After the Japanese navy bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which drew the United States into battle at the beginning of World War II, the Japanese military set its sights on the Philippines because of its strategic location.

The Battle of Bataan began on January 6, 1942, and almost immediately the defenders were on half rations along with few weapons and meds, because of poor planning by General Douglas MacArthur. That is, before the Bataan death march began, after having resisted the Japanese forces for some three months, the troops were already very ill, having been stricken with malaria, dengue fever, and many other diseases. Ultimately, the U.S. surrendered and that action represented the largest single defeat in American military history.

The Bataan Death March was a forced march of some 66 miles that began with 76,000 prisoners of war: 66,000 Filipinos, 10,000 Americans.

During the march, the captives were brutalized and dehumanized, shot, bayoneted, and, in many cases, beheaded; many of those who made it to the first camp in the Philippines later died of starvation and disease.

The book “Tears in the Darkness” by Michael and Elizabeth Norman is a remarkably accurate account of the march and its aftermath. The New York Times reviewer stated that “if you are not weeping openly by the book’s final scenes, then you have a hard crust of salt around your soul.”

After the march, the troops were loaded into box cars and transferred onto what became known as hell ships. During the march and the subsequent hell ship transport, they were given no water and no food and, in some cases, little to no air to breathe.

Most of the Americans taken prisoner on Bataan died before war’s end. Most of those who survived the war experience died before the age of 50 due to the effects of disease, stress, and starvation. Some deaths were attributed to biological experiments on the troops. The death rate for American POWs from the march was over 60%, whereas for those in Nazi POW camps it was less than 2%.

No Man Left Behind?

The Bataan death march survivors believed they were left behind to die, and they were right. That too, took a huge toll. Back in Washington, American and British leaders decided upon a “Europe first” war policy, as it was determined that Germany must be the first of the Axis powers (Germany, Japan, and Italy) to be defeated, because they were the most formidable.

So, what about the men and women left behind in the Philippines? The answer to that question attributed to Secretary of War Henry Stimson was “there are times when men must die,” as reported in the book, “When Men Must DIE Live” (another excellent read), by Bataan death march survivor James T. Murphy and his son, Kenneth Murphy, who I had the honor to meet and interview.

Listen to These Words:

We’re the Battling Bastards of Bataan,

No Mama, No Papa, No Uncle Sam,

No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,

No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces,

And nobody gives a damn!

My father was on the death march and it was about this time 81 years ago that the severely emaciated POWSs began to be rescued and released, but, unfortunately, the majority of those who made it home died before their 50^th birthday due to the horrors, torture, starvation, and deprivations ,they were forced to endure. My father died at age 47. I will always be grateful for his and his fellows’ sacrifices, and I am extremely grateful that Mr. Murphy located my father’s POW records for me.

Finally, as Mr. Murphy writes, “As we approached the USS RESCUE, we all looked up and shouted in unison “There’s Old Glory”! As we focused our eyes on the first American flag that we had seen in the last forty-one months, we survivors of the Hanawa prison camp wept unashamedly at the spectacle waving in the breeze at us. To a person, we felt as if those stars and stripes were saying, “Welcome back. You are safe now.”

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I have been doing a three-part series about revolution, including first, the proposed Democratic Socialists revolution in America, along with the bloody history of socialist and communist revolutions in recent times.

We now turn our attention to the Islamic revolution.

For the record, Islamism by contrast is not Islam. It is a revolutionary death cult within Islam. It is a political ideology that reframes Islam not primarily as a faith but as a totalizing political program. Its advocates insist that Islam is not merely a spiritual religion but an all-encompassing system governing politics, law, and society, in a manner that is antithetical to western civilization.

Alexis De Toqueville, who had a lot to say about the French and American revolutions, also studied the religion of Islam, and in 1838 he determined Islamism was detrimental to societal progress. He argued that Islamism encompassed not only religious doctrines but also political and legal frameworks that he believed could hinder the development of democratic societies. He had studied the Quran a great deal. He came away from that study with the conviction that, by and large, there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Islamism.

We can’t, therefore, say we haven’t been warned. The brutal truth about Jihad-loving radical Islamism? When it gains power, it gives three choices to infidels and “compromised” Muslims: convert, become a slave, or die.

While the woke left in America denounce our history as one of colonialism, the Muslim Brotherhood is imposing what they refer to as a “Civilization-Jihadist Process,” which means that their work in America and in Europe is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” And that’s a direct quote

The Muslim Brotherhood

A 200-page report, published by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), calls on the U.S. to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization to thwart its efforts to penetrate all aspects of American life.

As one scholar put it, the impact of the Muslim Brotherhood lies in something more subtle but ultimately more corrosive than overt violence: shaping the ideological and social environments in which radicalization becomes more likely. Make no mistake about it, the Civilization-Jihadist process serves as nothing less than the preparation for violent jihad.

The report is here:

The report first makes it very clear, there is a firm distinction between Islam and Islamism as follows: Islam is a religion that inspires Muslims to practice their faith in diverse ways, and for the vast majority of them, Islam provides a framework for devotion and moral living that is fully compatible with democratic values, pluralism, and modern life.

The most significant promoter of Islamism is the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt, the Brotherhood’s birthplace, has banned the movement and designated it a terrorist organization after decades of political confrontation and violence. Saudi Arabia, the custodian of Islam’s two holiest cities, has likewise outlawed the Brotherhood, describing it as a source of division and extremism. The United Arab Emirates has gone even further by proscribing the Brotherhood and related groups as threats to national security and social cohesion.

These actions clearly demonstrate that criticism of the Brotherhood does not stem from hostility to Islam itself. On the contrary, they reflect the recognition by Muslim governments and scholars that the Brotherhood distorts religion for ideological purposes, undermines legitimate religious authority, and destabilizes societies.

The Institutional Entrenchment Tactic

Tamkeen is one of the Brotherhood’s most important doctrines. It refers to a deliberate process of institutional entrenchment and empowerment. Rather than seeking immediate revolution, it calls for embedding Islamist influence within civil society, consolidating authority inside Muslim communities, and normalizing Islamist discourse in the wider public arena. Tamkeen is not simply a tactic of survival; it is a long-term program of transformation in which Islamist movements position themselves to shape the environment around them until they are sufficiently entrenched to advance their wider ideological objectives.

Muslim communities have also been among the first to suffer from Islamist authoritarianism, sectarianism, and violence. This demonstrates that Islamism is not a defense of Islam but an imposition upon it.

Another organization, Fondapol, a French think tank, hosts the definitive website on the Islamic revolution through the lens of terrorist attacks.

Islamism’s Bloody Trail

The following quotes from their research highlights the fact that the revolution is leaving a bloody trail across the Muslim-majority Middle East and Africa, as well as Europe.

The Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 96.7% of Islamist attacks between 1979 and April 2024. The report cites the deadliest terrorist organizations, taking into account their various offshoots, were the Taliban (71,965 deaths), the Islamic State group (69,641 deaths), Boko Haram (26,081 deaths), al Shabaab (21,784 deaths), and al Qaeda (14,856 deaths). These five terrorist groups were responsible for more than three-quarters (81.8%) of the victims of Islamist terrorist attacks between 1979 and April 2024.

In Europe (excluding Russia), since 1979, there have been 209 attacks and 802 deaths.

The research cited from Fondapol doesn’t include the statistics involving Muslim “rape gangs,” individual knife attacks, and honor killings, among other phenomena attributed to individual Muslim immigrants against the native population in Europe. For instance, as Daniel Greenfield has reported in Frontpage magazine, a poll in Sweden indicated that one in ten women have been raped, which is similar to a poll indicating the same statistic in the UK.

Acceptance of Islamism’s “Rape Culture”

The Restore Britain organization has released “The Rape Gang Inquiry Report” which details in shocking horror white British girls as young as 11 years old suffering from systemic sexual abuse, trafficking (some were trafficked to the Middle East), torture, pregnancy, forced Islamic conversion, and forced marriages by Islamic immigrants. According to the report, 250,000 women have been victimized. It is estimated that a minimum of 87% of the perpetrators are Muslim. Complaints by the victims have been largely ignored because the authorities did not want to offend the immigrant’s “culture.”

What is that “culture”? Edward D. Andrew, author of many books on Islam, writes, “At the deepest level, Shariah’s allowance of sexual use of captives rests on a particular theology of the non-Muslim. In this view, the unbeliever—especially the polytheist or idol worshiper—is fundamentally unclean. His life, property, and family are subject to the claims of jihad.

“When Muslim armies fight ‘in the path of Allah,’ they are entitled to the spoils of war. This includes not only land and goods, but also human beings. Women from conquered peoples are thus redefined. They are no longer seen as wives and daughters within their own communities but as loot—gifts from Allah to the victorious. Their previous religious ties and marital vows are considered null. Islamic jurists argue that by capturing them, Muslims have severed their old allegiances and placed them under a new legal order. Within that order, a Muslim man owning a slave is seen as bringing her under the protection of Islam, even while violating her sexually. Consent is not central to this theology.”

Abiding the Death of Western Civilization

On a side note, the movie “Taken” was an accurate account of this phenomenon. The kidnapping, rape, and trafficking, of white girls depicted in the movie is based upon true accounts. The only thing fictional was their rescue. That is, nobody is coming to rescue these victims.

The reason all this abuse has gone on for so long with few prosecutions and even fewer convictions had to do with the fear of British authorities being labeled “Islamophobic.” That is, multi-cultural wokeness was manipulated to the point of ignoring abhorrent behavior which has served to traumatize an entire generation of young British women. The root of this inane clash of civilizations is rooted in Western tolerance versus the Islamist belief that “white trash merit punishment.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is using democratic freedoms—freedom of association, speech, and civic participation, to eventually impose their authoritarian control and abuse of people, institutions, and civilizational norms. As is the case with the DSA attempt to overthrow the U.S. Constitution, America must come to grips with the fact that a slow-moving revolution is still a revolution and it must be dealt with as such. As a wise man once observed, culture is not just what people value, but what society tolerates repeatedly.

In the case of Islamism, that means “tolerating” the rape, pillage, plunder, and death of Western Civilization, or what’s left of it.

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Here are a few prescient lines from the Beatles tune “Revolution” written by John Lennon.

You say you want a revolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world

You say you got a real solution

Well, you know

We’d all like to see the plan

You say you’ll change the constitution

Well, you know

We’d all love to change your head

If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao

You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow.

I am doing a three-part series on revolutions. Last week, I wrote about the Democratic Socialists of America wanting a revolution that would end the constitution, private property, borders, and the Senate, in addition to many other things. Of course, the DSA claims they want to bring about this socialist revolution peacefully, however, that has never happened anywhere else in the world.

We are already witnessing lawfare, subterfuge, and political and judicial corruption as the progressives in America have many of the same goals as the DSA, and they had a head start on them. After all, haven’t the progressives already called for an end to gun rights, the electoral college, free speech that “offends” them, not to mention the plethora of laws, lawsuits, and prosecutions aimed to stop things and people they don’t agree with? Across the pond, their similarly woke cohorts will put people in jail for things they write on social media and if you are stabbed by a Muslim radical, you could be the person who gets handcuffed!

Having said all that, let’s talk comparatively about other revolutions via an amalgamation of various internet sources that include copilot, Wikipedia, Brittanica, soviet-union.com, along with several others.

Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in 1831 to determine why the American Revolution was so successful while the French Revolution became a bloody mess. The French Revolution was ostensibly based upon the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which happens to sound a lot like diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI), if you care to think about it.

Regardless, the phrase “the revolution eats its own” is a historical and political metaphor describing how revolutionary movements often grow more radical over time, eliminating their own earlier leaders and factions in the process. Of course, the revolution, before eating its own, murders “the establishment.” In the last century, it is estimated that so-called “revolutions for the people” murdered a minimum of 100 million of the people.

In France

The Reign of Terror under Maximillien Robespierre targeted not only the old regime but also fellow revolutionaries who opposed his radicalism, leading to the execution of around 1,300 people in just weeks. Ultimately, more than 16,000 were guillotined, including Monsieur Robespierre.

In China

The “eating its own” pattern intensified under Mao’s later policies. The Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) combined collectivization with unrealistic industrial goals, leading to mass famine and political repression. The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was a purge of “bourgeois” elements, including intellectuals and party members, to enforce Maoist ideology. These campaigns eliminated moderates and reinforced radical control. Historians estimate that between 35 million and 80 million Chinese died because of Mao Zedong’s policies, with the Great Leap Forward famine alone causing roughly 15–55 million deaths. Fast forward to 2026, China demands full control of its citizenry enforced by a 24-hour surveillance system along with social credit scores.

The people are anything but free.

In Russia

The revolution “eats its own” because its revolutionary aims — democracy, equality, and liberation (DEI again!) — were undermined by the very means it used to achieve power: authoritarian control, repression, and centralization. The state it created was more oppressive in many ways than the one it overthrew, fulfilling the paradox of self-destruction. To win the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks relied on mass mobilization, mass executions, and terror — tactics that entrenched authoritarianism and deepened mistrust between the state and the population. Estimates of Russians killed under Stalin range from around 6 million to as many as 20 million, depending on the inclusion of famine, executions, Gulag deaths, and deportations.

In Venezuela

The current-day revolutionary darling of Hollywood, the courts, legislature, and electoral processes were politicized. Opposition activists were marginalized or imprisoned.

Informal armed groups were empowered in neighborhoods loyal to the government. Chávez suspended Congress’s ability to pass laws and began a crackdown on the judiciary, including packing the Supreme Court (where have we heard that before?). The bicameral Congress (Chamber of Deputies and Senate) was converted into a unicameral National Assembly and stripped of many of its former powers, which is exactly what the DSA wants to do in the United States.

The non-governmental Venezuelan organization Provea reports that “the Maduro Government stifled the rights to personal freedom, life, and personal integrity with extrajudicial executions, torture, and arbitrary detentions. Between 2013 and 2023, there were registered 43,003 victims of violations of personal integrity, which include 1,652 victims of torture and 7,309 victims of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment. Moreover, according to Provea records, between 2013 and 2023, at least 10,085 people were murdered by security agents, the majority of these cases remain “uninvestigated,” the report adds.

On top of all that, according to a United Nation’s Report, “due to a prolonged economic, political, and human rights crisis, approximately 7.9 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2015, making this the largest displacement crisis in Latin America’s modern history. Inside the country, around 7–7.9 million people—about one in four Venezuelans—require humanitarian assistance to meet basic needs such as food, healthcare, water, and education.”

Nonetheless, in the wake of Chavez’s death, Sean Penn declared, “Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion.” Danny Glover praised Chavez, calling him “a social champion of democracy, material development, and spiritual well-being”.

Back to de Tocqueville

A central theme in de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” is that the American Revolution succeeded in embedding the protection of property and individual rights into the nation’s political culture. Tocqueville saw this as a key reason for its longevity — the rule of law and secure property rights gave citizens confidence and reduced the risk of tyranny.

Tocqueville observed that American society fostered civic virtue, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to the Constitution. This cultural foundation, rooted in the Revolution’s ideals, helped sustain political stability and public trust in government.

That begs the question, why would we want to replace what we have when it has proved so successful for 250 years? I am sticking with our founding fathers and John Lennon on this one.

Next week, we will discuss the Islamic Revolution.

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Before you laugh off the demands and priorities of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), do realize that over 30 of their members have won their primaries against Democrats.

CNN political commentator and establishment democrat Van Jones is worried, and rightly so. He basically refers to these full-fledged communists as turds in the Dem’s punch bowl.

That was his language, not mine.

The newest platform of the Democratic Socialists of America calls for a new U.S. Constitution that would replace the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress. That would constitute a form of government called a unicameral legislature on steroids, thereby obliterating the pillars of “separate but equal powers” and the checks and balances among our three equal branches of government.

Beyond institutional overhauls, the platform also lays out a broad set of policy goals: imposing wealth taxes on the richest Americans and corporations, canceling student debt, establishing a 32-hour workweek, granting blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants, enacting “Medicare for All,” providing universal childcare, and a pledge to position the organization at the forefront of the fight for transgender rights.

The platform also includes a “feminism for all” plank that calls for queer liberation, an end to gender-based violence, and bans on sex discrimination. It opposes restrictions on abortion, childbirth, gender expression, and gender transition.

Finally, these socialists want to abolish the police, prisons, and borders, as well as seize private property and nationalize major industries. Regarding the latter, here is what the DSA website has to say about capitalism: “Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society. We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation.”

Legally, DSA members should never be allowed to serve in Congress because they cannot honestly take the oath of office that includes requiring an elected to defend the Constitution without purpose of evasion. That is, the U.S. Constitution requires federal and many state officials to be “bound by Oath or Affirmation” before performing duties.

Federal statutes (e.g., 5 U.S.C. 3331) prescribe the oath’s text and require it before assuming office. The oath reads: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So, help me God.”

So, if the Dems and Republicans in office grow a spine they can save our country from these lunatics by blocking their being seated because the published platform of the DSA – which is binding on its members – is antithetical to our Constitution. That is, it is impossible for the members of the DSA to take the oath without the purpose of evasion.

I understand that the Communist Control Act of 1954, signed by President Dwight Eisenhower, declared the Communist Party USA an unlawful organization and criminalized membership or support for it. The party was labeled an “instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government,” but since then the courts have struck down most of the provisions of the same. The Supreme Court subsequently clarified that you can’t be punished for simply believing in or discussing communism. The government must prove a direct link between your words or associations and a plan to incite imminent violence or the likelihood to incite such actions.

The court missed the boat on this because the immediate plan is not to incite imminent violence. Instead, the actual plan, which is well on its way, is “the long march” through our institutions, which describes a strategy of incremental ideological subversion advocating that radicals infiltrate and reshape core societal structures such as universities, media outlets, and administrative bodies, to erode established power from within.

The “long march plan” is working. A significant number of young people now believe that socialism is preferable to capitalism; recent polls indicate that voters aged 18-34 prefer socialism by a margin of 18 percentage points. Will that generation comprise the end of America as we know it? Of course, as the saying goes, they don’t know that a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have. Nor do they know that socialism never works but it does create an eventual bloodbath and a subsequent tyrannical prison state while leaving the economy in shambles.

Both political parties, along with our courts, need to decide if a slow-moving revolution is no revolution at all? Or maybe they already have. The DSA is a cancer on our body politic. It should be treated as any other slow growing cancer because it will eventually kill the host. Ronald Reagan warned us that our freedom was always one generation away from extinction and, well, we can now see the “whites of their eyes”!

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I, for one, am still celebrating our nation’s 250^th birthday. I recently wrote about Benjamin Franklin’s answer to the question of what kind of government were we going to have, to which he replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Of course, the basic principle of our Constitution posits that we are not solely governed by the majority as in a purely de…

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In his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, Orwell critiques the “ugly and inaccurate” state of contemporary English, linking it directly to political and social decay. Orwell rightly observed that vague, pretentious, and euphemistic language is often used to obscure truth, justify morally questionable actions, and manipulate public perception.…

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These words of Benjamin Franklin, in response to the question of what kind of government the United States was to have, a republic or a democracy, are exceedingly prescient today, for we are surrounded, infected, and infested, by enemies within and without.

The four enemies I will focus on today (there are many more than four) are progressivism, the Demo…

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I must apologize for all the minutia in this piece, however, I feel it necessary to flush out the devil in the details as it pertains to all the ridiculous complaints about the SAVE Act, the passage of which is necessary to ensure the integrity of our elections.

Accordingly, what I will outline will serve to demonstrate that the requirements of the SAVE …

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Sometimes it is hard to imagine just how stupid California legislators and regulators can be.

If you recall, for 68 years there was an oil facility in Nipomo, known as the Santa Maria Refinery, that treated oil produced from the Santa Maria Valley and received by pipeline. After treatment there, another pipeline sent the semi-refined oil to the Bay area …

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The most puzzling election outcome in CA last week was the race for mayor in L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is the first mayor in 21 years that didn’t win outright in June. Spencer Pratt was the first Republican in a very long time consistently polling high enough to force a runoff.

But a funny thing happened after the polls closed. An L.A. councilwoman by the na…

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At the time I am writing this, we only have preliminary election results to consider. That is because the state of California takes longer – by design – to count votes.

The biggest news is that, for the first time in a very long time, it appears that a Republican with a chance to win will be on the November ballot in the governor’s race. Steve Hilton could be competitive, if and only if, Bianco and his supporters will work for him in November. Unfortunately, Republicans are famous for holding grudges due to bruised egos and other abnormalities.

The LA mayor’s race could result in the first run-off, versus an outright win for a Democrat, in 21 years. All it took was for an entirely inept administration, led by incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, to be held accountable for helping to burn entire communities to the ground and then stand in the way of the victims’ ability to rebuild.

Locally, the 5^th district supervisor’s race appears headed to a runoff too. In this case, I am fairly confident that the supporters of the apparent third-place finisher will get behind Maribel Aguilera for the win in November.

Having said all that, let’s go back to systemic delays in counting votes because those delays create conditions ripe for fraud.

Democrats and Rigged Elections

Do any of you remember Rod R. Blagojevich, who served as the 40^th Governor of Illinois? In December 2008, a federal investigation led to Blagojevich’s arrest on corruption charges after he attempted to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama upon his election to the presidency. He was subsequently convicted and sent to prison, only to have President Trump commute his sentence before pardoning him.

I bring this up because Blagojevich says that rigged elections by his party were commonplace during his time as Illinois governor through illegal aliens voting, fraudulent electronic voting machines, and phony mail-in ballots; and the fraud was particularly egregious in the Democrat-controlled city of Chicago, albeit, he added that cheating is a ‘time-honored’ tradition in Democrat-controlled cities throughout the country. That is, when asked if the Democrat Party steals elections, Blago’s answer was quite blunt: “Is the Pope Catholic?”

Here in CA, we may not know the outcome of some of the electoral races for an entire month. This is because CA has some of the laxest rules in the nation pertaining to turning in and/or mailing in ballots. I firmly believe the reason for this is to legalize opportunities for fraud. That is, one of the most basic opportunities for fraud is via ballot harvesting which breaks the chain of control of the ballot between the voter and the registrar of voters.

Illegal Voting Continues Apace

We also know for certain that there is nothing stopping illegal aliens from voting in our state because there is no required proof of citizenship needed to obtain a ballot and vote if you are willing to lie on the registration form asserting your right to vote. As reported by the California Post, “Welfare offices and other agencies in at least 46 U.S. states are providing voter registration forms to migrants without requiring proof of citizenship, leading Republicans, and conservatives to call for swift federal action to stop the handouts. If an applicant (illegally) attests that he is a U.S. citizen, that is considered valid on its face and the person is registered to vote — except in Virginia, Tennessee, and New Mexico, where they must provide a full Social Security number as well.

Every state but North Dakota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, give applicants for either welfare benefits, driver’s licenses, or in some cases, mail-in ballots, federal voter registration forms without demanding proof of citizenship.

To remedy this situation, The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require states to receive proof of citizenship when anyone registers to vote by mail, at a DMV or a welfare agency office. But, of course, the Dems in the Senate are stalling the bill.

Regarding fraudulent homeless voting in CA, as reported by USA Today, the feds dropped several felony charges in exchange for a guilty plea from Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, of Marina del Rey, California, a longtime signature collector for ballot initiatives. She was charged with one felony count of paying another person to register to vote, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a Monday, May 18 news release. Armstrong has agreed to plead guilty, prosecutors said.

The quote “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes,” is often attributed to Joseph Stalin. Whether or not he said it, it is a truth that hits home too often in California.

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In my 35 years of serving as a county government watchdog, I have seen the Gaviota coast and prime ag lands throughout the county preserved at all cost by county supervisors, even when it didn’t make sense. The California Coastal Act and the Williamson Act (which serves to preserve the viability of prime ag lands) both technically permit development benefiting coastal dependent industry and agriculture. However, the county has denied common sense projects in both these areas because they consider the same sacrosanct due to their no growth agenda outside of existing urban areas.

However, we could surely see both the Gaviota coast and prime lands sacrificed to the gods of green energy by local high priests masquerading as County supervisors. I have teamed up with former county planning commissioner Roy Reed to share the details of the most current horrible example of a solution in search of a problem.

As Californians find themselves inundated in layer upon layer of green energy initiatives, the state finds itself awash in an embarrassment of riches – simply put, during daylight hours when untold acres of solar electricity generation hits peak production the state must pay its neighbors to absorb that excess power only to find itself caught short during evening hours when demand peaks. Without safe and accessible means of storing generated solar electricity there is no way to match peak output with peak demand.

Meeting peak evening electricity demand often requires supplementation by fossil-fuel-fired “peaker plants” to generate adequate power. In a more sensible state there would be adequate capacity for pumped hydroelectric power, such as in PG&E’s Big Creek or Los Angeles DWP’s Castaic Power Plant where water, pumps, and gravity are used to store energy without pollution.

Unfortunately California hasn’t built any new pumped hydro facilities in decades leaving the state with but one power storage option – battery farms, along with all their potential hazards and concerns. Add to that excess power storage puzzle, the distribution question: can solar facilities be built conveniently close to the power distribution grid, or do they require miles of expensive transmission lines? That is the perplexing situation much of the state now faces.

A Utility Grade Solar Ordinance

Santa Barbara County, undaunted by those facts and under the direction of its green-leaning Supervisors Laura Capps, Joan Hartmann, and their obedient minion, Roy Lee, has, nonetheless, leapt into the fray, and has directed Planning and Development to craft a Utility Grade Solar Ordinance for the County, which will expand a previous ordinance that limited utility grade solar to a 600-acre footprint in the Cuyama Valley. The new ordinance has just emerged from two Planning Commission hearings with a potential footprint of 16,000 acres doled out at 100 acres per project limited to one 100-acre plot per parcel of 1,000 acres or more, along with permission to build associated battery storage. If fully built out, those 160 projects could potentially produce double the County’s current electricity consumption.

On its face, the plan appears workable, but the questions regarding distribution on the power grid remain, compounded by the fact that Santa Barbara County sits at the nexus of the state’s two power providers: Southern California Edison in the south county, and PG&E in the north. Which brings us to the next question: how does the County get to its 16,000-acre goal when the southern half, linked to SCE, has little open land suitable for solar other than the Gaviota Coast?

So, is this turning out to be another south-county initiative for which the north county will bear the brunt? Will the disproportionate share of proposed solar be borne by the north county on prime ag lands, those with the best soil and water availability?

Despite assurances to the contrary, solar farms are rarely built on hillsides because of the limited sun exposure. Moreover, prime ag lands are closest to power substations, thereby reducing the cost of the projects, meaning the decision makers had better not overlook the very real fact that there are few power substations located near ag lands that are not immediately adjacent to urban areas.

Moreover, as we saw in Monterey County, battery energy storage system fires can create a toxic plume, endangering communities and contaminating ag lands. Furthermore, consider the required cost of $500,000 to potentially $5,000,000 per mile of transmission lines that would be required to move the power from a remote area to an existing substation. This would unquestionably tax the viability of any such project.

Virtue Signaling at its Finest

In the end, this initiative produces far more questions than answers. While the BOS seems hellbent on eliminating gas and oil production (nearly one acre of solar panels are required to produce the same energy as one barrel of oil), it has embarked on a path that will undoubtedly result in the loss of many thousands of acres of productive agricultural lands in pursuit of a goal which may never be realized. And for what? Completely, totally, and redundantly excessive solar capacity? When our state is drowning in the same?

Please do recall that solar only produces four hours per day and battery energy storage systems can only save what has been produced. We’re going to sacrifice 16,000 acres of land for four hours of energy? And what about the fact that our region is subject to catastrophic wildfires that would render the solar panels and the requisite battery energy storage system toxic waste?

Mark this down as just another dumb idea in green virtue signaling.

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Community Calendar:

2 DAYS

SBCurrent’s Primary Endorsements Here:

A NOTE FROM BOB SMITH

Friends,

Republicans are essentially tied with Democrat turnout on the Central Coast right now. That means this primary can absolutely be won if Republicans who still have ballots at home turn them in immediately.

If you have not voted yet, we need you now.

* Avoid Mail Delays * Please do not use regular mail at this point.

Instead:

• Drop your ballot in an official white ballot box

• Take it directly to your county elections office

• Vote in person at an authorized voting location

Every ballot matters in a low-turnout primary, and we are close enough to beat Democrat turnout if Republicans finish strong over these final days.

Please also contact friends or family members you know who have not voted yet. We need all hands on deck. Thank you!

PROUDLY RUNNNING FOR
CALIFORNIA’S 24th CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

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I have been tracing America’s transition from a world of faithful pilgrims to nihilistic pirates, that is, discussing that which has caused cultures and civilizations to either flourish or meet their demise throughout modern history. It was British Anthropologist J.D. Unwin who studied the fall of some 86 cultures and civilizations throughout history, only to find that the longevity, health, and well-being of culture was largely determined by their attitudes, customs, and mores having to do with sexuality, faith, and marriage.

Another brilliant scholar, Carle Zimmerman, a Harvard sociologist, studied the role of family in the rise and fall of civilization, determining that the one thing that advanced civilizations had in common was the nuclear family construct. That is, tribal and clan-type family constructs never amounted to much and, on the opposite end, when men and women became so narcissistic and hedonistic that nuclear marriages fell by the wayside, the culture soon met its demise.

I previously focused on the unraveling of the home and family by way of events and values that began in the 1960s with a focus on women and mothers. Now, let’s turn our attention to men.

1) The feminist movement was a two-edged sword. As it sought to liberate women, it did so at the expense of men while it attacked so-called toxic masculinity. Along the way, it eviscerated the vital role of men as fathers, heads of households, providers, and protectors. Specifically, society at large, encouraged men to get in touch with their “feminine side” as they abandoned their traditional roles in family and society in deference to the ability of women to supplant them as equals.

2) The attack on men, became a war on boys. Even though nearly all scientific literature indicates that boys and girls mature at different rates and are stimulated by different things, mothers in the home and teachers in schools began to push back against the things that little boys are made of, including boundless rambunctious energy. In the 1960s, with the dispensing of drugs like Ritalin, hyperactive young boys were diagnosed as having attention deficit disorders at twice the rate of girls and were deleteriously drugged accordingly.

3) Traditionally, one key God-given role of women in society was to domesticate men by way of withholding sex apart from marriage, and sometimes, in marriage. The free sex movement and the commensurate loss of the fear of God, made possible by way of the pill and abortion, served to throw chastity out the window, and men became somewhat free to roam before, during, and after marriage, sans any personal moral constraints. Now at full throttle, the hook-up culture has replaced courtship, and porn addiction among men is epidemic.

4) Subsequent to number 3, no-fault divorce facilitated awarding primary custody to mothers which means the fathers ended up spending more time with their second family rather than their first. The destructive and disruptive impact of this resulted in successive generations of boys who were raised without their natural fathers in the home to guide, mentor, and discipline them, that is, if a man was present at all. This has proved a disaster for society as nearly every social ill including drug and alcohol abuse, criminality, homelessness, and the like can be traced to boys who were essentially abandoned by their fathers.

5) There has been a massive loss of 7.5 million jobs among men, such as those found in manufacturing, logging, mining, and the steel industry. These sectors virtually vanished, including by way of environmental regulations, thereby destroying head of household jobs for men without a college education. The resultant wage loss put pressure on spouses to find work at the expense of family life.

Jordan Peterson said it best, “If you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.”

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I last wrote a piece sequencing America’s transition from a nation of faith-seeking, family-oriented pilgrims to self-seeking, nihilistic pirates. This transition has happened in other societies, and it has always been marked via the demise of the nuclear family construct by way of divorce, foregoing marriage in the first place, and childlessness, as ob…

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I am doing a three-part series in recognition of our nation’s 250^th Anniversary. These three articles are, in my opinion, some of the most important information I have sought to convey in my 35 years as a journalist. I hope you will consider them carefully.

An Orgy of “Self”

Whereas our nation’s motto is still “In God We Trust,” in reality, we have fallen…

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Due to Gavin Newsom’s order that everyone receive their ballot by mail, your ballots may have arrived by the time you read this message.

I would like to share some of my personal recommendations for this election cycle.

For the governor’s race, I am leaning towards Steve Hilton, but I would be happy with Chad Bianco. That is to say, I am hoping that things are bad enough in our state that people will wake up and realize the current day Democrat Party has nothing to offer but more of the same, namely, the interrelated and cumulative impacts of inane policies and priorities resulting in the most unaffordable housing, gasoline, and electricity, not to mention the highest taxes, poverty, and homelessness, in the nation.

Our problem here in California, considering decades of failed leadership by elected Democrats, is that some people, namely Democrat voters and some Independents, are under the awful delusion that maybe the next Dem they vote for won’t be so bad. Let me tell you something. We haven’t had a good Democrat serving as Governor since Pat Brown. Having said that, Grey Davis would be an improvement over the likes of Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, or any of the Dems running for governor in this election cycle; the party is becoming progressively worse over time.

Here Are My Recommendations

For Congress, District 24, Bob Smith

For State Insurance Commissioner, Stacy Korsgaden

For State Superintendent of Public Schools, Sonja Shaw

For Attorney General, Michael Gates

For State Controller, Herb Morgan

For State Assembly District 37, Sari Domingues

For State Assembly District 30, Shannon Kessler

For Board of Equalization District 2, J. Brett Marymee

For Superior Court of Santa Barbara County, Luis Esparza

Local Races

For the following races, please be advised that some of these are going to be over in June. You can’t wait until November to decide who you want to vote for.

In SLO County, I am supporting Adam Verdin for 4^th District County Supervisor.

And Michael Erin Woody – SLO County Board of Supervisors, District 2.

For SLO County Clerk-Recorder, Vanessa Rozo.

In Santa Barbara County’s Fifth District please vote for Maribel Aguilera for County Supervisor.

For Santa Barbara County for Auditor Controller, please vote for Betsy Schaffer.

For Santa Barbara County Clerk, Recorder, Assessor, please support Melinda Greene.

In Conclusion

Have you ever done the math on our election process and its abysmal results in our state? There are approximately 22 million eligible voters in California.

A very large number of eligible people, three to four million, have never bothered to register to vote in CA, some 17%. In the general election of 2024, nearly 29% of registered voters did not vote, which equates to over 6.5 million voters. Add those numbers up and you have some 10 million people that are sitting out our elections regularly.

Here is where things get interesting. Of the 16 million who do vote, approximately 60% (9.6 million) of those continue to vote for the politicians that have been making a mess of this state for decades at every level of government, namely Democrats. That is, they keep voting for the party of regular debt and pension debt, high taxes, failing and undersized infrastructure, and decarceration, not to mention rampant waste, fraud, and abuse (rising to a cost of $17,000/yr per voter by some early estimates).

All in all, Democrats represent about 45% of the voters in CA, but control some 75-100% of elected positions, depending on the community (most all coastal communities are solid blue). In Santa Barbara’s south county, I don’t believe there is a single Republican on any city council. In our state legislature, Democrats have had super-majorities for some 14 years. Our state’s congressional delegation consists of 42 Dems, 7 Republicans and 1 Independent in the House of Representatives and two Democrat U.S. Senators.

Their stranglehold appears to be breaking, however: the GOP flipped three seats in the 2024 election (which is the real reason for the gerrymander of Prop. 50), and the CA Democrat Party has failed to unify behind a candidate going into this open primary.

Q. What would happen if the ten million residents sitting out our elections finally get fed up and weigh in with their ballots?

A. We could turn this state red in a flash.

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During this past Tuesday’s County Board of Supervisors’ meeting, Supervisor Laura Capps (she is now the ideological leader of the county supes), with the support of Supervisors Lee and Hartmann, approved some very extreme measures that violate our Constitution, at least in spirit, if not literally.

The worst measure approved by these three has do with a …

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County Supervisors Laura Capps, Joan Hartmann, and Roy Lee are planning to shut down all oil operations in Santa Barbara County.

Why is this a horrible idea?

The number one reason California residents and businesses are paying upwards of $2 more per gallon than the rest of the country is because a multitude of CA politicians, including these locals, have …

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Have you heard of the bombshell report titled “Gavin Newsom’s Empire of Fraud?”

What follows are direct quotes from the introduction to the exposé conducted by the think tank “The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research”:

California’s Cash Machine

The state collects some of the country’s highest income, business, and fuel taxes, and now spends more than $3…

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The original No Kings movement happened a little over 2,000 years ago when some leaders of a mob shouted to Pontius Pilate, “We Have No King but Caesar!”

Just a few days earlier, a multitude of people had welcomed Jesus as king when he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey colt, not as a conqueror, but as a sacrificial lamb. That day is known as Palm Sunday, t…

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