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The Colorado Christian baker wins again – but his tormenters will be back

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The left has hounded artistic Colorado baker Jack Phillips for over a decade. It started back in 2012 when a gay couple demanded that he create a “gay wedding cake” with two figurine husbands on top.

Of course, the gay couple could have gotten their gay cake created by many other bakers. They seem to have chosen Phillips not despite, but because, creating such a object was contrary to his religious beliefs.

Phillips politely said he would happily bake a cake for them, but not a gay cake. That’s an important point. Phillips did not simply refuse to serve the couple on the grounds that they were gay. Rather, he refused to create a special “gay cake” for them.

Phillips thus refused to create an artistic expression that was contrary to his religious beliefs.

The gay couple were something like a couple seeking out a Kosher restaurant, demanding that the Jewish chef cook up an elaborate pork dish, and then contending that they’d been discriminated against when told that pork is not on the menu.

It’s actually worse than that. The gay couple thought Phillips’ beliefs were not just discriminatory, but should be illegal. So, they schemed to establish that as a legal matter.  

First, they brought an action against Phillips before the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and won. The case then went to a Colorado appellate court, and they won there too.

Phillips finally filed for review in the Colorado Supreme Court, where all seven Justices are Democrat appointees. Those Colorado Justices refused to even hear the case on the grounds there was zero merit to Phillips’ appeal.

Then Phillips filed for an appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s the court of last resort in America, and they accept only a few percent of the appeals lodged there.

To everyone’s surprise, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Phillips’ case was worth hearing. Not only that, but after hearing the case they reversed the Colorado decision. They decided that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had exhibited an unfair antipathy toward Phillips’ religious-based actions.

Let that sink in. The U.S. Supreme Court – the highest court in the land – found that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and state courts had shown six years of unfair antipathy toward Phillips’ ordinary Christian religious beliefs.

At least they didn’t feed him to the lions. But what happened next was almost as bad, as anyone who’s been a defendant in a lawsuit will tell you.

On the very day the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in favor of Phillips, a self-described “devil worshipper” demanded by email that Phillips bake a cake celebrating the devil’s birthday – complete with a dildo on top. (It’s not clear what is bedeviling about dildos.)

As before, Phillips politely explained that he could not bake such a cake because it was contrary to his religious beliefs.

Before then, on the very day that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Phillips’ appeal of the “gay cake” case, someone came into Phillips’ bakery and demanded that he create a “transgender cake” depicting transgender stuff.

You can see the pattern.

As before, Phillips refused to create the “transgender cake.” As before, the transgender person brought an action before the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. As before, he/she won. And as before, the case eventually went up to the Colorado Supreme Court.

This time, the Colorado Supreme Court took the case (perhaps feeling stung by the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of the Colorado decisions the earlier time).

But the Colorado Supreme Court dodged a decision on the merits. Instead, they dismissed the case on a technicality.

It was a win for Phillips, but it didn’t establish any precedent for other Christian bakers or anyone else who wants protection for his religious beliefs.

Pity the Colorado Supreme Court. They were faced with either (1) defying the earlier U.S. Supreme Court decision by ruling against Phillips, or (2) defying their woke principles by ruling in his favor.

Ah, they were torn between the law of the land and the law of the woke. They found a clever way to choose neither.

But trust me, they’ll be back. The devil-worshipping transexuals, the kangaroo state courts and “civil rights” commissions stacked with Democrat appointees, and the rest of the totalitarian wokerati – they’ll all be back, lawless as ever.

They want to outlaw religious beliefs that they don’t believe in, and that’s almost all of them.

Bob Dylan to the Establishment: “It ain’t me babe” (redux)

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Note to readers: I published this right after Robert Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan, won the Nobel Prize for Literature eight years ago. You’ll see that it has some relevance to current events. (This year’s winner, just announced, is someone named Han Kang. I’m sure she’s very good, but I’ve never heard of her. But I don’t read many books – too many words!)

The establishment got spanked. Here’s the story:

Some old geezers in Scandinavia are very proud of some prizes they give. They call them “Nobel Prizes.”

The prize comes in several flavors. The “Peace Prize,” for example, is awarded by Norwegian politicians. They give it to other politicians they like.

One year they gave it to a guy who said he invented the internet, then lost an election for United States president, then refused to accept the election results, then threw the country into chaos for a month, then lost in the courts, and then got rich inventing global warming.

Another year they gave it to an American president who succeeded in getting elected and nothing else (I suppose they had to give him one for getting elected after giving one to the earlier guy for failing to get elected) and who later succeeded in escalating but not winning a war in Afghanistan, which is now the longest-running war in American history.

One year they gave their Peace Prize to a Palestinian terrorist.

There’s also a Nobel Prize for “literature” for the person they deem the planet’s best writer. This one is given by an obscure club of 18 lousy writers in Sweden. They call themselves the Swedish Academy. Everyone else calls them “Who?”

Their motto sounds like an advertisement for a suburban dinner theater: “Talent and Taste.” (I’m not making that up.)

This year, they gave their Nobel Prize for literature to Bob Dylan. Or at least they tried. Seems Bob wouldn’t return their phone calls.

Bob has a history of bucking the establishment. He was born Robert Zimmerman in a small Minnesota town. He learned some acoustic guitar and taught himself the harmonica. He changed his name, went to Greenwich Village and made a new name for himself as a folk singer. Hippies liked him.

Then he decided to plug the guitar in. The hippies went berserk, even without their drugs. Overnight, their cheers turned to boos just because Bob had tried something new.

Hippies were like that. They always wanted you to be new and different, but only if you did it their old-and-same way.

Bob survived being ostracized by the hippies for being different. On the sheer strength of his creative talent (not so much his singing voice) he became truly great.

The hippies eventually grew up, or at least older, and became liberals watching public television fundraisers showing Peter, Paul and Mary singing saccharine versions of Bob’s songs about ’60s protests that they never actually participated in.

And then Bob threw another switch. In middle age, he became a Christian.

Like the hippies earlier, the liberals went berserk. Christianity is for hicks, they believed, not for Bob and other sophisticates like themselves.

Later still, Bob defended Israel’s right to defend itself. The liberals, now rebranded as politically correct “progressives,” didn’t like that, either. Bullies never like people who believe in defense.

Nobel Prize announcements are watched almost as closely as “American Idol” and the Swedes know it. So this year they grandiloquently proclaimed that Bob had “created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

Huh? What are “poetic expressions”? Is that a wooly phrase for “poetry”? Anyway, I told you they were lousy writers.

That evening, Bob gave one of the hundreds of concerts that he still gives at age 75. He made no mention of his big prize. And for a month he still wouldn’t return the Swedes’ phone calls.

The Swedes got mad— for Swedes, anyway. One said Bob’s refusal to acknowledge this prize that he never asked for was “an unprecedented situation” and called him “impolite and arrogant.”

I already told you twice that they’re lousy writers. But they do have a talent and taste for unintentional irony. If they want to avoid “unprecedented situations,” then maybe they should give their little prize for creativity to someone less creative.

As for “arrogance,” it’s this self-appointed committee of hacks, not Bob, who presume to judge the world’s best writing. And then when Bob refuses to acknowledge their judgment, they presume to whine, “Just who does he think he is?”

Here’s who. He’s an independent thinker who is unwilling to allow himself to be used by establishmentarian prigs seeking to award themselves the authority to decide what is good.

Eventually, Bob returned their calls. And he says he’ll show up for the big ceremony, “if it’s at all possible.”

Bob being Bob, it sounds like he’ll have a concert to give that night instead. Even bad Swedish writers would recognize the symbolism.

In other symbolic news about the establishment, the dishonest, self-dealing insider whom the establishment hand picked to be the next president lost to a businessman who builds things.

The times, it seems, they are a-changin’.

Kamala is not Biden and she’s not Trump, but she’s still probably Harris

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I predicted Trump would win the 2016 election. On the day of the election, the betting odds on that were 12%. Had I been a betting man, I’d have made YUGE money.  

In 2020, I again predicted Trump would win. On the day of that election, the odds of that happening were 35%.

Trump lost that time, but, given the odds, I would not have lost nearly as much as I would have made four years earlier in 2016. I’d still be way ahead.

My point is that even though I missed the call in 2020, nailing the near-impossible call back in 2016 makes me a frigging prophet.

So, listen to me. Trump will win this year.

Kamala’s campaign had a strategy from the outset. Before talking about it, bear in mind that the “outset” for her was not in 2022 or even 2023 when other Democratic candidates were slogging through the snows of Iowa to visit rural coffee shops and giving interviews to local radio schmucks in New Hampshire and North Carolina.

No, the “outset” for Kamala was a couple of weeks before the Democratic convention last summer when nameless party poohbahs snatched her out of the obscurity of a failed Vice Presidency in the service of a frail, failed Presidency.

They installed her as the Democratic candidate, even though she has never won a single primary delegate, despite – or because of – her best efforts. (By the way, one might wonder exactly what’s in it for the poohbahs.)

Anyway, here’s their strategy. It’s to rest on the fact that (1) Kamala is not that frail, failed President and (2) she’s not Trump either.

That has been almost enough. But not quite.

Although they’ve succeeded in convincing voters that Kamala is not Biden and not Trump, they’ve failed to convince them that she’s not Harris.

They did try. Kamala disavowed her earlier open border policy, sort of. She retracted her position that guns owned by people not named Kamala should be confiscated, kind of. She no longer favors defunding the police, apparently. She seems not to think Joe Biden is sharp as a tack, anymore. She has not advocated taxpayer funding for “gender affirmation” surgery for rapists so they can move into women’s prisons, lately. She doesn’t advocate men competing in women’s sports, for now.

It’s a little hard to state Kamala’s current position on these things definitively. That’s because she herself does not state her position on these things definitively.

She reminds me of the lawyer who is asked “What is two plus two?” The lawyer answers “What do you want it to be?”

Kamala is more shrewd than that lawyer, however. She simply refuses to take the question. She refused all summer to sit for interviews or stand for press conferences after the previous two years when she had no campaign appearances at all because she ostensibly was not campaigning.

Once she did start campaigning in the wake of the poohbah coup, years after everyone else started, she campaigned not with press conferences or position papers or interviews – even with friendly interviewers – and pretended not to hear questions shouted to her. She instead campaigned on “Joy.”

There’s something disconcerting about anonymous poohbahs pulling a behind-the-scenes palace coup, installing a figurehead of their choosing, and instructing her not to give interviews but instead to campaign on “Joy.”

To the poohbahs’ credit, Kamala is definite about a few things. For example, she’s definite that she favors peace in the Mideast.

To their discredit, however, she’s not very definite about how to achieve it. Defeating the bad guys is evidently not on the table. In fact, identifying them is not even on the table.

All this joyous indefiniteness worked for a while. Despite Kamala’s absence at interviews and press conferences and her missing position papers, voters still believed she was definitely not Biden and definitely not Trump.

But as noted, they came to believe she might still be Harris.

As Kamala’s polling numbers have slipped, the poohbahs have evidently finally decided in desperation to put her in front of the media to state definitively that she’s not only not Biden and not only not Trump, but also not Harris.

The voters are saying, “OK, maybe. But then just exactly who are you?”

The Western Wall

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Note to readers: I originally published this piece ten years ago after some treks in Israel. I thought of re-publishing it yesterday but decided that I as a Christian cannot possibly speak on October 7 to the horror of that day last year, especially in view of the ambivalent reaction of many people since then. It would be like crashing a Shiva. So here it is, a day late. Or perhaps right on time.

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Muslims have the Taj Mahal and Mecca. Catholics have St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican. Jews have a wall.

The Western Wall is a stack of massive stone blocks a few dozen feet high and a couple of hundred feet long. It’s all that’s left of Jerusalem’s second Jewish temple, a structure that astonished even the Romans. The Romans destroyed it to punish the Jews for their Great Revolt in 70 A.D.

That wasn’t the first time. It’s called the “second” temple because it replaced Solomon’s temple, which had been destroyed by the Babylonians six centuries earlier.

For millennia, this fragment of the second temple has been sacred to Jews, reminding them of their culture, their religion, their diaspora, their return, and their faith that someday there will be a third temple.

I visited the Western Wall a few Fridays ago, just in time for the start of the Jewish Sabbath at sundown. I expected to see Orthodox Jews in traditional garb praying there, and I did.

But I saw more than that. I saw non-Orthodox Jews, heads bowed, trembling hands on the wall, tears running down their faces.

And among the prayerful were thousands of Jews singing and dancing to traditional music. Imagine a Jewish wedding reception — a really big one.

There was more than just Jews. Understand that hours after the United Nations created Israel in 1948, four surrounding countries simultaneously attacked it. Israel survived the attack, but its attackers killed or expelled all Jews from the Old City of Jerusalem.

For years thereafter, the occupiers of the Old City literally used the Jewish Quarter for mortar practice. Of 35 houses of Jewish worship there, 34 were obliterated. The Western Wall was routinely spat upon, and worse.

The ongoing destruction, banishment and desecration continued until the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel was again attacked from all sides. In those six days, Israel crushed its enemies, established protectable borders and reclaimed the Old City and the Western Wall.

Since then, the Israelis have welcomed all faiths to the Old City. In fact, two-thirds of the residents are Muslim. Their Dome of the Rock built next to the Western Wall and over the site of the first and second Jewish temples was left in their hands. Likewise, the traditional site of Christ’s tomb, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, is in Christian hands.

And so among the singing, dancing and praying Jews on that Sabbath evening a few Fridays ago were singing, dancing and praying Christians, Arabs, Asians and Africans. They invite everyone, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

They loaned me a yarmulke – they ask only that you cover your head – and watched me silently pray at their wall. They invited me into their celebration. One named Goldberg joked that my Scottish name sounds vaguely Jewish if only I would spell it B-E-I-T-O-N. I told him his Jewish name sounds vaguely Scottish if only he would spell it M-A-C-D-O-N-A-L-D.

Another was Romanian by ancestry. Out of an extended family of 32, his father was one of two who survived the Holocaust. (The Romanians surpassed the Germans in implementing the “Final Solution.” The Romanians were just shooting Jews on sight; the Germans intervened in order to send them to the death camps for “proper” extermination.)

Another was Moroccan by birth. His ancestors had been expelled from Spain in the Jewish expulsion of 1492. (Spain announced in February that he and other descendants of expelled Jews could return and reclaim the citizenship that was stripped from their ancestors 522 years ago.)

Several were friends of three Israeli teenagers who’d disappeared a week earlier. We didn’t know it at the time, but terrorists had already kidnapped them, murdered them and dumped their bodies.

Which brings up one other thing that struck me that Friday evening. Some of the praying, singing and dancing men and women were Israeli soldiers. I’ve done a lot of things, but never before had I danced in a circle with my arms around the muscular shoulders of young Jewish men wearing yarmulkes, combat boots, fatigues and automatic weapons. That we were of different faiths was the least-strange thing in the picture.

The Israeli soldiers were necessary because their wall is a target of terrorists, just as their children are. The mortars are gone from the Old City, but the suicide bombers are not. All this praying, singing and dancing — all this freedom — comes at a price.

Surrounded by psychopathic child-killers and totalitarian madmen vowing a second Holocaust, the people of Israel pay the price for freedom.

And in the shadow of the remaining fragment of their twice-destroyed temple, they invite the world to join them in celebrating that freedom.

“Disinformation” is not the same as falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater

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Here’s how the First Amendment debate over governmental prohibitions on free speech has been framed:

  • The Democrats want the government to prohibit people from spreading “disinformation” that they don’t like.
  • The Republicans correctly point out that the First Amendment, in general, prohibits such a prohibition.
  • The Democrats then respond that the First Amendment does not apply because disinformation is like falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater – people’s safety is at risk.
  • Republicans then point out that the analogy between political speech and falsely “shouting FIRE in a crowded theater” is rooted in a Supreme Court case dating back to WWI. In that case, the Court upheld a restriction on speech in opposition to the wartime draft. The Court decided that political speech opposing the draft was like falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater, in that it could cause America to lose the war. It was a stretch, but that was the Court’s analogy.
  • But, say the Republicans, that Supreme Court case was later rejected during the Vietnam War in 1969 (a much less popular war than WWI) and was essentially overruled. Political speech today clearly is protected by the First Amendment – even if it’s highly unpopular or even untrue.

So far, so good. But many Republicans have gone on to imply that the Supreme Court’s overruling of the “shouting fire in a crowded theater” analogy means that the First Amendment gives people the right to falsely shout FIRE in a crowded theater.

This was a mistake for two reasons. The first is strategic and the second is legal.

The strategic reason is that contending the First Amendment gives people the right to say things to cause an immediate, panicked mayhem violates common sense and tends to discredit the First Amendment. Casual thinkers start to casually think, “Gee, if the First Amendment gives people the right to cause dozens of trampling deaths in minutes, just to watch people get trampled, then maybe the First Amendment is not such a good thing.”

The legal reason it’s a mistake to imply that the Supreme Court ultimately decided falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater is protected by the First Amendment, is that the Supreme Court never did.  

Rather, what the Court held in that later case was that political speech is simply not the same as falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater. The latter is false and may produce immediate maiming and death, while the former is a political statement which might be false (or might not be) but is not likely to produce immediate maiming and death.

If the Supreme Court is ever confronted with a case where someone is prosecuted for causing immediate maiming and death by falsely shouting FIRE in a crowded theater, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not decide that his grotesque mischief is protected by the First Amendment.

But, you say, isn’t the First Amendment absolute?

No, it is not. For example, there is no First Amendment right to tell material lies in the sale of a product – to engage in false advertising. The First Amendment does not give a business the right to falsely state that their snake oil has cured cancer in 29,385 people if it hasn’t, or falsely state that customers can return goods for a cash refund if they can’t.

There is no First Amendment right to state falsehoods on your tax return. You can’t tell the IRS that you earned X dollars when you really earned X + Y dollars, as Hunter Biden has learned to his dismay (along with thousands of other citizens over the years, notoriously including Al Capone).

There is no First Amendment right to lie under oath. That’s perjury, and it’s a crime – and it’s not protected by the First Amendment.

There is no First Amendment right to defame a person, as several media outlets learned when they falsely characterized a teenager as racist because it suited their narrative. 

There is no First Amendment right to make or distribute child pornography.

But most other speech is indeed protected by the First Amendment, particularly political speech. Saying that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians, or that Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin is running the White House, or that the 9/11 attack was orchestrated by the CIA or by aliens, or that your uncle was eaten by cannibals, is all generally protected as political speech – whether it’s true or not.

Such political speech is not the same as shouting FIRE in a crowded theater to cause an immediate mob scene of trampled human bodies.

Whether there’s a political price to be paid for false speech is, of course, a separate issue. Sometimes there is, and oftentimes there’s not. Either way, that’s not a legal matter, but a political matter.

Our nation stands nearly alone in the protections of the First Amendment. In most of Europe, you can be sent to jail for “hate speech” that a judge finds offensive. And many people have been. That is not the law in America, yet.

The Republicans have by far the better of this First Amendment debate, but they’ve expressed their argument poorly by implying that you can indeed shout FIRE in a crowded theater.

The proper argument is: Granted, you can’t falsely shout FIRE in a crowded theater, but political speech is nothing of the sort.

Glenn K. Beaton practiced law in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

Hezbollah just received hormone therapy

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One of the treatments for cancer is often hormone therapy. Men with prostate cancer sometimes get what might be called anti-hormone therapy.

Prostate cancer cells need testosterone. Take away the testosterone, and they mostly stop growing and stop multiplying. This is accomplished with drugs that eliminate testosterone. It’s usually not permanent.

This treatment is not without side effects. Testosterone aids in numerous male functions, especially muscular strength and emotional aggressiveness. It’s the main reason that “women” who are really modified men who have gone through male puberty have a big advantage in women’s sports.

Testosterone is manufactured in the testicles. Hence the expression “He’s got real balls” to describe male machismo.

Which brings us to the Mideast. There’s a cancer in the Mideast. It’s been there for centuries, but lately it has grown more virulent and malignant.

This cancerous terrorism came to Israel again last year, this time starting south of Israel, in Gaza under the regime there called Hamas. They invaded Israel and butchered the residents. They beheaded babies, raped women, and took hostages back to Gaza to torture, kill and display their mutilated remains in public and on the internet. The world has not seen such an exhibition of barbarous cruelty in generations. 

The terrorism sympathizers in Gaza cheered. So did the ones at Columbia and Harvard.

Israel is now surgically removing the Hamas terrorism from Gaza, but in the meantime a strain called Hezbollah has metastasized north of Israel. This Hezbollah strain rains missiles and bombs down on Israeli cities and towns. Lately, it has launched missiles targeting Tel Aviv a hundred miles away.

These bombs and missiles have no military objective. They are directed at civilians for the purpose of killing, maiming and terrifying them.

Hezbollah is officially a terrorist organization according to the U.S. State Department. Its stated aim is to destroy Israel, completely. And by any means necessary, as they say in the fever swamps of American college leftism.

Hezbollah receives about $700 million a year from other terrorists who own and operate the nation of Iran a thousand miles to the east, beyond Iraq.

The nation of Iran is Persian by ethnicity, not Arab. They have no natural interest in Israel or the Palestinian problem far to the west. 

Their interest is in simply hating on the Jews.

That hatred has little historical basis. It appears to be simply a gimmick. It’s designed to be a point for the people to rally round in support of the ruling theocrats who oppress women, toss gays off buildings, and commit other atrocities, all while keeping their people entrapped in the 11th century.

Iranian Jew-hatred thus has the purpose and methods of a giant pogrom. The Jews are a scapegoat for a failed regime, much as they were in post-WWI Germany and countless other times in history.

This nation of Iran that funds Hezbollah terrorism is the same nation of Iran to which Barack Obama’s outgoing administration delivered wooden pallets of about $1,700,000,000 in Euros and Swiss francs (the cash was in foreign currency in order to get around U.S. sanctions passed by Congress).

Obama assured us that Iran had assured him that none of this nearly-two billion dollars of cash would be used to fund terrorism. As if we’re all gullible enough not to know that cash is fungible.

Hezbollah has used its billions from America via Iran to construct a massive terrorism machine, directed mainly at Israel. It’s the biggest non-governmental military in the history of the world.

Israel has had to resort to hormone therapy to battle this cancer. Here’s the treatment protocol.

Hezbollah is apparently chock full of individuals capable of being infiltrated. The Israelis did so. They learned that Hezbollah was in the process of purchasing new smart phones and pagers. Israel intercepted the shipments, and either modified or replaced the phones and pagers with ones that were tricked out.

To explode. Israel then placed calls to the phones and pagers to detonate the implanted explosives. All at once.

People typically keep their phones and pagers in their front pocket. In men, that places them in proximity to the above-mentioned organ of the male body that produces testosterone. Most of the terrorists were not killed, but only injured. This was by design or by accident, but I suspect by design. The Israelis are not prone to accidents.

The end result is that the terrorists are now money-rich with Iranian funding but testosterone-poor with Israeli hormone therapy.

These much-reduced testosterone levels will probably cause the terrorists to be less aggressive in the future. (And their bosses may find it difficult to recruit replacements.)

But cancer is resilient. More treatment will likely be necessary.

N.B. No offense is meant to cancer patients. I’ve been one myself, though never a recipient of hormone therapy.

Hey, this election is not about your precious feelings!

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The choices in this election are evidently Donald Trump and Not-Donald Trump. Nobody is voting for Trump’s chimeric, charlatanic opponent, but many are voting against Trump.

Those Against-Trump voters fall into three camps.

Camp 1 comprises people who genuinely disagree with Trump on the issues. I think these voters are mostly wrong, but I grudgingly respect them. At least they’re analyzing the issues, even though they’re coming to the wrong conclusion.

So, OK . . .

  • If they think Trump is wrong to tighten up the southern border;
  • If they think Trump is wrong to extend the tax cuts (which disproportionately benefited middle- and low-income Americans);
  • If they think Trump is wrong to keep nukes out of the hands of the Ayatollahs;
  • If they think Trump is wrong to encourage oil and gas production at home at reasonable prices and under stringent environmental safeguards rather than in places like Russia and Venezuela where they produce it dirtily and then sell it to us expensively;
  • If they think Trump’s economy of 1.4% inflation and low unemployment was bad compared to much higher inflation and unemployment under his successor;
  • If they think Trump is wrong to oppose racial discrimination in hiring and in college admissions; and
  • If they think Trump is wrong in his desire to slim down the Federal government;

. . . then I think they’re mistaken. But if they believe those things, then they’re probably right to vote against Trump. I say “probably” because it’s hard to be certain that Trump’s opponent is in their camp, since she waffles daily and hides her positions (with the aid of a complicit, biased media).

Camp 2 of Against-Trump voters are those who sincerely believe he’s a “threat to democracy.” I have a bit less respect for those voters because I think they’re being melodramatic rather than analytic.

Some of them are at least sincere and are voting the way they think serves the country. Others, however, are just parroting the “threat to democracy” line to rationalize their true reasons for being against Trump, namely that they are in Camp 1 or 3.

As for the threat Trump poses to democracy, Camp 2 points to Trump’s action and inaction on Jan. 6, 2021. Indeed, it was not his finest hour.

But the notion that we almost lost the Republic that day – to a hooligan in a buffalo-horn hat and his unarmed sidekicks who made a ruckus and swiped some souvenirs from the Capitol Building – is overblown, at best. Note that the Supreme Court ultimately decided that the gross offenders were grossly overcharged by the Democrat prosecutors, and the Court threw out the most serious charges.

This Camp 2 also points to Trump’s personality. Bellicose is perhaps a word to describe it. In a prior life, the guy had fun with a reality TV show where his punch line was “You’re fired!” In a more serious vein, Trump has bragged that he fired people right and left in his first administration.

Sometimes people do need to be fired. But good bosses don’t relish firing people. Moreover, a boss who frequently fires people should be looking a bit at his own failings in hiring and supervising such people to begin with.

But none of that makes Trump a “threat to democracy.” If you want to talk seriously about a threat to democracy, then talk about an administration that:

  • Refuses to physically protect to its political opponents;
  • Routinely characterizes its opponents as “threats” to the nation;
  • Calls for a “bullseye” to be put on its opponents;
  • Pressures media outlets to censor news and opinions they don’t like;
  • Hides the encroaching senility of the Democrat President, acknowledges it only when they get caught, and then replaces him behind the scenes with a woman who helped hide his senility to begin with and has never won a Democrat delegate in her life – while they still keep the senile President in the office of “Leader of the Free World” even as they acknowledge that he’s too senile to run for that office;
  • Seeks to put skin color ahead of merit in hiring and college admissions;
  • Frequently compares their opponents to Nazis:
  • Repeatedly overreaches in legal matters to the point that their court record on challenges is abysmal;
  • Refuses to follow Supreme Court rulings, and slams the Court as “illegitimate.”

In other words, talk about the Democrats.

That brings us to Camp 3. These are the voters I respect least, even though they’re the most amiable on the surface. These are the voters who mostly agree with Trump on the issues, but they simply don’t like his personality.

Trump is certainly not a slickster. He didn’t even graduate at the bottom of his law school class like the current Delaware beach bum and sometimes Oval Office occupant. In fact, he never went to law school at all. I doubt he even knows how to say “Pass the sweet-and-sour shrimp.”

But despite, or perhaps because of, all those things, I have a hunch that I might like the guy in person.

On the other hand, if I wouldn’t, so what? We’re not electing Homecoming Queen. We’re electing someone to preserve and enhance the interests of America and the world.

The left knows that. That’s why they hate Trump. It’s because he protects the interests of the country and culture they hate: America and Western Civilization. (If they lived in Africa or Southeast Asia, they’d hate them too, but that’s another column.)

If you’ve read this far, you’re not a leftist. But maybe it makes you feel good to join the left in voting against a person you find tacky and bellicose – someone you deem beneath you in social graces, polish, and good hair – even though he protects American and Western interests. Well, fine.

But actually, not fine at all. The price for your personal feel-goodery is to put our people, our nation, our civilization, and our world, at risk. This election is about something bigger than your feelings.

As for those who will vote neither for nor against Trump, my question is this: Do you really think Trump and his opponent are exactly equally bad at protecting our country and culture? Are you seriously contending that you graded them out on the issues and each of them came to a grade of, say, 73.41?

C’mon, man. You know which came out higher. Your refusal to vote for him is an exercise in virtue-signaling to yourself and others.

But this isn’t about you and your virtue and your signals. Get over yourself, and do the smart thing. The world is at stake.

Haitians eat cats and mud – the only question is where

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Two countries share the Caribbean island that is called Hispaniola. The west side is Haiti. The east side is Dominican Republic. The latter shares practically nothing with the former except that island, but it’s racist to point that out.

“Failed state” is an understatement to describe Haiti. It’s one of the poorest, most dangerous places on earth. You can scarcely call it a nation. Gangs run the government. It’s been eight years since the last election in Haiti. But no matter; the elections are all rigged anyway.

The State Department has honored Haiti with a “Level 4 Do Not Travel” advisory. That’s the worst advisory they give. It puts Haiti in the company of Iran and North Korea. Quotes from the advisory are fun reading, such as:

*Carjackers attack private vehicles stuck in traffic. They often target lone drivers, especially women.

 *Crimes involving firearms are common in Haiti. They include robbery, carjackings, sexual assault, and kidnappings for ransom. Kidnapping is widespread.

*Shortages of gasoline, electricity, medicine, and medical supplies are common throughout the country.

*U.S. government personnel are subjected to a nightly curfew and are prohibited from walking in Port-au-Prince. U.S. government personnel in Haiti are also prohibited from:

  • Using any kind of public transportation or taxis. 
  • Visiting banks and using ATMs. 
  • Driving at night. 
  • Traveling anywhere after dark. 
  • Traveling without prior approval and special security measures in place.Subscribed

Haiti makes Chicago by comparison look like . . . well, forget it. Nothing could make Chicago look any better, not even hell itself.

Haiti was the site of an earthquake about 15 years ago. It seems impossible, but the earthquake made things even worse. And so for a time thereafter, upper-class, liberal, white, American do-gooders made a fetish of going there to do good, or at least feel good. I can remember them to this day: “Dahhling, you really MUST go to Haiti! Those two weeks were literally spiritual for me (not in a literal sense, mind you). It made me an even better person!“

The US sends Haiti billions of dollars in aid. Despite all that free money, the place remains the crotch of humanity.

Fox Butterfield, is that you?

A staple of the Haitian diet is mud cakes. That’s not a charming name for a foreign food, such as “bangers and mash.” And it’s not a magical name for food that might be tasty apart from what it is, such as “haggis” or “Rocky Mountain oysters.” Mud cakes are cakes of mud – dried clay to be specific. The nutrient value is accursed, but they do heal your hunger, or at least fill you up.

You see, roughly half of the Haitian population goes hungry. This country in the tropics with good soil is unable to conjure up enough food for its own people.

Apart from mud cakes, they also eat pets. When the alternative is mud cakes, who wouldn’t?

Hunger is not the only reason they eat pets. Another reason is that their religion calls for it. About half the population of Haiti practice various forms of Voodoo, an odd theatrical religion drawing from the worst of African paganism with a touch of Roman Catholicism. Zombies are at home in Voodoo. So is spell-casting. So are skeletons.

So is animal sacrifice – it’s one of the standard rituals of Voodoo. When it comes to the species of animal, they’re flexible. It’s whatever can’t outrun them. Goats, deer, racoons, sheep, lizards, cats, dogs, etc.

After the animal is sacrificed, its remains are consumed by the entranced attendees of the ritual. It’s either that or mud cakes. If they aren’t eating cats in Haiti as you read this, it’s only because they already ate them all.

A little town in Ohio named Springfield has a lot of recent Haitian immigrants. Given that there are about 11 million Haitians still in Haiti, the good people of Springfield can expect more. Many of these immigrants are from Port au Prince, shown above, a place that is to princes what Rocky Mountain oysters are to oysters.

A few reports surfaced recently that the Haitian immigrants to Springfield are satisfying their hunger and practicing their religion in the manner of their culture: They are catching, killing and eating people’s pets.

The reaction of the liberal media was predictable. “Noooo waaaay!” they exclaimed in unison.

The notion that Haitians in Springfield were doing what Haitians do in Haiti was objectionable to the liberal media for at least three reasons. One, it was Donald Trump who mentioned it.

Two, the allegation suggested that the culture of some immigrants might be different than the culture of typical Americans. That’s taboo, unless the differences make the immigrants better, not worse.

Three, Haitians happen to be Black, or at least black. (When they’re foreigners, are they Black or just black? I’ll consult the AP Stylebook and get back to you.) The liberal media thus simultaneously judged Haitian religious animal sacrifice to be a bad thing, and contended that Haitians don’t engage in it, because, after all, they’re b(B)lack so they wouldn’t do such a bad thing. Not that it’s bad, at least when it’s done by b(B)lacks.

To contend otherwise makes a person racist. The definition of racism today is being critical of a person with dark skin. It doesn’t matter whether the criticism has anything to do with the person’s dark skin.

For that matter, it doesn’t even have to be a criticism. Simply making a factual observation about people that is deemed to reflect badly on them is deemed racist if they have dark skin.

Observing that the b(B)lack murder rate in America is seven-times the white murder rate, is racist. Observing that the b(B)lack illegitimacy rate in America is 72% is racist. And observing that Haitians in Haiti sacrifice and eat cats and dogs is racist.

The media therefore rejected these reports that Haitians love dogs and cats (“Taste like chicken!”). They said there was “no evidence” that the reports were true.

But in a court of law, reports themselves are evidence. Standing alone, they might not be definitive proof, but they’re certainly evidence.

Then the media escalated to hyperbole in proclaiming that the spooky reports were not only unevidenced, but “false.” Devilry, those reports are.

To conclude that the reports are “false” without any evidence that they’re false – but merely a lack of definitive evidence that they’re true – does violence to the legal principles of evidence. It’s witchcraft. It’s like saying the allegation that OJ Simpson committed murder is “false” because he was acquitted. And because he was acquitted, there’s “no evidence” that he was guilty.

But I’ll leave all that for another column. Today’s column points are (1) Haitians in Haiti commonly eat cats and dogs for bad reasons of religion and good reasons of hunger, (2) the Haitian immigrants in Springfield probably didn’t leave their religion back in Haiti, (3) the Haitians probably didn’t leave their hunger back in Haiti either, (4) the cats and dogs of Springfield are readily available, and (5) cats and dogs are tastier and more nutritious than mud cakes, or so I’m told.

You can connect the dots, but that would be racist.

Are the Democrats trying to assassinate President Trump, or are they just rooting for it?

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Shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated after the 2016 election, a so-called comedienne posted a picture of herself holding Trump’s severed, bloodied head. That apparently passes for comedy among Democrats.

In a presentation of Julius Caesar in the venerable Shakespeare in the Park production in New York City a few months later, a likeness of Trump was cast in the role of Caesar. I don’t need to remind you what happens to Caesar in the end.

The violent rhetoric from Democrats just keeps on coming, through Trump’s first term, into this year’s re-election campaign, and right up to weeks before the election. And now, it’s predictably escalating from violent rhetoric and into violent acts.

A month ago, a would-be assassin missed Trump’s cranium by a quarter-inch with a bullet from an AR-15, only because Trump luckily turned at the last possible second. It came out that the Trump campaign had requested beefed-up security prior to the incident, and the White House had denied his request.

The Secret Service at the time was headed by a DEI hire, and the agents at the event were test-failing amateurs. They allowed the shooter within 130 yards of Trump on an unsecured rooftop. Even after they saw him there, with a gun, they failed to take him out and failed to alert Trump or his staff until he’d fired eight shots, killing one man, seriously wounding another, and grazing Trump’s ear.  

In an apparent admission of near-lethal negligence by the Service, five agents were later suspended.

Their replacements seem not much better. In yesterday’s attempt, a Democrat donor got within easy range of Trump on a golf course with a rifle equipped with a high-powered scope. The shooter was wearing a Go-Pro, apparently to post his assassination on YouTube where Democrats everywhere could cheer it. He was thwarted only because he was foolish enough to poke his rifle out of the bushes, where an agent happened to see it.

The shooter had been on the golf course for at least 12 hours. One must wonder, how did he know Trump’s golfing schedule at least 12 hours in advance?

Even now, after two assassination attempts that missed due only to incredible luck or Providence, President Trump is not afforded the level of protection that President Biden or even Vice President Harris receives.

Most recently, President Doofus again falsely accused Trump of saying that neo-Nazis are “fine people” even though that accusation has been thoroughly debunked even by leftist fact-checkers.

Kamala Harris repeated the lie in her debate with Trump – and was not corrected by the moderators even though the moderators purported to correct at least seven Trump statements (some of which were not factual claims, but mere opinions).

You might think the mainstream media would condemn these assassination attempts in the strongest words possible. But if you do think that, then you haven’t been paying attention to the mainstream media for the last ten years.

The mainstream media is implying – no, they’re outright stating – that Trump has all this coming because he’s a Republican who says nasty things. The Washington Post has already dismissed the assassination attempt and has framed it instead as Trump unfairly capitalizing on the incident politically.

The media take their cue from Biden and Harris. They routinely equate Trump with Adolf Hitler, the mass murderer of millions.

The Democrats let their rank and file connect the dots: Everyone has been taught, correctly, that killing Hitler would have been a heroic act that would have saved millions. So, the Democrats don’t exactly say “kill Trump” but they do suggest you’d be a hero if you did.

Donald Trump’s anger might not take him any further

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When I was a kid, I had a bad temper. I suppose in today’s psychobabble, they would say I had an “anger-management issue” and perhaps they would give me drugs, a handicapped parking pass, and special privileges. But back in the day, I was just a kid with a temper.

One summer day when I was about 11, when my parents weren’t home, my brother and sister locked me out of the house for reasons I don’t remember (but they were probably good ones).

A back door to the house was sliding glass. This was before modern safety glass or double-pane windows. It was a simple un-tempered sliding glass door.

In a fit of anger, I kicked it. Not just with my toe, but with a big round-house kick. It felt good to see it tremble and shake, so I did it again, harder.

It broke. Sheets of jagged glass fell straight across my extended leg. I was wearing shorts.

I was lucky the glass didn’t cut my leg off. As it was, a big razor-sharp glass sheet penetrated well over an inch into my calf through a four-inch incision. In the gaping wound, I could see the fat layer and, beneath it, the red muscle tissue. I screamed in horror and pain.

My sister grabbed a towel, and we threw it around my leg. She ran across the street to ask a neighbor for help. I limped to his car and he casually chatted as he drove me to the ER. When I emerged from surgery an hour later, the neighbor was white, for he’d been told in the meantime about the severity of my injury.

Fortunately, the glass missed the artery, though there was plenty of blood. It did cut a nerve to my foot and left me without feeling on one side of my foot for a few months. To this day, that side of my foot has a funky sensation.

That evening, my father came home from work as usual.

Father: “I hear your temper got the best of you today.”

Me: “Yeah.”

That was it, and we never spoke of it again. I still lose my cool occasionally – most men do – but that’s the last time I can remember that my anger drove me into doing something dangerously stupid.

Anger is a powerful force. Channeled strategically by high-testosterone men storming the beaches of Normandy, it can save the world. Used less-strategically, it can destroy it – and them.

There’s a place for anger in politics. Like a lot of people today, I’m angry. Like a lot of people today, I want to kick the glass doors of our government, media, universities, and big businesses for their censorship, their racial discrimination, their wokeness, their antisemitism, and their incompetence.

Like a lot of people today, I like a candidate who feels similar anger. That’s why I voted for Donald Trump in 2016, again in 2020, and will again in 2024. He’s angry about the right things for the right reasons.

But anger has its limits. The boys storming Normandy had anger, and they sure as hell kicked in the glass door of Hitler’s house, but they weren’t just kicking a glass door.

Those boys also had a careful plan that was devised over months of thought, analysis and discussion by brilliant professionals like General Dwight D. Eisenhower. There were plans, counterplans, contingency plans, a retreat plan, and even a failure plan. Eisenhower himself drafted a mea culpa taking complete responsibility for the effort in case it failed.

Donald Trump has done a ton of good for America, but his anger is reaching the limits of its effectiveness. On Tuesday, he seemed to be kicking glass doors that weren’t even locked.

That appeals to a lot of people, including me in some circumstances. But it turns off women, who are often frightened by a man’s anger. And it turns off unengaged independent and moderate voters. You may despise such people, but they’re the ones who decide elections.

I’ll vote for Trump again, as I’ve already said. But I don’t expect him to win, and I don’t expect any Eisenhower-type mea culpa from him when he loses. Anger has its limits.