AR-15’s and Such

 

AR-15’s and Such

 A demented eighteen-year-old teenager legally bought an AR-15 (Armalite Rifle-15) in Uvalde, Texas, shot up an elementary school, and killed nineteen children and two teachers.  This was truly a national tragedy, on so many levels.  Texas’ easy gun laws were blamed.

 The previous week, another demented eighteen-year-old in New York State travelled 200 miles within the state, also with a legally purchased AR-15 style rifle, and killed ten people in a grocery store.  Another national tragedy.  New York State has among the most draconian gun laws in the country.  It didn’t make any difference.

 Immediately, the calls went out, from Joe Biden, our so-called “president” on down, and from people who don’t have a clue about firearms, - politicizing these tragedies while loved ones were mourning the loss of innocent lives.

 As is usual after these tragic shootings, “the guns did it”, not the nut or the crazy behind the gun, or the societal rot that produced the mind of a mass killer.  The misinformed in our country and their brainwashed followers, don’t blame the root causes of the malaise in our society, they blame the type of gun.

 They don’t blame the erosion of morals and ethics in the country on the drift away from religion and spiritual programs by our young people.

 They don’t blame the mental health crisis caused by replacing “in house” psychiatric care with self-administered psychoactive drugs, and the resultant criminality and homelessness.

 They don’t blame broken homes, drugs or alcohol, or child abuse.  “It’s the gun, particularly the AR-15, that’s responsible”.

 They don’t blame the violence in computer “games” and TV “entertainment”.  “SPLAT!!”, goes the game, as a red blotch appears, and an “atta boy” award point is given, as soon as a kid can hold the controls.

 They don’t blame our “educators”, who stress questions about kids’ gender identity, and who instill a sense of insecurity in our kids.

 They don’t blame the universities, who teach and promote the long refuted revolutionary principles of Marxism.

 They blame an inanimate object, the AR-15, the Armalite Rifle -15, (not the “Assault Rifle=15” or “Army Rifle-15”).

 I trained for the Army, and was in the Army in the 1950’s. (I know, I’m a dinosaur).  We first used Springfield 03 or 03A3 rifles for training, and later M-1 Garand rifles in the active military.  These rifles fired a 30-06 cartridge, with a substantial bullet, accurate to long distances.  It had been used since the early 1900’s.

 The M-14, in 1956-1964 was chambered for the NATO .308 round, and finally came the M-16, the selective fire military predecessor of the AR-15, in 1964, chambered for .223.  So, it was essentially a .22 rifle.

 We knowledgeable shooters, and our Vietnam troops called the original M-16 the “mouse gun”, because of its puny .223 round, compared to the prior 30-06 and ,308 rounds.  There were many problems with the M-16 at first, but it was improved with time, along with the semi-automatic, one-shot-at-a-time AR-15 civilian version.

 What happened to our country?  It’s not the guns, or the AR=15’s.  We’ve always had guns.  Guns are endemic to the American ethos and culture.  We just used them as the tools that they were intended to be, and not against each other, or to enter a school and start killing innocent children, or a grocery store, and start shooting innocent people.

 The AR-15 has become the most popular and ubiquitous singular rifle in the country.  Why? - Because of its accuracy, low recoil, easy re-configuration and relatively low price.  Certainly not because of its efficacy as a mass murder weapon. A recent survey shows that there are nearly 20 million AR-15 style rifles in the country.  The same survey shows that 33 firms manufacture and sell some version of the civilian AR-15.

 A 1994 attempt to ban “assault weapons” aimed at AR-15’s failed miserably because of lack of definition and precision about what the politically coined “assault weapons” were.  The usual liars in our government tell us how this 1994 ban reduced crime in the country, but these are the bald-faced lies that we have come to expect from Joe Biden and his handlers. The actual statistics don’t lie.

 Does anyone in their honest and rational mind think that more restrictive gun laws that penalize legal gun owners are going to prevent another demented, disenfranchised crazy person from getting their hands on an AR-15 (of the 20 million available in the country), or a pistol, or a knife, or a car, and killing more people?

 We have a population of nearly 335 million people, and we have just about as many firearms in the country. (Some say over 400 million firearms).  We need to learn to live with the guns we have.  It would help to keep guns out of the hands of the crazies, but left-wingers talking and bloviating at the issue accomplishes nothing. 

 Many Americans, at least in “fly over country” retain solid American values.  But unfortunately, some younger Americans have been misled, and have lost touch with what America is all about, and enough of these are disenchanted or lawless enough to riot violently in the streets and cause destruction, or to pick up a weapon and go on a shooting spree.

 Ray Gruszecki

May 30, 2022

Slaughter of the Innocents

 

Slaughter of the Innocents

 This started out as an answer to Daniel Lewis’ comment on my previous post about the frequency of recent mass shootings.  It ran on and on, so I’m posting separately.

 One reason for “the nut or criminal behind the gun” is the release of the mentally ill into our communities in the 1950’s and 1960’s, in hopes that psychoactive drugs will replace the mental hospitals of the past.

 Quoting from the “New York Times”:

 “THE policy that led to the release of most of the nation's mentally ill patients from the hospital to the community is now widely regarded as a major failure. Sweeping critiques of the policy, notably the recent report of the American Psychiatric Association, have spread the blame everywhere, faulting politicians, civil libertarian lawyers and psychiatrists.

 Many of the psychiatrists involved as practitioners and policy makers in the 1950's and 1960's said in the interviews that heavy responsibility lay on a sometimes neglected aspect of the problem: the overreliance on drugs to do the work of society.”

 And from “The Healthy Place”:

 “In the mid-1950s the numbers of hospitalized mentally ill peaked at 560,000 in the United States. This, plus the advent of effective psychiatric medication, led to many mentally ill people being removed from institutions and directed towards local mental health facilities. The number of institutionalized mentally ill dropped to 130,000 in 1980.”

 So, hundreds of thousands of mentally ill patients were released into society after 1950.  What the above paragraph omits to say is that many of these patients ended up in prisons, where they were radicalized to crime, or to homelessness, and an anarchic, lawless existence.

 These links refer:

 https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html

 https://nami.org/mhstats

 https://www.npr.org/2017/11/30/567477160/how-the-loss-of-u-s-psychiatric-hospitals-led-to-a-mental-health-crisis

 https://www.healthyplace.com/other-info/mental-illness-overview/the-history-of-mental-illness

  

Another reason for mass shootings:

 Why does an eighteen year old, (one in New York State, and one in Texas), pick up guns, don body armor, and kill multiple people in a super market, on the one hand, and multiple small children in an elementary school, on the other?

 Part of the answer, I’m sure, lies in some form of mental illness as described above.  Another revolves around the apathy toward human life resulting from the many media outlets depicting a rank disregard for human life.  BANG! Goes the video game recording a “kill”, as red splatters on the screen, and an acknowledgement point is rewarded.  Same with “action movies”, where “the enemy” violently dispatched.  And our kids participate in this ersatz carnage as soon as they can sit up and hold the controls.  Our kids are desensitized to violence from babies onward. What do we expect from this exposure, - a respect for human life?

  

There are myriad other reasons, dishonest leaders, false prophets, personal betrayals, that can skew and twist a young person’s psyche, but the over-riding reason is spiritual desolation due to lack of spiritual or religious beliefs.  People all over the world are drifting away from religion, including our young people.

 According to Gallup: “The decline in formal church membership has largely been driven by younger generations of Americans. About one in three U.S. young adults have no religious affiliation. Further, many young adults who do identify with a religion nevertheless do not belong to a church. But even older adults who have a religious preference are less likely to belong to a church today than in the past.”

 Our kids are marinated in internet and entertainment industry violence, while eschewing the Christian belief systems and morals and ethics of their forebearers.

 Even when raised in strong Christian churches, our young people drift away from religion when exposed to agnostic or atheist secular beliefs as part of public or university schooling, or just living in the secular world.  Innovative approaches such as Mike Baughman’s Union Coffee Shop in Dallas aimed at bringing young people back into a spiritual environment, and keeping them focused spiritually have had some success in bringing young professionals back to God.  https://www.uniondallas.org/our-story/

  

What exacerbates the whole issue is the instant availability in everyone’s pocket, of access to all of the knowledge of the world, and the audio/visual means to disseminate it to anyone in the world.  Who needs God, when one can wield such power by manipulating a screen on 3” x 4” device?

 Being a technical puke, I hate to acknowledge it, but our modern world and its technology also contributes to some teenager being able to kill 20 innocent children.

  

How do we get out of this propensity for another demented young man to slaughter masses of innocent people and children?  We can preach at it and say, “Return to God”.  HOW?? 

 It seems that we need almost a Messiah on the order of a Jesus Christ to rectify our spiritual malaise, and we need a political leader on the order of a Washington or Lincoln to cure our political sickness.

 We can pray, and hope that time will bring the cure.  And we can each do our part, by being respectful Christians and citizens, and try to teach our young people to be the same.

 Ray Gruszecki

May 25, 2022

What is Wrong In Our Society?

 

What is Wrong In Our Society?

 What is wrong with our society? 

 We seem to have a mass shooting at a school or a church or a super market, or other such soft target, as often as every week.

 We have a population of nearly 335 million people, and we have just about as many firearms in the country.  So, its’s easy, and it happens after nearly every shooting, to blame the gun, and not the nut or the criminal behind the gun.  Restrictive gun laws don’t work.  Many mass shootings take place in cities and states with the most draconian gun control laws, California, Chicago, New York, etc. 

 What happened to our country?  Its not the guns.  We’ve always had guns.  Guns are endemic to the American ethos and culture.  We just used them as the tools that they were intended to be, and not against each other, or to enter a school and start killing innocent children.  There are over 300 million guns in the country, so confiscation and overly strict laws against lawful gun owners are not the answer.  We need to learn to live with the guns we have.  It would help to keep guns out of the hands of the crazies, but left-wingers talking and bloviating at the issue accomplishes nothing.

 I grew up in the 1940’s and 1950’s in Massachusetts, and I was raised with guns.  A Red Ryder BB gun at age eight.  A .22 rifle at age twelve.  Then shotguns, higher caliber rifles and pistols when I got older.  And we carried these firearms around in our cars and trucks, and didn’t even think twice about it.  They were tools, for hunting, or for target practice.  Never in a million years would the thought arise to turn a gun on another human being.

 But it was different world.  We went to church.  We respected our parents and teachers and the police.  We obeyed the laws.  We were taught to be good citizens by the paragons of our communities.

 Elements of our society lost being decent, God-fearing people, somewhere along the way, and lost their ethical and moral integrity.  Maybe it was related to the reaction to the second world war and the movement away from religion and toward secularization.   Maybe it started with the assassinations in the 1960’s of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, and the world-wide movement toward anarchy.  Maybe it was related to the resurgence of socialism and communism being taught in our universities, with insufficient stress on the corrosive nature of those philosophies.

 And more recently, this ethical and moral degradation has been hastened by the ready availability of destructive anarchic material readily available to young minds on the internet, and the rise of “wokeness”, political correctness and “cancel culture” as active facets of popular thought.  Marxist groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa fan the flames of violence, and people like George Soros fund it.   

 Many Americans, at least in “fly over country” retain solid American values.  But unfortunately, some younger Americans have lost touch with what America is all about, and enough of these are disenchanted or lawless enough to riot violently in the streets and cause destruction, or to pick up a weapon and go on a shooting spree.

 Ray Gruszecki

May 24, 2022

Lest We Forget

 

Lest We Forget

 Lest we forget.  This is why we are living in Joe Biden’s unbelievable dystopia.

 We not only have the most abysmal “president” and “vice president” ever, in our history, they should have never been there in the first place.

 The democrats, the left-wing politicians, and much of the media, big tech and entertainment industry have made it seem as if the news just before the 2020 election about Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents was some sort of conspiracy theory or misplaced right-wing lie.  And the gullible American public swallowed the incessant propaganda that Joe Biden won the 2020 election fairly.  He would not have been elected if news about Hunter Biden’s laptop was not suppressed.

 Even after now admitting that Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents are real, this same cabal continues to hide news about it and denigrate its existence. Slowly, the truth is emerging, now that Americans have been conditioned that Biden is the president, and against President Trump.  And where is the FBI, who has had the laptop since December of 2019?

 Let’s remember, if the news about Hunter’s laptop and its contents was not suppressed by the above dishonest mob just before the 2020 election, Joe Biden would never have been elected.  And all you have to do is look at the numbers.

 Biden won the electoral college in 2020 by 306 to 232, with 270 electoral votes necessary to win.  This included Arizona with 11 electoral votes with 10,457 winning popular votes; Georgia 10 electoral votes , 12,670 popular votes; Pennsylvania 20 electoral votes, 81,660 popular votes; Wisconsin 10 electoral votes, 20,682 popular votes.  These four states add up to 51 electoral votes, and would have given Trump a winning total of 283 electoral votes.  The total popular vote in the four states necessary to attain these 51 electoral votes would have been 125,469 out of the 18,360,000 total votes cast, or less than 7 tenths of one percent of the total votes cast in these states.

 It is pretty obvious that these small popular voter margins would have easily been overcome, and Trump would have been re-elected president, if the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop had not been suppressed by our dishonest politicians, mainstream media and big tech.

 https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-cnn-cbs-hunter-biden-laptop-russian-disinformation-media

 https://nypost.com/2022/03/30/media-avoided-the-ties-between-joe-biden-and-hunters-laptop/

 https://nypost.com/2022/03/18/how-big-tech-media-and-dems-killed-the-hunter-biden-story/

 Ray Gruszecki

May 20, 2022

Propaganda and Lies

 

Propaganda and Lies

 How could rational, intelligent, thinking people not seen this coming?  How could we Americans become so blinded by propaganda, so as to accept not only an acknowledged political hack as president, but also a man who was clearly diminished in his mental capacity by age?

 The answer lies in our mainstream news media that have become a propaganda arm of the democrats.  They hid Biden in his Delaware basement and only let him out for scripted events.  They perverted and withheld truthful news, and basted him in sweet lies.  He was to be the great conciliator.  Instead he became the great Marxist disrupter of our society.

 President Trump was controversial and combative in nature, and couldn’t keep his mouth shut, or his thumbs off the “tweeter”, but who can blame him after the merciless tormenting and false charges levelled against him for five years?

 During Trump’s presidency, the country was proud to be American, and ran prosperously, at least before Covid.  He fast-tracked vaccines and was about to bring the country back economically, when the leftist forces arrayed against him finally skewed and withheld news that would have elected him.  The mainstream news media were the perpetrators, but the gullible American electorate was complicit in putting the incompetent Joe Biden into office.

 On another tack, how could we Americans, including many of our big corporations, be taken in by the Marxist charlatans of “Black Lives Matter”, to donate millions of dollars in the name of George Floyd, a murdered Minneapolis petty criminal and drug addict?  And then seeing BLM be the driving force behind $2 billion worth of destruction in our major cities during the summer of 2020, including the destruction of many of the icons of our culture and heritage.  On top of that, BLM then stole and absconded with millions of dollars of the of the donated money, only donating a small pittance to actual intended victims.

 Our gullibility and stupidity knows no bounds when it comes to the lies, propaganda and posturing of the unscrupulous leftists/Marxists.  We are now being lied to daily from Biden’s teleprompter, from Karine Jean-Pierre’s notes, from cabinet members, and from other democrat congresspersons.  And these are not just shadings of the truth.  They are literally, bold, in-your- face reversal of facts that can be checked online or with DVR recordings.  Just how dense and stupid do the democrats think we are?

 It’s beyond arguing political differences.  It’s beyond saying “we told you so”, or “no more pithy tweets”.  The democrats and their leftist allies have gone a long way toward ruining this country, and setting it on the path of another ruined wealthy democracy, Venezuela, once the wealthiest country in South America, and now, another failed state. 

 There is nothing that this Biden administration seems to be able to do to prevent the same fate for the U.S.  The midterm elections in 2022 may get the democrats out of congress, but they can’t get Biden out, or Harris, or, heaven forbid, Pelosi, inheriting the executive.  We have to wait for the 2024 elections, with two years of a stagnant or non-government.

 There is absolutely nothing that this Biden Marxist excuse for a government has done right.  Yet Joe and his minions will go in front of the country and pat themselves on the back for the great job they’re doing, and stubbornly insist that they are right.  Apparently, they have not bought groceries or gasoline recently.

 And 30-40% in the country approve of the job that Joe Biden and the democrats are doing.  Who are these people still showing approval?  Apparently, they are democrats, socialists, Marxists and other leftists that will never question the democrat party, no matter how badly the country (or their city) is doing under democrat rule. 

 Left-wing politics is their mantle from birth, or from the left-wing educational system, and will never change.  Logic is wasted, political science is wasted, emotion is wasted.  These people can be starving or destitute from Marxist policies, and they will try to find a way to blame Trump, or if not Trump, the closest republican.

 Ray Gruszecki

May 20, 2022

Putin's Folly

 

Putin's Folly

 Putin's folly. He must be fuming in the several languages he speaks.  He may have learned Ukrainian, by now

 Putin must have believed the mythology built up around the invincible Russian military.

 Let’s stop and pause for a minute, and analyze the efficacy of Russia’s war machine.

 The Soviet Union was driven out of Afghanistan by a determined indigenous resistance after nine years, with heavy losses. (We can’t crow too loudly about this if we remember our own experiences in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan).

 The Soviets lost 27,000,000 dead in World War II in helping to defeat Nazi Germany.  (Some will argue that they won the war by themselves).  Truth be told, what really defeated the Nazi armies during their 1941-42 invasion of Russia, was the brutal Russian winter, just as the winter had defeated Napoleon’s “Grand Armee” 130 years earlier.

 Since the 1990’s, the Russian Federation military has had some successes in small wars to annex pieces of the Caucasus and small countries to the south of Russia proper.  They built up a reputation in popular opinion of being a modern, efficient, fighting force, particularly since they had nuclear weapons and advanced ICBM’s.

 The conventional Russian military has proven to be abysmally unprepared and inefficient in the war against a determined and well-trained enemy. (Ans particularly and enemy that the west keeps well-armed with the most up-to-date weapons).  The Ukrainians have literally run circles around the Russian military forces.  The Ukrainians have imposed more losses on the Russian military than they sustained in nine years of war in Afghanistan.

 In addition to faulty military intelligence, another big mistake that Putin made is “well, the Ukrainians are really Russians”.  The Ukrainians are fiercely independent, and say “Ми походимо з козаків”, - We are descended from Cossacks”.  The response of Ukrainian border guards to Russian warship: 'Go f--- yourself'. 

 The Ukrainians have beat the Russians back from Kyiv, and seem to have done the same at Kharkiv, way east.  They seem determined to drive Putin and the Russians entirely out of Ukraine, including Donbas and Crimea, and will likely be successful if we keep them supplied with modern arms.  $40 billion, now being passed in the senate should be enough, and though there is opposition to this amount, better to spend it to stop Putin in Ukraine, rather than in Poland or Germany, with an exchange of nukes.

 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/may/12/how-putins-war-ukraine-has-backfired-spectacularly/

 Ray Gruszecki

May 14, 2022

Up is Down, Down is Up

 

Up is Down, Down is Up

 

Up is down.  Down is up.  The sky is green.  The grass is blue.  Joe Biden is a moderate.  There were no vaccines available when Joe Biden took office.  The leftist dems are for law and order.  These are the sort of lies that we now hear every day from Joe Biden and his administration.

 Joe Biden’s handlers dress him in $2000 suits, cut his hair to hide his bald spot, and rehearse him to read the prepared lies from the teleprompter.  Joe, then, hardly aware of what he is reading, stands there, and lies and lies, and lies to our faces.

 Now, all politicians will slant the truth to make themselves look good.  But this group of left-wing politicians will lie to the country about actual observable or recorded facts.  We can reverse our DVR’s, and many times, see for ourselves.

 And, man, oh man, do they lie when it comes to taking responsibility for any one of myriads of societal issues that they have caused.  Their favorite deflection is still to President Trump even though he has been out of the loop for nearly a year and a half.  If not Trump, then “Ultra MAGA republicans”, whatever those are.  Or an excuse blaming anyone but themselves for the high inflation, lawlessness and open border of “Biden’s Dystopia”.

 People are pissed off.  You don’t mess with peoples’ kids, their pocketbooks or their freedoms, and these democrat-socialists have messed with all three.  Even the left-wing media collaborators are becoming increasingly critical of the “woke” and “cancelling” crowd in Washington.  The democrats, (most of them), that have affiliated themselves with the far left “squad”, and the like, are now scurrying to salvage something before the mid-terms.  So, the lies abound, but hopefully, Americans are not gullible enough or stupid enough not to see through the deceptions.

 Ray Gruszecki

May 13, 2022

Now Baby Formula

 

Now Baby Formula

 

Maybe in the bad old Soviet Union of the 1950’s or 1960’s, the country would run out of baby formula.  -----  And in Biden’s American dystopia.

 Maybe in Orwell’s “1984” or Huxley’s “Brave New World”, or in Nazi Germany, or in the old Soviet Union, would we have a “Ministry of Truth” as a propaganda tool. ----  And in Biden’s American dystopia.

 The fumbling and mismanagement of old Joe and his handlers is beyond belief.  Everything that they touch or attempt to tweak turns to crap.

 Joe Biden and his administration are beyond a doubt, the worst government ever foisted on this country.  This includes Jimmy Carter’s which was terrible, although well-intentioned, and some of the corrupt governments of the 19^th and early 20^th century.

 Trump haters, apparently mostly those who are “woke”, rank him as terrible president, but although I was never particularly a big Trump fan while I lived and worked in New York, Trump’s populism returned pride to the bruised American psyche.  In spite of his political tormentors (and impeachers) for five years, and the baseless accusations against him, he fulfilled his campaign promises, and “Made America Great Again”, at least before the Covid pandemic hit.  It has to be apparent to any honest person, that everything went hell in this country as soon as Trump left the presidency, and the feckless Biden came in.

 Ray Gruszecki

May 12, 2022

Abortion, Emotion and Soros Money

 

Abortion, Emotion and Soros Money

 Do the raucous purple and green haired miscreants rioting in front of SCOTUS and the justices’ homes think that they are accomplishing something other than scorn?  Read the referenced links.

 The violent leftist groups have been organized, most likely by Soros money, similar to the summer of 2020, to cause depredations of our culture and heritage, stir up emotions and disrupt our election process.

 If you look deeply behind who is funding much of the anti-American protests and riots in the country, you don’t have to look much further than George Soros and his Open Society Foundation.  They have recently funneled over $25 million into pro-abortion causes.  The following articles refer.

 https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/the-truth-about-democratic-abortion-extremism/

 https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/leftist-attacks-wont-intimidate-the-pro-life-movement/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=next-article&utm_term=first

 https://headlineusa.com/soros-has-poured-more-than-25m-into-abortion-lobby-since-2016/

 https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/the_slimy_hand_of_soros_emerges_in_abortion_protest_outrages.html

 Ray Gruszecki

May 11, 2022

Some Research about the Russian war on Ukraine

 

Some Research about the Russian war on Ukraine

 “Russia has lost around 25,500 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its invasion on February 24, local news media The Kyiv Independent reported on Sunday”.  https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=kyiv+independent+russian+losses

 These numbers are Ukrainian based, and may be on the high side.  The U.K. Defense Secretary estimates 15,000 Russian military deaths in Ukraine as of April 25, 2022. In comparison, the Soviet Union lost 13,310 dead in Afghanistan in 9 years of war, and the U.S. lost 2,440 dead in Afghanistan, and 4,400 in Iraq in those lengthy wars.

 Again, using Ukrainian numbers, “Russia has also lost approximately 1,130 tanks, 2,741 armored personnel vehicles (APV), and 509 artillery systems, an infographic released by the newspaper showed, citing the Ukraine Armed Forces.

 Other losses included 1,961 vehicles and fuel tanks, 199 planes, 156 helicopters, 92 cruise missiles, 12 boats, 179 multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), and 360 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).”

  What do Russians think of the war?  It seems that the propaganda disseminated to the Russian public is just as effective in their sphere as our biased left-wing media is in our U.S. political sphere.  They lie, and the lies are believed and form public opinion.

Published by Statista Research Department, May 9, 2022

“The majority of Russians expressed support toward the actions of their country's military forces in Ukraine.  In total, 74 percent of respondents certainly or rather supported them in April 2022. However, that share decreased by seven percent compared to the previous month.”

 https://www.npr.org/2022/04/18/1093282038/russia-war-public-opinion-polling

 https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2022/03/17/what-do-ordinary-russians-really-think-about-the-war-in-ukraine/

 “State propaganda and fake news about Ukraine “shooting its own citizens in the Donbas region” started back in 2014 and since then has been increasing in its pace and volume. Even if many ordinary Russians are badly misinformed, however, the early polls may still capture authentic attitudes reflecting a silent majority at home supporting Putin’s actions, and thus represent the social construction of reality in modern Russia. At the same time, there are several potential arguments why the results from the early polls should be treated with great caution – or perhaps even discounted as meaningful.

 The most reputable public opinion data available in Russia are from the Levada Center, a non-governmental research organisation conducting regular surveys since 1988. Levada surveys on 17-21 February found that the majority of respondents (52%) felt negatively towards Ukraine. Most (60%) blamed the US and NATO for the escalation of tensions in Eastern Ukraine, while only 4% blamed Russia. Their polls suggest that net public approval of Putin had surged by about 13 percentage points since December, a rally-round-the-flag effect, with almost three-quarters (71%) expressing approval of his leadership by February.”

 Ray Gruszecki

May 9, 2022

Russia and China

 

Russia and China

 One of the reasons that I went to Russia in 2017, and China in 2015, is to see these countries for myself, talk to knowledgeable people there, and not rely only on second hand accounts of what those controversial countries were about.

 My impression of Western Russia in 2017, (St Petersburg and Moscow), was that other than the Cyrillic alphabet these cities were quite European and cosmopolitan in nature.  St Petersburg, particularly, lived up to its epithet of “Venice of the North”.  The Winter Palace and Hermitage Museum, and the iconography and statuary in St Petersburg were literally beyond compare.

 We were hosted by a multi-generational Russian family in their apartment in St Petersburg, and were able to discuss some aspects of life in Russia.  Even at that time, in 2017, sanctions were affecting life in Russia.  These sanctions were imposed after Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.  These sanctions restricted travel of Russian citizens to Western countries.

 A lecture by Dr. Sergei Akapov, Professor of Political Science at St Petersburg University, commented on Russia’s domestic and international orientation in the modern world.  Some of his main points were Putin’s 80% approval rating, Russia’s difficulty in competing with Germany and Western Europe and the “brain drain”, the loss of university graduates to higher paying economies.  He also commented on the sanctions back then, and how they were hurting Russia.  One can only imagine how badly the whole world’s sanctions are hurting Russia after Putin’s war on Ukraine.

 Moscow was another large European city, - drab in some places, and with reminders of the Soviet era.  The Kremlin and Red Square were iconic, but St Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square was blocked off due to celebrations around the 870^th anniversary of Moscow.

  China in 2015 was people, people, people, 1.4 billion of them, marching to pretty much the same drumbeat.  The society is rules driven, with the rules devised by the CCP, the Chinese communist party, to maintain hegemony in this large mass of people.  The urban Chinese are modern, technologically advanced, and do their own thing, as prescribed by the communist government.  Rural Chinese are abysmally backward, and striving to obtain urban ID cards.

 The Chinese are different from the Western world, and proud of it.  The aims of China are to become and remain the dominant economic, technological and military force in the world.  Their motto is “this is our millennium”.  The prevailing attitude is that “the West has treated us badly in the past, but never again”.

 China’s Three Gorges hydroelectric project on the Yangtze River, which can be seen from space, is an example of massive Chinese projects.  Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing are cities of nearly 25 million people each.  China’s Belt and Road Initiative was just getting started in 2015, as was Xi Jinping’s consolidation of absolute power.

 Ray Gruszecki

May 8, 2022

News Outlets

 

News Outlets

 If it were not for an irascible old Australian, Rupert Murdoch, and a patrician New York intellectual, William F. Buckley, and a few others, the real news happening out there would never have had a chance to be made available to the public.  Murdoch bought Twentieth Century Fox and the New York Post in the 1980’s, and founded Fox News in the 1990’s.  Buckley founded National Review in 1955, and nurtured it through its early years.

 Fox News, National Review, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal are called conservative or “right”.  Many honest and fair-minded consumers of news consider them as “true” or “real” news.  For example, they reported the real news about President Trump’s non-collusion with Russia, Hunter Biden’s laptop and Joe’s, the “big guy’s” involvement, and a plethora of other instances where these “conservative” outlets covered the real news, while most of the rest of the media carried left-wing democrat propaganda which either lied about the news or censored it.

 It is a shame in this country, that most consumers of news do not vet news sources, and just gullibly accept the left-wing propaganda offered by the majority of our media outlets.  A steady unfiltered diet of the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and CNN will surely make someone’s politics lean to the left and leave gaps in their awareness of the real news happening around them each day.

 Not to say that the opinion portions of Fox News, National Review, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal are not slanted toward the right, but all of the news is actually covered in the news sections of these media outlets, and not propagandized, or censored, or purposely omitted.

 Ray Gruszecki

May 7, 2022

They Got Away with It

 

They Got Away with It

 The leftist mob and their media and big tech collaborators got away with it.  They handed the presidency to a doddering, senile Joe Biden in 2020 by withholding and lying about news critical to the election.  A paltry 125,000 votes in four states would have given President Trump 51 electoral votes and the presidency if details contained in Hunter Biden’s laptop about Joe Biden’s “play-for-pay” crimes were not covered up from the electorate.

 Unethically and illegally giving Biden the presidency is the most egregious assault on our republic, because it has resulted in our living in Biden’s and minion’s distorted dystopia, with our country facing ruination, with Putin’s war on Ukraine and with the Chinese CCP greedily eying Taiwan.

 But that’s not the only thing that the leftist-Marxist mob have gotten away with.  They rampaged through the country systematically destroying or defacing reminders of our history and culture, and causing over two billion dollar’s-worth of damage in our cities.  The excuse given by the mob for this destruction was the killing of a petty criminal drug addict by a Minneapolis cop.  Black Lives Matter and Antifa, both avowed Marxist organizations that fomented the riots, were never prosecuted or brought to task.  The leftist mob got away with it.

 Elements of this same left-wing mob defunded our police and installed “woke” prosecutors in our major cities that let repeating criminals “walk”, resulting in our current high crimes rates.  They continue to intimidate by violence any elements of government or society with whom they disagree.  Who can forget the “hatchet job” perpetrated on Judge Kavanaugh during his SCOTUS confirmation hearings?

 And now they’re back again.  Since Americans have begun to see Biden and the democrats for the destructive leftists they really are, and their popularity, even in the left-wing propagandist media has slipped, they had to do something.  What better issue that abortion?  So, they stole and leaked a draft SCOTUS ruling which discusses overturning “Roe vs Wade” and “Planned Parenthood vs Casey”.

 No fires in the streets yet, or graffiti on the SCOTUS columns (a chain link fence was quickly erected around the SCOTUS building), but the leftist mob has already called the six potentially pro-life Justices “extremists”, and threatened them, their families and their homes.  And they are getting away with it, just like they got away with their other assaults on our laws and society.    

 Any honest, rational person who has some perspective of history can see that this country has two different levels of justice; - one for the left wing and their abuses, and another for the right.  Whatever leftist extremists perpetrate is met with “ho-hums”, and “just peaceful protests”, whether destroying $2 billion worth of property, including federal property by Marxists agitators in support of a criminal junkie, intimidation of legislators and judges, or assaults on America itself.

 But just let the right wing try similar protests and demonstrate in the streets.  Condemnation by the hypocritical left is swift and severe.  Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 and the march on the capitol on January 6, 2021 are examples of right\wing demonstrations that turned violent like many left-wing riots in 2020.  There is a democrat run, January 6^th committee trying to prove sedition and insurrection against the participants in the march on the capitol. There was almost universal condemnation by the media of the right-wing violence, and almost no mention of the violence and abuses of BLM, Antifa and other Marxists in the continuous riots during the summer of 2020.

 Not to condone any violence, but the disparity of how the right and left are treated in this country is beyond any modicum of fairness.

 Another example is how President Trump and Joe Biden are treated.  Trump, for all his foibles and combativeness, straightened the country out, at least before Covid hit, and was poised to bring it back economically.  He was tormented mercilessly and wrongfully by the left and impeached twice for trivial causes, once, after he had already left office.

 Who would not be combative in such circumstances?  Biden, who has literally ruined this country economically and culturally, has been treated with kid gloves, like a kindly old grandfather.  Politics aside, any honest person has to acknowledge the inequities perpetrated on the American people by the unscrupulous, “woke” leftists.

 Ray Gruszecki

May 6, 2022