Bob and Susan Beckett pastorThe Dwelling Place City Church at 27100 Girard Street in Hemet, CA. For more information, you may contact them at DPCitychurch.org

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Truth has become an increasingly rare commodity in our world! The very idea that “truth always wins out” has been thrown out the window and in its place the ‘power brokers’ have taken over. You can see it everywhere – in politics, media, commercials – propaganda & conspiracy theories abound!! Once-sane people have lost the ability to rationally debate issues. Instead, we get ear-loads of cursing, name calling, & slander. Every time I hear or read this stuff I ask myself – “But is it true?” That, I submit, is the most important question we can dare to ask.

I read articles maligning our government, our heads of state, and our laws. There are many who think it’s a virtuous thing to try and assassinate our elected officials. It seems that ‘divide and conquer’ is alive and well in the United States and we are getting a textbook, up close look at Division 101.

Like it or not, truth is dying and it cannot help but have serious consequences for us all. Jesus said it in Matthew 12 – “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to resolution and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.” Abraham Lincoln echoed this thought in 1858 when he also said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Cannot!

It reminds me of an old story about a letter to a neighbor: It reads: Dear Frank. We’ve been neighbors for six tumultuous years. When you borrowed my tiller, you returned it in pieces. When I was sick, you blasted rap music. And when your dog went to the bathroom all over my lawn, you laughed. I could go on but I’m certainly not one to hold grudges. So I’m writing this letter to tell you that your houses on fire. Cordially, Bob.

America is on fire. Is anyone paying attention or are we all just adding on firewood?

Proverbs 12 tells us that “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.” My advice to people is to always confront deceit & lies. When people just make stuff up, do we say nothing?! Proverbs 29 is 100% on target here: “When the godly are in authority the people rejoice. But when the wicked are in power, they groan.” Speak up or get ready for more groaning!

There is a stunning verse found in Joshua 24:19. Joshua has confronted the Hebrew people with truth. Many have chosen to follow idols so he called them all together and delivered these now famous words: “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” What does the Word of God say about laws & boundaries, right & wrong, good & evil? Find the answers to these and you will find truth.

Gregory Elder tells of spending many hours at the beach and of building many sandcastles during the summers. One year some bullies appeared and smashed his creations. Day after day they would come and destroy what he had made. One day he

decided to do something about it. He gathered stones, rocks, blocks and other hard materials. He put them in place and covered them with sand to create his sandcastles. Just as the bullies appeared, he disappeared. He watched a good way off as these bullies – barefooted – ran off in pain as their bare feet had met their match.

I suppose, applying that narrative here, we could call these bullies secularism, politics, heresies, or just plain ol’ sins that kick at the foundations and structure of our society. If our structures are not built on The Rock (Jesus Christ & The Word) they will eventually crumble. After all, the Bible reveals truth as a moral concept rooted in God’s very character. As Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) so brilliantly noted: “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” Selah!

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Recall the president’s first term was closely shadowed by high-profile breakups from loyalists who disagreed with him on matters of substance. For example, the split with his first Defense secretary, James Mattis, began in 2017 when Mattis, a man who spent more than four decades in uniform, defended the importance of NATO. His successor, Mark Esper, found himself at odds with the president for refusing to use the military on citizens. On his way out the door, Esper told the country that if his replacement was “a real ‘yes man’ … then God help us.”

Some of the highlights from Trump’s second term include squabbles with his biggest donor, Elon Musk, who was upset the president wasn’t lowering the national debt enough; with former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene because millions of Americans faced losing health insurance; and with Rep. Thomas Massie for having the audacity to seek justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking operation.

Now it appears it’s Carlson’s turn. He, like Pope Leo XIV and many of our allies and nearly 70% of Americans, disapproves of the president’s handling of the war in Iran. On a recent episode of the Carlson podcast, the former Fox News host invited his brother Buckley, himself a former Trump speechwriter, on the show to discuss their buyer’s remorse.

Everyone has that line they won’t cross for the president.

Omarosa Manigault Newman left reality TV to advise Trump. She followed him to the White House, found out there was a lot of racism over in MAGA land, and ended up back on reality TV. For Mattis, it was abandoning our allies. For Esper, it was shooting protesters.

For Carlson, it’s Iran. Candidate Trump campaigned on ending endless wars. This week, Trump said there’s no timeline for when the war he started with Iran will end.

“I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,” Carlson told his brother. “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”

Now before Tucker’s apology, Buckley defended his initial support of Trump’s candidacy in 2015 — despite “all of his obvious foibles and his disgusting elements of his personality” — in part because “he built things.” Buckley also said that after the election of President Obama, white Americans in Washington were subjugated by a version of Jim Crow in education and society, and that progressives “would look blank or angry” whenever he asked what Obama was doing to strengthen the nation.

In other words, being red in the face over Trump did not turn the Tucker boys blue. In fact, the episode ended with the two calling the left a bunch of “lunatics,” even after listing the ways the Trump administration was holding back release of the Epstein files and hurting the country.

“Demonic influences concentrate on those who have power. Beware of power,” Tucker warned listeners halfway through the show before his brother chimed in: “And those who seek power.”

Of course, Trump’s ascension to the White House wasn’t solely based on the contributions of media folks. The president entered 2015 having been a public figure for more than 30 years. He’s had the luxury of criticizing elected officials and legislation on camera without the burden of governing for much of that time. When he entered the political arena, he didn’t have a record to defend. He likes being quotable, not being held accountable. That’s why it’s doubtful he would have been elected a second time if not for the support from unscrupulous podcasters masquerading as political journalists such as Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, who less than a year ago said everything Trump “campaigned on, I believed he wanted to do. And now he’s doing the exact opposite thing.… I voted for none of this.”

As if “this” had not been clearly spelled out in the pages of Project 2025 for all to see before deciding whether to vote for Trump and that agenda.

Schulz, the comedian and podcaster, might not have read that outline, but Tucker Carlson probably did. That’s why his apology to listeners — like the mea culpas from the discarded loyalists of the past — ultimately won’t mean anything to mainstream Republicans or MAGA. Those who identify with the latter listen only to Trump. As for the former — they have always known that people like Carlson don’t regret supporting Trump. They regret falling out of favor.

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Vote Elizabeth Tucker for Riverside County Superior Judge

I am very happy to see that Elizabeth Tucker is our “first” choice on the March 5 ballot, running for Riverside County Superior Court judge.

I have learned that at least one courtroom at the Larson Justice Center in Indio is vacant since a qualified judge is not available for duty. Due to a lack of judges here in the Coachella Valley, commuting judges from the areas of both Temecula and San Bernardino are assigned cases here. The net result in the lack of local judges is resulting in excessive waits at the Indio courthouse and delays in justice for our citizenry.

Elizabeth Tucker has over 28 years of experience right here in Indio and the Coachella Valley, 23 years as a deputy district attorney and today more than five years as a court commissioner, hearing cases in dependency court. As a Democrat, I am pleased we have a candidate with this depth and breadth of experience. And given that Tucker is a resident and serving our community as a Rotary Club member, this is certainly another real plus.

Vote for Elizabeth Tucker, Riverside County Superior Judge – she has earned our support.

Dennis Sheehan, Indio

Cherry-picking parts of the Constitution

I read the Feb. 6 letter to the editor regarding “respect the Constitution.” However, one must also read and understand the entire 14th Amendment. While I totally disrespect what President Trump is alleged to have done Jan. 6, Section 5 of the 14th Amendment states, “The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

It is unfair to pick and choose elements you like and disregard others you dislike or have chosen not to take into consideration. These actions are more political than accurate representations.

Barry Morgan, Rancho Mirage

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various author’s articles on this Opinion piece or elsewhere online or in the newspaper where we have articles with the header “COLUMN/EDITORIAL & OPINION” do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints or official policies of the Publisher, Editor, Reporters or anybody else in the Staff of the Hemet and San Jacinto Chronicle Newspaper.

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In 1969, the federal government announced that it would hand out millions of dollars in subsidies to companies willing to try something new: build houses in factories. Then as now, America was in the throes of a housing crisis.

There weren’t enough places to live. Mass production provided Americans with abundant and cheap food, clothing, cars and other staples of material life. But houses were still hammered together by hand, on site. The federal initiative, Operation Breakthrough, aimed to drive up the production of housing — and to drive down the cost — by dragging the building industry into the 20th century. It didn’t work.

Big companies, including Alcoa and General Electric, designed new kinds of houses, and roughly 25,000 rolled out of factories over the following decade. But none of the new home builders long survived the end of federal subsidies in the mid-1970s. Last year, only 2 percent of new single-family homes in the United States were built in factories. Two decades into the 21st century, nearly all U.S. homes are still built the old-fashioned way: one at a time, by hand. Completing a house took an average of 8.3 months in 2022, a month longer than it took to build a house of the same size back in 1971.

Federal housing policy in the decades since the failure of Operation Breakthrough has focused myopically on providing financial aid to renters and homeowners. The government needs to return its attention to the supply side. Opening land for development, for example by easing zoning restrictions, is part of the answer, but reducing building costs could be even more constructive.

Land accounts for roughly 20 percent of the price of a new house; building costs account for 60 percent. (The price of land is a larger factor in coastal cities like New York, but a vast majority of new housing in the United States is built on cheap land outside cities.) The tantalizing potential of factory-built housing, also known as modular housing, continues to attract investors and entrepreneurs, including a start-up called Fading West that opened a factory in 2021 in the Colorado mountain town of Buena Vista.

But Fading West, and similar start-ups in other parts of the country, need government help to drive a significant shift from handmade housing to factories. This time, there is reason to think it could work. On a windy morning last month, I watched as wooden platforms the size of train cars moved down the Fading West assembly line, advancing to a new station every few hours as workers added walls and windows, wiring and insulation, dishwashers and cabinets.

The finished boxes are trucked to building sites and swung into place by cranes. Houses consist of two to four boxes. Once they’re knitted together, the result looks like a traditional home. Charlie Chupp, the chief executive, previously ran a company that built and shipped all the pieces of new stores for Starbucks, Einstein Bros. Bagels and other restaurant chains. Fading West is seeking to apply a similar model to building homes and apartments. “We see ourselves as being in manufacturing, not construction,” says Eric Schaefer, a former pastor who is now the company’s chief evangelist, bending the ear of politicians, reporters and developers about the potential benefits of mass production — and the changes necessary to support it.

Final assembly happens so quickly that it almost seems like a magic trick. In Poncha Springs, a town 30 minutes south of Buena Vista, I watched as a crane swung a 19,894-pound box over a concrete foundation. A worker on each corner checked the fit while two more waited in the basement to connect it to the foundation. As it was secured, a truck arrived with the next box. The team of eight workers has sometimes assembled four houses in a single day.

Joanna Schwartz, the chief executive of Quartz Properties, which is using Fading West’s boxes to build the homes, said buyers sometimes come to see the show. “They didn’t have a house in the morning and then in the afternoon they can walk through it,” she said. Fading West says houses from its factory can be completed in as little as half the time and at as little as 80 percent of the cost of equivalent handmade homes, in part because the site can be prepared while the structure is built in the factory. A 2017 analysis by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, found similar savings for the construction of three- to five-story apartment buildings using modular components. Factory building has other advantages, too.

It can reduce waste, maintain higher standards of consistency and produce homes that are more energy efficient. It is not subject to rain delays. It also offers a solution to the home-building industry’s growing problems finding enough qualified workers, especially in high-cost areas. Manufacturers like Fading West can build where labor is cheaper and then ship homes to the places where people want to live. But there are good reasons modular housing has remained the next big thing for a long time. One basic problem is that houses are large objects, and unlike cars or airplanes, they are not designed to move. The result is that the savings from factory production are partly offset by the cost of transportation. (Some companies reduce transportation costs by shipping homes in smaller pieces, an approach pioneered by Sears and other retailers of “build your own home” kits in the early 20th century, but that just shifts the cost from transportation to assembly.)

The volatility of the housing market is also a problem. Traditional home builders rely on contract workers who are easily dismissed during downturns. Factory builders, which have high fixed costs, tend to go bankrupt. Housing downturns have ended a long line of ambitious and well-funded efforts to create the Model T of the housing industry. In 2006, on the cusp of the most recent housing crash, factory builders produced more than 70,000 homes. Since the crisis and the resulting wipeout, annual production has not exceeded 30,000 houses. Neither volatility nor transportation costs might matter if factory home builders could match the efficiency gains found in other kinds of mass production.

Brian Potter, a senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress, a nonpartisan think tank focused on technological innovation, gives the example of the Ford Taurus. Experimental models of the 1996 Taurus were built by hand, which cost almost half a million dollars per car. The car eventually retailed for less than $20,000. Factory home builders have struggled to streamline construction. Mr. Potter spent several years looking for ways to make housing construction more efficient, an effort he narrated on a fascinating blog, before concluding that significant progress wasn’t likely. “Almost any idea that you can think of for a way to build a single-family home cheaper has basically been tried, and there was probably a company that went bankrupt trying to do it,” Mr. Potter told me. I think the history of the auto industry provides reason for more optimism.

One lesson is that progress requires production at scale. There are a handful of car companies that each make millions of cars, and hundreds of home builders building a few hundred homes a year. Fading West, which aims to produce as many as 1,000 homes a year, says that isn’t enough to justify investments in automation. Efficiency gains also come from doing the same thing over and over again, but the idiosyncrasies of local building codes make that impossible.

In Colorado alone, by Mr. Schaefer’s count, there are more than 300 distinct building codes, requiring adjustments for each new batch of homes. Fading West found that it had to use different roof designs for homes headed to the city of Fairplay and to a development just outside the city, because the county has stricter snow load regulations. A sequel to Operation Breakthrough could help the industry overcome those challenges. The Canadian government’s Rapid Housing Initiative is providing support for large-scale modular manufacturing by setting tight construction deadlines for affordable housing projects that obtain government funding, an approach the United States could emulate on an even larger scale. The government also can push for the standardization of building materials and building regulations.

Herbert Hoover, the great champion of industrial standardization, who during his years as commerce secretary in the 1920s worked successfully to establish uniform rules for products such as paving bricks, milk bottles and blackboards, argued that establishing consistent standards was the nearest thing to a free lunch. It would increase productivity, benefiting companies, workers and customers.

Florida and California will always have somewhat different building codes, because hurricanes and earthquakes pose different challenges. But there is no reason for Colorado to have 300 different codes. If it seems far-fetched that the government could revolutionize the home-building business, take a look at what sits on top of a growing number of American homes.

The government has driven the spread — and driven down the cost — of solar panels through decades of investment and subsidies. It’s time to pay similar attention to the buildings underneath.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various author’s articles on this Opinion piece or elsewhere online or in the newspaper where we have articles with the header “COLUMN/EDITORIAL & OPINION” do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints or official policies of the Publisher, Editor, Reporters or anybody else in the Staff of the Hemet and San Jacinto Chronicle Newspaper.

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Rusty Strait | Senior Reporter

A friend (not a writer) recently asked me how much it costs to self-publish a book, understanding that I had self-published my last book. It is a question every writer, whether aspiring or already published in a different form, should know about. There are so many aspects of the question that I’m not sure where to start, but I’ll try to expand my brain enough to answer.

The following points are crucial:

1. How many pages is your book?

2. Even if you have conceived a cover, there will still be costs associated with all the artwork involved.

3. Do you have photos? How many? Are they in black and white or color?

4. Publicity: As the publisher, the cost of publicity is your responsibility.

5. Research book reviewers. Newspapers and magazines are the best sources. They usually have someone who reviews books. However, some agencies charge various fees. They may provide a decent review but lack standing in the publishing world. Kirkus is the Godfather of reviews, but even they charge now.

6. Line editing to ensure your P’s & Q’s are in place.

7. Editing for plagiarism and other liabilities. Accuracy is key in non-fiction, and in fiction, especially if you have real settings and characters buried in your story. Nowadays, people love to sue for damages, like money.

These are just some of the basics that you will encounter if you self-publish. As you go along, you will find that prices vary depending on who you use for things you know nothing about. In this instance, the early bird gets stuck with the bill. It’s better to talk to your librarian if you have no other source of such information. However, if you love writing and can afford the costs of self-publishing, go for it. It is a lot of fun, and the things you discover along the way are awesome. Thanks for listening, and I do appreciate your interest and inquiries. Writing is my life. Just sayin’.

rustystrait@gmail.com

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I was recently asked if there was a defining moment that dramatically accelerated and perhaps made permanent the chaos this nation is presently facing. My answer: the two weeks between March 16 and March 30, 2020.

On March 16th, Donald Trump declared a National Emergency for COVID-19 and effectively shut down the nation for “15 days to slow the spread”. At a press conference announcing the temporary shutdown he said: “With several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner, and turn it quickly.” Regardless of the severity, never throughout the annals of mankind has a nation been shut down to combat a pandemic.

However, the politically compromised and dishonest medical advisors to Trump (including Drs. Fauci and Birx) advised him to declare a National Emergency and agree to a shutdown and social distancing by pointing to the supposed success of China’s choreographed lockdowns.

Soon thereafter, Trump allied with Mitch McConnell and the Democrats to structure an unprecedented economic relief package which was passed by Congress on March 27, 2020. Trump signed the $2.2 Trillion Coronavirus relief bill or the CARES Act on the same day.

This was the largest single spending bill in human history and equivalent to the annual Gross Domestic Product of Russia. Within the voluminous CARES Act was $400 million to the states to legitimize, promote, and underwrite mass mail-in voting and by default, ballot harvesting.

By including this spending in the relief package, both political parties and the White House gave their stamp of approval for mass mail-in voting and the inevitable attendant abuse and manipulation. The announced initial 15 days to slow the spread of COVID-19 days became 45 days as Donald Trump, on March 30, 2020, reluctantly extended the de facto national shutdown for an additional 30 days after acquiescing to the so-called public health experts in the government. Once that extension was announced, Trump lost control of events and it became impossible for him to reverse course.

He was mercilessly mocked whenever he talked about ending the lockdowns toward the end of the 45-day period as the legacy media and the Democrats were incessantly fearmongering and the federal medical bureaucracy was deliberately inflating the infection and fatality numbers.

This cabal was secure in the knowledge that the measures outlined by Trump and the White House Covid Task Force would sink the economy and open the door to mass mail-in voting and voter fraud. Which would also be the catalyst to defeat Trump in the general election.

Accordingly, the political opposition and legacy media unrelentingly wallowed in alarmism and championed draconian lockdowns, masking and social distancing while also promoting mass mail-in voting. Thus, the extension issued on March 30th inevitably led to long-term lockdowns, massive economic dislocation, protracted school closures as the various state governors, pointing to Trump’s decisions as their justification, initiated their own lockdown regimens.

Trump was confronted with the reality that a president has no legal basis to intervene in the shutdown policies of the individual states. Instinctively, Trump knew he had made a mistake as he watched the economy implode. However, due to the upcoming election, he hesitated to remove those around him, such as the duplicitous Drs. Fauci and Birx, who were not only incompetent but in league with the Democrat/Legacy Media axis.

Trump, in his speeches, did attempt to convince the governors and federal bureaucrats to alter course, but it was too late as the damage to his presidency, the nation, and the citizenry was a fait accompli. Further, with donor and federal government funding combined with insouciance on the part of the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, the Democrat war machine relentlessly, and in some cases unconstitutionally, succeeded in changing election laws in numerous states prior to November 3, 2020.

The decisions and actions between March 16th and March 30, 2020 were the primary factor in the election of Joe Biden and the Obama-led Marxist takeover of the presidency and the Executive Branch, which has eventuated in the following:

• A de facto open border resulting in over 10 million illegal immigrants and an untold number of potential terrorists flooding the nation,

• $10.3 Trillion in new national debt since March of 2020 (in 2008 the total national debt was $10.0 Trillion),

• A potentially permanent stagnant economy and ongoing inflation resulting in one dollar in November of 2023 buying only 82% of what it did in March of 2020, while real disposable income is down 7.5%,

• A politically weaponized justice system and federal police force (FBI) targeting Trump and other political adversaries as well as everyday Americans,

• Permanent uncontrolled mail-in voting in 34 of the 50 states,

• The massive expansion of the government-sponsored censorship and domestic spying industry,

• An overwhelming erosion of confidence in the Federal health bureaucracy due to manipulating data, promoting lockdowns, and the haphazard approval and mandating of the COVID-19 vaccine,

• The funding of a never-ending and unnecessary war in Ukraine, the enriching of Iran, and the greenlighting of Chinese expansion and belligerency.

Donald Trump deserves to be recognized as an indispensable man who was the right president at the right time and prior to March of 2020 had one of the most successful presidencies in the modern era. However, when confronted by his adversaries and their manipulation of the Coronavirus Pandemic, Trump’s acquiescence and decision-making process was out of character as he was far too fixated on the upcoming election.

The decisions a president makes in times of national crises oftentimes have enormous implications for the future of the country. The decisions made in those fateful two weeks between March 16 and March 30, 2020 are the backdrop to the chaos this nation is presently experiencing.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various author’s articles on this Opinion piece or elsewhere online or in the newspaper where we have articles with the header “COLUMN/EDITORIAL & OPINION” do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints or official policies of the Publisher, Editor, Reporters or anybody else in the Staff of the Hemet and San Jacinto Chronicle Newspaper.

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President Harry Truman once said, “The lessons of history we don’t learn can come back to bite us. How quickly we forget things in politics. One thing I never forgot is the 1948 presidential election. The media were all agog over New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey beating “Give ‘em hell” Harry Truman. Prior to election day, the vaunted Gallup poll rated Dewey at 53.2 and Truman at 32.1 in its pre-election poll. The press was so excited that one newspaper came out on election night with headlines that read DEWEY WINS. The publisher, Robert McCormick, had mud on his face for a long time. It is simply a matter of pollsters not being trustworthy with facts. They quickly adapt to something they hear or read about a candidate.

Adolf Hitler told everybody what he would do in his book, Mein Kampf. A book that, according to Donald Trump’s daughter, he kept by his bedside. Today he is quoting almost verbatim from Hitler’s book. Hitler called the Jews vermin to be gotten rid of. Trump calls Americans who don’t support him vermin and publicly vows to get rid of them. He is talking about many of us honest and patriotic citizens who respect and honor the Constitution that he would like to replace with his own set of rules. Not on my watch.

Joe Biden has proven his merit. He doesn’t come close to the percentages of Harry Truman. Let me list the things he inherited from the Trump Administration: a humongous deficit. He left just as inflation was gathering wings. It rose to 9.1% in June and is now at 6.5 per cent. That is quite a drop. It continues to fall. High prices, for instance, gasoline and fuel bill increases due to the greed of the corporate giants who, like Trump, couldn’t care less about ordinary citizens. What has Biden given us? I’ll tell you:

1. 1.8 jobs for every unemployed person, down from a peak but still historically high.

2. $24.2 billion, the amount of U.S. Security assistance committed to Ukraine since the Russian invasion over a year ago.

3. 2.38 million ending in September 2023, for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It stopped migrants at the U.S. border nearly 2.4 million times, a record surge driven by sharp increases in Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaraguans making the trek. The previous yearly high was in 2021 when CBP stopped migrants at the border 1.66 times.

4. The number of High Mobility Artillery Rocket known as HIMARS that the Administration has committed to send to Ukraine. The mobile advanced rocket systems have been a game-changer for Ukraine forces, allowing them to fire at Russian targets from dozens of miles away and quickly drive away before Russian armillary can target their position.

5. Biden won Senate confirmation for 97 of his picks to the federal bench, including Supreme Court Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson during the first two years of his presidency. Biden has outpaced his two immediate predecessors.

6. The president has granted nine pardons and 80 commutations, far more than any of his predecessors at this point in their presidencies. Donald Trump had granted 11 at this point, and George Bush, seven. Barack Obama didn’t take any clemency action in his first two years.

7. The average price per gallon that American motorists are paying at the pump has fallen since peaking at $5.02 per gallon.

8. 660 million COVID-19 vaccines have been administered to Americans under Biden.

9. Twenty million had received the jab before Biden took office. Donald Trump said that COVID would disappear in a week. We know how that turned out.

10. Deaths from the Corona Virus had already taken 416,750 when Biden was elected.

11. One trillion dollars has been allocated for roads, bridges, ports, and more in Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure legislation, arguably the most significant legislative achievement of his first two years in office.

12. 43,000 bridges in the U.S. are rated as poor and needing repair, according to the White House. He also brought down the price of insulin and other medicals.

These were things he did to make America safe and comfortable for you. It is hard to compare what Candidate Trump would do. I don’t understand why the Republicans fear him so much. As you look at all the bangles and beads being flashed at you like a carnival shill, don’t be swayed. Remember, all that glitters is not gold. Don’t give up what you have to a traveling salesman. I’m an American, and I’m concerned because I love this country just like it is. Just sayin’.

rustystrait@gmail.com

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Anyone holding the idea that Israel needs to accept a two-state solution to survive has not thought through the problem. Or perhaps they have indeed thought through the problem and have decided that a two-state solution is a step along the way to dissolving Israel as a state of the Jews, which is just fine for them but not for the Jews.

What would be the result to Israel if it were reduced to its ‘67 borders? At that time, the narrowest distance from its eastern border to the Mediterranean Sea was less than 10 miles…actually, closer to 9 miles. Before the ‘67 Six-Day War, to get from Jerusalem to Beit Shan near the Sea of Galilee required leaving Jerusalem, going west towards Tel Aviv, traveling up the Coast Road to Haifa, turning East to Tiberias, and then south to Beit Shan, a trip of 4-5 hours. The military risk to the country was being cut in two at that choke point.

When the question arose as to why the town of Dimona was chosen as the site of Israel’s nuclear facility, Israel offered the following explanation: Though Dimona is only a few miles east of the Egyptian border and a few miles west of the Jordanian border, it is the point in Israel that was furthest from any border. The hills of Judea and Samaria run north-south along the top of the Jordan Hills, with the Jordan River at the bottom of the Rift Valley to the east.

The hills naturally sit above the lowlands to the west. Before the ’67 War, most of Israel’s population sat below those hills to the west, as is still the case today. There is one hill east of Ben Gurion airport that can see the takeoff and landing of every aircraft, making them easy targets. Giving that hill to the Arabs would be similar to a cow raising its neck to the slaughterer so he can make a better cut. These points address the topography of pre-’67 Israel and its effect upon the lives of the Jews. No one who wishes a secure future for Israel should think of returning to those suicidal borders.

There’s also the sociological aspect of integrating Arabs and Jews. Anyone seeking a two-state solution is suggesting that perennial conflict is their goal. Jews and Arabs need to be substantially separated geographically. The Jordan River seems logical, with those Arabs remaining in Judea and Samaria becoming citizens of Jordan. They would not be stateless and they’d be unable to interfere with the development of a majority Jewish state. A Jewish state is the only way to prevent repeated occurrences of October 7’s slaughter. While Jews are somewhat indifferent towards Arabs, Arabs have hated Jews since Mohammad walked the earth.

The problem is that, while Jews can live side-by-side with Arabs, being indifferent or befriending them on an individual level, traditional Arabs will merely hate Jews when the Jews are strong but will attempt to slaughter them when the Jews are relatively weak. This brutality is supported by Mohammad’s behavior. If Mohammad slaughtered Jews 1300 years ago, today’s Arabs consider it laudable behavior and will try to do the same. And, of course, Mohammad slaughtered Jews to the last man at Khaybar (except for those who agreed to pay the Jizya tax or converted to Islam).

He waited until he had gained enough strength to beat them and then acted despite the interim peace. One must also consider Iran, the key villain in this mess. Let me urge you to explore the following two links that may be eye-opening for those on the fringes of this conflict: 1) There is no question that, for ideological reasons, there are those in the United States government who are strengthening Iran to the detriment of Israel. 2) These same people are strengthening Hizb’Allah in Lebanon at the expense of Israel as well.

These links imply that Israel is considered expendable except to the Jews themselves and others with a conscience and a memory. Therefore, Israel must resist physical compression and cultural suppression. To this, I must add that the continued existence of Israel as a state of the Jews is imperative for the entire world. The flourishing of Israel prevents world dominance by globalists who wish uniform entropy and powerlessness among all populations.

This goal of uniformity is so lacking in sense that, if permitted to do so in the future, people will write entire scholarly volumes about its stupidity. Israel is a bulwark against globalism and enforced uniformity. That’s because it’s a fine example of a nation that is both tied to the past through Judaism and is responsive to changing socio-economic conditions that require flexibility. It has not needed the presumptions of globalism, Marxism, or even capitalism to succeed. At every choice point, it tinkers without fear and restrictions until it finds solutions that work. Israel’s independence and success explain much of the antipathy directed at the state of the Jews.

I call this antipathy ‘anti-Semitism.’ This week, in every synagogue in Israel and around the world, we read the section called Noah, which tells how God decides to destroy all living creatures except for Noah and his family. Men had become so corrupt they no longer merited continued existence. The Hebrew word for corruption is ‘Hamas.’ Yes, Hamas was and is the pinnacle of corruption. Apparently, things are no different today than they were in pre-flood history.

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Like most Americans, I was shocked by the vicious inhumanity that the coward terrorist group Hamas carried out in Israel last weekend. Unfortunately, organized evil is neither unique nor surprising. The Nazis were equally evil across Europe, as were the Japanese at Nanking, Stalin with Ukraine, and Mao with his own people. Sadly, evil happens, devils exist, although, thankfully, they are rarely celebrated.

But “rarely” doesn’t mean never, and the most shocking thing last week wasn’t the evil Hamas perpetrated but, rather, the extraordinary support it has received. Not only is Hamas’s evil finding exuberant support in places like Iran and Qatar where you might expect it, but there were tens of thousands of Muslims—and their liberal comrades—in places like New York, Detroit, and Washington out en masse vocally demonstrating their support for these monsters.

And it wasn’t just on the streets, in places like Harvard and Yale and NYU, you had students and professors and organizations blaming Israel for Hamas’s inhumanity. Even as the full extent of the carnage emerged, days after the world was able to see the barbarity of what the savages carried out, the rallies in support not only didn’t diminish, but they seemed to grow. I couldn’t help but wonder what that portends for our future.

As an American, I shook my head, stunned as I watched the scenes unfold. I wondered how so many people, with smiles on their non-hidden faces, could cheer such evil and how supposedly intelligent people could put their names in support of such barbarism. My reaction to a few posts on Twitter was, “Send them to Gaza.” Not that it was going to happen, but it’s one thing to cheer the beheading of babies and raping of women from five thousand miles away, it’s another thing to do so when there’s a realistic possibility of the IDF ending you.

Of course, that’s not going to happen, but then I wondered to myself, what is wrong with these people, and why are they allowed to do this? Before the words even formed in my head, I answered my own question: Free speech… that extraordinary thing we have that Muslim countries don’t.

All of that led my brain to a quote that is often falsely attributed to Winston Churchill: “When Muslims are in the minority they are very concerned with minority rights, when they are in the majority there are no minority rights.” The British Bulldog may not have said that, but a look at a map of nations with Sharia law suggests that it’s correct.

“But we don’t live in one of those countries, the ones with the radical Muslims,” you might say, “these people are just fringe wackos.” Not so much. A 2015 poll of Muslims in America showed the following: “More than half (51%) of U.S. Muslims polled also believe either that they should have the choice of American or shariah courts, or that they should have their own tribunals to apply shariah. Only 39% of those polled said that Muslims in the U.S. should be subject to American courts.” It also found “nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, ‘It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.’” and “Nearly one-fifth of Muslim respondents said that the use of violence in the United States is justified in order to make shariah the law of the land in this country.”

Anyone watching the thousands of protesters in Atlanta, Chicago, and Tampa could easily see that it’s likely the percentages listed above have only grown, something troublesome in a free republic.

Now, support for Sharia doesn’t necessarily equate to support for Hamas’s actions last week, but a Venn Diagram would likely demonstrate a great deal of overlap.

But then you say, “Muslims are barely 1% of the population, so they can’t be a threat.” Maybe, but think about this: trans people are far fewer in number yet, today, we find ourselves amid national fights about bathrooms, sports, and the “medical” butchering of children. Interestingly, most of the people who support the LBGTQXYZ123 agenda also support “Palestine.” The irony, of course, is that Gazans would almost certainly throw the alphabet people off the tops of buildings were they to go there. Note, too, a fascinating essay summing up Peter Hammond’s analysis of the effect Muslims have on a country as their numbers grow.

So, the question becomes, how does a pluralistic, secular state that values individual liberty deal with vile ideas that are repugnant to the basic elements of the culture, as well as with those who espouse those repugnant ideas? Is the Constitution a suicide pact that allows those who object to its foundational principles to use the document’s freedoms to take power in order to eliminate our constitutional republic?

In his autobiography, Malcolm X talks about being invited to speak at Harvard and other prestigious universities when he was still spewing much of his anti-white racist venom. He marvels that, while he was invited to speak and said things that most of the audience disagreed with, they were always courteous and usually engaged in a healthy, respectful dialogue.

Contrast that with today’s conservative speakers such as Heather MacDonald, Ann Coulter, or Ben Shapiro, who have had events canceled or found themselves drowned out and threatened by leftists who equate speech they don’t like with violence. Not surprisingly, a recent poll showed that 66% of college students find this acceptable, while another showed that 65% of Democrats supported censoring “misinformation.”

Now, maybe this vile and public championing of hate will be a tipping point where the Democrat coalition fractures as the various victim classes it has nurtured twist themselves into pretzels trying to be good team players. I doubt it, though, because Democrats in toto hate America, hate freedom and, most of all, hate Donald Trump and MAGA. They are bound together by these hatreds and will always put power above everything else.

Nonetheless, what we saw over the last week should, I hope, cause more people to take notice of those who would use our freedoms to end them for everyone else. The adage of “One man, one vote, one time” refers to the idea of someone or some group using the democratic norms of a nation to win an election and then using that victory to eviscerate freedom. Think Hitler in Germany, Chavez in Venezuela, or Erdogan in Turkey.

If we’ve learned anything since the reign of Barack Obama, it’s that America is not immune to the danger of political parties weaponizing government for their own purposes. Given that the people cheering on the butchers of Hamas are a core part of the Democrat coalition, we should not be too quick to dismiss them as fringe. If we do so, we could all live to regret it.

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