Quote of the week

“To be free is better than to be unfree—always. Any politician who suggests the opposite should be treated as suspect.” – Margaret Thatcher

Buddy’s Soap Box

A patriotic Texas howdy from Buddy

Wow, the Biden dismantling of America continues to accelerate. But he does have his priorities, such as designing a maternity uniform for our pregnant war fighters (who we once called soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen). Can’t go to war with China in anything looking frumpy, can we?  What I want to see is a space force maternity space suit for pregnant astronauts.

Not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of woke-driven stupid stuff is hatching, and God bless ‘em, the people are noticing. Biden’s and CNN’s ratings are in steep decline.  And why not? Three of the earliest and worst Biden ideas being: 1) the big Democrat voter drive at the border; 2) the “infrastructure” multi-trillion-dollar Vote Democrat giveaway; and 3), the 800-page how to steal the vote in perpetuity bill, all wonders from Biden and his womxn. No wonder Biden defenders are getting harder to find than 10.0 Action Comics #1s.

We can’t just grouse about what Biden and his woke crowd are doing to make America less great again. We need to act. Fortunately, the opportunities for action are many and, very often, it takes only moments of your time to ACT!  Here’s a great way to join thousands—and eventually millions—of others who are letting their government representatives know their thoughts on pending legislation.  Heritage Action for America from the Heritage Foundation makes doing so super EASY! They do the research. They inform you. Then in almost the blink of an eye, you contact your federal or state representatives regarding pending legislation expressing your support or opposition.

Heritage Action for America, more commonly known simply as Heritage Action, is a conservative policy advocacy organization founded in 2010. Heritage Action, which has affiliates throughout the United States, is a sister organization of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. Heritage Action has been called a “powerhouse in a new generation of conservative groups” and “perhaps now the most influential lobby group among Congressional Republicans.”

If you aren’t a wokey doke or cancel kook, and you find sense and logic in what we report here, in this free-for-all free speech zone, then maybe you are more conservative than you thought.  Speak up, speak out, if not here, then elsewhere, be a part of saving this great nation!

Other Items in the News

Pennsylvania Forced to Remove 21,000 Dead People from Its Voter Rolls. The state of Pennsylvania reluctantly removed more than 20,000 deceased voters from the voter rolls after a Public Interest Legal Foundation lawsuit. Countless Democrat voters are now rolling over in their graves, especially those who became more active voters after death.

A recent internet headline caught the Soap Box’s eye: “Biden Administration Announces Plans to Curb ‘Ghost Guns,’ Push ‘Red Flag’ Legislation”  Is Casper the Friendly Ghost now packing? And is Biden’s Red Flag law intended to prevent the premature display of the commie flag, at least until Democrat Party wokies replace the old Stars and Stripes with their own banner?

Arizona Governor Signs Bill to Defy Any New Federal Gun Control Laws.  Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation on April 6 that would prohibit police and sheriffs in the state from enforcing new federal gun laws that may violate the Constitution’s Second Amendment. Texas and other states where the Constitution still matters are following suit.

Democrats alienating Hispanics. In an interview with New York Magazine that describes how Democrats “came up short” in the 2020 election, David Shor notes that the problem is how far left “white liberals” have gone and how their extremism is alienating Hispanics. For full details, see full guest column below.  “This is true of many black, as well,” says the Soap Box.

So proud to be a red state Texan!  The Texas Senate has passed a budget that’s below the Conservative Texas Budget guidelines set out by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “This budget demonstrates tremendous respect to taxpayers, as well as everything the state economy and families have gone through the last year,” says TPPF’s Vance Ginn. “The budget protects last session’s hard-fought property tax relief, doesn’t include any backdoor tax increases, grows less than the fiscally responsible formula of population growth plus inflation, all while leaving the Rainy Day Fund untouched.” Yahoo!” says the Soap Box!

In a recent poll, Texans overwhelmingly rejected the idea of Texans being required to have a “vaccine passport” for their daily lives: 98.3 percent of readers said NO, leaving just 1.7 percent taking the opposite position.  Yahoo!” says the Soap Box!

If meaningful election integrity reforms fail to be enacted into law, it will be because the Republican majority in the Texas House and Senate capitulated – not because Democrats stopped it. This statement is equally true for any state where Republicans represent the majority. Unfortunately, some Republicans no more favor election integrity than do Democrats.  So watch out for the woke rascals in your state government, be they Democrat or Republican.

BLM Co-Founder Buys $1.4 Million Home in Virtually All-White Area (2% white).  On Wednesday, dirt.com reported, “A secluded mini-compound tucked into L.A.’s rustic and semi-remote Topanga Canyon was recently sold for a tad more than $1.4 million to a corporate entity that public records show is controlled by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, 37-year-old social justice visionary and co-founder of the galvanizing and, for some, controversial Black Lives Matter movement.” 

So, at least we know where some of the millions forked over to BLM ended up!  — Soap Box

Representative Matt Gaetz appears by all accounts to be something of a cad and a bounder when it comes to women. If the allegations are true, we are glad he is not our representative in Congress, and the nation will be better off when he is no one’s representative. A guy that flashes around nude photos of his conquests on the floor of Congress and dates (and possibly sleeps with) a minor, a 17-year-old girl, lacks the judgement and discretion citizens expect of their representatives. 

The Atlantic recently ran an article on Rep. Matt Gaetz wherein his alleged failing are enumerated and condemned.  The article included the following line: “Congress has traditionally handled cases such as this by shaming disgraced members into quitting, but Gaetz has learned the lessons of his mentor Donald Trump: Have no shame, and wear your disgrace as a badge of honor earned in partisan warfare.”

Here we have a further example of what passes for journalism today. In the Atlantic we have a have publication so agenda driven that they can’t be trusted to be honest. President Donald Trump remains the bogyman under every woke progressives’ unkept bed. One gets the feeling that Rep. Gaetz, in the end, exists only as a convenient opportunity to yet again—ad nauseum—dump on Trump. And speaking of ad nauseum, CNN’s Gaetz hit-piece likewise attributed this bad boy’s behavior to Donald Trump.

Highly Recommended

The following are excellent resources for those of us (way more than 75 million strong) who want full and honest news reporting. We’ll be adding to this list as we go along. Those who prefer filtered news—only the news deemed safe for them to know—can stay with the legacy media, such as it is.

Here’s a great way to join thousands—and eventually millions—of others who are letting their government representatives know their thoughts on pending legislation.  Heritage Action for America from the Heritage Foundation makes doing so super EASY! They do the research. They inform you. Then in almost the blink of an eye, you contact your federal or state representatives regarding pending legislation expressing your support or opposition.

Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) AARP is a shill for big government, AMAC isn’t.

Fox News and One America News (OAN) Cable channel

The Epoch Times print newspaper and web site/email updates

Dennis Prager  This man will help you find the mainstream conservative hiding inside you.

President Donald Trump’s Great America PAC is now up and running.  Give to this PAC or to individual candidates you know to be truly conservative. Money given to the Republican Party is money down a RINO hole.

https://texasscorecard.com/state/legislative-priorities-tracker/

And where is the brain washing going on? Visit almost any college or university in the country and you’ll have your answer.  And having metastasized there, it is now infiltrating many public schools as part of the woke hate-America agenda.

Columns worth reading

Each week under this heading, I’ll include columns or intros to columns you can read in full elsewhere on the internet. Each of these columns pretty much express my views, else I’d not be sharing them with you.

Media Gets It Wrong: Biden’s Culture War is Causing Hispanic Families to Flee the Democrat Party

Posted Tuesday, April 6, 2021, by AMAC Newsline

Even top Democrat political experts are starting to push back on the false media narrative that the Biden administration is just a boring return to normal. Andrew Sullivan, a popular Democrat pundit, is lambasting Biden and the Democrats for going on a “woke rampage.”

Sullivan, a former editor of the liberal New Republic, called out Mr. Biden for pursuing an agenda that “alienates and inflames his moderate supporters and snubs practices that most Americans take as common sense.” He expanded:

“I want Biden to succeed. I want Republicans to moderate. I want to lower the temperature. I want to emphasize those policies that really do bring us closer together, even though many may still freely dissent. Biden says he wants to as well. But none of that can or will happen if the president fuels the culture war this aggressively, this crudely, and this soon.”

Meanwhile, as noted in an April 1 article, top Democrat data scientist David Shor fears that the Biden White House’s culture war will result in millions of Hispanic Americans fleeing the party of critical race theory, wokeness, and socialism. In an interview with New York Magazine that even former President Barack Obama lauded concerning how Democrats “came up short” in the 2020 election, David Shor notes that the problem is how far left “white liberals” have gone and how their extremism is alienating Hispanics:

“[W]e’ve ended up in a situation where white liberals are more left wing than Black and Hispanic Democrats on pretty much every issue: taxes, health care, policing, and even on racial issues or various measures of ‘racial resentment.’ So as white liberals increasingly define the party’s image and messaging, that’s going to turn off nonwhite conservative Democrats and push them against us.”

While Sullivan is offering his honest assessment of the opening days of the Biden presidency and Shor is candidly frightened for the future of the Democrat Party, leftist corporate media organizations have been trying to cover for Mr. Biden, pretending that his administration is not even participating in the culture war. The Washington Post recently published an opinion piece arguing that “Joe Biden is kryptonite to the culture war.” The title of one New York Times op-ed reads: “Biden wants no part of the culture war the G.O.P. loves.” Politico reports that “White House advisers and Biden aides insist they’re unbothered by the culture-wars-du-jour…They respond with a snore.”

A “snore”? Since day one, the Biden White House has embarked on a radical crusade to “transform” America.

In less than three months, the Biden administration has directed American taxpayer dollars to fund foreign abortions, weakened religious freedom protections for churches and businesses, undermined faith-based adoption, and moved to abolish girls’ sports, while also requiring doctors to perform unalterable gender-transition surgeries on children. Biden has reimposed divisive critical race theory training on federal employees. Biden recently started laying the groundwork for an oppressive new regulation to restrict the development of single-family homes, a clear attack on suburban America. He has ushered in open border policies which have resulted in a crisis on the southern border. He has spearheaded defective legislation that will make it more dangerous for police officers to keep Americans safe. In addition, Biden has engaged in a bizarre attack on the American founding by abolishing the President’s 1776 Commission, a council of esteemed historians, scholars, and leaders tasked with promoting unity by restoring appreciation for the principles of the Declaration of Independence

The media may be downplaying the significance of these actions in an effort to minimize their political impact. But there is no denying the fact that Americans are noticing Democrats’ cultural radicalism–and it is turning off Hispanics in particular in remarkable numbers.

In 2020, President Trump received more votes than he did in 2016 in 78 of the nation’s 100 majority-Hispanic counties. In Texas, President Trump increased his overall vote count in areas where Hispanics comprise at least 80% of the population by 10 points, winning 5 Hispanic heavy counties after losing all 18 of them in 2016. Along the border, President Trump won 52% of the vote in deep blue Zapata County, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate since Reconstruction to carry the county. He also improved upon his 2016 vote count in Rio Grande Valley counties overall by 12 points, increasing his vote totals in 96% Hispanic Starr County by 55 points, in Hidalgo County by 23 points, in Cameron County by 19 points, and in El Paso County by 9 points. In Florida, President Trump did 23 points better than in 2016 in Miami-Dade, the state’s largest county with the largest Hispanic population, accounting for 75% of his net vote gain in the entire state. Overall, President Trump won 55% of Florida’s Cuban-American vote and a full 15% of Cuban-Americans who voted for Clinton in 2016 switched their votes to President Trump in 2020. After receiving the endorsement of the Governor of Puerto Rico, President Trump did 11 points better than in 2016 in Florida’s Osceola County, which has the largest Puerto Rican population in the mainland United States. In Doral, Florida, which has the highest Venezuelan-born population in America, President Trump improved upon his 2016 vote count by 41%, winning the city. Nationally, President Trump did better with Hispanics by 8 points compared to 2016, increasing his vote count in Hispanic precincts all over the nation, including a 126% increase in Paterson county, New Jersey, a 51% increase in Clark, Nevada, a 64% increase in Maricopa, Arizona, and a 38% increase in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Even in socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district in New York, President Trump increased his 2016 vote count by 9 points.

Many hardcore Democrats and their media allies have blamed this on what they call an “alarming amount of misinformation targeted to Latino communities prior to the election,” as one ABC News article put it. After all, how could President Trump, who ran against illegal immigration, make massive inroads with the Hispanic American community?

But more serious-minded political experts like Shor are starting to dismiss that fallacy and understand that the problem the party faces is “more fundamental,” as Shor puts it. Rather, the left-wing culture war being waged by white liberal Democrats is costing them support. Shor notes that:

“[I]f you look at the concrete questions, white liberals are to the left of Hispanic Democrats, but also of Black Democrats, on defunding the police and those ideological questions about the source of racial inequity… Hispanic conservatives don’t actually buy into a lot of these intellectual theories of racism. They often have a very different conception of how to help the Black or Hispanic community than liberals do. And I don’t think we can buy our way out of this trade-off. Most voters are not liberals. If we polarize the electorate on ideology — or if nationally prominent Democrats raise the salience of issues that polarize the electorate on ideology — we’re going to lose a lot of votes.”

The problem for Democrats going forward is that while waging their culture war, they have also done nothing to address the real issues of concern to Hispanic Americans. One recent example is the fact that Democrat cancel culture activists are still calling for a boycott of the largest Hispanic owned food company in America, Goya Foods, after the CEO of the company praised President Trump nearly a year ago.

But there are even deeper disconnects between the ideology of white Democrat elites and Hispanic Americans. For instance, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Hispanics identify as working-class Americans, Democrats speak to them as “LatinX” voters, though 90% of Hispanics dislike the term and only 3% of Hispanics even use it. Millions of Hispanic Americans came to America to get away from the horrors of socialism and communism, but in his campaign Biden linked arms with socialist Bernie Sanders embracing a radical “unity” plan. In office, the Biden administration has already allowed funding to flow to the communist regime in Cuba and is reportedly considering removing some sanctions on the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

Though a majority of Hispanics do not support decriminalizing border crossings, white liberals in the Democrat Party are rallying around the idea. Tens of thousands of Hispanic Americans work high-paying union oil and gas jobs, yet Biden has moved to “transition” America away from oil and embrace the socialist Green New Deal. Large majorities of Hispanics want schools and churches to be reopened, and an end to crippling shutdowns that have laid off tens of thousands of blue-collar Hispanic workers.  Biden has called such re-openings “neanderthal thinking.”

Like all Americans, Hispanic Americans want good schools, safe neighborhoods, and strong families, but white liberal elites are waging open attacks on each of these goals. Over 70% of Hispanics support school choice; nonetheless Biden has vowed to close down charter schools and “oppose any and all voucher and neo-voucher programs such as Education Savings Accounts and Tax-credit Scholarship programs.” Nearly 60% of Hispanics oppose defunding the police, but numerous Democrat run cities have moved to cut millions or even billions of dollars out of law enforcement budgets. More than two thirds of Hispanic voters support voter ID laws, yet Biden and the Democrats are right now attempting to jam through legislation that would weaken voter ID laws across the country, opening the floodgates for fraud. Hispanic Americans are the only ethnicity of which a majority believes abortion should be abolished in most or all cases. But Biden has implemented the most anti-life agenda of any American President as he has threatened to repeal the Hyde amendment and moved quickly to provide taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood and the United Nations Population Fund, which has participated in the funding of coerced abortions and sterilizations around the world.

On virtually every issue, the Democrat Party’s all out declaration of war on American culture, law enforcement, the nuclear family, religious freedom, and the right to life is fundamentally at odds with the preferences and values of millions of Hispanic American families.

Biden and his media defenders ignore this undeniable political reality at their peril.

Missouri GOP Stops Left-Wing Takeover in its Tracks

Posted Wednesday, April 7, 2021   |   By AMAC Newsline

Unnoticed by much of the media, Republicans in Missouri are taking a brave stand against a left-wing takeover of the state–and their courage could show the way for other legislatures to do the same.

After a statewide initiative passed last August backed by deep-pocketed, out-of-state liberal interest groups, Missouri was slated to expand Medicaid to cover working age, able-bodied adults under ObamaCare. It was a massive, permanent expansion of the welfare state destined to result in countless more citizens on the government dole–a tragic but sadly familiar story.

In red state after red state, the progressive left has marched across the map buying Medicaid expansions through ballot initiatives, in which specific policy questions typically decided by the legislature are instead put directly to the voters. More than half of states allow these so-called “citizen initiatives.” But leftist non-profits like the Fairness Project—a front for California state government employee unions—and other progressive operatives have learned how easy it is to hijack these ballot initiatives under the guise of open democracy. They have launched a barrage of new campaigns backed by an onslaught of misinformation.

Typically, these misleadingly worded policies are able to pass with virtually no support of outside major urban areas and college towns. This playbook has worked well for the left–until now.

This month, Missouri lawmakers decided to flip the script. With unexpected heroes on the right and familiar villains on the left, it’s an incredible plot twist in the fight against socialized medicine.

If Missouri is successful, red states may have a path to defeating the Obamacare disaster for good.

Missouri lawmakers were told by everyone, including the Republican governor, that they only had one choice: fund Medicaid expansion.  After all, the expansion ballot initiative had already passed. The lack of a funding mechanism in the initiative made no difference, Republicans were told.

For several months, it looked inevitable. Missouri, which already spends almost 40 percent of its state budget on Medicaid, would be forced to cough up even more. And for what? To expand free coverage to able-bodied adults age 19-64 earning under 138 percent of the federal poverty line, many of whom already receive heavily subsidized coverage. This would be yet another big government disincentive to work.

But lawmakers decided they had another choice: to simply not fund the expansion. They could say no–and that is exactly what they did.

In the state House, Republicans stuck together and rejected Medicaid expansion in a party line vote of 111 to 48.  A report from the Foundation for Government Accountability has explained the legal and political merits of this initial rejection.

At the same time, legislators targeted several areas where Missouri could do better on health care and other priorities with an alternative proposal.  Representative Cody Smith, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has submitted House Bill 21, which prioritizes funding for people with disabilities, schools, and public defenders. The alternative proposal keeps taxes stable and preserves limited state resources for those who actually need and deserve taxpayer help.

The fight now shifts to the Missouri Senate.

Opponents, of course, have accused Republican legislators of ignoring the will of the people. But Republicans are standing firm.

Where did this courage come from?

For one thing, Republican lawmakers believed that the ballot initiative—especially without any funding mechanism included—never really represented the will of the public. And they remain convinced that the public will stand behind them. After all, the state has overwhelming Republican majorities in both houses of the state legislature and voted for President Trump by double digits.

The specifics of the initiative also give them confidence. The August election saw voter turnout hovering around 30%. If you run the numbers, it turns out that roughly 16% of registered Missouri voters voted to expand Medicaid. And if those numbers weren’t bad enough, the geographic distribution is even worse. 107 Missouri counties voted no, while the city of St. Louis and Kansas City along with a half dozen other counties voted yes.

But, even more importantly, legislators heard from many voters who felt misled by the campaign around the initiative. Once Missourians learned that Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare has nothing to do with expanding coverage for seniors, individuals with disabilities, or children, they ask their representatives to oppose expansion. Plain and simple.

If Missouri Republicans pull this off, it might be a turning point in the health care debate. It also might lead to states seriously revisiting their processes for so-called citizen initiatives. More and more lawmakers have expressed concern that these ballot initiatives simply serve as vehicles for out-of-state interest groups on the left to circumvent conservative leadership in legislatures to advance a blue state agenda in red state America.

If this tactic succeeds, it could set a new pattern for how Republicans at the state level can fight back.