Quotes of the week
“If we lose our freedom, it’s not coming back. If you love your freedom, you must be prepared to defend it.” — Louie Gohmert, speaking at the God and Country Patriot Roundup, last Saturday in Dallas.
“When freedom is lost, it is never lost to nice people.” — Buddy Saunders
871,459, the number of “enforcement actions” by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol so far in Fiscal Year 2021 (Oct. 1, 2020, through the end of April). That compares to 646,822 for the entire previous year. Source: U.S. Customers and Border Patrol
NOTE: Any Soap Box material written by Buddy may be copied and forwarded to family and friends. Material from other sources is usually copyrighted but likely can be shared so long as it is not changed or abridged and the publisher is properly credited, including the link to their site.
Buddy’s Soap Box
A patriotic Texas howdy from Buddy
With the aid of my assistant, Doug, I am working to make further improvements to Soap Box. For example, reader comments are now featured on the right side of the page. What you say matters very much. Even what the woke crowd thinks matters—when their words show them for the fools they are AND when they manage cogent thoughts worthy of debate. The woke perspective isn’t appearing among our comments, not because we block their comments. We don’t. Rather, the more likely reason is that the woke crowd simply lacks counter arguments, and prefer instead to express themselves through riots, burning and looting—and pulling down statues.
Now is a good time to also thank all the other news and opinion sites, two Texas-focused, and two national.
Michael Quinn Sullivan’s truly outstanding sites, The Texas Minute and The Texas Scorecard, and Paul Gleiser’s You Tell Me Texas allow us to feature their efforts to provide citizen voters with information the woke media works so hard to suppress. Although we write with a bit of Texas focus flavored with our comic book/popular culture background and customer base, in reality all we write matters every bit as much to everyone, no matter your background or where you live.
On the national level, we encourage our readers to check out OAN (One America News)
and The Epoch Times, both of which cover matters the woke media ignores and even so-called serious news sources ignore, either out of cowardice or as yet undiscovered financial imperatives. Subscribe to the Epoch Times. And if you have access to the OAN cable channel, try watching OAN just one weekend. In that weekend you’ll learn more than you’ll ever learn from the woke media and milquetoast “conservative” news sites, the truth about the stolen election, Hunter’s laptop, hydroxychloroquine, Dr. Fauci’s ties to China and his connection to the Chinese virus that has killed millions. How does Soap Box know all this? By Buddy listening to OAN, especially on the weekend while, as he puts in long hours working from home on Lone Star Comics business, he double-duties by listing to OAN. Buddy learns, knows a lot. So can you.
This week, following a great political cartoon, Soap Box welcomes Paul Gleiser from You Tell Me Texas as our guest writer. Buddy thinks himself a pretty good writer, but his skill and ability pale compared to the crisp clarity Paul brings to his weekly columns. In the column featured this week, Paul makes the point I’ve been making—that we, the working people with families, are the many and the elites the few. In future elections, we will clobber the woke class and roll back their insanity, assuming we have honest elections.
Working America’s shifting allegiance.
by Paul Gleiser · Published May 27, 2021 · Updated May 27, 2021
The word “ubiquitous” is defined as: “…existing or being everywhere at the same time; constantly encountered.” Ubiquitous describes media today. Thanks to Apple and its imitators, we literally hold it in our hands.
Because of our phones, the elites who dominate news and social media have never occupied a higher percentage of our waking attention and they are able – via their ubiquity – to imagine themselves as reflective of the country upon which they report.
But they’re not.
Away from the media enclaves in New York and Washington is a vast and rich continent populated by the muscular labor and skilled practitioners that feed us, protect us, heat and cool our homes, tend our wounds, take out our garbage, fix our machines, patrol our streets, light the darkness and stock the shelves.
Call this giant cohort “Working America.” It’s a population numbering in the scores of millions and, in stark contrast to the coastal media elites who have become ubiquitous via our phones, it consists of men and women who without fanfare produce economic output of tangible value. These are the people who could ill afford to sit out the pandemic by idling at home while the country at large could ill afford that they might.
These are people who bear no resemblance to, and have nothing in common with, the elites of media, entertainment and most of politics – elites who look down upon Working America with disdain and condescension.
It wasn’t always so. For most of the 20th century, Working America believed what they read in the paper and saw on the TV news – all while voting Democratic. The Democratic Party was seen – rightly or wrongly – as the unquestioned champion of the guy who ate his lunch from a pail and had to wipe his hands before he could shake yours.
That guy still believes in America. He still believes that the best way to get ahead in the world and to have a nice life is to be good at what he does and to treat people in his daily life – including his employer – fairly. If he’s a white man married to a white woman, he doesn’t look at the children they have together and see irredeemable racists. Having had to oversee the pandemic-driven Zoom schooling of those children, his eyes are now open to the indoctrination that is posing as education.
He also has figured out that while administrations of both parties come and go, the levers of government remain firmly in the hands of career bureaucrats who are overwhelmingly leftist.
Democrats think they got rid of Donald Trump in 2020 and they may well be right.
But Working America hasn’t gone anywhere. And thanks to Donald Trump, Working America is paying attention in ways it never has.
For this reason, those on the right who fear that the country is about to be lost have reason to take heart. The current ascendency of the elitist Left, with the inevitable excesses that follow, may very well prove in the end to be their undoing.
Other Items in the News
The cable network, One America New (OAN), continues to impress, reporting important stories ignored by the woke media and even Fox News. You’ll learn more honest news in an hour watching OAN than you’ll get in a week watching FOX. Tucker Carlson and other conservative commentators survive at Fox for two reasons only: They draw massive audiences that bring dollars FOX craves. And Tuckers are careful to avoid forbidden subjects such as the stolen presidential election. On a scale of 100, Soap Box gives OAN 100 and Fox just 10. We also give The Epoch Times and the Washington Times each a 100, and pretty much every other newspaper in the country, including the Wall Street Journal, well-deserved 10s.
OAN tends to feature a lot of its in-depth reporting, the kind you’ll get almost nowhere else, on the weekend when ordinary news happenings tend to be slow. Again, you’ll learn plenty the woke media doesn’t want you to know, big stories an HONEST media would report.
Soap Box knows the following wasn’t written as a parable about Biden and Trump, but it can be taken as such, with the reader, based on his POV, taking one to be the Knight and the other the Maggot. But note the armor was stolen, so you know where we stand. And free advertising to the gaming site hollowknight.fandom.com for providing us with yet another bit of serendipity, a chance link between fantasy and reality! Buddy, not being a game player—no time—simply stumbled on the Hollow Knight game site during a word search, but it turns out his assistant, Doug, and others here at Lone Star Comics, play the game.
“A maggot driven mad by a strange force. Inhabits a stolen armored shell.
Weak creatures love to steal the strength of others. Their lives are brief and fearful, and they yearn to have the power to dominate those who have dominated them.
False Knight is one of the main bosses in Hollow Knight. He keeps the City Crest required to open the gates to the City of Tears. Failed Champion is his faster and stronger dream form.
“False Knight is a Maggot wearing the armor of Hegemol, one of the Five Great Knights of Hallownest. This weak creature wanted to find means to protect his siblings who live in an abandoned storeroom in the middle of the Forgotten Crossroads. When he discovered Hegemol sleeping in his armored shell, he took it for himself, hoping for the great strength that wearing the armor seemed to promise. Even though madness did not drive him to do this, False Knight eventually fell to the Infection’s control.
“False Knight falls from the ceiling when the Knight enters the hall below the Maggots’ storeroom, killing any enemies still wandering inside. He then attacks the Knight, deluded by his own strength, while threatening to collapse the building in his rage.
“At the end of the fight, False Knight accidentally collapses the floor and falls below, where the Knight can execute the final blow. Once defeated, the Maggot is expelled from the armor along with the City Crest.”
Hunter Biden’s laptop. What a father is Joe Biden, a father who pimps his drug addict son out to foreign entities on behalf of the Biden family. According to Hunter’s own words, the “Big Guy” demanded 50% of Hunter’s “income,” enough to pay the Biden family bills with money left over for Dr. Jill to shop at Neiman Marcus. And more pitiful by far, the fake media and corrupt federal government that ignores this story—and that includes Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.
China’s investment in the company Biden and Son continues to pay off. Well, now, without explanation, Mr. Biden has cancelled the Department of Justice’s investigation into the origins of the Covid virus.
Why is Biden doing the above? Simple answer. Money. Money from China. Money from Russia. Our elites, better insolated against a pandemic than you or I will ever be, don’t care how many people die worldwide due to the virus China set loose in the world by fumble or intent. What matters is what George W. Bush called the “New World Order,” a place where massive corporations seek world-wide markets at any and all costs. If you want to make money in China, follow the rules, the communist totalitarian rules. Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and now American Airlines and Coca Cola are all falling into line, to say nothing of a president, illegitimate as he is. They all are following the New World rules AND following the money.
Trump wins special election by 94.5 percent. Remember folks, this is Texas, and Texas conservatives, at that. Yesterday’s The Texas Minute One Click Survey imagined a world where the GOP had to pick a previous Republican ticket to take on Biden-Harris in a special election. The match-up was Bush-Cheney and Trump-Pence. You won’t be surprised to learn 94.5 percent of readers chose Mr. Trump. Soap Box’s take on this is that had Trump-Pence been replaced with Trump-DeSantis, the percentage would have jumped to 99. Soap Box will never forget how Pence betrayed President Trump along with a lot of other Republicans, all of whom must go.
Biden Continues Assault on American History, Cancels Trump’s “National Garden of American Heroes Believe it or not, Soap Box thinks (not “feels,” but thinks and “scientifically,” at that) that Biden was right in doing so. We know how far afield the woke cast for heroes. A Garden of American Heroes envisioned by President Donald Trump would be one thing. One dreamed up by Biden quite another, likely more a patch of weeds than a garden.
The nation would be well served by not one but two Gardens of American Heroes. Here’s what Soap Box proposes. Both gardens would be created and maintained by private public subscription—no government involvement whatsoever. One Garden for the woke crowd, the other for the non-woke. We leave it to the wokies to decide who is worthy of a statue and memorialization in their garden and who is not. Our guess is that a lot of people with statues now up elsewhere would not get another in Wokieland.
But it would be our hope that the non-woke Garden would find its roots and inspiration in the traditional American experience of free speech and free expression. Thus, in our Heroes of American Freedom Garden, all comers would be welcome, or at least tolerated, even non-native, so that the heroes of the left, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Che Guevara and such, might stand next to George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Christopher Columbus, and Martin Luther King.
To accomplish this, each Garden would be administered according to its own charter and the statues—there would likely be many—would be funded and placed by private individual subscription limited to $100 or less per person—no funding by government or business, just we the people, at least that’s what Soap Box urges for the garden Buddy would support.
Two such gardens would tell us much about the people who put the statues there. And it would begin to answer a question we’ve had since the wokie progressives began pulling down statues all across the country, that question being, “What statues will the left put up in place of those they have pulled down?
According to the loopy tenants of critical race theory, all white people are inherently racists. So, after the given that all white Americans are racist, Are all white Canadians as well? All white Britons? All white French and Germans, etc.? All white Jews? All Amish? A much better argument can be made that all wokies, regardless of color, are idiots.
The insanity that has come to Women’s sports. Biological males, no matter how girlie they imagine themselves, are still male and have no business competing in women’s sports. To do so represents an unfairness all but the woke crowd understands. What one finds in his shorts or her panties is the defining factor in what you are.
Nonsense from the usual suspects, but good for a laugh!
A Belief in Meritocracy Is Not Only False: It’s Bad for You by Clifton Mark Aeon
It encourages selfishness and discrimination yet it continues to be instilled in the minds of many.
For the true moral to the above story, see this week’s Aesop’s Fable just below.
This week’s Aesop’s Fable: The Fox and the Grapes
One hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. “Just the thing to quench my thirst,” quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning around again, with a one, two, three, he jumped again, but with no greater success. Again and again, he tried for the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I am sure they are sour.”
Moral of the story, dedicated to the wokie dokes: “It is easy to despise what you cannot get.”
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/
Texas Score Card https://texasscorecard.com/state/legislative-priorities-tracker/
Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute.
Project Veritas, Fun and informative hidden camera videos exposing the secret agendas of the left in their own words.
Featured Reader Comments
The following comment came from MID in response to last week’s column. Soap Box was so impressed with MID’s feedback that we want to be sure readers don’t miss it. In the future, we’ll run any other outstanding comments in this way.
“Have to say, this was an above average post.
“I’m a little behind, but I had to read your analysis all the way through and found it airtight (also enjoyed the Texas Aesop’s fable, funny with a good illustrative point).
“The fact that none of the ‘ruling class’ wants to mount a fact-based rebuttal is quite telling. Instead it’s the usual, condescending refutations that gave rise to Moveon.org.
As has been oft quoted: In war (and we’re basically there without the physical casualties, but lives are still ruined nonetheless) the Truth (titled object in this case) is the first casualty. Especially when there is no objective ‘truth’ in what is being claimed by one side.
“Problem is, since the introduction of ‘situational ethics’ (remember that?) in which everyone’s ‘truth’ becomes completely subjective and equally valid, it has become quite popular to simply ignore Truth and Facts as a guiding principle (the origins of those who seek America’s demise is quite interesting and follows a predictable pattern seen over and over in history. Unfortunately, even a general overview of the same is too complex to detail here, but for those interested: the point in which Harvard law school removed Blackstone’s ‘Natural Law’ as the basis of all law and the introduction of ‘Case Law’ (A.K.A make-it-up-as-you-go method of determining Truth) was substituted as the foundational principle for law, is a pretty good candidate for the starting of America’s slow deterioration. (likewise, if one can recognize the pattern, one can even determine why it occurred)
“These sorts of moments are what I have come to term as ‘X-points’ of history. Crossroads that seem wholly insignificant at the moment of their occurrence, but carry massive in influence when allowed to proceed unchecked. History is replete with these X-points in which the seemingly insignificant decisions have literally changed the course of the world. This is why the stealing of elections carries such critical importance.
“State-wide in Ga. everyone (much over the age of 8) knows that the three most corrupt counties in the state are Fulton, Dekalb and Gwinett counties. Unsurprisingly, these are the counties in which votes are most in question. Likewise, these are the counties which suddenly ‘found’ more votes after the election to carry Warlock and Assoff into their Senate seats. Georgia didn’t elect them — or Biden. Fulton, Dekalb and Gwinett counties did. And for all of the reasons Buddy has cited.
“So, now that Truth has lost all meaning; Law has no meaning. And once Law is meaningless, then what comes next will serve only destruction’s ends. The only question remaining unanswered is: How bad the destruction will be?
— MID
Columns worth reading
Each week under this heading, Soap Box will feature columns or intros to columns you can read in full elsewhere on the internet. Each of these columns pretty much express Soap Box’s views, else we’d not be sharing them with you.
GUEST COLUMN #1 ‘Dangerous’ New Wave of Censorship Culminating in the US: Dershowitz Soap Box sees censorship and election fraud as the two greatest threats to our constitutional republic. The woke crowd, beginning with the Democrats and extending to their assorted communist allies—Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and such—make it clear by the day that they seek to eradicate free speech and honest elections.
GUEST COLUMN #2 Down on Biden’s open border, down Mexico way. This week from The Texas Minute and Michael Quinn Sullivan comes a look at the Texas border Biden and Commie Harris don’t want you to see. The problem—nay, the threat—described isn’t just a threat to the citizens of Texas and other border states, it is a threat to the nation made to happen by a political party more interested in building a future voting block at taxpayer expense and the safety and well-being of Americans.
GUEST COLUMN #1: ‘Dangerous’ New Wave of Censorship Culminating in the US: Dershowitz
By Isabel van Brugen and Joshua Philipp May 26, 2021 Updated: May 26, 2021
The removal of Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier from the U.S. Space Force this month after he publicly stated his opposition to Marxism and critical race theory is part of a broader, more dangerous new wave of censorship that is culminating in the United States, says constitutional expert Alan Dershowitz.
In an interview with Epoch TV’s “Crossroads,” Dershowitz, a former Harvard Law School professor, expressed concern over Lohmeier’s dismissal, as well as other incidents such as the removal of former President Donald Trump from Twitter, Facebook, and other Big Tech platforms in January following the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
The Space Force on May 19 relieved Lohmeier from the 11th Space Warning Squadron over allegations that he was “politically partisan” when he denounced the spread of Marxism in the military during an interview.
In explaining his dismissal, the department said Lohmeier made “public comments” deemed to be “partisan political activity.” Lohmeier in a podcast warned about the spread of Marxist ideology within the military and the detrimental consequences of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s agenda to push critical race theory.
Critical race theory, which is rooted in Marxism, has been heavily promulgated throughout academia, entertainment, government, schools, and the workplace in recent years, coming to new prominence following the rise of far-left groups such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Some employers have included concepts from the doctrine—which some claim teaches that the United States is a fundamentally racist country and that one race is inherently superior to another—in their “racial and cultural sensitivity” training.
Like Marxism, it advocates for the destruction of institutions, such as the Western justice system, free-market economy, and orthodox religions, while demanding that they be replaced with institutions compliant with the theory’s ideology.
The legal scholar and author of the new book, “The Case Against the New Censorship: Protecting Free Speech From Big Tech, Progressives, and Universities,” accused Democrats and Big Tech companies of engaging in censorship.
“We’re in a very, very dangerous situation now where the left, which has enormous influence on American universities, has enormous influence on social media, has enormous influence on certain kinds of politics in the media, are trying to suppress free speech, and they’re succeeding, and we have to fight back,” Dershowitz said.
Big Tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google are today engaging in “massive censorship” that endangers the freedom of speech itself, Dershowitz said.
“That’s not good for the country, it’s not good for the Constitution, it’s not good for freedom of speech. It’s not good by any standards, and it has to stop. And we the consumers have to demand that Facebook and YouTube and Twitter stop this censorship,” he continued.
Twitter executives have indicated that Trump—who had about 90 million followers on the platform—will remain suspended indefinitely, while Facebook’s “Oversight Board” ruled earlier this month to uphold his ban but set a time limit on it.
The companies have also drawn intense scrutiny for perceived political bias and alleged unbalanced moderation of users’ content. Critics say much of the companies’ moderation in the past year has unfairly targeted conservative speech and speech from individuals deemed to be supporters of Trump.
Meanwhile, groups on the other side of the aisle have been taking issue with how social media companies are operating, claiming that the Silicon Valley companies have failed to adequately address misinformation that is being proliferated online.
“What Donald Trump tweets—I may disagree with every single word he says—but he has the right to say it. And more importantly, people forget the First Amendment has two aspects, one, the right of the speaker—Donald Trump to speak—that’s one part of it,” Dershowitz said.
“But the second part, which is largely ignored, is the right of you and me the public to hear and read and see what he has to say to accept it or reject it in the marketplace of ideas,” he added. “When you ban a speaker, you also ban his viewers and listeners from having access to that speech, and that’s an equally dangerous aspect of violating free speech rights.”
Janita Kan contributed to this report.
Follow Joshua on Twitter: @JoshJPhilipp
GUEST COLUMN #2: Down on Biden’s Open Border, down Mexico way
Good morning,
Brandon Waltens and I spent yesterday along the Texas-Mexico border. The cartels are aware that the Biden Administration isn’t interested in enforcing border security, and it shows.
That leads today’s Texas Minute, 5/26/2021.
– Michael Quinn Sullivan
The situation along the Texas-Mexico border has “gotten worse” – that’s the assessment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after meeting with local law enforcement officials in Laredo yesterday.
Local officials estimate there are close to 700 “stash houses” operating in Laredo alone in which illegal aliens are kept after initially crossing the border.
As we walked along the Rio Grande north of Laredo, Border Patrol agents pointed out cartel “spotters” just a hundred yards away whose job it is to track American law enforcement activities. The cartels carefully track Border Patrol shift changes, travel patterns, and response times so they can better traffic people, weapons, and narcotics into Texas.
While Democrats and the media paint a picture of illegal aliens as families seeking a better life, the reality is more stark. The National Border Patrol Council’s Sergio Moreno told me upwards of 94 percent of those crossing in the Laredo sector are single men with violent records. And of the 52,000 apprehensions so far in Fiscal Year 2021, just under half are “other than Mexicans.”
A common theme was that “every bit helps” – deployment of the National Guard troops, state and local officials, and likewise. While those bodies serve as a visual deterrent, none actually have the authority to detain the illegal aliens and send them back across the border. Without bold action on Texas’ part, the “troops on the border” are window dressing.
As Attorney General Paxton explained, the effect of SCOTUS’ Arizona v United States is that state and local officials cannot deport illegal aliens. If they try to do so, the federal government could be able charge the individual officer – the sheriff’s deputy, the police officer, the state trooper – with kidnapping, for example. The Supreme Court asserted that the “Supremacy Clause” of the Constitution gives Congress the power to preempt state law – and Congress has given no wiggle room for states to protect their international borders.
The State of Texas must be willing to confront the Biden Administration (and that flawed 2012 Supreme Court ruling) if we are to protect Texans from the escalating cartel violence.
Platitudes from the governor simply aren’t enough. Without bold action by Texas, a dire situation will continue to get worse.
Reminder: last weekend Fox News’ Tucker Carlson said Greg Abbott is a “total fraud” on border security issues. What I learned yesterday makes me think Carlson was being kind.