates.

For today, let’s get back to reality.

For those who want to sit this one out – to note vote, or to vote for a third-party candidate with no chance of winning – you need to ask yourself whether the future of the country is more important than casting some kind of protest by way of a wasted vote?

If you don’t vote, no one sits and cries. No one will beg you to reconsider. No one will write it down and say, “Mr. Jones in Topeka didn’t like the candidates, so we need to do better next time.”

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Racist Leaders Presume You Are, Too

By Rob Meyne

  • Feb. 4, 2024
  • 3-min read

The names of many contemporary movements, organizations, and legislation are focused-grouped tested to ensure they sound as appealing as possible. Nomenclature has a lot to do with the ability to successfully market something.

Terms like Black Lives Matter, or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), or the Inflation Reduction Act are designed to generate support for policies that do not reflect what their name suggests.

No reasonable person questions that black lives matter. Nor do they oppose the ideas of inclusion or inflation reduction. Yet frequently a majority of reasonable people oppose the specific actions being taken in pursuit of those objections. The devil is always in the details.

Years ago, you may recall there was opposition to harvesting tuna, because marine mammals were often killed in the process. Accordingly, there was a suggestion that tuna operators should form an alliance and call it “Friends of the Dolphin.” No doubt you could have generated cash contributions to such a group from a lot of people who would have been horrified to find out what it really was.

If you’ve paid attention to the dumpster fire that is also known as the Biden Administration, you will remember they tried to enact components of the “Green New Deal” (AKA, the Green New Steal). These were radical revisions to the way we use and generate energy, manufacture and distribute products, and to whom we give huge taxpayer-funded subsidies. It was politically unpopular and economically devastating. The bill went nowhere. So, they just called it the Inflation Reduction Act. Members of Congress had only a few days to read the thousand page bill, and team Biden just put most of the elements of the Green New Steal into it.

The voters don’t like it? Simple: change its name and pass it anyway.

If you said you were opposed to the Inflation Reduction Act people thought you were in favor of inflation. Sadly, this kind of disingenuousness, and outright lying, drives much of the political process.

Monikers like DEI are crafted to sound like a commitment to a laudable goal but do nothing to tell you the nuts and bolts of the proposals. You can certainly favor the concepts of DEI without favoring the methods leftist elites use to make them happen. The left routinely disguises their true intentions – their actual policies – by labeling them in a misleading way.

It has often been said the left succeeds when the people are not informed but conservatives succeed when they are.

Consider this: any policy that treats people differently based on their skin color or national heritage is racist. That is the definition of racism; treating people differently because of the amount of melanin in their skin. Yet that is exactly what most DEI programs require.

Equity, in fact, is the polar opposite of equal opportunity. Equity requires the allocation of benefits and opportunities based on race. Management by equity requires that merit be a secondary consideration. That is an uncomfortable reality, but until we come to grips with it, we will continue to struggle to find answers to some of our most important problems.

For as long as I can remember, I have been astonished at how people on the left look at everything through the lens of race. Leftist leaders simply don’t believe race isn’t the first thing conservatives think about when they begin their day. Most Democratic leaders assume we are all obsessed with race because they are.

Perhaps more than anything, solutions to problems of race will elude us as long as half the nation assumes the other half shares their obsession with race. Saying that out loud is not likely to make you friends among Democratic leaders.

More to come.

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If You Trust the Government,
You May Need Therapy

By Rob Meyne

  • Jan. 27, 2024
  • 4-min read

The portion of Americans who trust the government to do the right thing has plummeted to historic lows. Less than 20% of us trust the government. The other 80% might ask “are you not paying attention?”

It takes a willingness to ignore facts, and reject common sense, to believe much of what the government tells us. This is true for all levels of government, but particularly nationally.

This is not the same thing as saying the government never tells the truth. Sometimes it does. But every sentient creature in America should view governmental messages with skepticism and do their own homework before determining what is true.

Pew comments on the lack of trust in government:

“Public trust in the federal government, which has been low for decades, has returned to near record lows following a modest uptick in 2020 and 2021. Currently, fewer than two-in-ten Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (1%) or “most of the time” (15%). This is among the lowest trust measures in nearly seven decades of polling. Last year, 20% said they trusted the government just about always or most of the time.”

The real question, today, is why WOULD you trust the government?

The Gallup survey shows, unsurprisingly, that Americans trust their local government much more than the federal.

This is a fairly good rule of thumb. If all politicians should be viewed with skepticism – all PEOPLE should be viewed with some healthy skepticism – certainly, it is easier to learn about your local office holders than those who work in area code 202 and spend their nights at places like the Capital Grille.

A related, and hugely important, question is what media should we trust? The quick answer is “not many.” But here is another good rule of thumb: you should put more trust in people who encourage you to personally learn about issues than those who discourage it. You will likely never hear someone from MSNBC or CNN telling you to learn about things for yourself. That is the mark of a news outlet that is more interested in propaganda than truth.

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Equal Opportunity for All Should Be Our Goal

By Rob Meyne

  • Jan. 21, 2024
  • 5-min read

In 2011, Chicago pastor Corey Brooks lived for a while on the roof of an abandoned motel in his South Side neighborhood. He was protesting urban violence and hoping, through contributions, to raise money for a community center.

Brooks is a longtime advocate for people in his neighborhood, a devout Christian, and a respected leader. In the thirteen years since he lived on that roof, Brooks has learned firsthand of the damage being done to young blacks by contemporary Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts and Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Brooks has become a vocal and effective opponent of DEI, CRT, and other schools of thought that teach Americans that you’re either a victim or an oppressor based on your skin color. Brooks writes intelligently and clearly in a piece from Tablet Magazine. It is worth the read.

DEI has evolved into a catch-all phrase that leftists use to refer to everything that is good and worthwhile about fighting racism. If DEI a just referred to good faith efforts to lift up people who might need a helping hand, that would be one thing. No serious and sane person would object to that. That is not what DEI is. As is so often the case with the gospel of the left, the reality of their policies is different from their rhetoric.

It is likely that most people who embrace equity – people who run our schools, have jobs in corporate HR, or maybe work for a non-profit – talk about the concept as if it is a general, all-encompassing effort to pursue a fair and equal world. One doubts that most equity devotees can even define what it means. Most such people no doubt mean well. But the problem is they end up giving energy and momentum to a disastrous concept they don’t actually understand.

The people who implement equity as a policy, however, know that it isn’t the same thing as equality of opportunity. Equity demands equal results based on one’s membership in a group; equal opportunity has a goal of a color-blind society, where effort, talent, and merit matter and skin color cannot hold you back.

In practice, as it is actually implemented by government, DEI tells us that wealth, opportunity, rewards, and benefits should be allocated according to race, sex, and national origin, not by merit. It is all about racial quotas and rejects the role of merit in our society. DEI is perfectly suited for a socialist society but is antithetical to our own.

CRT is an intellectually vacuous set of objectives that have their roots in the Frankfurt School of communism. Yes, no one likes to admit that, and it doesn’t make one sound less conspiratorial to point it out, but it is true. Critical theory in general began with Marx and others who saw all of society as a war between the classes.

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All Trump. All the Time?

Is Hunter’s Middle Name “Diogenes?”

By Rob Meyne

  • Jan. 3, 2024
  • 4-min read

If you turn on Netflix or even broadcast TV, you would likely see something that would have been startling twenty years ago. Nudity, profanity, and main characters that identify as transexuals or ficus trees are common.

A similar situation has evolved in American presidential politics. Every week, something happens that would have been a headline-generating event in our parent’s generation. The unusual has become usual. The uncommon has become common.

The search for a decent journalist makes Diogenes’s challenge seem like a piece of cake. (It is not at all certain Diogenes ever said he was looking for an “…honest man.” If he were, he could steer clear of Washington and not reduce his chances of finding one.)

Digoense, by the way, was a founder of stoicism, and would be considered weird even if he was hanging out with the bizarre crowd at a waterfront sunset in Key West. Diogenes was known for doing all manner of things in public that one normally does in private – defecating, fornicating – all in a crowd. He sounded like someone you’d want to party with. If he lived today, he would livestream himself in flagrante delicto. Basically, he’d be Hunter Biden without the influence peddling gig.

Biden and Trump are the two likely nominees, but people are lining up in droves to say they wish they had another choice – anyone – hog, dog, or frog. Both candidates have high negatives and their average age is “deceased.” Trump at least still exhibits signs of life and mental acuity. Biden would likely lose a political debate if he had the gonads to accept one, unless he debated a kumquat or three-toed sloth, in which case it would probably be a push.

Never has a major political candidate been indicted for a crime while he was running for office. Certainly, never has a sitting president indicted his opponent. Never have the political machinations of state, local, and federal governments been coordinated deliberately to try to put a candidate, for whom they have expressed great disdain, behind bars. Never have the courts been used to try to throw a candidate off the ballot by claiming they were part of an insurrection.

If memory serves, the only significant political figure to run for president from prison was four-time candidate Eugene V. Debs, with home I share a hometown, who ran as a socialist. His highest vote total – something shy of a million – was when he was in prison. Somehow the phrase “Vote for Inmate 3994739 never quite caught on as well as the ”Hey, look me over” song used by Birch Bayh (also from Terre Haute) in his first run for the Senate.

On the Democrat side, the evidence that Joe Biden is a crook increases faster than Hunter’s bar bill at the Chateau Marmont.

The problem, of course, is not just that Hunter is a piece of human dung, although that is irrefutable. The PROBLEM is that this particular piece of dung routinely paid his father directly, as did other family members, paid him exorbitant rent, and even paid many of his bills for him. That Joe benefited financially from Hunter’s influence peddling is undeniable. Plus, courts have held that a person can be enriched in a way that qualified as criminal even if the actual financial largesse accumulated only for his close family. If a wife or son is “paid off,” does anyone really believe the husband or father does not benefit?

So we have a massive case of influence peddling, money laundering, and plain old-fashioned bribery that is being ignored or slow walked by a very corrupt Attorney General. On the other side, we have a former president who has been indicted in two jurisdictions with spectacularly weak cases that will require juries to accept legal arguments that are literally unprecedented. Another case is civil because the paucity of evidence against Trump would not sustain an actual criminal indictment.

So you have two possible or even likely crooks competing for the votes of people who loathe them. You have a complacent, lapdog media where true journalists are as rare as an honest Biden, and you have the entire political structure of one of our two major political parties doing their best imitation of a banana republic. Oh, and you have a credible third-party candidate taking votes from both of the major candidates.

You’ve got an economy on the brink and war breaking out on TWO international fronts with our allies involved and a non-zero chance we’ll have American boots on the ground. A cyberattack, EMP, or global nuclear holocaust is also a non-zero possibility.

And those are just the GOOD things happening.

If one tries to take the positive approach, that can help, but coming up with a rational reason to think everything is going to work out fine is more difficult by the day.

For now, I have to go buy a kumquat and see if I can talk a three-toed sloth into running as an independent. I’ll get back with you.

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There May Be Hope for AI, and America

By Rob Meyne

  • Dec. 29, 2023
  • 5-min read

We are fortunate that a major advancement in how we learn about public policy is on the way. This is good news. Stay tuned for a moment.

First, if you’re one of those people who says it is hard to be informed about current events, it is time to decide if you care enough to do it. Sorry, but the stakes are so high you need to decide if the future of the nation matters enough to you to be an informed citizen. Pick a lane. Our only hope for the future of the country is that enough people will sufficiently care that they will be well-informed and base their voting decisions accordingly.

It is understandable that we all have busy lives. But we do those things that are most important to us. If you aren’t informed, it is ultimately because you don’t put a high enough priority on it. We all have the same number of hours in a day. How we use them is up to us.

I don’t care about the San Diego Padres. They could disappear entirely, and it wouldn’t affect my daily routine at all. My friend at work, though, loves the Padres. She can tell you in what order they batted last night. But she can’t tell you what charges have been made against Trump regarding January 6. (She hates Trump and assumes he led an insurrection but can’t tell you what evidence exists to prove that.)

We learn about those things we care about. If you want to know what matters to someone, find where they spend their time, attention, and resources. That is your answer.

One good thing about the web is that it has never been easier to learn about current events. There is more information available, instantly, than ever before and more is out there every day. There are more web pages than there are people. And it isn’t even close.

The catch, of course, is that most media is biased. And AI is being used to develop false stories. Yes, you must look at more than one source and learn which is truly credible. When you read a story or watch it, note if there is a reliable reference for the information. Most are not well-sourced. I make a point to read things I don’t agree with every day, just to force myself to hear the other side, learn what they think, and possibly – hopefully – learn information that may conflict with what I had thought to be true, or even completely new information that may change my views.

As an aside, I am astonished that most people are afraid of finding out they are wrong. I love it when it happens. I WANT to have the correct information. I will arrogantly add, of course, that it doesn’t happen often 😊. I study this stuff so closely I am, if you’ll excuse me saying so, well-informed. Most people are not. But if I learn facts that conflict with what I thought to be true, I am happy because it matters more to me to be correct than to have my political biases confirmed. Most people are too insecure to be that comfortable.

I would never look at just one source, but one that I do recommend, and that impeccably sources their stories, is the Blaze. Its founder is a conservative guy but not a member of either party. He criticizes Republicans Democrats equally. And he invites us – on radio, online, and in his books – to make up our own minds.

His last book was over 400 pages, more than 50 of which were footnotes. Check it out and decide for yourself. Beck has been attacked by the left, of course, because he is effective. They generally don’t attack people they aren’t afraid of. They don’t waste their time. Beck has even been called a White Supremacist, which is simply a lie. No one in public life is more committed to equal opportunity, or more against racism, than Beck. But the mainstream media and political elite don’t want you to hear him.

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