It’s quite simple. When the President is incapacitated and thereby unable to fulfil the duties of the office, the Vice President assumes the powers of the Presidency.

In the modern world, the fact that this transition process exists is of vital importance to the very lives of every person on the earth. Why? Because we are armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and have the ability to destroy quite literally everything.

For four years the people in and around the White House either allowed a senile old man who had lost his ability to reason to have access to the buttons that could destroy all human life, or they staged a coup by taking those buttons away from him.

Reason dictates that it was the latter.

I think that most Americans realized that President Biden was senile during his term of office. But despite the obvious signs of his severe impairment, this was continually denied by those in and around the White House, and legacy media.

Put simply, they lied.

That lie prevented a transition of power to the elected Vice President.

The people screeching the loudest about the need to ‘preserve democracy’ were in fact undermining it each and every day.

Immediately following the last Biden/Trump Presidential Debate we witnessed the tide turning. Suddenly many of those who had been insisting that President Biden was ‘sharp as a tack’ changed tactics and began urging him to drop out of his quest for re-election. And of course since that time we have learned more and more about President Biden’s long standing mental decline. Just this week in a major book written by a legacy media personality who spent years denying the very facts he now writes about.

There is speculation that had the debate not been so disastrous, and President Biden had somehow won re-election, he would have soon left office, allowing his Vice President to take over. That speculation seems highly unlikely given what actually happened during his Presidency. What is much more likely is that those around him would have kept him in power so that their long standing influence peddling grifts could continue.

We are all on the outside. We could only know what we were allowed to see on television. If we are honest, we must admit that what we did see was quite bad. But those on the inside saw much more.

Those on the inside, the Cabinet, had a solemn duty to act.

Section Four of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

Discussing the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, one of its authors, Congressman Richard Poff remarked on its anticipated usage:

“One is the case where the President by reason of some physical ailment or some sudden accident is unconscious or paralyzed and therefore unable to make or to communicate the decision to relinquish the powers of his Office. The other is the case when the President, by reason of mental debility, is unable or unwilling to make any rational decision, including particularly the decision to stand aside.”

During debate, consideration, and passage of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment it was determined that the term “principal officers of the executive departments” meant the President’s Cabinet.

The Cabinet had a solemn duty to act, but it did not act.

The Cabinet Secretaries subverted our government, rather than acting to preserve it as they were sworn to do. Due to this severe failure to act, these fifteen officers have shown themselves unfit to ever hold political office again.

It goes beyond that. President and Mrs. Biden’s personal staffs, from their Chiefs Of Staff down to their Press Secretaries lied to the American people for years, allowing this coup to continue. They are unfit for future government service.

This extends to a handful of Democratic members of Congress as well. Not all of them, certainly, for they were lied to just as the American people were lied to. But the leaders of the Democratic caucuses in the House and the Senate did know. They knew and they remained silent. They violated their duty to the American people and having thus shown themselves unfit for office should be removed by voters at the first opportunity.

Had the Biden Administration been properly functioning, had the people who composed it fulfilled the duties of their offices, power would have transferred from President Biden to Acting President Harris.

To use that Administration’s term, democracy would have actually been preserved by those screeching about the need to preserve it in public, while they undermined it every day in private.

Why all this division?

Because each side seems to believe that our nation as we know it will be destroyed, indeed that they themselves may be somehow destroyed, if the other side wins.

But, it’s not supposed to be this way.

If you enjoy this post, please share it!

Government is supposed to be strictly limited.

Particularly government here in our United States.

Let’s take a look at our founding document:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

All men are created equal.

That all are born with rights, granted by God.

That government exists for the singular purpose of protecting those rights.

But that is not the government we have today. Rather we have a government that seeks to regulate most aspects of our lives, and all aspects of society. We are electing less of a President, and more of an Emperor. Indeed it would not be a stretch to call the United States of today an empire, with American troops in at least 178 countries around the world.

If government in the United States was strictly limited, as our nation’s founders intended, we would not see the fear and vitriol that are both so present during elections, because it would matter so much less which side happened to win any particular contest.

Today government touches every part of our lives. And as such, it can do us immense harm. That is why there is so much fear of the other side of the political divide. That is why there is anger and outright hate directed at those who root for the other candidate, whomever that might be.

If we hope to fix the cancer of incivility surrounding political discussion, we need to once again limit the reach and scope of our government. A government that is not in a position to harm us need not be feared.

Candidates and parties don’t talk about that today though. Indeed both sides seem engaged in a race to see who can expand government quicker, and who can spend more borrowed dollars to do so.

Today is election day, and sooner or later this election will be decided.

Half of the country will be delirious with joy, the other half will be overcome with fear.

It shouldn’t be that way.

It took a very long time for our government to grow to its current scope. And it will take a very long time to return it to its proper scope. But if we hope to have better elections, and better government in the future, we all need to begin seriously looking at how government can be restrained, and support those who actually work to restrain it.

But however the elections might turn out, we must not be discouraged. This is the greatest nation that has ever existed on the face of the earth. There has never been a challenge we have not successfully met. With work, and determination, we can ensure that our future is just as glorious as our past.

A couple of days ago, here on Substack, she asked a question.

“What is your gun history?”

Well, I’ve got a hell of a lot of gun history.

And I’ve got really powerful views about guns.

So, I couldn’t resist her question. This essay is my answer.

But first, let me turn it over to Susie:

OK, you’re back, so here we go!

Guns have been a part of my life since I was really, really young. Think five years old learning to shoot a .22 handgun in the back field of my grandfather’s farm.

And they have been a part of my life ever since.

Some of the best memories of my childhood are of the deer hunting trips we used to take every year. My grandfather, father, and uncle would load up all of us kids and we’d head over to a small town in Eastern Washington for an extended deer hunting trip in the bitter but dry cold.

But here’s the thing. Our deer hunting trips were a lot different than most. I can honestly say that my family has been very committed to deer hunting for three generations now, and not a one of us has ever shot a deer. We may have a .300 Savage (my paternal grandfather) a .30-30 Winchester (my maternal grandfather) a .308 Winchester (my father) and a .30-06 Springfield (me) but despite all that firepower, the deer are perfectly safe from us.

Because the point of it was never to shoot deer. The point of it was always to spend time together, bonding, as males. To spend time strengthening the bonds of our family. Around a campfire, camping with guns, acting as if we were hunting.

I’ve always loved to shoot, and I’m a pretty darn good shot with pistol. I’m not bad with a shotgun either. Rifles are much less my thing, and given that, it’s funny perhaps that I own more of them than any other type.

But, I don’t shoot often. Indeed, quite a few years ago now, probably well over a decade ago I acquired a beautiful new rifle and it has still never been fired.

Most of my guns are not new though. The vast majority of them are from my family. My great grandfather’s guns. My grandfather’s guns. And now that he is dead, my father’s guns. These are the guns I own, and indeed the guns I use.

And that’s the thing guns are for me.

Guns, these specific guns are my family. I can look at my great grandfather’s beautifully preserved rifle and remember him. Remember time spent with him, even though he died when I was very young. I can look at my grandfather’s beautiful shotgun and remember the times we spent in his fields, acting as if we were hunting ducks. I can hold my father’s rifle, and remember all those camping trips that we called deer hunting.

These guns are my tangible connection with my past. My link to the men in my family who are no longer here on earth with me.

For that reason, these guns aren’t guns, they are treasure of immeasurable worth to me.

But, guns are also a tool. An extremely important tool when life reaches the gravest extreme.

It has been a lot of years now, but I used to own a beautiful second home deep in the Cascade Mountains. Deep enough that a trip to get groceries was an hour long trek, and a fast food hamburger was a lot further than that. Response times from the Sheriff’s office were probably well over an hour. Not due to any fault of the deputies, but simply because of how remote that home was.

One night, in the middle of the night, my then wife shook me awake in our upstairs bedroom. She let me know that someone was breaking into the house.

I grabbed my Colt 1911 Government, the handgun I am most confident with, and that I have the most confidence in, and carefully headed downstairs.

I heard the young men, there were two of them, making their way into the main part of the house where I now was, from the laundry room. They had broken in through the back, where there was a mudroom entrance that led into that laundry room.

They entered the big central room at just about the same moment my then wife switched on the lights from a landing on the stairway.

The one in front stopped immediately on seeing that big .45 pointed directly at his chest, from a very few feet away.

I have no way of knowing what the intentions of these young men were. Would they have simply robbed us, or did they have something much worse in mind? There was no way to know, then or now.

What I do know is that whatever those intentions were, they instantly evaporated when they were confronted by a fat, balding, middle aged, naked guy holding them at gunpoint.

And I did hold them at gunpoint for quite a long time while I tried to figure out what to do with them. Hold them for the hour or two it would take for the Sheriff to respond, with all the dangers associated with trying to hold someone for so long, or cut them loose, back into the wild. In the end, I sent them on their way. I could not think of any way that my then wife and I could safely hold them for an hour or two. We were not, as police are, trained in methods of restraining dangerous criminals.

Of course, I could have simply shot them both dead.

They had broken into my home in the middle of the night. I was well within my legal rights to drop them right there in my living room, and I never would have even seen the inside of a police station. Beyond that, at the time I was the Mayor of the City where my other home was, and they were criminals engaged in a criminal act. Killing them would have resulted in no legal hassle whatsoever.

I did not shoot them, because I saw no reason to shoot them.

The threat that they posed to my life, and my then wife’s life stopped the instant they saw that big .45.

But, I have often wondered when I’ve reflected on this experience, if either of them realized just how close they were to death. That Colt 1911’s safety was off. It has a really light trigger and there was no slack left. It was loaded with Cor-Bon Jacketed Hollow Points, loaded to +P pressure. One each would have done the job, but had that decision been made, it would have been at least two each as I had been taught so many times in the past.

That was only the part of the danger they faced though. My then wife also had them covered from her position on the stairway with her Walther PPS in .40 S&W. I don’t know if they ever even saw her, but I have no doubt that if I would have fired, she would have done the same.

So those young men came very close to death that night. All that kept them from death was a pound or two of extra force on my trigger.

I’ve never actually written this story out before. In fact, it’s been told by me to only a small handful of people. But one of those people was a Legislator I worked for at the time, and he delighted in telling it to all who would listen.

Looking back through the years, reflecting on the incident, I think I handled it in the very best way possible.

I had the clear legal right to shoot, but I didn’t shoot because I recognized that I could neutralize the threat without doing so. I have often worried that by turning the two criminals loose, they may well have committed crimes against others. And I’ve felt badly about that. But I honestly don’t feel I had any other choice. To this day, I still do not see a way I could have safely captured them and held them until the Sheriff was able to arrive.

So, to answer Susie’s question, that’s my gun history.

My guns are extremely important to me because they are a tangible connection to my family, and my family’s history.

They are also important because when there is no other option they are an effective means whereby I can confidently protect my life, and the lives of the people I love.

The question at issue in the arguments that briefly flourished:

Is the United States a Democracy?

or

Is the United States a Republic?

As with all remotely political questions in these times, both teams took a side, and stuck to that side. Facts and reason be damned.

But, facts and reason do exist, so this question can be answered, and answered correctly.

The answer is of course that the United States, and for that matter Washington State are…

Wait for it…

Democratic Republics!

Yep, that’s right. The Democrats of Washington might scream that we are a Democracy, and the Republicans of Washington might scream that we are a Republic, but neither side is telling the entire truth.

For that matter, neither side seems to know the entire truth.

And that’s a problem.

It’s a problem, because it seems that in more and more cases we are being governed by people who are not serious. And if we hope to thrive as a society, we had better start electing serious people. We’d better start paying attention to serious people.

But, it’s more fun to pay attention to the Clowns on the Left and the Right. So that’s where our attention goes, and from that, to those Clowns the money flows.

We need to stop that.

Serious people deserve the attention we give to Clowns.

And if we hope to be governed by serious people, they need our attention, and the campaign money it brings.

So, that’s it.

My little post that shouldn’t need to be made is reaching its conclusion.

The United States is a Democratic Republic.

It is a Republic because those who make our laws do so on behalf of large numbers of people. The people don’t do so directly.

It is a Democracy because we elect those people who make the laws on our behalf. They aren’t a part of an aristocracy.

A Democratic Republic. Why is that so hard for the Clowns to understand?

He’s badly wrong.

This is a really easy question for me.

I think about stuff, and then I put those thoughts down into words. People pay me to do this. They open their wallets and give me their hard earned money. That’s a remarkable thing, and a great honor for me. I’m forever thrilled that people think my writing valuable enough to pay for.

If instead of writing I just put a prompt into a Large Language Model and published whatever unoriginal junk the computer spit out a few seconds later, but claimed to be a writer, and accepted payment for writing, then that would be fraudulent. It would be wrong, immoral, and yes, shameful.

I’m a writer. I write a hell of a lot of words, each and every day. I hope that they are always great, but I fear that they often are not. Great or not though, I strive and I sweat, this is my craft, and I work to do it well. I’m a writer, and I’m proud of that fact.

Some weirdo, claiming to be a writer who is doing nothing but letting Ai ‘write’ for him, and cleaning the output text up a bit? That’s no writer, that’s a scammer. But it’s not a surprise that those who would chose to scam others, to make false claims about themselves, would be drawn towards Large Language Models. Those models were built by taking copyrighted works without permission. The immorality is simply breeding more immorality.

I’ve written here on Substack for a long time now. I started doing so before the Substack people started adding all the neat features and gizmos.

I remember when they first started offering Ai images for writers to include in their articles. And full disclosure here, I was intrigued. I could get just the image I wanted, for free, without worrying about anyone’s copyright. I played with it. I had the computer make me a handful of images, and I included those images in a really small number of posts.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that what I was doing was wrong. I’m not a visual artist, and entering a prompt into a computer didn’t make me one. I was no more the creator of those images than I’m the creator of the moon. I never claimed that any of those images were created by me, but even so the act of posting those images amounted to an untruthful implied claim.

I’ve not used the image generator here on Substack since, nor included anything like that in a post since.

I had also decided, when all the Ai hype began, that I would never use it in my writing. That good or bad, what I wrote was going to be real. The real stuff, from my mind to yours. Including Ai images in my posts was contrary to that commitment to myself.

So yeah, when you read my words on Substack, know that they are my words, typos and all, for I am a writer, and proud to be a writer.

As for those ‘writers’ who let their computer ‘write’ for them, well yeah, they deserve to feel the shame that they feel. Of course the fact that they feel shame is proof that they know what they are doing is wrong.

The deadline was yesterday, at close of business.

Well, yesterday afternoon something really funny happened. I’ve got to admit, I laughed out loud when I first learned of it on X.

It was funny, but it was wrong.

It doesn’t take much to file for office here in Washington, so thirty people have filed to be our next Governor.

But in reality, there are four serious candidates. Bob Ferguson our current Attorney General and Mark Mullet a State Senator are vying for the Democratic nomination, while on the Republican side the fight is between former Congressman & Sheriff Dave Reichert and former School District Director Semi Bird.

This is an interesting race. Senator Mullet would be a better Governor than Attorney General Ferguson, but is badly trailing in fundraising and support. The Attorney General has long been the heir apparent, and that seems to be holding true. Congressman Reichert is an electable candidate, he has a shot at winning the Governorship. But the Republican party has endorsed Bird, a candidate who wasn’t even able to hold on to his position on the School Board, having lost a Recall Election.

Ultimately, one of these four will be our next Governor, and most likely it will come down to either Ferguson or Reichert.

With all of that groundwork laid, now I can tell you what happened, why it was funny, and more importantly, why it was wrong, despite the humor.

A local political activist went out and found two other Washingtonians, with the same name as our Attorney General, and convinced them to file for the Office of Governor as well.

So there will be three Bob Fergusons on the Primary Ballot. Democrats will have to somehow figure out which Bob Ferguson is the right Bob Ferguson.

As I mentioned above, my first reaction when I encountered this yesterday was laughter. It’s a creative trick, and it is rather funny to imagine what the Attorney General’s reaction must have been.

But while admittedly funny, it isn’t good.

The institutions that we have are one of the vitally important things that have worked to make America the nation that millions around the world line up to become a part of. Our Founding Fathers created these institutions, this system of Federalism full of checks and balances in order to build a nation in which liberty could flourish.

And as a result, those of us who live in the United States are the envy of the world.

If you doubt that, just take a look at the millions streaming across our borders. If this country wasn’t any good, they wouldn’t be looking to come in and build new lives here.

But today, our institutions are under attack, and our nation is under attack. From within. Just a month ago, media was reporting about rallies in which the participants were chanting “Death To America.” In Michigan. I remember when I used to see chants like that on the news every evening, way back in the late 1970’s, when our Embassy in Iran was overrun, and our diplomats taken hostage. Has Iran come to Michigan?

Into this extremely fraught political time, a political activist and his supporters decided to make a mockery of our electoral process. To take advantage of the system so that they could insert a trick into it. And who knows, their scheme could work. Undoubtedly some voters could be confused and end up voting for the wrong Bob Ferguson. If enough are confused, it could alter the result.

In the United States we are supposed to win elections by outworking and outspending our opponents. By championing issues and positions that are important to our electorate. By pointing out the differences between ourselves and our opponents. It’s not a perfect system by any means, and often it gets nasty, but it is the best possible system, and the system we have.

Trying to win through blatant trickery, by gaming the system, isn’t right. It is an outright attack on our institutions and our political system.

And the thing is, these wrong acts only grow over time.

Four years from now, how many Republicans sharing the same name will file for election to the Office of the Governor? When Democrats use abusive tactics against Republicans they find those same tactics later used against them. Just as Republicans suffer under unfair tactics used by Democrats that were first dreamed up by Republicans.

And with each such cycle, our civil society is further degraded.

Artificial divisions between people grow.

Our nation is weakened.

If America is to remain strong, it must have serious people leading it.

If we continue to make a mockery of our institutions, how can we survive?

Since I have three separate Substacks, I’ve decided to give Linktree a try. You can find mine here Cameron M. Bailey’s LinkTree.

Or if you’re really snazzy, give this a shot:

Damn. If I keep this up, I’ll have to stop calling myself a Luddite.

I guess one could say that I grew up a hick. I never got very far from my grandparents farm as a child. Small town. Riding on tractors when I was old enough to walk, driving them not too much after that. And why not, there’s nothing at all to crash into in the middle of a field. Tagging along as the animals were fed, doing all kinds of slightly dangerous things with my cousins that would have probably freaked our mother’s out, had they known.

But then, as I entered High School, my parents moved. We moved from rural to holy smokes this is rural. We had football at our school, I played it every year, really badly. But, it was only eight man football, we didn’t have enough guys to play with eleven. That wasn’t the cool thing though, in my view at least. The cool thing was FFA, the Future Farmers of America. An organization that I truly loved. But, again, we were small. My high school class was a big one for the school, we had about twenty kids.

So, I grew up as a hick. I wore the cowboy boots every day, and the cowboy hat on snazzy occasions. I dipped the tobacco, listened to country music, and drove a Ford pickup.

To be honest, things haven’t changed all that much. I moved back to the populous side of the State, but even so, to a county that doesn’t feel much like it, and into a small little city. I did relegate the cowboy boots to occasional wear, and swapped the Ford pickup for a Chevy. I do spend a lot of time in the big city, but, at heart I guess I remain a hick.

So, I might be biased. But…

Thanks for reading Cameron M. Bailey! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Every day, for days now, I’ve seen news reports showing college students, and their professors, at our most elite universities doing the most irrational things.

My favorite are the “Queers For Palestine” folks. Do they not realize that the whole Queer thing merits capital punishment under Hamas’ government? I mean I get the whole ‘La Petite Mort’ thing, I understand that some folks may sometimes refer to orgasm as The Little Death, but people have got to understand that the Hamas folks aren’t talking about The Little Death when it comes to Queer folks, they mean The Big Death, ye ol’ dirt nap.

Ah, but maybe that isn’t my favorite.

Maybe my favorite is the Columbia PhD student / riot spokesperson who gave a news conference at which she declared that Columbia had a responsibility to provide meals to those who had illegally occupied, and were destroying a building on Columbia’s campus. That unless the university do so the rioters could starve to death. She called it ‘humanitarian aid.’ Of course the best part was when the media reported on just what she is studying. Imagination and poetry through a Marxist lens or some such made-up b******t. (See, us hicks are familiar with both actual b******t, and the use of the word b******t.)

No, that’s not it though.

It’s got to be the masks. Because when your cause is just, and you believe in your cause, you don’t hide behind masks. Notice that every last one of them is wearing a mask? Washington, Jefferson, and Hancock didn’t wear masks. Lincoln and Grant didn’t wear masks. King and Malcolm X didn’t wear masks. Who did wear masks? The Ku Klux Klan. Just like the elite protesters on elite campuses, the KKK guys loved their masks.

But, at least it makes it easy for us. In 2024 we can know, without any doubt, that when we see a young person, wearing a mask outside, we are looking at a mentally ill individual.

I don’t know, I might be biased against these folks who are apparently ‘the best and the brightest’ because, you know, I am a hick. But…

Thank you for reading Cameron M. Bailey. This post is public so feel free to share it.

My grandparents fought a war. A really serious f*****g war. They eradicated a truly horrific evil from our world. They helped surround him in his underground bunker, and on April 30, 1945 he put his buddy in charge, killed the woman he’d just married (kind of an odd honeymoon if you ask me) and then blew his own brains out. I always remember the date, for April 30 is my birthday.

He did pick quite a guy to take over after shooting himself though. That guy made sure that the last guy got the fine funeral of being thrown in the mud, covered in gasoline and fried. It was the only real action he took and the next day he murdered his six children, his wife, and then killed himself.

So, that was the end of the evil b******s.

But, it wasn’t the end of the evil. The evil just went underground.

These men, and their compatriots, conspired to systematically murder every single Jewish person in Europe. And they almost succeeded. Antisemitism had always existed there, but these guys took it to a whole new level, murdering Jewish people by the millions. Our grandparents liberated the camps, saving the few Jews who were still alive. The world thought that with the wars end, the evil was finished. Indeed, the world declared ‘Never Again.’

But, the evil of antisemitism didn’t end. It moved into places that were considered our most important institutions of higher learning. It was taught to impressionable students by radical professors. In recent weeks we’ve seen it explode out of hiding. We see signs and chants calling for the death of Jewish people, just as were seen in Germany during our grandparents generation. We’ve seen Jewish students refused entrance to their classrooms, libraries, and elsewhere on their campuses, just as was seen in Germany when the Nazi party rose to power.

But it’s not just the Jews that these little antisemites are against. They are against the West, opposed to Western Values, Western Democracy, Capitalism, and the Rule of Law. They want to burn it all down. We’ve seen media reports of these folks chanting Death To America, just as I heard on the news as a kid, coming from Iran. The NYPD has publicized leaflets these people were handing out demanding the same Death To America.

Free Speech is undoubtedly the most important right Americans hold. And it shouldn’t be infringed. We’ve got to tolerate the speech of these students, even when they chant Death To America.

But Free Speech does not include lawlessness. When they take over buildings, that’s trespassing, not free speech. When they threaten to murder someone for being Jewish, that’s not free speech, it’s a crime. When they prevent a student from using his school’s library because he’s Jewish, that’s unlawful, not free speech.

Ultimately, antisemitism is evil. Our grandparents proved that. And I don’t think it was only our hick grandparents, the rich urban folks fought just as hard to try and stop crimes against humanity forever.

But, maybe I see things through rose colored glasses, because I’m a hick. But…

My house, in my little city is just across the street from a college.

Now, it isn’t one of those fancy ivy league places.

It doesn’t have any classes about imagination and poetry through a Marxist lens.

It probably doesn’t have any classes teaching students how to cope when the barista at Starbucks looks at them funny or accidentally calls they him when he is they.

It also doesn’t have any antisemites breaking into buildings or camping out on the lawn, all while holding signs calling for the death of Jewish people.

In fact, last night, instead of all that they had a big ol’ ball game. This I know because the stadium lights shine into my kitchen and the cheers travel when they are doing well.

Alas, this little hick college has no made up nonsense classes, no anti-capitalist protesters, no one calling for the destruction of the Western world.

So what does it have?

Young people working, studying, to become productive members of society. Learning things that will enable them to leave the world just a bit better than they found it.

Young people learning how to be nurses, police officers, mechanics, you know skills that will bring value to others.

What else does it have?

Students who fell on hard times as children who are now, as adults, working to improve their lives by studying for a GED. People new to our country doing the same.

Hick things. Things sneered at by so many who are now apparently standing proud as masked antisemites. Things that are considered unimportant by those who laughingly refer to places like my home as ‘fly over country.’

I kind of like my peaceful little hick college, maybe I’m biased though, since I’m a hick. But…

We sure saw the hicks rise this week, didn’t we?

Fraternity Brothers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill decided to take a stand when protesters tried to replace the flag of the United States with one of Palestine. They stood strong, holding the flag off the ground while surrounded by an angry but ineffectual mob.

The President of the United States couldn’t stop the mob. University administrators couldn’t stop the mob. Who stopped the mob? A bunch of Fraternity Brothers who put down their beers, stood holding the flag, and laughed at the screaming hoard around them.

Photos of their deed went viral across social media, were reprinted in traditional media, and a fundraiser organized to throw them a party has now raised over half a million dollars.

The young men in those photos looked kind of like hicks to me. Certainly a much different look from the masked antisemetic weirdos harassing Jewish people and destroying university property.

And that’s the thing.

This is a time for choosing.

Will we choose to do what we can to stand in the breech for Western society?

Or will we stand by, silently, helplessly, as those who despise our way of life work to destroy it?

I know what choice I’m making, and its to stand with my people, my fellow hicks. Hicks who remember that the United States, for all its failings, remains that shining city on the hill.

So, yeah, if I was to think of things in that way, I’m an influencer.

But, a mighty odd influencer. I’ve got good data on my audience. It is overwhelmingly male, and its average age is somewhere in the mid to late sixties. A bunch of whippersnappers we are not.

Seriously though, I don’t consider myself an influencer.

I’m just a guy who writes a lot. Primarily about Freemasonry, secondarily about the issues of the day. With a few of my odd little quirks thrown in.

One crossover subject that I write about somewhat frequently is hats. It’s a crossover because hats are an important thing within American Freemasonry. And, hats are one of my odd little quirks. I love the things.

So, I write a lot about them. I’ve written about their use within Freemasonry. I’ve written about what I feel a proper Masonic hat should be. I’ve written reviews of hats up and down the price scale.

And my readers seem to enjoy these posts.

And I know for a fact that these posts have resulted in some sales of the hats I’ve posted about. One guy I know bought two really expensive hats after I posted about them.

So, I guess that could also make me an influencer. Me, an old guy, writes about hats from time to time, and my readers, other old guys, go out and buy a hat from time to time.

The thing is, that means that my little hat posts could be subject to regulation by the federal government. There’s FTC rules that I could be required to follow. These rules have to do with disclosure. I’m required to disclose if I have a relationship with someone who sells hats, or if I got paid to review a hat, or if someone gave me a hat to review. No one’s ever given me a hat to review, no one has ever paid me to review a hat (although if you want to send me some cash, send away,) and I’m not associated with anyone who is in the hat business. So, I’m in the clear. And that seems reasonable to me. If you are a content creator (to use another term of today) and you are getting paid to shill for a product, the moral thing to do is disclose that fact.

Ah, but, we do live in a time in which far too many people look to the state to solve anything and everything that they perceive to be somehow problematic.

Did you notice that photograph of an awesome old Copenhagen can above? So much cooler than the Copenhagen can of 2024. We all know that Smokeless Tobacco is addictive, government didn’t have to ruin our cool can lids by forcing the Copenhagen people to slap a notice on them.

But, I digress.

Let’s get back on track.

I like Copenhagen. I’ve liked Copenhagen since I was maybe five years old and my grandfather’s neighbor Weldon let me smell his while I was riding in the old farm truck that he was driving through my grandfather’s fields. It has been over fifty years, but I still remember that day perfectly clearly.

I’ve probably used Copenhagen for forty years. I have no desire, nor intention to stop. I like it that much.

I think that it is a fine product, and if you are a cigarette smoker over twenty-one years of age, I’d recommend that you give it a try too.

Why?

Because smoking cigarettes is dangerous as hell, and I believe that harm reduction is a valuable tool for smokers to use in an effort to reduce risk.

Did you see what I just did there?

I wrote a review of a tobacco product. I was being an influencer again.

But, I’m not in the tobacco business. No one paid me to write what I did. And the Copenhagen people certainly didn’t give me any for free, in fact they’ve sucked tens of thousands of dollars out of me through the decades.

So, I’ve got no trouble with the FTC.

Ah, but that’s the rub.

Because far too many people want to regulate everything to death. Advocating to do so is how they avoid taking any and all personal responsibility.

In January of this year, the New York Times published an editorial by the Director of the News Lab at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center On Media, Politics, And Public Policy, Emily Dreyfuss.

Most of her editorial was simply a rant about a nicotine product called Zyn. Zyn is like smokeless tobacco, without the tobacco. Sort of like margarine is to butter. Me, I’ll stick with my Copenhagen and my butter, but apparently lots and lots of folks really like this non tobacco oral nicotine product.

And according to Dreyfuss, they post about it on Tik Tok, and YouTube, and everywhere else in social media land.

Dreyfuss thinks that’s a problem that requires intervention by the federal government. Why? Because she has an eight year old child, and children might see the posts people make online about Zyn. As with all worshipers of the state, Dreyfuss sees herself as a defender of childhood safety.

Down towards the end of the editorial Dreyfuss lays out her Public Policy ideas. Because, she is after all, a Public Policy person from Harvard.

What are they?

-More money of course:

“Government agencies are clearly overwhelmed; they need the resources to enforce the rules already on the books to protect children from exposure to addictive products.”

-A way of getting around the whole unpaid thing. You see, as mentioned above, I don’t get paid when I review a hat, so the FTC rules don’t apply to me. I don’t write my hat posts because someone wants to sell hats and hires me to do so, I write them because I like hats. Likewise Zyn does not pay influencers to help sell their products, so the folks talking about Zyn online are doing so simply because they like Zyn. Just like I do because I like hats. And government can’t regulate that. But Dreyfuss thinks it needs to figure out how to do so:

“A recent F.T.C. effort to propose new online privacy safeguards for children addresses ad targeting, but it doesn’t broaden the definition of advertising to encompass unpaid viral influencer content.” -Emphasis mine.

And:

“A separate piece of legislation, the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, is awaiting a Senate vote. The bill has decent prospects of passage, but it doesn’t directly address the issue of unpaid influencers” -Emphasis mine.

And:

“I’d go so far as to propose that the courts broaden the definition of advertising to include all influencer promotion.”

Ultimately Dreyfuss would have the courts deem me an advertiser of hats, just because I post about the hats that I buy and enjoy.

It seems rather sad that no one ever bothered to teach Dreyfuss about the First Amendment during her time at Harvard. But don’t worry, she’s not done.

My declaration of myself as an influencer throughout this post is certainly tongue and cheek. I’m certainly not Khaby Lame with eighty million followers. I’m just an old guy who writes stuff that other old guys like to read.

-But for purposes of regulation, Dreyfuss certainly would classify me as an influencer, and most likely you as well:

“For a product as dangerous as nicotine, I’d put the bar to be considered an influencer as low as 1,000 followers on a social media account”

So, this post clearly would be subject to regulation by the federal government in Dreyfuss’ perfect world.

Of course nicotine isn’t very dangerous at all. The combustion and inhalation of tobacco is. Again, it’s sad that Harvard didn’t teach Dreyfuss that facts are important during her time there.

-But Dreyfuss can’t stop there. What happens, if say, some completely unknown guy has a YouTube account, and he’s got a total subscriber base of three people. Not three thousand people, or three hundred people, three only people.

And this unknown guy makes a video in which he chats about his use of Zyn. He doesn’t follow Dreyfuss’ dreamed of FTC rules because he is 996 subscribers short of her proposed regulatory threshold.

And that video somehow, through the grace of the internet gods, goes viral.

Well, that unknown guy is going to have to be punished. Somehow. Someway:

“maybe if a video from someone with less of a following goes viral under certain legal definitions, it would become influencer promotion.”

The ideas Dreyfuss is promoting are unworkable, contrary to the First Amendment, and unserious.

But, I do have an idea for Dreyfuss to consider, since she writes about her concern for her eight year old son, and what he might encounter online. Indeed that concern seems to be the driver behind all her nonsensical proposals.

Perhaps she will consider it. But doing so would require her to take personal responsibility.

Are you ready?

Here it is…

Tell your eight year old son that he isn’t old enough for Tik Tok, and don’t give him a phone!

See how easy that was?

Think AC/DC:

And I’m lucky, because in a tiny little town just to the South of my home, there’s a radio station that plays just the kind of music I like.

Because I only really listen to radio in my car, and because I prefer music while driving, I’ve never spent any time listening to National Public Radio. It’s just not my thing.

But NPR sure has been in the news recently.

It all began when one of NPR’s senior editors wrote an essay, published in The Free Press, exploring his thoughts about why NPR’s audience has been shrinking, and why the public’s trust in its reporting is in decline.

This resulted in others within NPR’s orbit writing their own thoughts about what is wrong with NPR. Some reaching much different conclusions than the writer who started it all off. Things that may have stayed in house under normal circumstances were suddenly published, for all to see.

To make matters even worse, instead of considering the possible merits of the criticism it was receiving, NPR’s official reaction was to simply suspend the editor who wrote the first essay.

It’s all a sad story of public relations going horribly wrong.

But does a government funded outfit like NPR need good public relations? The IRS is surely despised, yet thrives. Because bureaucracy doesn’t need to respond to the will of the people. It just keeps on growing.

Undoubtedly we need a healthy press if we are to have a healthy republic. And legacy media has certainly been in a financial free fall for a long time now. Taxpayer supported reporting might seem like a good solution. But it is not. Reporting paid for by the government is reporting that government can coerce if it chooses, and that is not a free press.

We don’t need government funding of news reporting, we need better business models for news organizations. Those exist.

My own hometown newspaper came under new local ownership some years ago, and seems to be thriving. It is doing this by remaining hyper focused, covering our local schools, our local governments, and our local civic groups.

The New York Times is profitable, and its profits are growing year over year. It’s doing this by embracing a paid digital subscription model. Taking a much different approach, The Guardian doesn’t use paywalls, but over a million and a half people send voluntary donations to support its work.

Finally, right here on Substack journalism is thriving, and profitable. Indeed the essay that sparked all of this reporting about NPR was published here, in The Free Press.

Government is not the answer, profitable business models are.

As I consider all of this, I can’t forget that this past Monday was April 15. The day the government expects its cash. Tax time.

And those taxes are what finance a great deal of NPR’s operations.

The population of the United States is over 333 million. 23.5 million people listen to NPR in any given week.

Is it in any way reasonable for our federal government to require that the 309 million people who don’t listen to NPR, pay for NPR? To require 309 million people to subsidize the radio listening habits of 23.5 million others?

I can’t help but realize that taxpayers aren’t subsidizing my listening to AC/DC.

The very idea of government subsidized press is anathema to the principle of a free press. A free press without which our society can not function.

Probably all kinds of goofy hats when I was a little kid. (I did wear a three piece suit to First Grade one day.) But, as far back as I can remember well, probably around Junior High School, I was a baseball hat (trucker hat, dad hat, gimme hat, whatever the heck you want to call them) guy. I wore a hat like that, every single day.

Except for our big extended family hunting trips. On those I wore a Maine Crusher style hat. And of course Rodeos, Fairs, things of that nature, for those I wore a big Stetson that I bought straight out of the factory on a trip to Missouri. But, those were kind of rare days, just a few at a time. Ninety percent of the time, it was a baseball hat for me.

And I’ve saved a lot of the great ones through the years. Most of them are in my basement now.

But, I’ve got to admit, I’ve always been kind of a hat slut. I’ve not been picky. I love ‘em all.

Except for stocking caps. The damn dumbest, ugliest hats ever devised by the mind of man. I’ve only ever worn those horrible things when snow skiing in the very worst of weather, and the two times I summited Mount Rainier. (Back when I was young and skinny!) The rest of the time, I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of the things. Beanie, skullcap, whatever nonsense you want to call such an abomination. My friend Clayton wears one. Bad Clayton!

All this hat wearing has been a good thing. Skin cancer runs in the family, and hair doesn’t like to grow on my head, so by wearing all these hats I’ll probably avoid having the doctors carving on my scalp in a few years.

But, the thing is, we all grow up.

I like to think that I’m still a young guy, but, alas, it just isn’t true. I’m an old geezer now.

And when you start to grow up, you realize that those baseball/trucker/gimme hats are really little kids’ hats. Unless one is playing baseball, they aren’t really proper hats for proper men.

So one starts buying proper hats.

The first of which, that I’ve worn very regularly for many years was a Tilley sailing hat. Not one of the weird ones with the nylon and mesh and crap, but a real Tilley, nothing but heavy cotton duck and brass. I’ve got three of those now, and wear ‘em all summer long. (But there won’t be a number four, because Mr. Tilley sold the outfit and Tilley hats are not what they used to be.)

I’ve got a knock off Tilley too, a nice strong hat with a huge brim, I wear it while working the BBQ.

And western hats. Oh, golly, western hats are cool! But hard to buy, unless you really know what you are doing, and really expensive, unless you buy a junker. Through the years I’ve managed to acquire a closet full of beaver felt western hats. Everything from a really excellent vintage Resistol to the custom made hat pictured above. They’re all in boxes, filling up that closet.

Plus, a nice straw western, and a really old vintage straw Stetson Boater, (we haven’t seen many men wearing those since about 1917 or so) even an Alpine, although I don’t have the lederhosen to go along with it.

And of course, to sort of go with the Tilley’s, waxed cotton from Filson, insulated for winter. I’ve got the Stormy Kromer that people in the Midwest swear by, but here in the Northwest it has got to be a tin cloth Filson.

The big difference between real hats and little boy’s hats is that real hats don’t have their entire fronts serving as a location for advertising of one sort or another. How odd is it that the hats most men wear really are not much more but advertising pieces that we pay to wear?

But hey, enough of that diversion.

One hat that I’ve always thought had great style is a tweed walking hat from Ireland. But, I also rather thought of them as old guy hats, and forever thought of myself as a young guy, so I never snagged one.

That changed a few days ago, when I bought myself a really fine example of the Irish walking hat. It’s a beauty, and if I’m honest with myself, I’m an old fart now, so I figure I’ve earned the right to wear it.

The trouble is, the seven year old granddaughter.

She was with me when I bought it, and was adamantly against the purchase.

I bought it anyway of course, and she in turn has declared that only a loser would wear such a hat. This leads me to threaten to pick her up from school wearing said hat and embarrassing her in front of all her friends. We are perfecting the art of slow escalation in this cold war.

But, it wouldn’t be a good thing to actually embarrass the kid, no matter how much fun it is to threaten. And of course, I can’t let her think that she has won the war, so the other day I took a little trip down to my basement and dug out a Donegal tweed flat cap.

It’s a great looking cap, all greenish-blue with the tiny flecks of color so common in Donegal tweed. I’ve probably had it for twenty-five years, but maybe only ever wore it once or twice. It’s just always seemed kind of odd to me. And other than a couple young guys I know up in Seattle, I never see flat caps being worn.

I hauled it upstairs, tried it on, and the kid declared it a good hat.

So, I got my tweed, and she got rid of the walking hat. Peace was restored to the home.

Since it was upstairs, I’ve been wearing it around. Yesterday, to the grocery store.

Not one of those big supermarket places. I avoid those like the plague. Sometime in the last few years, when no one was looking, people started going to the supermarket in pajamas and crocs. Ever since then my nightmare has become a vision of myself being stampeded by a flock of pajama wearing shoppers as they run towards whatever is on sale.

So, I go to the little old timey grocery store. It costs a little more, but the shoppers all seem to wear actual pants.

And yesterday I went wearing the flat cap.

A style of hat I very rarely see out in the wild.

But what do I see yesterday?

Two other guys, also wearing flat caps, and a third in a Newsboy. (A Newsboy is a flat cap but constructed differently, and with more floppiness. See, ya just learned something!)

And all this brings us, finally, to the moral of the story.

(I bet you thought that this rambling nonsense was going to go on forever!)

When we make the switch from little boy hats to actual adult hats, we think that we are going to be the only one in the world doing so. We get self conscious as all get out. We worry about being out of fashion. We wonder if we can actually pull it off.

We have all of these doubts, because we never see men wearing real hats.

But that is just because we don’t see them. We are no more likely to actually see the hats that other men are wearing than we are to see the shoes on their feet. Our brains just pass right over what our eyes register because it isn’t important to us.

When we actually pop that odd to us hat on our head and go to town, like I did yesterday, suddenly we notice. I noticed three other guys in one small grocery store who had done the exact same thing.

So wear a hat with confidence! They look good, they keep the rain off your head, and they’ll keep the doctor from having to cut things off your head. What could be better?

Tomorrow I’ll probably get back to writing about more important things than hats. Heck, I’d intended to write about ballot access today, and of course at some point I’ll want to write about Israel and Iran, but, alas, hats are what came out of me today, so you got an odd little post. I hope you had some fun reading it.

Her story is compelling. She is thought to be a witness to facts at issue in a civil lawsuit, and a federal judge has held her in Contempt for refusing to reveal the sources that contributed to her investigative reporting about the matter.

She is facing fines of $800.00 per day, for protecting her confidential sources.

Ms. Herridge made it clear in her testimony the impact an eroding away of reporter’s ability to protect their sources would have on the media, and by extension on our ability to make informed electoral decisions.

“Forcing a reporter to disclose confidential sources would have a crippling effect on investigative journalism, because without reliable assurances of confidentiality, sources will not come forward. The First Amendment provides protections for the press because an informed electorate is at the foundation of our democracy.”

Laws similar to the proposed PRESS Act exist in States, including my own, and it does appear as if the PRESS Act will eventually pass into law, extending those protections federally.

It seems as if all will eventually be well for Ms. Herridge and others who might one day be similarly situated.

But the media of my middle age is nothing at all like the media of my young adulthood.

The Joe Rogan Experience podcast has 16.4 million subscribers.

Fox News, the most watched cable news network averages 1.2 million viewers per day.

The Free Press has gathered 520,000 subscribers in a few short years.

The Washington Post has lost 500,000 subscribers in a few short years.

Heather Cox Richardson’s ‘Letters from an American’ has 1.2 million subscribers.

The New Yorker has roughly the same, with its 1.2 million subscribers.

Why am I recounting these random facts?

To show that the way we consume news, and who gathers news, has changed dramatically over time.

The Joe Rogan Experience, The Free Press, and Letters from an American didn’t exist just a few years ago. And all three of them were started by an individual or two, not a corporation or investor.

Heck, even I have thousands of readers here on Substack, and I’m just the proverbial crazy guy in his basement. - Ok, so this isn’t quite true, Mrs. Bailey does unlock the door and let me come upstairs once in a while. -

So yes. It is vitally important that we protect press freedoms. We need to protect Ms. Herridge and her former employers CBS, FOX, and ABC. We need to protect the massive New York Times, and the tiny Marion County Record. We need to protect all those who write for them.

But it is just as vital that we extend protections to the bloggers, podcasters, newsletter writers, YouTubers, and everyone else that makes up the new media ecosystem. An ecosystem increasingly composed of individual creators, working without the support systems and resources offered by legacy media outlets.

Only by protecting these new forms of media and those reporting through them are we able to meaningfully defend a free press so vital to our Republic.

The easiest explanation of Dobbs is that it returned to the States the ability to regulate any aspects of abortion that are not covered by federal law. Rightly or wrongly decided, Dobbs is in keeping with the nation’s tradition of federalism.

That decision appeared to be a victory for Republicans, who have sought restrictions and outright bans on abortion ever since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Pro Life Republicans got exactly what they had sought.

It was anything but a victory.

It was a loss for the Republican Party because it put the Party in opposition to the views of the vast majority of Americans, on an issue of extreme importance to a very large and motivated block of voters.

Indeed just this week the Arizona Supreme Court found abortion in all cases except to save the life of the mother to be illegal in that State.

Republicans will lose far more races than they win whenever it seems as if an abortion ban is possible. The Party can’t win on the issue, because it is contrary to the deeply held views of a huge majority. Unless something happens to change it, Republicans are facing perpetual minorities all across our country. We’ve already seen the massive impact Dobbs has had on elections and this impact will not lessen unless Republicans broadly embrace change.

Now that abortion is an issue for the States, State Legislators need to drive that change.

In those States where Republicans hold a majority they must find and enact an abortion policy that can be supported by an overwhelming majority of voters, and they must not stoke fears that they will continually chip away at legal abortion in such a way that would eventually lead to a ban. Pushing for a ban or restrictions not supported by most voters will put Republican majorities in jeopardy, no matter how red the State may be.

In those States where Republicans do not hold a majority, individual Republican Legislators need to refrain from introducing bills dealing with abortion that have no chance of passage, and are introduced simply to make pro-life constituents happy. Message bills like that may satisfy a Legislator’s base of voters, but they drive the majority of voters who feel differently to the polls. And this happens not only within the individual Legislative District, but has an effect across the State, and up and down the ballot.

Long ago Oscar Wilde said “When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”

Unless Republican State Legislators change in a meaningful way, Dobbs will prove to be their punishment.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe.

You know what that means, don’t ya?

That’s right! It means that NASA is using the opportunity to shoot rockets at three different moons. The United States Government is launching balloons filled with poison during the resulting minutes of darkness. CERN over in Europe is opening a black hole. And the Freemasons, around the world, are performing weird sex rituals.

Why is all of this going on? Why is the US poisoning its citizens, NASA shooting moons, the Europeans opening a black hole, and the Freemasons having orgies in their Lodge rooms?

Well, to bring about world domination of course!

The New World Order!

The ‘elites’ are taking the opportunity provided by this eclipse to finally take over the world, finally and forever subjugating the mass of humanity.

But don’t worry, the process will go OK, the National Guard has been deployed. You’ll get an easy choice, submit to your new rulers, or die!

Now the good news is, I just happen to be a Grand Master of Masons. And I have a friend who works for CERN, and I know two guys who help design rockets!

So, I figure that undoubtedly makes me one of the new ruling ‘elites.’

I’ll send you your marching orders in the morning. I’d do it now, but I’m far too busy with my Masonic sex rituals at the moment.

Now the good news is that since you are reading this, you know that what I’ve written above is complete nonsense.

The bad news is that the conspiracy theory I wrote about above is actually believed to be true by people throughout our country. People so disconnected from reality that they fall for this nonsense, peddled by crooks, con-men, and lunatics. Just one video outlining the above ‘conspiracy’ has apparently been viewed over a million times.

And that’s scary. It’s scary because we can’t have a rational society if it is filled with irrational people.

It’s also scary because it is a very short leap for someone to believe that the Mason (or NASA employee, or whomever) that lives next door is part of an evil conspiracy and should be killed in order to protect society.

I do not argue that the Government, any Government (or any communications platform for that matter) should suppress or censor nonsense like this.

But I do argue that we, as rational people, should challenge lies when we encounter them. Fight irrationality with rationality. Counter bad speech with good speech. Only in those ways can we drown lies with truth.

A few references:

https://www.infowars.com/posts/major-events-surrounding-the-april-8th-solar-eclipse/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/04/05/debunking-false-claims-2024-solar-eclipse/73208812007/

If you enjoyed this little post, will you consider sharing it?

Wanting to contain nuclear proliferation, the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom all promised to respect Ukrainian sovereignty, and provided “assurances” of assistance if Ukraine were attacked. China and France provided Ukraine with similar promises.

In exchange for these promises Ukraine transferred the nuclear weapons on its soil to Russia.

These promises did not include a guarantee that the United States or any other signatory would go to war in order to defend Ukrainian sovereignty.

This is the obligation of the United States to Ukraine, and the primary reason our nation has been funding its defense from Russian invasion.

Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression has been impressive. From the first mobilization, brave Ukrainian fighters have stood up for their country, and fought the powerful Russian military to a standstill.

But, that’s the problem Ukraine faces now. The war is at a standstill. Russia isn’t winning, but neither is Ukraine, and Ukraine’s soldiers are dying.

Given that the population of Ukraine was 38 million in 2022, and Russia’s stood at 144.2 million in that same year, Ukraine will run out of lives to sacrifice long before Russia does.

Indeed Ukraine has recently changed laws to expand the draft to those not previously eligible, and is considering further changes which would allow even more men to be drafted into its military forces.

Ultimately, Ukraine is stuck in an unwinnable war, fought in trenches and ruined cities. Sacrificing its population in a doomed cause. All while being cheered on by western leaders.

Given that the United States has funded a great deal of Ukraine’s efforts in the war, and has continually urged Ukraine to keep up the fight it is reasonable to wonder what the objective of the United States is.

I fear that as with failed American adventures in the past, we don’t have a clear objective, and no picture of what ‘winning’ would look like.

Surely our objective can’t be to keep funding Ukraine until its people are bled completely dry, but it certainly looks as if it is.

Weakening Putin’s Russia may be a wonderful fantasy, but it is hard to see how it can be moral to sacrifice an entire people to do so.

The time for peace has come.

A regular occurrence when I was young were short little overnight or two night trips in and around Washington and British Columbia, with my parents and often grandparents. I remember very well weekends in Vancouver and Victoria, at Winthrop and Twisp, La Push, and Newport in Oregon.

Given my own memories, I’ve tried to take my granddaughter on similar short trips at every opportunity. This week she was on Spring Break from school, so we spent the last couple of days on Greys Harbor and Ocean Shores. A lot of little things went wrong on this trip for some reason, but she’s a trooper and declared it a most wonderful time anyway.

As part of this trip, we had dinner one night in a fancy restaurant in Aberdeen. It was necessary, because earlier that day we’d followed the granddaughter’s preferences, and that was the local hot dog restaurant. I figured that Mrs. Bailey would murder me if I didn’t take her someplace that offered a fine glass of wine!

So, we’re at this very highly rated restaurant, and I’ve got to admit that the food was quite superb.

But the bill came with a surcharge added.

Paraphrasing the explanation of the charge, it was some nonsense about tacking on a percentage so that the restaurant’s employees could be properly compensated for their labor.

How screwed up is our society that we look at wages as if they are some sort of donation to the employee?

I see this a lot in the higher end of the restaurant business, where employers refuse to pay an adequate wage, so try schemes like this to keep employees.

The last time I noticed a surcharge like this it was at a fine dining restaurant that has been wildly successful for many decades up in the Seattle/Tacoma area. It was just as disappointing to see then.

I don’t object to things like this because I don’t want to properly tip the folks who take care of diners in restaurants. Indeed I’ve always prided myself on tipping quite generously, more generously I believe than most.

I object because it is ridiculous that employers feel so poorly about their employees that they refuse to pay them a meaningful wage. It’s shameful.

In all the years I worked for the Legislature, we would hear, often, from groups representing restaurant owners that those owners should be exempted from minimum wage requirements, because their employees received tips.

It can certainly be argued that minimum wage laws do more harm than good, and that most of that harm is borne by those the laws are seeking to help. But, that’s not the point. The fact is that minimum wage laws do exist, and for one category of business owner to try and get itself exempted from what every other business owner has to comply with is absurd.

As a society we should have an expectation that if one person wants to employ another person, they should compensate them reasonably. Not look for tricks to try and keep them barely squeaking by.

It’s most telling I think that one generally encounters these surcharges in the fanciest and most expensive of restaurants. Not in the countless establishments unknown outside of their own neighborhoods.

That points to greed.

And greed leads to a very serious problem facing our society today.

How is it that some of the wealthiest people in the entire world live in and around Seattle, right alongside people making the sidewalk their home?

This inequality, if not addressed, will eventually explode.

No society can long remain stable if the rich continually grow richer, the poor continually grow poorer, and the middle class is squeezed harder and harder with each passing year.

Since then the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has said in response:

"We’ve been hearing out there, a lot of misinformation done on purpose"

That’s a problem. It’s a problem because it is a lie. It’s an even bigger problem because the words ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ have been used to tag speech that people and institutions with power are seeking to have suppressed, hidden from the public. And far too often, private companies have gone along with those desires.

The truth is, as pointed out in my post on Easter, that many of the concerns posted about the President’s actions lacked context. They failed to explain that the Transgender Day of Visibility has always fallen on March 31, but that the date of Easter varies from year to year.

So, context was lacking. But, it was not ‘misinformation’ as the White House claimed.

President Biden signed a proclamation stating that:

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility.”

For the White House to claim that those asserting that the President proclaimed March 31 as Transgender Day of Visibility are spreading ‘misinformation’ is absurd. It is nothing but a message to the media that the White House would prefer that they stop reporting on the story.

This is a threat to Free Speech. In fact, all discussion about ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ by government and governmental officials is a threat to Free Speech. It is not the proper role of government to decide what is true or not true, what people should or shouldn’t say or read.

But the press also needs to stop stoking up false fires that do nothing but serve to anger people and grow divisions within our society.

In the runup to Easter, the Daily Caller published a story claiming that the Biden White House had banned children from submitting Easter Eggs with religious themes from an egg decorating contest. That story was picked up quite widely, I stumbled across it in a number of outlets.

The Daily Caller later retracted the story because that policy has been in place for decades, through both Democratic and Republican administrations. But how many fewer people read the retraction than the initial story? How much less publicity did it receive?

In September of last year, a Gallup poll showed that 29% of adults in the United States have “not very much trust” that mass media reports the news fully, fairly, and accurately. 39% indicate that they have “none at all.”

Mass media, newspapers, network and cable news, and the rest have an obligation to society to report the news honestly. The fact that 68% of the adults in this country think that they do not do so is a very serious problem.

It is a problem that impacts the Freedom of Speech, because if people don’t believe that the news is honest, they will have no compelling reason to defend the rights of our Fourth Estate.

Another attack on the rights of intellectual freedom are phoney and false ‘fact checks’ published by media organizations and spread far and wide.

Yesterday saw an example of this with a Fact Check from CNN, stating that “Trump falsely claims, again, that he had to post bond to appeal civil fraud decision”

But President Trump’s claim isn’t false at all. Only by taking his claim completely out of context can one torture logic enough to somehow come up with this fraudulent fact check.

Yes, it is technically true that President Trump could have appealed the decision of the court without posting bond, but had he done so his assets would have been seized and sold in order to satisfy the judgement. The only way available for him to appeal the ruling, without suffering massive punishment was to post the bond. Post a bond and appeal to a higher court, or lose what it has taken a lifetime to build. Hardly a choice.

Nonsense like this phony fact check further erode trust in media.

But more importantly they are an attack on Freedom of Speech. By claiming that truthful speech is false, the reach of truthful speech is suppressed.

Thanks for reading Cameron M. Bailey! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Book bans are very rare in the United States, but they do happen. I remember as a very young adult when Iran threatened attacks on sellers of the book The Satanic Verses and put a price on the author’s head. I ran out and bought a copy of the book, believing it important to show support for those opposing censorship. The next banned book that I remember purchasing was Sex by Madonna. For the same reason.

Today’s culture wars have brought book bans back to popular mind. We hear a lot about conservative people trying to have books that tackle themes around sex and gender banned from schools and libraries.

But it’s not just conservative people. It’s liberal people as well. The book Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier is just one example.

If we hope to protect everything that this country stands for, we can’t work to ban books that we disagree with. We can’t on the one hand defend books that explore issues of gender from a liberal point of view, while trying to ban books that explore those same issues from a conservative point of view. We are either for Freedom of Speech, and the freedom to read, or we aren’t.

But we do well to remember that over the long march of history, those that ban and burn books have never turned out to be the good guys.

Sticking with Irreversible Damage, in 2021 the American Booksellers Association sent out copies of the book to bookstores as part of a regular promotional program.

This is an association that claims to be a staunch defender of Free Speech, the right to read, and it works hard to promote Banned Books Week each year.

But it too is a gleeful soldier in the cause of censorship.

After sending out promotional copies of Irreversible Damage to bookstores it apologized, and the apology contained the claims:

“An anti-trans book was included in our July mailing to members. This is a serious, violent incident that goes against ABA’s policies, values, and everything we believe and support. It is inexcusable.”

Books are not violence.

Giving someone a book is not violence.

Mrs. Bailey, bashing me upside the head with a thick hardback is undoubtedly violence.

But sending a book, to a bookseller, for their consideration is in no way violence.

The American Booksellers Association is disingenuous in its claims to advocate for banned books, and its apology is an absurd lie.

But of course, there is a reason to this madness.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is strong. But, if enough people can somehow be convinced that books and words are violence, the censors know that they just might develop a crack that can be exploited whereby the rights guaranteed by that Amendment can be chipped away.

Thank you for reading Cameron M. Bailey. This post is public so feel free to share it.

These are just a few examples of ways in which the freedom of speech is under assault. If we hope for our children and grandchildren to grow up with all of the freedoms and joys we experienced, we must stand against these continual attacks on free thought.

In a nutshell, it criminalizes certain speech. Including speech that is “insulting.”

The fact that new restrictions on the expression of opinions and ideas are being put into place, by a western government is not surprising. Free Speech is viewed by many in the western world as an antiquity, best left behind by modern society. In Europe and elsewhere we have seen new legal restrictions on speech over recent years, and here in the United States our own government has been pushing platforms to remove content that doesn’t fit with the government’s own preferred narrative of events.

Ultimately though, all such restrictions on the expression of ideas are evil. A quick look at history clearly shows that all regimes that have cracked down on speech have been evil regimes. History might not exactly repeat itself, but it certainly echoes.

Here in the United States, there has been a great deal of pushback on efforts by the government to appear to collude with, or threaten, social media companies to remove disfavored speech. And of course, governments in this country have not passed laws restricting Free Speech as we collectively understand it.

We are, in this country, largely exempt from tyrannical efforts such as that seen today in Scotland, because of our perception of whence our fundamental human rights are derived.

We, as Americans hold that our core human rights are granted to us by God.

Our human rights are not things granted by a King or a Parliament on a whim, subject to revocation on yet another whim. Rather they are inalienable, a gift from God to man that none on this earth have a right to infringe.

Our founding document makes that clear:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”

Unfortunately, for billions around the world, this philosophy is not enshrined in law. Here, it is. We are lucky, by the accident of our births, to live in a land that holds human rights as sacred.

But, if we hope for our children and grandchildren to live in freedom, with the same rights as we have enjoyed, we must resist calls for censorship. These calls come from people on both the right and the left. They are always misguided.

Only through the defense of speech that we personally find abhorrent can we protect our own right to Free Speech.

This Easter holiday provides us with a good example of that.

Today is Easter. To millions of people in the United States, and around the world, today is the holiest day of the year. A sacred day.

The President also issued a proclamation declaring today as the 2024 Transgender Day of Visibility.

People opposed to the President’s action took to social media and other forums to denounce them and him. Just as one example among a great many, a Republican member of Congress posted “There is no length Biden and the Democrats won’t go to to mock your faith, and to thumb his nose at God.”

Likewise, people in favor of his action, quickly jumped in to demonize the denouncers. A Democratic strategist posted that those who expressed concerns about the proclamation were “part of an ongoing effort to bully, harass, demean, and demagogue trans Americans for simply trying to live their lives.”

Both sides seized the opportunity to create division.

But neither side posted the whole story.

The whole story is that the specific date of Easter changes from year to year, it is not a fixed date. But the Transgender Day of Visibility always lands on this date, March 31, and has since it was first created in 2010.

The Transgender Day of Visibility was not specifically set for Easter Sunday. The days met simply because the date of Easter changes from year to year.

It would have been wise for the President and other advocates of the Transgender Day of Visibility to move the date. Doing so would have prevented an easily forecasted backlash, and would have been a net positive for effective advocacy.

But the fact that they did not does not mean that they acted in bad faith. They made a poor decision. There is a vast difference between these two things and while it is perfectly reasonable to point out a bad decision, it is not reasonable to automatically ascribe bad motives to those who made it.

Likewise, when people communicated about their dismay at this sharing of dates, that does not mean that they were coming from a place of bad faith. Instead of attacking their motives, minds could be changed by the offering of a true, honest, and measured explanation about how and why both are taking place on March 31st this year.

When thinking about politics, it is important for us to remember that votes are garnered and money is raised when a politician or group is able to spark outrage. It works better than anything else. Politicians, and all those special interest groups out there want us to be angry. It’s how they get us to support them, it is how they raise money.

We can beat the system by just jumping off the outrage bandwagon. By seeing that good people can disagree. By recognizing that a whole lot of things aren’t evil, they are just stupid.

Ten years later, in 2021, U.S. House Democrats brought earmarks back, and they have been funding local priorities ever since.

The media likes to demonize earmarks, widely declaring spending done via earmark to be wasteful pork.

But, that just isn’t true.

Just what is an earmark?

It is a provision in legislation that directs spending for a given project or program at the behest of a member or members of Congress. Thereby bypassing the regular administrative award process.

Contrary to what many in the media would have us believe, this is a good thing. And it’s a good thing for a couple of reasons.

First of all, we must consider who we think could better direct federal spending in the community in which we live. Some bureaucrat in Washington D.C., who has likely never even visited our little slice of the country, or our member of Congress who lives in and is elected from our own area?

If we disagree with the spending priorities of the bureaucracy, we are essentially powerless for it exists in its own bubble, forever. But, if we disagree with the things our member of Congress funds, we have an opportunity to replace that member with someone who better reflects our priorities.

Secondly we must remember that our nation is stable, because our government functions through division of power. Our Constitution makes it clear that spending decisions are the responsibility of Congress alone. Not the Executive Branch.

Congress passes legislation that creates processes and procedures for the receipt of funding. But those processes and procedures are broadly implemented by the Executive Branch, which as a result has a very strong hand in selecting winners and losers.

The problem with this is that it can become extremely time consuming and cost prohibitive for small local efforts to ever receive funding. Grant writers and lobbyists may well be the cost of admission.

But through the earmarking process, the small local effort has a chance to bypass all of that expense and expertise. If that local effort can convince its member of Congress that it is worthy of funding, it has a chance of receiving that funding. It is a way of leveling the playing field for organizations and efforts that may never have a chance otherwise.

Is there a chance that earmarks can be abused? Sure. Are they occasionally abused? I have no doubt. But they are the best possible opportunity for something small, but really important for a local community to ever receive federal funding. And they are in keeping with the Constitutional mandate that the Legislative Branch control federal spending.

I did what I had been taught by my family that Americans do. I decided to try and make the changes that I felt needed to be made. I did that by driving to the County Courthouse and filing for election to the City Council.

Eventually I ended up being Mayor of that city.

My race for office had an impact, and I was able to have an impact. I hope, as all do, that I left my city better than I had found it.

That is the American way. That is how our government is supposed to function. A citizen sees something that he or she disagrees with and decides to get involved. Puts effort into making things better. If enough other people agree, change comes.

But it seems that now, a class of people in our country no longer believe that is how it should be. They apparently believe that only their people, only those vetted and selected by them, should have an opportunity to run for elective office.

We’ve seen this in efforts to have Donald Trump removed from ballots in various states.

Much more tellingly, we are seeing it in organized efforts to stymie Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s efforts to get on the ballot.

ABC News reports that on Tuesday of this week the Democratic National Committee held a press call at which a State Senator from a battleground State said the Kennedy ticket is “disgusting and an abuse of our democracy.”

Surely we must all recognize that our Republic can not function, or even exist, if people who have a vision for our nation don’t articulate that vision, and work to persuade others to support that vision. The United States can’t function without this interplay of ideas, and political campaigns are the primary way those ideas are brought forth to the public at large.

So how is it “disgusting” that a man who has a different vision for America is working to persuade Americans to adopt that vision.

Indeed, rather than being “disgusting” Mr. Kennedy, along with everyone who seeks elective office is answering the great call that our Republic makes to its citizenry.

We can disagree with Mr. Kennedy’s ideas. We can even dislike him as a person. Indeed we can work towards his defeat. All of these choices are ours to make, and if we feel it right to make them, that is an honorable thing. But it is absurd to portray a man doing his civic duty as somehow “disgusting” for doing so.

Declaring Mr. Kennedy’s campaign an “abuse of our democracy” is equally absurd.

The very nature of our form of government requires that all sorts of people, from all kinds of backgrounds, holding diverse ideas, seek election to our governmental offices. From the highest to the lowest in the land.

That a State Senator, that any State Senator, believes that running in an election is an “abuse of our democracy” is patently absurd.

But, I suppose that there are plenty of not smart folks holding elective office in this big country of ours. Certainly no intelligence test is required for ballot access.

It’s worse than that though. It’s worse than that because we have one of the two largest political parties in this country, the political party that currently holds the White House promoting this nonsense. Surely they know better. But they choose to promote a false and corrosive narrative for reasons of political expediency.

That is what is so dangerous for our democracy.

The way to defeat Mr. Kennedy is not through slander or keeping him off the ballot. The way to defeat him is with better ideas and a better candidate. That is how things are supposed to work in the United States. Anything less is an attack on our democracy by those claiming to defend it.

This post is not a call to vote for Mr. Kennedy, or for President Trump, or President Biden. I have my thoughts about that, as I’m sure you do as well.

Rather it is an attempt to point out that we have a major political party in this country that has spent the previous years trying to claim the mantle of defenders of our democracy, while at the same time, seemingly doing all it can to undermine that democracy.

If we hope to defend our Republic, we must not accept arguments made by the dishonest and disingenuous that undemocratic actions somehow preserve democracy.