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By Steve Woodward

Logic rarely informs political narratives. Thus, it comes as no surprise that a narrative gaining momentum advises that abortion does not kill babies, but it’s about to kill the Republican party. 

It’s gaining momentum, we conclude, because The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal agree.

“Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are or they will face another disappointment in 2024,” observes a lead editorial in April 6, 2023, editions of the Journal. 

“Now that the end of Roe (v. Wade after the Supreme Court’s historic crushing of legal abortion) has awakened a previously complacent pro-choice majority, anti-abortion passion has become a liability, but the Republican Party can’t jettison it without tearing itself apart,” writes Times columnist Michelle Goldberg in an April 7 op-ed headlined, “Republicans are freaking out”.

The Times’ Goldberg bolstered the premise of her ominous screed by quoting a tweet by conservative commentator Ann Coulter: “Please stop pushing strict limits on abortion, or there will be no Republicans left.”

This wrist wringing comes in the aftermath of a resounding defeat in Wisconsin earlier in April that flipped the state’s Supreme Court to a 4-3 radical Left majority — a majority likely to hold for a decade. The post-election narrative advised that this was a self-inflicted wound by the Republican candidate who stubbornly clung to his anti-abortion messaging. 

That thinking does not square with the real story: A cascade of dark money transformed a state Supreme Court race into a $30 million slugfest with most of financial haymakers delivered in support of the Milwaukee circuit judge Janet Protasiewicz, who dropped all pretense of pledging to interpret law from the high court’s bench. Instead she said, essentially, that she never would recuse herself from any case tied to social or cultural issues in which she has expressed firm positions, abortion “rights” at the top of the list.

“Turnout was the highest ever for a court race that didn’t coincide with a presidential primary,” wrote Kimberley Strassel in an April 6, 2023, op-ed in the Journal. Strassel, no centrist, nonetheless warns Republicans in her column that they must “unwax their ears” and cave on abortion. Otherwise, expect more defeats like Wisconsin.

A Substack columnist, Jessica Valenti, who proudly proclaims that her mission is to advance “Abortion, Every Day”, jumps onto the same bandwagon, that being: It matters not that your camp fundamentally and religiously opposes aborting births. Wake up. An American culture in decline is fine with it. Why stand on principle when you can easily cave based on polling numbers?

“Republican legislators across the country have been working overtime to prevent Americans from having a say on abortion rights,” Valenti rants, “no longer bothering to hide their obvious disdain for democracy.”

She’s so dumb — an obvious conclusion — that they/them Valenti fails to grasp that America is a Republic girded by democratic principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our founders prioritized life. 

Democracy is the Left’s favorite word in defense of everything they wish to obliterate. Their opponents always are “existential threats to democracy”. 

Not to be overlooked in an examination of the Left’s hypocrisy on all things abortion is its waffling on “born alive” legislation addressing babies targeted for abortion that survive execution. Democrats simply could not see the common sense to which this bill in the U.S. House was anchored.

Dems opposing the bill argued that the same baby they would have killed on contact might “suffer” en route to a hospital to receive medical attention. Can’t make it up.

Reports The Christian Post: “Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) who opined that the bill could create ‘more harm for the baby since it requires immediately taking a struggling baby to a hospital’.” That hospital,” she explained, “could be hours away and could be detrimental to the life of that baby. This is nothing more than part of the effort to make abortion illegal nationally in this country. I object, and I urge a no vote.”

The baby as the pawn is the Left’s central theme. The Left wants to kill and protect the baby at the same time. 

What do we, as Conservative Republicans do, in the face of calls from within to abandon defense of the sanctity of life? I might suggest we recall the 1964 speech that vaulted Ronald Reagan into the political arena. He told us then that we had arrived at “a time for choosing”. He went on to warn that the choice was not easy but that the wrong choice could cast our nation into darkness.

In 2023, Republicans can not afford to lack courage to choose vehement opposition to the normalization of infanticide. 

By Steve Woodward

We are the cliches we invent for ourselves. Currently, we’re told that we live in uncertain times. Yet, repeatedly, in 2020, ’21, ’22, and here in turbulent 2023, I’ve never been more certain about so much.

Assuming I process everything I hear and read as thoughtful analysis and truth telling delivered by corporate media, I am:

A racist.

A Christian “nationalist”.

A transphobic monster and accomplice in the morning of rage that recently visited a Nashville Christian school.

A hate-filled, January 6 insurrectionist.

A Constitutional apologist who misreads the First and Second amendments.

A book banner.

An election denier.

An environmental assassin.

A spreader of COVID-19, both of the virus itself and of derisive misinformation toward those who complied with “vaccines” and boosters, masks, and isolation.

Quite the rap sheet for a law abiding, graying white guy who pays his taxes and flies Old Glory every morning, except when there is rain, and brings her in at nightfall. I also plead guilty to being a Christian, not in name only but a Christian who will stand against persecution even, and especially, if its perpetrators are fellow American citizens.

The certainty of these times, in my humble estimation, is understood only when we recognize the miserable lives the ascendant Antifa/Marxist/Left (they’re not merely Democrats who pay union dues) have chosen for themselves.

In this hellish parallel world, nothing is humorous; everything is a red flag. Nothing is sacred; everything is suspect. Everyone outside the woke universe is a threat to the new order.

Who stands on the periphery of this otherworld of “wokeness”? Those who embrace Judeo-Christian values. Those who respect the rule of law. Those who identify a maximum of two genders.

How do they loathe thee? Let me count their ways.

Family Grounds (see report nearby) is an independent coffee shop that in recent days opened its doors in Sanford, NC. It rolled out with a strong digital presence: website, Facebook, etc. Its owners hope to help customers start their day with freshly brewed coffee. Awake is good. Woke? Check it at the door.

The Men’s room sports a stylized “M” and a “XY”. The Women’s room sports a stylized “W” and a “XX”. High school 101. Brilliant. After all, embracing the nuclear family is impossible absent a basic understanding of the two sexes.

What happened next? A few snowflakes in Sanford protested mightily, posting one-star reviews. They soon were crushed by a high tide of backlash in the form of five-star smackdowns. This happens every time. Pro reality typically crushes pronouns.

Even closer to home, our local former “newspaper”, today an underground radical organ of a yet unidentified cult, The Pilot, caters to those who argue that the Fasten Seat Belt sign must never be turned off because cultural turbulence never will subside. Recently, The Pilot collaborated with The Raleigh News & Observer, to place the hate machine at the feet of … wait for it … white people.

But, here’s a footnote you might have missed. Did you know that the publisher of The Pilot — and generations of family that came before in the newspaper business — is related to descendants of the late, great Josephus Daniels, who led the Wilmington Massacre of 1898 and was a proud white supremacist?

Funny, it never came up as a disclaimer when The Pilot recently published a collaborative in-depth report with the N&O, entitled, “Hate Groups, Messages of Fear on the Rise”.

Mostly, the tedious excuse for journalism was a rehashing of January 6, 2021, quoting various experts warning of the rise of extremism at our doorsteps. But deep into the article you can find a bombshell that should alarm active duty and retired military. You are the extremists.

“Southern Poverty Law Center names 28 hate groups and 17 anti-government groups active in North Carolina,” according to the Pilot/N&O report. “Megan Squire, who studies hate groups for the SPLC, says those typically target others based on immutable characteristics, dehumanizing or demonizing people because they’re Black, for example, or gay or an immigrant or a Muslim. The America they wish for is made up primarily of white people.”

Next comes the unfounded assumption that should strike fear in the hearts of our veteran community.

“According to the SPLC and others who track it, extremist activity in North Carolina appears comparable to that of many other states, with a possible exception: the state has a huge active-duty military presence and the eighth-highest veteran population in the country. Nearly 642,000 veterans lived here in 2019, according to UNC demographers, and their military training makes them prized recruits for violence-prone extremists.”

This same easily discredited diatribe that was passed off as investigative reporting never mentions the rise of Antifa terrorism across our nation, currently on full display in suburban Atlanta, where a parcel of land intended for development as a police training academy is under siege by domestic terrorists.

Here’s another example of why a legitimate newspaper editor would have sent the report back to the authors demanding a rewriting, if not a rethinking of its premise. It took us back to December 3, 2022, in downtown Southern Pines.

“Hours before the show,” the N&O/Pilot reports, “protestors had been outside the (Sunrise Theater) demanding the Downtown Divas’ performance be canceled to protect local children, though no one under 18 was to be allowed in.”

This references the now infamous drag queen show that evening at the Sunrise. The group characterized as “protestors” stood on the rail station platform reading scriptures. Unlike the reporters who collaborated to craft this work of fiction, I was there. The protestors that evening were there to celebrate the drag show. Their signs and their words were laced with profanity. They came to the venue with their children, as if to begin the drag normalization process.

These surely are not uncertain times. I am certain evil is here. The enemy is among us. Look around.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

By Steve Woodward

Apparently, even Republican judges are not immune from becoming activists.

According to an extensive investigation by citizen journalist and radio personality John Zumwalt, North Carolina Superior Court senior resident judge James Webb is behind a coercion scheme involving probation fees and experimental mRNA jabs (often mischaracterized as vaccines).

Zumwalt has collected evidence through interviews with court defendants proving that Webb repeatedly has offered to waive a state-imposed monthly probation fee ($40) if a previously un-jabbed individual provides subsequent proof of “vaccination” against COVID-19.

“There’s so much wrong with that, in my view,” said Zumwalt, who broke the story during a pre-recorded segment of the weekly John & Maureen Show on WEEB on March 26, 2023. “Judge Webb obviously believes it’s ok. Judge Webb, you’re invited in (to WEEB studios). I’d love to sit down and talk to you, face to face, on the air.”

Zumwalt stops short of implying that Webb is breaking laws. Zumwalt’s pursuit of the story was prompted by his concern that Webb is exploiting vulnerable people and acting unethically by subverting the intent of probation fees.

“If you’ve got a defendant in your court room, there’s a good chance, a very good chance, that the defendant does not have a lot of standing in the community,” Zumwalt said during the show. “There’s a good chance this person is not wealthy; there’s a good chance that $40 a month means a lot to that person. That $40 a month may mean groceries, or at least a quantity of groceries.”

It must be assumed Judge Webb believes he is providing a valuable public service by advocating for COVID “vaccines”. But beyond exercising an abuse of his power for the bench, Webb is also raising health risks for these coerced defendants. Studies and data gathering from around the world continue to raise alarms about the efficacy and safety of these non-trialed, emergency jabs produced by pharmaceutical makers enticed by government underwriting.

In many cases, it appears the “vaccinated” are more likely to become infected as time goes by. This, along with a constant drumbeat of news of healthy younger adults becoming stricken with heart inflammation, cardiac arrest and nerve damage.

“This risk (imposed by COVID shots) is unprecedented in the history of modern medicine,” said Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. “Those daring to raise the alarm on the unproven and dangerous nature of the vaccines have been persecuted relentlessly.”

A recent study released in the United Kingdom reports the discovery of more than 62,000 excess deaths across the UK and Wales beginning in 2022 and through March 2023 — a 50-year high. How is this possible? Independent journalists with The Expose have determined why — COVID vaccines. Read more.

Another just released study raises red flags about pregnant women and COVID jabs. Published March 21, 2023, it reports, “Specifically, 46% (124/270) of pregnant women in the first 90 days of the rollout experienced an (adverse event), and 81% (26/32) experienced miscarriage.” And, last but not least, from the journal Medpage Today, this finding: “We show for the first time evidence from a multicenter national study that (functional neurological disorder) after COVID-19 infections and vaccines (emphasis added) are more common than previously reported and have distinct clinical profiles.” 

Zumwalt’s forthcoming revelations were briefly mentioned live on WEEB a few days before the John & Maureen Show aired. He said a man approached him later the same morning at a local breakfast spot. The man told Zumwalt he attended his daughter’s sentencing before Judge Webb in recent weeks. The man said he advised his daughter to turn down the $40 fee waiver because she had not been vaccinated, and did not intend to be. The judge asked the man if he could afford to pay the monthly for his daughter. He said, “I sure can.”

Zumwalt pledges to share his findings on Webb’s behavior with regional and national media outlets.

“No matter how strongly you agree that you should get a shot, or how strongly you feel about not getting a shot, that has nothing to do with this,” Zumwalt said during the show. “This is about a judge, Judge Webb, Judge James Webb, who I believe is horribly abusing his power, and forcing people to do something they don’t want to do. So Judge Webb, shame on you.”

By Steve Woodward

Remember when airports were full of energy and anticipation?

I my youth, Dulles International Airport was a sparkling, modern gem erected in what was then Virginia countryside. On a few occasions, we transported my Dad to Dulles when he was traveling on business. 

From the parking lot, which rarely was even close to full, outdoor speakers blared announcements from the terminal building. A formal sounding, radio-quality voice sent the imagination soaring: “American Airlines, flight 24, Flagship service to Los Angeles, is boarding, gate 10.”

As a kid, flying to Los Angeles while being served a meal on real plates with silverware was well beyond my comprehension. Unfortunately, I missed most of that golden age. By the time I took my maiden flight to Los Angeles, around 1982, plastic and Styrofoam were the new norm.

While recently traveling by air, my comprehension was once again challenged both inside the airports and aboard the aircrafts. Here in 2023, airports are disturbing gateways in which masked zombies in hooded cotton tops and ill-fitting, pajama-style bottoms sit silently, captivated by digital content.

Particularly notable on this recent journey was the persistent mask wearing, evoking grim memories of years just passed. Some are masked snowflakes, who remain shackled to the virtue that their masks purport to signal. “If even one life is saved …”!

Others are older adults, including many who appear perfectly healthy and vigorous. Even some employees of the TSA security brigades are reporting masked up to work. Flight attendants also can be spotted wearing poorly fitted masks despite no requirement imposed by their employer.

Have they read nothing to dissuade them of the futility, not to mention stupidity, of mask addiction? Or are we at a place where even volumes on the topic would not change their minds? This is why I find myself feeling sorry for these people. They are mentally ill. Completely. 

Airports today are full of anxiety and fear. And these conditions have nothing to do with potential in-flight turbulence, delays, or cancellations. In fact, travelers appear so fixated on their devices I’m not certain they’d even brace ahead of impact, lest they miss a TikTok moment.

I do not blame them for their mental illnesses and the resulting insistence on masking up. There is plenty of blame to go around, beginning with Dr. Anthony Fauci and myriad scientists, physicians, politicians (not to be confused with leaders) and hysteria loving media personalities (not to be confused with journalists). 

The presumption that absolute safety is a reasonable expectation is how we should define so-called Long COVID. No precaution can be dismissed if it might provide an added “safety” layer. Especially now that these same people walk around thinking but never saying out loud what is their grimmest realization – the miracle mRNA jabs are useless. 

Even the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the airlines recognize how fragile and mentally challenged passengers have become. Remember when the pre-flight announcement was over in less than 90 seconds. Seat belt demonstration (the dumbest and longest surviving pre-flight ritual). Location of exits. Life vest operation. Oxygen mask demonstration.

All of those remain on the list, but the supplementals take up at least as much time and are even more absurd. No e-cigarette smoking or charging. No consumption of personal alcoholic beverages (get hammered at the airport bar, then board). And the best of the rest: 

• Face coverings are optional. Please respect those who choose to wear them.
• In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, please remove face coverings before placing the oxygen mask over your mouth and nose.

These two gems openly acknowledge that, a) the feelings of the masked are extremely fragile. (Under no circumstances inform a masked moron that 2021 called and it wants its masks back), and b) the masked would think twice about remaining safely face-diapered despite, ultimately, passing out when unable to breathe. (Masker’s thought bubble: Has the CDC approved this risky in-flight oxygen?)

Fellow Americans are increasingly Godless, faithless, introverted, poorly attired, ill-informed, and manic. But there is good news, friends.

Progressive left politicians in our once glorious cities have ruined these destinations and some might never recover from crime and decay. Thus, no longer will wanderlust find us venturing into airports in anticipation of journeys to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York. I’d rather jet off to Havana. Or …

Perhaps what’s old is new again. See the USA in your Chevrolet. Get your kicks on Route 66. Ski The Poconos. Chattanooga Choo-Choo, won’t you choo-choo me home? All aboard the Riverboat Queen! 

By Steve Woodward

It is worth noting, and only mildly surprising, that “woke” is assigned a definition in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. One who professes to be woke is “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” 

There is no mention of other ways through which a woke person exhibits his active attentiveness, such as by vandalizing private property, threatening college campus guest speakers, or hijacking public education.

We now see the evolution of woke on a track similar to the one that re-defined “science” during the age of Wuhan Virus hysteria. It has become an “ism”.

“Science-ism” (especially under the reign of Dr. Anthony “I Am Science” Fauci) became the sweeping explanation for all restrictions on daily life “required” to keep everyone safe from certain death should one contract a head cold. Similarly, “woke-ism” no longer is merely persistent awareness that all aspects of culture are racist. It is a persistent state of misery that goes beyond finding racism at every turn, and now extends to rejecting every element that heretofore comprised what we once knew as American values.  

To name a few, woke-ism rejects Christianity, America’s founding, gasoline combustion engines, red meat consumption, and the obvious existence of but two genders, female and male.

During a recent interview with Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer, who hosts a highly recommended podcast, The Josh Hammer Show, a University of Pennsylvania professor and expert on all things woke-ism described in great detail its cancerous spread within academia. Amy Wax, a tenured member of the Penn law school faculty, has become an outcast and, despite constantly facing the wrath of woke mobs, refuses to be silenced. 

Woke-ism, she says, reduces everything to “oppressed versus oppressor” and sees our nation as “irredeemably racist” thus requiring society’s “demolition from the bottom up.” Woke dogma “dwells on the evils of our democracy and our system, and accords special status to oppressed minorities and especially blacks. And, finally attributes all disparities between groups to this nefarious force of racism.”

At UPenn and beyond, Wax warns, “the key is that the woke forces have taken over the university, and they do not tolerate dissent.

“They are extremely wary of anyone who questions any of these tenants, and whom points to facts on the ground or ways of interpreting them that are inconsistent, and sees those as a threat to their hegemony and to these oppressed groups who, of course, are of paramount importance now. Cosseting them and pleasing them and protecting them is the top priority in academia.” 

As we find ourselves at a cultural crossroads, it is important to recognize that woke-ism is not generational, making it a much broader phenomenon than, say, anti-war protests of the 1970s, or the 99% who became the Occupy Wall Street movement a decade ago. Exhibit A: Hyper-woke President Joe Biden, 80.

This reality recently was on display in a whiny editorial published in The Pilot, the undertones of which tell us that the honeymoon is over in its relationship with a reformed and revitalized Moore County Board of Education.

The editorial laments that the cause of ongoing unrest and faculty resignations at Crain’s Creek Middle School is entirely the fault of outspoken school board vice chairman David Hensley and his fellow board minions, who are accused of hanging on his every word like bobblehead dolls.

It’s not the first time we’ve been subjected to a baseless editorial by The Pilot’s editorial board (comprised of one, or maybe two, white males). The assessment of Crain’s Creek chaos blames Hensley’s rhetoric while overlooking all of the root causes of discipline problems in schools. Such as: lack of discipline enforcement; children who have not recovered mentally and emotionally from pandemic lockdowns; parents, or a single parent, who are raising disrespectful kids; and, last but not least, overwhelmed teachers and bus drivers.

Instead, The Pilot infers that Hensley & Co. forced the reassignment of the Crain’s Creek principal that sparked a wave of faculty resignations, which is patently false, and then does what the woke always do — denies that woke-ism sows seeds of chaos.

Hensley rightly has called out “the failed woke strategic plan which governed (Moore County Schools) from 2019-2022,” and pointed to “their ‘woke’ plan which resulted in this breakdown in student discipline and declining academics.”

Amusing and also delusional were comments posted at ThePilot.com in response to the editorial. One commenter suggested that dismissing another person as “woke” is as demeaning as assigning an ethnic slur to those of Polish, Italian and Hispanic descent. He further lamented that woke is “a word meant to demean”. Think about that. How does one demean someone whose world view is that all are to be demeaned?

Another commenter concludes that “woke” is meant to shut people up, leaving no room for discussion or debate. Here again, we see a typical tactic of the Left. Accuse your polar opposites of doing and saying precisely what “wokesters” are doing and saying, then add tears, rage and shrieking to drive home the point.

Allow me to offer an alternative view on the matter. Woke is a joke. But no one is laughing.