RESOLVE

The toll

By Steve Woodward

Disengaged and distracted, many Americans lament the deep division that defines the era in which we live. Yet, demonstrably, the 21st century Marxist Left that consumes the Democrat party stands for dead babies, dead Israelis and, thanks to undeterred waves of murderous illegal immigrants, dead and maimed American citizens.

Objectively, divisions have widened since the ascension of Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency in 2009. Two Obama terms and the establishment of Obama 3.0 under the guise of a Joe Biden administration have driven establishment Democrats violently further Left, and taken many young, college educated citizens with them.

This is starkly reflected by American policy regarding and attitudes toward Israel. An April 2024 Pew Research Center survey asked respondents to prioritize the importance of America’s support for its longtime ally. The resulting data delivered a 31-point gap, with 39 percent of Republicans (and those who are Republican-leaning) replying that Israel should be a top, long-range U.S. foreign policy priority compared to eight percent of Democrats (and those who are Democrat-leaning). In fact, on no other foreign policy issue were the D/leanD respondents more tepid. They even prioritize at 29 percent “limiting the power and influence of Iran” (the catalyst behind Israel’s perilous state).

Among 19 questions on U.S. foreign policy priorities, no other topic elicited a gap above 30 points with the exception of the one question that absolutely should not have been included in the foreign policy survey in the first place — “dealing with global climate change”. That delivered a 55-point gap. As expected from supporters of a Democrat party in which climate change is religion not mere policy, 70 percent of D/lean D say its the nation’s top foreign policy priority compared to 15 percent of R/lean R.

Democrats clamoring for a Kamala Harris policy speech on U.S.-Israel relations amid Israel’s war on Hamas terrorists (and by extension Iran, which funds Hamas) should expect to be disappointed. In reality, Democrats clamoring for any Harris clarity on policy are limited to a few think tank wonks, and obviously not the glassy eyed pro-abortion brigades that swarmed Chicago during the recent Democrat convention.

Policy that addresses human tolls does not align with a “joy and hope” narrative (smoke screen) that the media has assigned to Harris-Walz 2024. But human tolls are precisely what are exacted when the United States betrays its allies. Rather than supporting Israel’s destruction of Hamas, the U.S., along with the U.K., have pushed for measured responses to the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 innocents.

And rather than urging the United Nations and other U.S. allies to join us in pooling our intelligence resources to free more than 100 Hamas-held hostages, they languish in tunnels beneath Gaza. As of September 1, six fewer are languishing because they are dead — four men and two women, ages 23-40, brutally murdered. Point blank gun shots ended their innocent lives.

The Harris-Biden regime keeps pressure on Israel to call a cease fire to negotiate the release of the hostages, as if Hamas would never think of killing again during a lull in combat. As this is written, the U.S. Department of Justice is announcing charges involving a criminal complaint against Hamas related to October 7. How were these charges not filed on October 8, 2023? Why now? To absolve Democrats from pretending October 7 never happened? Just in case. Elections, and such.

“The terrorists murder six Israel hostages, including one dual-citizen American, and Israel is suddenly under pressure to make concessions — to Hamas,” observes a September 3, 2024, Wall Street Journal editorial. Over the months of war, writes the Journal, “Israel is offering unprecedented strategic concessions and risking its soldiers’ lives to free hostages.”

We are reminded weekly of the human toll exacted because the hapless Harris-Biden (or is it willfully negligent?) regime refuses to take stringent actions to close the U.S.-Mexico border. After allowing at least 10 million-plus to flood into the homeland since 2021, the Left is expecting an election year bump because it finally cut a deal with Mexico to keep immigrants from surging. (Imagine the human toll as they are herded like animals around northern Mexico or, worse, sent into the sex trafficking pipeline).

This temporary border control “solution” is not stopping the carnage across the United States. The high profile murders of children and women at the hands of young male illegals are nonetheless glaringly absent from the radar of these supposed legions of newly inspired Harris voters. They likely never will hear about — or choose to ignore — the 14-year-old girl in Indiana stabbed August 31, 2024, by Dimas Gabriel Yanez, 26, while she watched her brother play baseball. Indiana law enforcement reports that Yanez was deported to Honduras in 2018. But, along with millions, he returned to roam cities and towns, undetected and undocumented.

When will the trauma of being attacked in small town Lowell, Indiana, with a butcher knife subside for the Honduran’s teen victim?

When will the human tolls ever matter? When will Americans with the privilege and power of casting a vote wake up to the realization that they can stop the carnage? Or will the gutless Left, intent on breeding baby murdering pro-abortionists, and virulent anti-Semites, and deranged climate warriors, even notice the consequences of any of it?

Sadly, they almost certainly will not. At least not until they are added to the toll.

Seriously?

By Steve Woodward

Functioning as a speechwriter for the Harris “campaign” must deliver quite a power trip. Her writers apparently have tremendous leeway. They toggle freely between fiction and surreality.

Consider this gem: “Donald Trump is an unserious man.”

This was delivered during her speech at the Marxist’s National Convention in Chicago, a.k.a., Gaza West, where armed security lined streets and storefronts were adorned with plywood.

Unlike much of what comes coursing out of her mouth, this one actually merits closer attention.

While Joe Biden found his calling as an entrenched Washington Democrat, a two-term vice president serving the most anti-Constitution, pro-socialism American president in history, and a public servant who betrayed his country (aided by his man-child son, Hunter) by selling access and influence to foreign adversaries in exchange for no less than $27 million, what was Mr. Unserious doing?

Trump built a commercial development empire, rolled out a golf resort business that has no rival (even Charlotte Democrats sneak out to play Trump National), and became the host of a 14-season, highly profitable NBC reality TV program.

And what do you know, he even delivered an encore. In 2017, Trump was elected President of the United States after which he pursued a seriously focused agenda that delivered desirable outcomes for millions of Americans and our foreign allies. Seriously. The 45th president in a nutshell.

More specifically, Americans witnessed a precipitous decline in the cost of fuel at the pumps (photo nearby, March 2020) and energy in their homes. Black and Hispanics citizens were employed at record levels hitting half-century highs. They held real jobs driving a robust economy during which inflation dipped as low as 1.9%. Serious results.

Around the world, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un and Iran’s ruling clerics apparently viewed Trump’s America First stance as a serious deterrent, not a campaign slogan. Mexican leaders apparently found Trump’s demands to reduce chaos at the U.S. southern border compelling. He threatened to impose tariffs. Mexico got the message quickly. Collaboration between U.S. border patrol agents and their counterparts restored order. Serious results.

When immigrants flood our homeland the result is deadly serious. The media defaults to cover-up mode to protect the regime. But young women dying at the hands of murderous illegal thugs — Laken Riley in Georgia, Rachel Morin in Maryland, two among many — did not go unnoticed. Joe Biden, coddled and sheltered, naturally miscalculated public sentiment. When he tried to say Riley’s name — on the fly in the State of the Union speech — he mispronounced it. What is worse than unserious? Unrepentant? Unmoved?

The Biden-Harris White House era will be recorded by historians as a dark epoch littered by the carnage of cultural decline and measurable suffering.

It adds up to one large snowball of unserious. Since the earliest days of 2021, willful neglect of the U.S. southern border has seen no fewer than 10 million (likely more) unvetted illegals surge into the homeland, including unknown throngs of terrorists.

By conspiring with a mafia of pharmaceutical profit vultures and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta/Facebook, military careers, family run businesses and the health of young adults were destroyed by Biden-Harris COVID jab mandates.

Persistent inflation gutted the economy and household savings, aggregating to more than 19%. Gas prices spiked in all 50 states, crippling motorists, shipping and the travel industry. Unemployment climbed to nine percent. The aftermath finds people crushed by record high consumer debt.

With Harris at his side, Biden retreated as Russia advanced into Ukraine, and Hamas terrorists descended into Israel, exacting an initial death toll of more than 1,200. With Harris at his side, Biden unconscionably ordered a calamitous exit from the U.S.-owned Bagram airbase in Afghanistan three years ago, costing 13 American soldiers their lives, abandoning billions of dollars worth of military assets and reopening a terrorism training ground.

Serious coordination was required to conceal the steady decline of Biden’s mental acuity. A vice president conspiring with a First Lady, members of Congress and media acolytes to hoard power and torture a feeble old man is betrayal. That’s more than serious. That’s Satanic.

An unserious Secret Service detail assigned to Donald Trump’s campaign created conditions for the unthinkable — a bullet traveling toward the back of his head on July 13, 2024. That one missed. Another obliterated a Pennsylvania father and husband. His name is Corey Comperatore. Like so many deceased victims of Biden-Harris, it will not be read aloud from a teleprompter.

Chicago is fading from memory, and even unserious pollsters are failing to manufacture a Kamala surge as the convulsions of a scripted, sterile convention yield to the revulsion Harris and her running mate, the Mandarin Marxist of Minnesota, engender.

That deepening revulsion has inspired a roster of full-blown serious to mobilize behind Trump. Elon Musk. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And a former Democrat member of Congress, U.S. Army Reserves Lieutenant Col. Tulsi Gabbard (photo nearby).

Kennedy’s relatives are not taking this well. In a statement, they lament Bobby Kennedy’s “betrayal”, expressing support for the Harris ticket’s “shared vision of a brighter future” and “economic promise”.

Unserious Donald seems to have unhinged and unraveled a Democrat dynasty relegated with its lesser heirs — the Carters, Clintons and Obamas — to the obscurity of history’s ash heap.

The ask

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Philippians 4:6-7

By Steve Woodward

“What should we be praying for?”

A friend raised this question as we parted ways recently, upon which it dawned on me that it was not entirely rhetorical. It was in fact timely.

Some will caution that we never should waste God’s time praying about the trivial. We should not be praying for a team to win a game, or a golfer to sink a putt. And we certainly should not bend a knee to pray for victory in the political arena.

Or, is this OK? “Dear Lord, please deliver a victory for Donald Trump in November.” We know God hears us, even a silent prayer for a presidential candidate. (An assumption here is that there are few prayers coming in for Kamala Harris. The Left is more agnostic than ever. If not full blown Godless. To whom do pro-abortion, gender fluid persons pray? About anything?)

But what is at the root of a prayer to return Trump to the White House? Is it rooted in human pettiness? In mere contempt for Harris and her ticket mate, the thoroughly Godless Tim Walz? In greed (in the hope of lower taxes and more disposable income)? In revenge?

Many of us contemplate the purpose of prayer in our lives. I certainly do. In my youth when I was a CHRINO (Christian in name only) I prayed only when boarding a commercial airliner, pre-takeoff. (Sometimes, I prayed in flight: “Dear God, I meant to say takeoff and landing”).

Millions of citizens of our nation, and the world, ignore “politics”. “They all lie, those politicians.” “Voting is a waste of time.” “I don’t watch the news.” “I wore a mask for my grandparents.” “We have to help everyone, even an illegal immigrant.”

American citizenship never can be reduced to a spectator sport. The sidelines of life feel safe only because they are so crowded by others doing the same thing. Standing there. Our founding fathers feared this day.

Thus, I further argue that we must pray. Continuously. But for whom or what must we pray? The media deliberately reduce politics to cults of personality and identity. Trump is the choice of white Christian nationalists. Harris is the choice who stands against systemic racism and for reproductive rights because she is “black” and female.

The reality is most informed Americans (by far a shrinking subset of the population) vote for a president to see desirable outcomes. If you find it unseemly to pray for a New York construction billionaire who has swagger and an ego, pray instead for outcomes that will restore American prosperity, the traditional family, our energy independence and homeland security.

Then it comes down to a clear choice. Either we are praying for the preservation of mankind’s greatest nation, and the freedom and security our national strength extends to the world (and, by default, conservatives in charge of policy), or we are praying for an entirely different set of outcomes (the lived experiences of many since 2021).

These outcomes ensure desperate families who can’t earn enough income to get by day to day; who can’t afford adequate food, or adequate energy to maintain homes; who are hardworking yet losing their jobs; who live with violence in our streets, both the visible violence terrorizing cities, and violence in the shadows (innocent victims of illegal immigrant invaders funded by drug cartels).

Go ahead, decline to pray for a party or candidate. But then ask why would an American hesitate to pray relentlessly for: Israel, and persecuted Jews everywhere, including our youth on college campuses; hardline U.S.-led diplomacy to end, or at least deter, Russian aggression (in Ukraine and beyond); Chinese leaders awakened to consequences of unethical trade practices; and a Mexican government that respects America’s sovereign border?

There is tangible evidence that prayer builds on itself, gathers like a storm, and eventually pays dividends. Many Americans have prayed continuously for the safety of President Trump. In an instant, as Trump’s head turned, prayers were answered on July 13, 2024, in rural Pennsylvania. No thinking person, and certainly no spiritual person, assigned poor marksmanship to the sparing of Trump’s life.

What to pray for is a personal choice. Our broken world answers the why.

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

Dignity before diversity

By Steve Woodward

Carol Swain drives the Left absolutely insane.

She was born into poverty in the 1950s. By the early 1980s Swain had earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

But along with Dr. Ben Carson and Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, to name two, Swain is not beholden to government largesse as the catalyst for her emergence from an economically disadvantaged childhood. She refused to be held back by the soft tyranny of low expectations, the decades-long Democrat playbook intended to create an endless cycle of dependence on government entitlements.

Swain broke that cycle after a tumultuous upbringing as one of 10 children in southwest Virginia. Her story is one of a serendipitous encounter after a drug-induced suicide attempt. Already a single mother after a brief marriage that ended in divorce, a hospital physician looked her in the eye and offered something Swain had rarely encountered — encouragement.

“You are intelligent; you are attractive,” he said. “You can do more with your life.”

Swain said the compliment came as a shock. “I was 20, 21 years old and I’d never heard anyone tell me I was attractive.”

Working as a nurse’s aide in a senior home, a hospital orderly was similarly impressed by Swain. A Sierra Lyon migrant who believed in American opportunity, he advised, “You ought to go to college.”

“Those words changed my life,” Swain said.

That was all the encouragement Swain needed. She set forth to earn a G.E.D. (General Educational Development, a high school equivalency degree), having dropped out after eighth grade. Swain was motivated by determination she’d never known, and undeterred by long odds before her.

Swain paid her way through and graduated from Virginia Western Community College with an associates degree in 1978. She was 24.

Six years later she earned a Master’s Degree at Virginia Tech, and five years thereafter, in 1989, became a UNC-Chapel Hill Ph.D. A self-described introvert, Swain was not automatically drawn to a career as a college professor. She could not have imagined standing before and lecturing classrooms populated by students. But she would soon find herself teaching at Duke University and Princeton University (1990-99), and added another degree, Master of Legal Studies (Yale Law School, 2000), before launching an 18-year run teaching political science and law at Vanderbilt University (1999-2017) in Nashville, where Swain still resides.

When early signs of what is today is known as “wokeness” began to emerge on the Vanderbilt campus around 2015, Swain stood in defiance. She wrote an opinion column for The Tennessean newspaper following the brutal January 7, 2015, attack by Islamist terrorists on staff members of a Paris-based satirical magazine.

Swain refused to ignore the message the attackers sent:

“The Jan. 7 terrorist attack resulting in 12 deaths at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine that committed the apparently unpardonable sin of lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, once again illustrates that Islam is a dangerous set of beliefs totally incompatible with Western beliefs concerning freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association.”

Swain’s conclusions set off a firestorm on the Vanderbilt campus. Virtue signaling factions demanded that she be fired or suspended. She stood her ground and retired on her own terms in 2017. Swain said she was not supportive of “what American universities have allowed themselves to become.”

That reality led to campuses beholden to diversity, equity and inclusion doctrine. In 2023, Swain published her ultimate denunciation of woke higher education, a book entitled “The Adversity of Diversity”.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in 2023 that race-based admissions are unconstitutional, Swain instinctively predicted that workplace DEI was destined to collapse. Based on her life experiences, Swain knew that artificial constructs are no match for divine providence, courage and the American work ethic.

Dr. Swain presents her assessment of DEI’s fate when she visits Moore County for an appearance at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 15, 2024, in the Sandhills Classical Christian School auditorium. Admission is free. Signed copies of Swain’s book will be available for purchase after her remarks.

Kill box

By Steve Woodward

“They put Trump in a kill box.”

Podcaster and investigative journalist Benny Johnson arrived at this grim conclusion after spending a day in Butler, Pennsylvania, with his production crew and two members of Congress, Eli Crane (R-AZ) and Cory Mills (R-FL), on the site of a July 13, 2024, campaign stop where an assassination attempt targeted President Donald Trump.

Rep. Cory Mills (left) joins Rep. Eli Crane on infamous Butler, PA, roof

Crane is a former Navy Seal sniper, who was deployed five times during a 13-year career. Mills is a retired member of the U.S. 82^nd Airborne Division and Joint Special Operations Command, who was wounded during a deployment to Iraq in 2006.

During an extensive visit to the open field in Butler on July 26, 2024, Johnson and his traveling companions captured drone video and climbed atop the roof of the now infamous building that was ignored by Secret Service ahead of and during Trump’s rally.

They also revealed how a chain-link fence on one side of the property separated the rally stage from an open space where many individuals gathered. This area was in closer proximity to the podium – about 80 yards — than the roof where Thomas Crooks fired eight shots from about 140 yards. No one behind the fenced area was subject to security screening. They were outside the perimeter established by Secret Service. Various television news reports capture these groups of people calling out to law enforcement after they spotted Crooks on the nearby roof. Their warnings were ignored.

“You’ve been lied to,” said Johnson at outset of his podcast, The Benny Show, which has 2.27 million YouTube subscribers and a total of eight million-plus subscribers across multiple podcast platforms. “The truth is so much worse than you could possibly imagine.”

If you want to understand the sheer incompetence and mysterious indifference exhibited by Secret Service agents and local law enforcement personnel assigned to the Butler rally, setting aside 90 minutes to watch the July 27 podcast is strongly recommended. Click here to watch. It’s riveting.

During Johnson’s daylong investigation he said they encountered no one representing the federal government, the Secret Service or any law enforcement agency. There was no police tape protecting any area or structure. “There wasn’t anybody trying to preserve the crime scene,” he said.

Johnson’s reporting delivers three dominant headlines.

First: The American Glass Research building, its easily accessible roof, and its proximity to the rally was deliberately ignored by security. After seeing it in person, Johnson could draw no other conclusion. Second: If a nearby water tower, the tallest structure for miles, had been manned by snipers Crooks never would have survived his arrival atop the AGR building. He would have been taken out immediately. But the tower also was ignored. Third: An opening along an unmonitored, unsecured fence could have been exploited by any person or group bearing explosives or weapons, which would have turned the rally into “a war zone”.

“It’s going to take me a long time to process what we just witnessed because what we just witnessed was, without any question in my mind, a deliberate attempt to ensure that something bad happens to President Trump,” Johnson said.

Upon returning to his Tampa studio from Butler, Johnson provides a detailed account of what they observed, and what additional information sources close to Crane, Mills and Johnson himself have provided. These are among the unavoidable conclusions that the corrupt corporate media are unlikely to report:

“(Crooks) tried to enter the Trump event — that’s brand-new information. He was turned away at security. Where are those security guards? Where’s their body cam? … He was flagged as behaving very suspiciously and was turned away. … Security had already rebuffed Thomas Crooks and said you will not enter and flagged him as suspicious. Why did they let him go? Why did nobody track him? Why was nobody looking at Thomas Crooks?”
The Secret Service assigned to Butler were denied requests for drones to surveil the rally grounds.
“Whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS, Department of Homeland Security, officials were not in fact Secret Service agents but instead drawn from the Department’s Homeland Security investigations unit. This is especially concerning given that the HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocol typically used in these types of events.”
A sniper team that was in (an adjacent building with a view of the AGR rooftop where Crooks took his position) was incapacitated. “One member was sent home. How that’s possible? … One guy gets locked out of the building (after he was) told to go investigate (Crooks’ whereabouts). He gets locked out and the other (remaining) sniper gets removed from his post and goes to check on his buddy locked out of the building. The result, no matter how it all happened, is that Thomas Crooks was able to get his shots off without any engagement.”

Butler water tower captured by Johnson drone

The most scandalous lapse of that ill-fated day (that resulted in the shooting death of Corey Comperatore, 50) was the absence of federal snipers atop a massive water tower. “The tower has a railing along the side (on top) that is perfect for a security detail. You could have put 10 men on this tower to have a virtually 360-degree perfect, eagle-eye view of everything at the event. Every single sniper location, every one, every single security position is made irrelevant by this tower since this tower is so much higher and is so much more protective of President Trump.”

“There were hundreds if not maybe thousands, in the aggregate, of individuals who were able to bring lawn chairs, who were able to bring roller bags, who were able to bring luggage, who were able to bring pelican cases, to bring tailgating equipment within 80 yards of President Trump (separated only by a chain-link fence).”
“What if just 10, 20, 40 (terrorists) were able to walk up to this fence line, and they had rocket propelled grenades in their little roller kits; they’re just walking in with a little cart. They just roll up with that cart. It’s filled with RPGs. It’s filled with firearms. It’s filled with, God forbid, who knows, and what if these people were tactical?”

Congressmen Crane and Mills have since appeared on various news outlets describing what they observed in Butler while accompanying Johnson’s crew. They are certain that the tragic moments that unfolded on July 13 are not to be written off as resulting from a comedy of errors.

On July 29, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced the formation of a 13-member task force to investigate the assassination attempt. One member, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), was in attendance during the rally and is familiar with local law enforcement personnel. Another, Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD), recently visited the scene in Butler.

Crane and Mills, despite their thorough investigation on site and extensive sources, were not named to the panel.