After spending over $21,000,000,000,000 (Trillion) on the War on Poverty, and having not shown much for the effort, spending additional dollars as proposed by the Administration certainly would seem to fufill the definition above. Government policies which lead to a lack of individual responsibility cannot be solved by spending alone; there is a direct link between certain personal values and success or failure. This is nothing new and was pointed out fifty-six years ago by Daniel Moynihan in The Moynihan Report, yet we continue to see policies which create generations of despair. The numbers do not lie, nor does history; it is time for a change of policy regarding poverty in this nation. https://nypost.com/2021/07/02/helping-poor-kids-takes-more-than-money-they-also-need-stable-homes/

The longer the investigation goes on, the more I am convinced that there were many high level men involved with the dirty deeds of Jeffrey Epstein. Why? Because it is taking the course of many government investigations into the potentially illegal activities of government officials that we have seen over the past several years; namely, investigations that go on and on for years until the players are either out of power or the public memory has all but erased the deeds. If you follow the link to the article, you will know more about Epstein than before and you will most likely, want to ask more questions, but don’t bet on ever being satisfied about Epstein and those who enjoyed his services. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/inside-jeffrey-epsteins-decades-long-relationship-with-his-biggest-client

The link below (copy it and put it in your browser) will provide you with the history, theory and realities of CRT. It seems to be racing across our nation despite parents in many communities fighting it at the local level with their school boards. But, it is becoming entrenched in the highest levels of our national government and amazingly, even in our military. It is a theory which as put into practice, denies and overturns the value and work of the individual and can only lead to a fragmented society at war with itself. https://www.city-journal.org/theoretical-roots-and-practical-consequences-of-critical-race-theory

After spending many hundreds of billions of dollars world wide, wind and solar still only provide about 3% of our energy needs and with the damage to the environment caused by massive wind and solar farms, even environmentalist groups are opposing new projects. This 5 minute video provides some startling facts that cannot be ignored. I hope it provides you with some food for thought. Feel free to skip the ads at the start of the video. https://youtu.be/RqppRC37OgI

To the average person, the atrocities outlined in the article by Nicholas Kristof are unimaginable. This is because we live in what is still fortunately, a society of rational laws. Totalitarian States however, are not guided by logic (unless you accept the unscientific logic of dialectical materialism); instead, they are guided by manmade rules based on a man- made ideology which has a basis in the misreading of history, misunderstanding of the human mind and in the end, an amazing ability for corruption. Can you imagine a law in the United States which forces women to use contraception in order to eliminate unwanted births? The Nazis did it, and now, China does it. Or, being sent to prison for an unauthorized pregnancy? Welcome to China. Be warned, if you follow the link, be prepared to be disgusted and repulsed by what you read and wonder what can be done to counter the new barbarians who control the lives and destinies of over a billion people. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/12/opinion/sunday/china-xinjiang-uyghur-muslims-genocide.html?searchResultPosition=1

As most Americans feeling and hoping that Covid is slipping into history, we find that more people have died from Covid this year than in all of 2020. Unfortunately, so many deaths are in third world countries among people who have so little. I like that the President is sending 500 million doses to mostly 3rd world countries; that will do more good for the US image than all of the foreign aid that we waste in so many areas. On the other hand, with these deaths in mind, is this really the time we want to set a 20 year record on illegal immigration? Illegals from 150 countries are welcomed and then shipped around the US. Have they been tested for Covid? If not, why not? The first duty of any is to protect the lives and well being of his/her citizens. If we see a new spike of Covid in those areas where illegals are sent, the administration will have to carry the weight, but we all shall pay the price. This is certainly not the time for putting forward a policy of open borders. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-deaths-this-year-have-already-eclipsed-2020s-toll-11623350773

While there is no doubt that the internet, email, etc., can lead to great productivity, it can also lead to feelings of isolation, inferiority, a lack of discipline, be counter productive to concentration, etc. How many times during the day do you check your email, or are notified that you have a new email, tweet, etc., and how many times do you drop what you are working on in order to check out the new missive? When that happens, the random message to you becomes the most important item in your life since you have prioritized it by responding to it quickly. This excellent review of the new book, A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload, will hopefully make you take a step back and restore some discipline regarding all the methods of electronic messenging . Perhaps we all need to have a timer on our desks so that we only look at electronic messages once an hour, or every two hours. Do you think you could do that? https://www.city-journal.org/tyranny-of-email

Causes can never claim victory for they become centers of self interest, with budgets and employees. Since they can never claim victory, they must always seek either new threats to their members, or discover new grievances which in turn leads to new requests for funding and continued existence, etc. What is the current direction of feminism and how well does it serve the vast majority of women? In this article, Mary Harrington does not call for a return to the role models of the 1959s, but she does question if a feminism “in the thrall of technology” is a failure. Is it time to think the direction of feminism and have it finally admit to certain “pragmatic realities”? This is a well written and thoughtful article that should be a basis for questioning todays more radical feminists. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/06/reactionary-feminism

When I was in grad school 50 years ago (ouch!), taking my classes in totalitarianism and guerrilla warfare (what is now called asymmetrical warfare), one of the shining stars was Regis Debray. Born and raised by “broad-minded” parents, he finished first on the entrance exam for entry into the Ecole Normale Superieure, the key stepping stone to an academic career in the humanities. He went a step beyond, as his writings caught the eye of Che Guevara, was invited to Havana to become a “court favorite”. He received training in guerrilla combat, scouted locations for Guevara, serve four years of a thirty year term in a Bolivarian prison, and fought with the Sandinistas in the late 1970s, all of this when he was in his twenties and early thirties. His writings influenced Marxist theory on warfare and went against the tide of both Maoist and Cuban strategy (his writing on the subject was said to be “unquestionably constitute one of the most brilliant examples of Marxist-Leninist analysis to have appeared in many years”). Had Che listened to Debray, his farcial adventure in Bolivia might have ended very much differently. Later, he was a foreign policy adviser to Francois Mitterrand, the President of France.

Now, at the age of 80, he continues to write, including a book on the religious roots of environmentalism, Muslims in France, an autobiography and more. In the article linked below, we find a mind that has always questioned not only the systems and individuals around him, but his own self. It is a treat to see that he is still alive and kicking. I hope you enjoy the article as much as I. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/06/rgis-debray-radical-conservative

“At the same time, National Socialism also maee itself felt on the level of everyday life by rewarding those who employed National Socialist language and ritualistic behavior in the conduct of their daily affairs and by requiring that activities be conducted in such contexts. While true believers had no trouble meeting these requirments, those who were not (and those who were skeptical) were necessarily driven on the path to various degrees of inner corruption by constantly having to behave in the required manner in order to protect and promote their intrests. The more they internalized such behavior, the less it mattered in a practical sense whether they believed what they were saying and doing. Their political correctness required “correct” political behavior.” (Allianz and the German Insurance Business, 1933-45 by Gerald D. Feldman, pp 107) It was the same under Stalin, Mao, etc. and today we see it in the United States. As Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”