Alec Baldwin Is Full of BS —

And Should Be Charged with Felony Crimes

Ever notice that every time a leftist screws up – which happens on every day that ends in “y” – it’s always someone else’s fault? Think about the drooling sock puppet wandering around the Oval Office. Nine months in office, everything he’s touched has turned to crap, and it’s all still Trump’s fault. Everyone, including the Drooler-in-Chief himself, refuses to acknowledge the utter incompetence of the ventriloquists with their hands up his butt.

Which brings us to Alec Baldwin. While rehearsing a scene for a western in which he was facing in the direction of the camera – a shot known as a “reverse” – his gun discharged, the bullet striking the cinematographer, passing through her, and also hitting the film’s director, who was standing behind her, wounding him and killing her. Baldwin claims that when the gun was handed to him he was told it was “cold”, meaning unloaded. That it was a “one-in-a-trillion accident”; that industry standards need to be revised to prevent a reoccurrence of such an event, perhaps to the extent of banning all real guns from film sets; that the film crew was a “well-oiled” team; in other words, “It wasn’t my fault!”.

All of which pegged my BS Meter big time.

First of all, the most important rule of handling guns is that you treat every gun as loaded all the time unless you’ve personally verified it isn’t, and never point a gun at anyone or anything unless you’re ready to kill or destroy it. Period. If God had given us an Eleventh Commandment, that would be it. It’s not only the cardinal rule of guns, but it’s just plain common sense, and Baldwin chose to ignore it.

Further, I can draw on my own personal experience. Way back in ancient times I was a working actor (Brian Baker – IMDb). In two of the shows I shot – Baretta (“Baretta” It Goes with the Job (TV Episode 1977) – IMDb) and The Incredible Hulk (“The Incredible Hulk” The Disciple (TV Episode 1979) – IMDb) – my characters were involved in gunfights. Here’s how that’s done. The scene is first shot in “master”, meaning a wide shot that includes most or all of the actors and all the major elements of the scene visible in the frame. Then “reverse” or close-ups are shot of the players, those shots used to provide pacing and emphasis as part of the artistic and creative process.

In several other shows I was in my characters were cops who never drew their guns. In those shows I was given an actual “prop gun”, basically an inoperable replica gun made of pot metal or rubber, the sole function of which was to stuff my character’s holster. The guns we used in Baretta and Hulk were actual working guns, so when Baldwin bleats about “prop guns” he’s basically highlighting his ignorance, if not consciously trying to minimize his responsibility.

In the scenes leading up to the filmed gunfights in both shows my characters were costumed with prop guns. Working pistols were kept locked up by the set armorer until it was time to use them. When that time came, here’s the process. The prop master took away my prop gun. The armorer arrived with the real gun. He opened the cylinder – this was in the era when cops used revolvers, not semi-autos – and we both verified it was empty. Then he looked down the bore to confirm it was clear, handed the gun to me, and I did the same thing. He took the gun back. He then presented six blank rounds. We both inspected them and confirmed they were blanks. He then loaded them into the cylinder, closed it, and placed the gun in my holster. I was not allowed to draw the gun until it was time to shoot the scene.

After we shot the master, he took the gun back until it was time for my close-up, the “reverse” shot, at which point we repeated the process.

When firing the gun, I always made sure my gun wasn’t actually pointing directly at any people. The camera can’t tell exactly where the gun’s aimed, so it’s really easy, and a basic safety precaution, to aim slightly off-target. This is especially true when shooting the reverse angle, what Baldwin was doing when he shot his victims. You’re very close to other people and the gun’s pointing in their general direction. Even blanks can be deadly at close range if they’re wadded and not crimped. Definitely the time to take extra precautions. The standard practice in those days – and I have no reason to think standards have gotten looser with the passage of time – was to coordinate with the director exactly where the gun would be aimed, and then clear any people from the area directly in front of the barrel of the gun. In other words, a simple and basic safety precaution.

From what I’ve read about the Baldwin event, precisely none of what I just described was taking place on the set of his movie.

The armorer – the one person with direct responsibility for securing and controlling the guns and ammunition of the production – was a 24-year-old kid with virtually no experience in the job. Guns and ammunition were occasionally left lying around unsupervised. There are reports of members of the crew grabbing production guns during breaks to use recreationally, with live ammunition. The presence anywhere on the location of actual live ammunition is, frankly, unimaginable. The gun was reported as being handed to Baldwin by someone other than the armorer… Why? And why didn’t Baldwin question that? Why didn’t the actual armorer prevent that?

“Well, why should Baldwin the actor be criminally charged?”, you might ask. After all, he simply fired the gun he was given by someone else. While that seems to be the case, he failed to observe even the most rudimentary precautions before pulling the trigger, meaning his negligence caused the death and injury to the victims. In my opinion that negligence reaches the level of criminal conduct; manslaughter, negligent homicide, something on that order.

“But as an actor he’s not in charge of the conditions leading to this incident”, you respond. While that’s probably true, he’s also one of the producers of the project, and the producers are the people ultimately responsible for what happens during a production. They allocate the budget, hire the personnel, provide the props and location and everything else that’s actually present while the film is being made.

Someone made the decision to hire an unqualified armorer to supervise the guns and ammunition. Someone made the decision to hire an assistant director who seems to have taken it upon himself to hand a loaded gun to Baldwin on that set. Someone made the apparent decision that saving production money warranted possibly hiring people to perform certain functions more cheaply because they were less qualified.

In the movie world, that “someone” is the producer… one of which was Baldwin himself. Those decisions as producer led directly to the death of one victim and injury to the other. Again, that poor prioritization and decision making rises to the level of criminal conduct in my opinion.

It was no different from handing the keys to a Porsche to a 14-year-old kid and telling him to have fun. It was beyond stupid.

It was a crime.

©Brian Baker 2021

Big Surprise: A Leftist Calls For Censorship… Of Me

 

(The following is a Letter to the Editor (LTE) written by me that was published today in the local daily newspaper of Santa Clarita, The Signal. I was responding to another LTE critical of my last column, “The Great Mask Scam”. You can read that person’s LTE here: Dorio LTE)

Most of the columns and letters to the editor (LTEs) that I write and that are published by The Signal concern political topics, and since I’m a conservative I expect – and get – a lot of umbrage and pushback from leftists who disagree with my views.

That’s fine with me. I believe in open debate in a free society. But that’s a view that apparently isn’t shared by all.

My 2 December column “The Great American Mask Scam” engendered a responding LTE from Gene Dorio (“Fringe-Speak in Baker Column”, 9 December) that illustrates the problem. Rather than making any effort at all to refute the specific assertions of my column, which included six links to verifiable reputable sources, Dorio presumes a position of superior moral authority (“As a geriatric physician…”), makes a claim unsupported by any documentation (“(I) find this commentary disseminates misinformation while pitting science and public health against political bias.”), and then advocates censorship (“Advising and advocating citizens to wear a mask is not a scam, and The Signal might join in to better serve the health and welfare of our community.”).

You don’t get to win at poker by claiming you have the better hand but refusing to show your cards. The same holds true when debating public policy. Dorio is certainly entitled to his opinion, but that’s all it is… an opinion.

To their credit, The Signal’s editors follow a policy of open debate, and in fact noted when they published Dorio’s LTE that they didn’t agree with my column. Such a policy gives the reading public the opportunity to see all sides of an issue, not just whatever seems to be most popular with leftists at the moment. Major kudos to The Signal.

The leftists’ love of censorship and “cancel culture” is one of the biggest dangers facing this country. They can’t be allowed to get away with it.

 

©Brian Baker 2020

 

 

The Great Mask Scam

 

If you’re old enough you may remember that two or three decades ago there was mass hysteria about the danger of second-hand smoke, primarily from cigarettes, and how it was going to cause premature death on a massive scale numbering millions of people. An entire generation was at risk because little kids were going to be dying en masse from their parents’ smoking habit.

Intentional or not, the whole thing turned out to be one big hoax.

How about the AIDS hysteria of the ’80s? Remember that? Everyone was going to be wiped out by AIDS? “Oops, only kidding…”. Turns out only a small portion of the populace was at risk from AIDS, and the predicted mass die-off never materialized.

Well, it’s déjà vu all over again.

The COVID-19 virus started making its appearance in late 2019 (hence the “19” part of its nomenclature). Like the SARS virus, corona viruses are a form of flu. Within a very few weeks the hysteria was ginned up with dire predictions of millions of deaths in this country, generated by badly flawed computer models and Chicken Little worst-case predictions based on nothing more than mere speculation. To this date there hasn’t been any controlled experimentation to support those assertions. In fact, as I’ll soon discuss, what little actual “science” has been applied to this issue has reached very different conclusions. Further, the illness itself has a survival rate of about 99.9% for those who aren’t seniors or have significant underlying conditions, meaning that for the vast majority of people the illness is merely an inconvenience.

In my 18 May column (“The Rape of the Constitution”) I discussed how masks other than containment/filtration systems were pretty much useless in preventing the spread of viruses, and the six months that have passed since then have borne out that statement. All we have to do is look around to see the reality. We were told that masks and social distancing would “flatten the curve” almost immediately and only be necessary for the short term. Well, does “the curve” look flattened to you? Pretty much all domestic venues, whether they mask or not, are experiencing a significant “second wave” of infections. This is in spite of the fact that in those jurisdictions that mandate wearing masks compliance is very high, estimated as being at 80% or better.

Does that make any sense at all to you? It sure doesn’t to me if masks allegedly work as well as they’re supposed to. The icing on the cake is how many of the mandarins mandating masking are regularly caught flouting their own rules. From Newsome to Pelosi to Whitmer to Fauci to Feinstein, on and on, we see those poohbahs ignoring masks while they think no one’s looking. Probably because they know masking is nothing more than a thick slice of baloney.

But that’s merely the observable phenomena. Let’s cut to the tape of “the science”.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in a report issued in May 2020 (Link 1): “In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks”. Remember that COVID is a form of flu.

According to the Europe PMC (Link 2) masks allow contaminates to flow around the edges of common surgical masks, rendering them ineffective.

Pubmed, part of the NIH, also concluded masks were ineffective (Link 3). A September 2020 study published by the National Library of Medicine (Link 4) reached the same conclusion: “Surgical mask wearing among individuals in non-healthcare settings is not significantly associated with reduction in ARI incidence in this meta-review.” The World Health Organization (WHO) states that “At the present time, the widespread use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence.” (Link 5)

The recently released Danish study (Link 6) concluded that, “… a recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, incident SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with no mask recommendation.”

As shown by the “real science” and confirmed by simple observation with our own eyes, masking has turned out to be one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on this country. Masks have become the American Burqa, the symbol that one is a True Believer and not a heretic. It’s pure political Kabuki. Further, continuing mask mandates under the premise that they’re going to magically become effective in battling this virus is the very personification of the Einsteinian definition of insanity: repeating the same action while expecting a different result.

It’s past time to accept that the masking emperor has no clothes, put an end to the nonsense, and move on to policies that make actual sense so that our country can start returning to normal. The way to do that is to take actions that only affect the very small percentage of people who are truly vulnerable to this illness and let everyone else get back to living their lives.

Linked Sources:

Link 1: Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures – Volume 26, Number 5—May 2020 – Emerging Infectious Diseases journal – CDC

Link 2: The efficacy of standard surgical face masks: an investigation using “tracer particles”. – Abstract – Europe PMC

Link 3: The operating room environment as affected by people and the surgical face mask – PubMed (nih.gov)

Link 4: Effectiveness of Surgical Face Masks in Reducing Acute Respiratory Infections in Non-Healthcare Settings: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (nih.gov)

Link 5: Advice on the use of masks in the context of COVID-19, Interim guidance – 5 June 2020 – World Health Organization (WHO-2019-nCov-IPC_Masks-2020.4-eng.pdf)

Link 6: Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers: A Randomized Controlled Trial: Annals of Internal Medicine: Vol 0, No 0 (acpjournals.org)

©Brian Baker 2020

 

(Also published today in The Signal)

 

The Big Question on Masks

 

Here in Colorado, on Friday, 9 October, Governor Jared Polis – who bears an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Potatohead – announced that he’s extending the current masking mandate for an additional 30 days.

Well, of course he’s extending it. I can think of very few – if any, actually – examples in history of dictators who have willingly stepped away from power. Further, that conveniently pushed the possible end date beyond Election Day.

How convenient.

Riddle me this: if masks are so effective, why is it that I can nowhere find data on what percentage of people hit with COVID were mask-wearers? If the vast majority of victims were people who didn’t wear masks you’d think that information would be trumpeted from the rooftops because it would be very strong evidence – not actual proof, but evidence – that masking actually works to help stop the spread of the disease.

On the other hand, if a significant percentage of those victims were regular mask wearers yet were still hit with COVID that would be a pretty clear indication that wearing masks is ineffective, and I would expect that data to be suppressed as it would conflict with the entire political dynamic and dogma that’s been imposed on the populace, which has been based so far on speculation and unproven hypotheses.

So, which is it? Is no one even collecting such data? If not, why not? I find that idea hard to swallow, as it seems to fly in the face of normal medical practice and epidemiology. Or is the data being collected, but also being suppressed?

Let’s see the stats.

 

 

 

©Brian Baker 2020

 

 

Have ANY Leftists Read the Constitution?

Gary Horton’s 23 September column “Undemocratic Senate Doesn’t Represent Us” (here) was yet another example of his regurgitation of the Dem/socialist party’s talking points du jour, in this case hysteria about Trump nominating the successor on the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to Justice Ginsburg.

He complains about small states like Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky having the same representation – two Senators – as heavily populated states like California. So, let’s examine that.

The size of each state’s House delegation is determined by its population, thereby representing the “popular vote”. That’s why the House is known as “the people’s chamber”. The purpose of the Senate was to represent the interests of each state as a body, and originally Senators were appointed by each state’s legislature. The Constitution was amended so that the electorate of a state determined its Senators, but again, Senators represent the interests of each state as a body, and so each state is treated equally with two Senators. If each state’s Senate delegation varied by population instead of being limited to two… well, since that’s exactly what the House does, there wouldn’t even be a need for the Senate, would there?

Horton predictably goes on to try to contrast the Senate’s refusal to consider Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to SCOTUS to Trump and McConnell’s intent to seat a replacement for Ginsburg in this election year period.

However, McConnell is simply following long-established precedent in both cases. When, in an election year, the Senate is held by one party and the presidency by another, the usual practice is to wait for the outcome of the election, which is exactly what happened with Garland. But if the Senate and presidency are both held by the same party, standard practice is to move forward with confirmation, which is what’s happening now.

I have to wonder if Horton ever had a class in civics while he was in school. Really, this is pretty basic stuff.

 

 

©Brian Baker 2020

 

(Also published today in The Signal )

My First Appearance in the Denver Post…

… Never Happened.

 

The Denver Post is the local major metro daily newspaper for the region, and reminds me of nothing so much as the Los Angeles Times. That’s not a compliment. Though not as blatant as the Times in refusing to publish opinion pieces that oppose leftism, they definitely favor guest columns and letters that support their own staunchly leftist editorial stance.

Here in Colorado Proposition 113 is on the November ballot, and on 5 September the Post published an editorial urging voters to support and enact that initiative. The following, in italics, is the text of a response I submitted to the Post for publication as a Letter to the Editor (LTE), refuting their position. The response explains the purpose of Prop 113 and why it fails to meet constitutional standards.

The Editorial Board’s (EB) endorsement of Prop 113, which would allow Colorado to join an interstate “compact” to cast its votes in the Electoral College (EC) based on the outcome of the national popular vote and “to walk away from the antiquated electoral college system”, was disappointing, to say the least.

The Founders purposely created the EC to avoid direct democracy in presidential elections, considering it – correctly – as little more than mob rule. The end result would be elections utterly dominated by a few coastal high-population urbanized states, with smaller states completely marginalized to the point of irrelevancy.

It’s not “democracy”; it’s a mobocracy.

Though the EB correctly points out that “…  the founders of this nation empowered states to decide how they would allocate their electoral votes”, they overlook the fact that the US Constitution also requires that each state provide a republican form of government to its citizens, and allowing the residents of other states, through the “compact”, to determine the outcome of an election within the borders of its own state does not comport with that mandate.

Further, the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 10 states: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress,… enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State…”

That’s about as straightforward as it gets.

I have little doubt this nutty “compact” idea won’t stand up to judicial scrutiny at SCOTUS if an attempt is ever made to use it to determine an election outcome.

If you wish to read the original editorial you can do so here. As is SOP for leftists, they’re either completely ignorant of the actual constitutional issues that are involved – a common problem with leftists, who seem to have never even heard of that invaluable parchment – or they simply don’t care about it, the only other explanation, one which is entirely unacceptable.

Ultimately the Post published seven LTEs, three supporting their position and four opposed. None of those LTEs were mine. Before I say why I think that’s so, let me establish my bona fides.

I’ve been submitting material for publication for over three decades, and have a success rate of over 90% of my material being published. It’s been in The Signal of Santa Clarita, the LA Daily News, the Los Angeles Times, and national publications such as USA Today, Wild West Magazine and the Mensa Bulletin. So I have a pretty good idea of whether or not something I’ve submitted is likely to be published. In this case, though I felt my LTE was pretty well-written and didn’t violate any “style” guidelines, I also felt pretty certain it wouldn’t see the light of day.

“Why’s that, Brian?”, you ask.

Here’s why. Of the LTEs that were published in the Post, particularly those opposed to the idea of this interstate compact, NOT ONE raised the most important point at issue: the specific ban in the Constitution against interstate agreements or compacts.

Imagine the dilemma of the Opinion editor at the Post being confronted by the very specific and irrefutable obstacle to the editorial position they’d publicly taken on this issue. Do they publish that LTE, and if so do they have to also acknowledge they’re supporting a proposal that clearly flies in the face of constitutional proscriptions? Do they have to print a retraction? Probably much better all around if they simply pretend they never saw it, so they simply spike it.

Thus I wasn’t at all surprised when my LTE simply vanished into the ether, probably along with anything written by anybody else who’s actually taken the time to read the Constitution.

As I said in my opening paragraph, the Post reminds me very much of the LA Times… and that’s definitely NOT a compliment.

 

 

 

©Brian Baker 2020

Lipstick On A Pig

Gary Horton’s August 5^th rant of the week, “It’s Time to Reimagine Law and Order” (link), certainly touched all the bases we’ve come to expect from the radical left recently as they relate to “fixing” our allegedly broken law enforcement system.

Throughout his column Horton repeatedly refers to America’s “incarceration rate” as the rationalization for his position: “Today, America incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation. At 700 inmates per 100,000 residents, we top arch-bad guys Cuba by 30%, Russia by 200%, China by 540%, and repressive Iran by 230%.”

He apparently thinks such communist “paradises” as Cuba et al are going to accurately report imprisonment rates which reflect badly on their utopias. Not to mention that they have euphemistically designated “re-education” camps that aren’t counted as prisons, and in which people aren’t “incarcerated”; they’re “cured”. Also not to mention that in those countries boatloads of people simply… disappear.

When I posted that observation as an online comment Horton replied: “Look at the company we’re not only keeping, but exceeding… When you compare the US to other modern industrial democratic nations, the difference is beyond stark. Canada, Germany, England, Australia…. we are multiples and multiples higher in incarceration. They are not countries gone wild, Brian. They are nice places to live. So – please explain WHY we have this odd outlier outcome – and how can we fix it? How would you fix it?”

But as I responded there, I’m not going to “explain” anything because I reject the entire notion that incarceration rates are meaningful in any way as they pertain to this country. Some people commit criminal acts. If they get caught and convicted in a public trial they get locked up (except maybe in Commiefornia). It’s as simple as that.

If we were talking about some police state in which people get locked up for “thought crimes” or political activities he might then have a case. But that’s not the case here. We’re unique in the world in that we have rights and freedoms that are constitutionally guaranteed. As far as I’m concerned we’re the gold standard. So I don’t care what other countries are doing. They have nothing for us to emulate; they should be trying to emulate us. I’ve been to every one of those countries he mentioned in his comment, and well over a dozen more, and there’s not a single one of them in which I’d prefer to live rather than here.

Are we perfect? Of course not; nothing created by humans is. But the idea that this country is, or is becoming, some kind of police state is simply absurd.

Horton is spouting the same rhetorical nonsense we’re getting from the antifa/BLM radicals who are creating such havoc across the country, but he’s dressing it up in better language. It’s a sorry attempt to slather lipstick on a pig.

 

©Brian Baker 2020

(Published 21 August 2020 at my blog and in The Signal)

 

 

The Rape of the Constitution; Are Panic and Hysteria Going To Be the “New Normal”?

 

When in panic or in doubt,
run in circles, scream and shout… Children’s ditty

 

Social distancing. Masks. Shelter in place. “Essential” businesses. Terms and concepts that have become all too familiar and common in our lexicon over the past few weeks.

At every government level from the national to the municipal those policies have been imposed on the populace by executive fiat, without debate or legislative action, via the invocation of “emergency” powers of dubious nature and justification.

The current COVID-19 infestation has been portrayed in the most panic-inducing light possible. “Pandemic” is the term of choice, a word guaranteed to induce apocalyptic fears in the general populace. But let’s rationally consider some facts to see if we’re being gaslighted.

I think it’s imperative to first view the current “crisis” in true historical perspective. COVID-19 is, as the name suggests, a corona virus. It’s not something unprecedented. Corona viruses are actually fairly common. Some strains of the common cold are caused by corona viruses, as are SARS and MERS. In fact, the formal name of the current pathogen is SARS-CoV-2, meaning it’s simply a variant of the SARS pathogen, discovered in 2003, that we’ve seen before.

As I write this column COVID-19 deaths in this country just passed the 80,000 mark. Yes, that’s a lot of people and it’s very sad. But during the 2017 – 2018 common flu season “…more than 900,000 people were hospitalized and more than 80,000 people died from flu” in this country. (https://www.healthline.com/health/influenza/facts-and-statistics#5)

Where were the panic and hysteria then? I sure don’t remember any “shelter in place” or “safer at home” or “social distancing”, or masks, or businesses closed down by imperial fiat, or any other impingement on our constitutional rights to live our lives normally. Do you? Why is that?

Per the US Census Bureau our official population is 331,883,986. Assuming 80,000 people in this country have died from COVID-19, that’s a fatality rate of 0.024104%. That’s LESS THAN ONE-FORTIETH OF ONE PERCENT. Why are we completely and utterly destroying everything this country stands for over a ginned-up hysteria that’s a danger to a ridiculously miniscule portion of the populace? Wouldn’t it make more sense – a LOT more sense – to simply encourage those at the most risk – the elderly and unhealthy – to take precautions, rather than impose draconian and, frankly, un-American “emergency rules” of questionable legality (at best) on the general population?

Consider masks. Viruses are nano-scale particles, much smaller than bacteria. Unless one is wearing a mask or containment device capable of capturing or filtering such small particles masks are useless. The viruses can easily pass through the spaces in the mesh or fabric of the mask, or around the edge borders. So unless one is wearing an N95 or better device, masks – especially pieces of cloth – are really just decorative fashion accessories. And virtue signaling devices, of course.

The biggest and most dangerous problem is how dictator-wannabes – like Commiefornia’s Newsom, Colorado’s Polis, Michigan’s Whitmer, and New York’s Cuomo – have exploited this situation to grab power and impose their diktats by imperial fiat on every aspect of how people must live their lives. This is very reminiscent of life under the commissars in the old Soviet Union, right down to the bare shelves in grocery stores and neighborhood snitches. I never thought I’d see something like this in this country in my lifetime. It’s the stuff of old dystopian books and movies.

Many of those tin pot tyrants are bleating about how this is a preview of a “new normal” moving forward. Once we cross the finish line at wherever the constantly-moving goal posts end up – if they ever actually stop moving at all – they envision a restructured social order in this country. Well, though I had plenty of problems with the “old normal”, mostly having to do with the socialist bent of so much of our governance, I think it’s vastly preferable to whatever nightmare political hacks like these would like to see replace it.

As many times as I’ve read the US Constitution I have yet to come across an Exemption Clause suspending our rights in the event of a public health “crisis”. Yet at this time those rights have been completely obliterated as if the Constitution doesn’t even exist. It’s time for those hacks to be reminded that they work for us; we don’t “bend the knee” to them.

I think it’s high time for a good dose of civil disobedience. Otherwise this current hysteria will have set a very dangerous precedent. Think “climate change” hoax. You just know those fanatics, many part of the same cast of characters, are eyeing these events as a precursor to what they can do by ginning up a “crisis” on that topic. Think of the damage they can do if they’re successful.

“Give me liberty…”

 

 

©Brian Baker 2020

 

(Also published today in The Signal)

 

Oops! I Did It Again!

My hand, doing the dirty deed

 

I am so totally getting my Bernie Bro on… again!

I’m not a member of any political party; I’m one of those “independents” pollsters, pundits, and politicians are perpetually pontificating upon. During the last presidential primary season four years ago, because I could vote in the primary of either major party, I decided that for the first time in my life I’d cast a vote for a Dem/socialist, and decided to do so for the Bern, Bernie Sanders. I even wrote about it at the time, and that column was published right here:  ( https://theviewfromtheisland.com/2016/06/10/are-unicorns-real/ “Are Unicorns Real? I’m feelin’ the Bern…!” 10 June 16 )

Well, here we are again, for Super-Duper Tuesday (the New and Expanded Super Tuesday), and since my new home in Colorado participates in that event, with Trump having the GOP nod tied up I’ve decided to throw my support to the Bern once again.

You’ve got to hand it to the Bern. At least he’s honest. He doesn’t deny his socialism, in contrast to virtually everyone else in that sorry political party, all of whom constantly bleat that the “progressive” policies they’re constantly trying to shove down our throats are anything — ANYTHING – other than blatant socialism, if not outright communism.

The results of the Super Duper Tuesday event add even more delicious drama to the ongoing soap opera that is the Dem/socialist primary process. Sanders’s seemingly unstoppable momentum ran into a brick wall in the south, while Biden’s previously moribund and all-but-embalmed campaign was resuscitated by his sweep of those same southern states. Liz “Fauxcahontas” Warren only took third place in her own home state of Massachusetts while “Midget Mikey” Bloomberg was only able to win American Samoa. In fact, he’s already “suspended” – read “ended” – his ridiculous effort to buy an election, throwing his support – for whatever that’s worth – to Biden. Warren has also dropped out, though as of my writing this column she hasn’t yet endorsed any other candidate.

Now the real fun starts.

At this point it looks like the ultimate nominee will be either Biden or Sanders. The Democrat Party national convention meets in Milwaukee starting on July 13, and if either Sanders or Biden have secured a majority of the delegates at that point then presumably that person will win the nomination on the first ballot. The process will be complete and the nominee selected.

However, if neither has won a clear majority in the state primary process, either directly through state voting or indirectly via deals struck with other candidates who have agreed to support him by pledging their own delegates, then they’ll have a contested, or “brokered”, convention leading to subsequent ballots. That’s when the knives come out. “Super delegates” – party poohbahs – get to participate in the selection process, and those people are pretty much all “establishment” drones, the very people scared to death of Sanders dragging their electoral hopes down the drain. The same folks who threw the 2016 nomination to Clinton and infuriated the Bernie Bros back then.

I think this is a real possibility, particularly given the preference of that party’s “establishment”.

If this year’s Dem/socialist convention is brokered and Biden wins, particularly if that win is viewed by the Bernie Bros as being a rerun of 2016, the outrage from that faction will be palpable and consequential, costing Biden vital support in the general election in November.

There’s rich irony in the fact that, for a party so immersed in identity politics, their 2020 nominee, whoever wins, is going to be a rich, old, white guy in his late 70s. For the hard-left faction, Biden is too “establishment” and doesn’t check off any of the required “social justice” criteria. For the “establishment” types, Sanders is a scary communist who’ll drag the entire party into political oblivion and irrelevancy. The question then becomes whether or not “orange man bad” is enough motivation to stimulate the angry faction to vote for a candidate they don’t otherwise support.

Come November Trump will be facing either a Marxist who wants to turn the USA into Venezuela, or a doddering geezer who seems to be suffering from the early stages of dementia.

Interesting times… Grab some popcorn and settle back for the show.

©Brian Baker 2020

 

(Also published 3/11/2020 in The Signal)

On Impeachment Insanity

      

 

In his February 1 letter to the editor, published in The Signal, the local newspaper of the Santa Clarita Valley, entitled “Republicans Making Dems’ Points” Duane Mooring wrote: “We must impeach and remove Donald Trump from office because the evidence is very clear that he abused the office of president of the United States solely to promote the interests of Donald J. Trump.”

Nonsense.

That’s an accusation unsupported by any objective facts and based on pure speculation. The only way anyone knows the “motivation” of any actor is if that actor states what it is — unless the accuser can read people’s minds — and in this case the accused (Trump) has clearly stated that it wasn’t his motive. That’s why proving motive isn’t a required element of evidence in judicial proceedings.

Further, Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate corruption — specifically Biden’s as VEEP — is a perfectly legitimate request. Biden’s current political campaign doesn’t immunize him from criminal investigation for his past actions as a federal officer. In fact, the argument can be made – and I’m making it – that investigating his actions regarding Burisma is very much in this country’s best interest, as it’s very germane for people to know about any candidate’s corrupt actions, especially if carried out as an elected official.

The fact that it’s possible that Trump may be facing Biden in the November election is purely incidental, and immaterial. If Biden doesn’t have anything to hide, he’s got nothing to worry about, right?

Running for office doesn’t get a person a free pass from being investigated. If anything, the opposite is true, especially as far as Dem/socialists are concerned when the subject is Trump or other conservatives. Does the name Brett Kavanaugh ring any bells?

Fortunately, Senate Repubs have had enough of this hyper-partisan Dem/socialist nonsense and by the time this letter sees print will have most likely put this entire sordid fiasco into the trash bin of history, right where it belongs.

 

©Brian Baker 2020

(Also published today in The Signal)