Thursday, June 29, 2017

Independence Day is Here!

Friends, when you enjoy your Independence Day
(Fourth of July) celebrations, please take a moment
to reflect on the brave, patriotic Americans past
and present who made our great, free, and wonderful
country possible, and have kept it that way through
these past 241 years. Also reflect on how frighteningly
close we came to losing everything to the ever-present
left-wing cabal seeking to take our precious country
further down the dark and foreboding road to
totalitarianism in last year's presidential election.

We have much to be grateful for as we celebrate
the United States' birthday! Let us pray for her and
give thanks for her remaining a beacon of freedom
and hope for a troubled world. Now, let's have a
grand 4th of July picnic and watch some fireworks!
Please pass the hot dogs and save some potato salad
for your favorite Peasant!


MEM

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

The Left's Derangement Syndrome

My wonderful readers, the political atmosphere in these
United States has become absolutely toxic, the political
rhetoric has become downright hateful, and violent behavior
is becoming the order (disorder?) of the day. And we have
the Left to thank for it all.

Last week your faithful Peasant made mention of the assas-
ination attempt on House Majority Whip Steven Scalise when
he was at a team practice in Alexandria, Virginia to get ready
for the annual Congressional baseball game between teams
of Democrats and Republicans, a game that is supposed to
lessen political tensions between the elected representatives
from both parties and to raise money for charity. The gunman
was a Bernie Sanders supporter and campaign volunteer from
Belleville, Illinois, who traveled all the way to the Washington
D.C. area with a list of Republican members of Congress in
his pocket. It seems pretty obvious what the purpose for the
list was, given his actions in Alexandria. Moreover, he had been
very vocal about his fierce hatred for President Donald Trump
and the Republican Party, with the recent presidential election's
results being more than his fevered mind could handle. A
deeply left-wing activist, he had been calling for an even more
progressive tax schedule, and was a staunch supporter of
labor unions.

The people back in Belleville who knew the gunman expressed
shock and disbelief over the news of what he had done; the
former mayor of Alexandria, Bill Euille, told the Washington Post
that he had spoken with him nearly every morning when they
saw each other at the local YMCA, nearby the ballpark where
the shooting took place. The gunman had been in town for several
days before committing his heinous crime, shooting the congressman
and three other people, one of whom was a Washington police
officer assigned to guard Rep. Scalise. All victims as of this posting
are alive and being treated for their wounds, with Rep. Scalise's
condition having been upgraded from critical to serious.

Now, in the days and months since the inauguration of President
Trump the Left has become even more unhinged than they had
previously been; witness the march in Washington by the radical
feminists wearing caps resembling vaginas, the speeches made by
show biz libs Madonna and Ashley Judd, the former stating that
she had a wish to "blow up the White House" and F-bombing
the "detractors" of the march and its participants, just this for a start.
Add to the mix still more hateful, violence-flavored rhetoric from
other left-wingers in Hollywood and Broadway, the mean-spirited
"humor" from late night talk show hosts and other alleged comedians,
the incessant calls for the impeachment of President Trump from
Democrat members of Congress (never mind the fact that the president
has not committed any impeachable offenses, nor has he committed
any offenses, period!), and some deranged lunatics in the ranks of the
Far Left absorb this vile bile, then someone acts on these vicious,
violent sentiments. This explains the would-be assassin from Illinois
and his actions in Alexandria.

I can't say that I am surprised by this ugly turn of events, as someone
who has observed the Left for many years. They always accuse their
enemies, the conservatives, of saying what they say, doing what they
do, and being what they are. They would have you, and in fact demand
you believe that the conservatives are the uncivil, unhinged, vicious,
racist, misogynistic, homophobic bullies.  But consider: we conser-
vatives made no hateful remarks about President Obama or his family
when he was in the White House, nor were we the ones who advocated
blowing up the White House; we weren't the ones who formed groups
to "resist" the president when we had a president from the other party;
we weren't the ones who exhorted for the stoning of elected officials
from the opposing party; we weren't the ones who called for raping any
women from the opposing party; we weren't the ones who hurled racist
epithets at black people in the other party, nor sexist and misogynistic
slurs at various women from the other party. And we sure as hell didn't
make any death threats against anyone from the other party or
ideology. Rather, the Left had done all of these things to our people,
and are stepping up their evil behavior, as witnessed in the shooting
of Rep. Scalise. MSNBC recently asked on their network "Do we
HAVE to feel bad about Steve Scalise?", and they along with other
voices on the Left intoned that the House Majority Whip brought the
shooting upon himself (!). The lefties are not only the real bullies,
they also blame their victims for their situations.

This is not unlike a battle in which one side takes peashooters and
slingshots to the battlefield while the other side brings machine
guns, flamethrowers, and howitzers to the fray. We conservatives
have always prided ourselves on combating the liberals and others
on the left side of the political divide with respectful debate, logic,
employing logic and facts. We have left the ad hominem attacks
and the rancor to the left-wingers, feeling sorry for them since they
don't have logic and facts in their arsenal and therefore feel the need
to take the low road when we engage in battle. But in the wake
of the shooting of Rep. Scalise, we must not show such for our
lefty foes, for they do not deserve any sympathy; they are taking
our country down a dark path which leads to the experiences of
other countries where base passions drown out comity, and
to be outspoken is to wear a target on your back. The Democrats
and the Left in general are not like their forerunners from 50 years
ago, nor 40, nor 25, nor even 10; these people (and I use this term
loosely) are totalitarians. They will never acknowledge defeat,
even when decisively defeated in a national election as what
happened last November; they won't listen to any differing voices
with differing ideas. This bunch perceive their political opponents
as the enemy army on a battlefield, and attempt to destroy them by
demonization, discrediting, slander and libel, and now bullets.

Senator Sanders, to his credit, publicly condemned the shooting and
the shooter, sorrowfully acknowledging the gunman's having been
one of his presidential campaign volunteers. This was most gratifying,
coming from the most left-leaning major political figure in the country.
Sanders also wished Rep. Scalise a full and speedy recovery. Let us
fervently hope against hope that others on the Left follow their
hero's example and follow suit, going further by renouncing gross
incivility and embracing clean, honest, respectful, civil and open
debate and discourse.

Otherwise we shall be in danger of having a second civil war, one
that will make the one in the 1860s look like a children's pillow
fight.


MEM







Thursday, June 15, 2017

A Tragedy in Virginia

With the increasing fever pitch on our nation's political scene,
your concerned Peasant has been worried about the accompanying
increase in violence between the partisans on both sides of the
political divide. Now a member of Congress has been shot while
preparing to play in Congress' traditional annual baseball game
pitting Democrats and Republicans for fun and for charity.
While engaging in a team practice at a field in Alexandria,
Virginia, House Majority Whip Steven Scalise was shot in the
hip by a gunman who also shot several other people before police
shot him dead. What is known about the gunman at the present
time is that he is a Bernie Sanders volunteer, having helped on
Sanders' unsuccessful presidential campaign, and has been
a member of some rather controversial left-wing political
groups. Moreover, he had a history of scrapes with the law
which included domestic abuse and aiding damage to a motor
vehicle. And he was allegedly distraught over Donald Trump
winning last year's presidential election, with the Republicans
also doing well in the Congressional and state races, so he
traveled from his home in Belleville, Illinois, to the Washington
D.C. area to vent his frustrations on Capitol Hill Republicans
with a gun.

I want to take the time to address this horrible event in the way
it needs to be addressed, but time is not proving generous today.
So, I shall do so next week, when I can more easily set aside
a block of time to do justice to this terrible act. Meanwhile,
please keep Rep. Scalise and his family in your prayers as he
is fighting for his life; he has had two operations just to stop
the internal bleeding, and faces more surgeries to repair his hip
and some internal organs. I have been praying the rosary for
them. Thank you and God bless. God be with Rep. Scalise
and the other victims.


MEM



Thursday, June 8, 2017

Roger Ailes, R.I.P.

Sometimes a person comes along who makes such a great impact
on a field of endeavor that the both the field and society, are never
again the same. Roger Ailes was just such a person, having created
FOX News, the news network that gave television viewers an
alternative source for their TV news which did not have a left-
wing tilt, a place to turn for a fresh perspective on the news of
the day. A Republican operative for many years beforehand,
Ailes saw the potential which television had for the GOP to
overcome the establishment broadcast media cartel with its
Dan Rathers, Tom Brokaws, Peter Jenningses, and Sam
Donaldsons delivering only what the establishment wanted the
public to hear. As an aide to President Richard Nixon, Ailes
wrote a 300-page memorandum titled "A Plan for Putting the
GOP on TV News", in which he detailed his ideas which he
would implement for founding FOX News.

Along the way, he had encountered lots of adversity --- much of it
in the form of hate from the Left --- for upsetting their cartel
apple cart. But Ailes was a patriot who cared deeply for our
country and he wanted people to get different takes on the news,
especially American political news in order to make well-informed
political decisions, especially at election time. In this instance Roger
Ailes was a liberator as well as a pioneer in the national media.

In his later years Ailes had been accused by some of the female
staff at FOX of sexual harassment;  He claimed that the first such
action was taken by one of FOX's news show hosts because she
was angry about not having her contract with FOX renewed.
However, five more women at FOX filed suits of their own
making the same complaints, and FOX paid one woman a
$1 million out of court settlement. Your diligent Peasant does
not have all the information concerning this serious matter,
but will posit that if Ailes were innocent of the charges made,
he and FOX would have fought them, telling the complainants
to do their worst in court, and Ailes would never have resigned
from the organization he founded. Having followed similar stories
over the years, I would have to say that a blameless person could,
and should, fight with all they've got any attempts to besmirch
his good name and reputation, for these are the most valuable
possessions that any one of us have in life. In the wake of
Roger Ailes' passing on May 18, I shall hold out hope for
Ailes to be cleared and vindicated so that he shall be remembered
in a positive light, remembered for his considerable contributions
to news broadcasting and to our national political discourse
rather than for some alleged instances of poor judgement and
resultant misbehavior. Rest in Peace.


MEM

Thursday, June 1, 2017

A Study in Contrasts

Your favorite Peasant had a wonderful, and rather interesting
Memorial Day.

Every Memorial Day I head over to Elm Grove, a lovely and
charming village which I have loved since boyhood. Living
in nearby New Berlin and later Brookfield, and having attended
high school with a few chums from The Grove, as the locals call
their quaint community, I discovered their wonderful Memorial
Day parade and except for the years that I lived out of state I have
attended this parade every year. The usual features of such a parade
are always present ---  marching military honor guards, local celebrities
and politicians, beauty pageant queens, and decorated military
heroes riding in classic cars; floats with bands playing, students from
a local martial arts dojo, members of a village gardening club,
staff from the village library and such; the village police and
firefighters in their respective vehicles; some villagers walking
their dogs, both clad in red, white and blue decor for the occasion,
and clowns doing delightful stunts. But this year, the parade had
an entrant that they never before had, at least to my memory.
And they certainly stood out!

The Waukesha County Democratic Party sent a contingent to march
in Elm Grove's Memorial Day parade. They marched right down
the main street of rock-ribbed, unabashed, proudly conservative
Elm Grove, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by God-knows-
how-many to one.

No blarney, about fifteen members of their party marched with their
party banner, nearly every one of them carrying an American flag,
some also carrying signs which said things like "patriotism" and
"veterans". And the crowd became very silent. Everyone just
quietly and respectfully watched as the Dems marched by. No one
yelled any obscenities, any threats, any slurs of any kind; no one
threw garbage; no one charged at them to assault them; no one
so much as gave them the finger. Everyone was very polite.
All of this in this bastion of conservatism and small-town values
and virtues, a community which would give a lefty anything from
conniptions to apoplexy.

Now contrast this to the events in places like Berkely, where on
separate occasions conservative speakers were shouted down and
all but run off of the University of California Berkely campus,
and in one of these incidents left-wing students and other "activists"
rioted in the streets. They bragged afterward that they didn't allow
"fascists" to speak on their campus; and affirmed their visceral
hatred of President Donald Trump. In Portland, Oregon, Black
Lives Matter thugs teamed up with other radical groups and rag-tag
individual hooligans to force local Republican Party members and
elected officials from marching in an annual parade in which they
have always marched, with no problems of any kind, until
this year. The GOP folk were told that they would be physically
attacked by the left-wingers if they appeared in the parade, and
since they could not (or perhaps would not?) be guaranteed
safety by the city and its police, they cancelled their scheduled
appearances in the parade.

And your faithful Peasant can come up with more, many more,
such instances of leftist thugs silencing the people whose views
differ from their own, going so far as to threaten them with mayhem
if they appeared in their cities and on their college campuses.
This behavior from the people (I use this term VERY loosely!) who
boast of their supposed tolerance, inclusion, pluralism, and, yes,
love, while accusing conservatives and other non-lefties of
intolerance, exclusion, elitism, and hatred. I have asked this
question here on this blog before, and now ask it again; don't you
love it when the Left accuses we conservatives of behaving as they
do?

I think that these stories are perfectly illustrative and revealing as
to the true behavior of each side, and no more remains to be said.
This was certainly a most interesting, and instructive Memorial
Day for your observant Peasant; a tale of two ideologies and their
adherents.


MEM