The Earth has a magnetic field that extends far into outer space, and which is caused by the Earth’s molten iron core, making our planet somewhat like a magnet, north and south magnetic poles that are separate from the geographic poles.  In other words, the geographic North Pole is in one place, and the magnetic pole in another.  If you’re wondering what all this has to do with current events, stay with me.  The magnetic field protects us from radiation and creates the northern and southern lights, that are only visible near the magnetic poles.  Our magnetic field protects life on Earth, and aids in navigation.  People can use a compass to navigate, and some animals find their way thanks to the magnetic field.  Now, the molten iron core of the Earth is constantly moving around, as molten metal tends to do.  Since 1831, the North magnetic pole has been moving around 6 miles a year, so it’s over 1,240 miles from where it was back then.  However, scientists (real scientists, not climate change fraudsters)  have found that for the past 20 years or so, the poles are moving much faster, more than 30 miles per year.  Scientists believe that this may indicate the onset of a magnetic reversal, in which the North and South magnetic poles change places, so that a compass will point to the South pole, not the North.  This has happened many times in the past, about every 200,000 to 300,000 years.  The last magnetic reversal was 780,000 years ago, so we may be overdue.  I’ve long suspected that liberals, leftists, progressives, or whatever, have some solid object between their ears which affects their minds.  Stone always was the leading candidate for this substance, but now I think it may be metal, and it may be the ongoing magnetic shift that has caused their derangement.  We all thought that Donald Trump was the sole cause of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome), but what if it’s more than that?  What if Trump is simply the catalyst that triggered the lunacy caused by the shifting magnetic fields inside their heads?  We could be on to something.  This, better than any other explanation I’ve heard, would account for the drastic (you should pardon the expression) polar shifts in positions by the Left.  I mean, we always knew that were hypocrites, but what if they can’t help it?  Think about it, during the same period of time in which the poles began moving six times faster than they had been moving, liberal positions have turned around 180 degrees. (A little geographic lingo).  Traditionally, Democrats were friendly toward Russia.  They laughed at Mitt Romney when he suggested there was a new Cold War with Russia.  Now, they all but advocate a real war against Russia.  After 911, Democrats opposed the Patriot Act, claiming that it infringed on the rights of American citizens.  Even before 911, Democrats fought to restrict the activities of the CIA and FBI.  Now, Democrats are in support of unrestricted electronic surveillance on American citizens, up to and including spying on a sitting President, and conduct which amounts to a political coup.  What could have caused this?  It has to be the iron between their ears.  But there’s more.  Recently, Democrats, almost all of them, including Il Duce Obama and Hillary Clinton, the whole cabal, were opposed to gay marriage.  Now, not only are they in favor of it, they say anyone who doesn’t agree is no better than a criminal.  What’s more, you not only must agree with gay marriage, you also must recognize an unlimited number of possible genders, or else there’s something wrong with you.  Has to be iron on the brain.  But it’s worse.  The magnetic shift has caused a reversal of norms.  Democrats now exist in a bizarre world where up is down, good is bad, and legal is illegal.  All Democrats opposed open borders.  Now, they say allowing illegal aliens into the country at will, although against the law, is legal, and enforcing the law by detaining them is illegal.  Before, Democrats supported the Second Amendment and would never try to take away your guns.  Now they favor confiscation.  Before the magnetic shift, Democrats recognized the need for some restrictions on abortion.  Now, they say that executing criminals is wrong, but killing unborn (and newborn) babies is right.  Because their minds have been affected by the shift in the magnetic field, liberals no longer are able to perceive reality.  Case in point.  In the People’s Republic of California, there are tens of thousands of homeless people living on the streets, without even the most basic sanitary facilities.  In the State that pioneered regulations preventing water pollution, and mandating sewage treatment, piles of human feces have turned the streets into open sewers, causing a health emergency.  The Democrats who run California see the same people living in tents and boxes on the street.  They see the piles of human waste, and they see the rat infestations, and call their neglect “compassion.”  This week, the federal government announced plans to step in and get the homeless off the streets and into housing.  Think the iron-for-brains Democrats are grateful?  Think again.   A Los Angeles Councilman said, “Trump wants to ‘crackdown’ on homelessness and put people into ‘government facilities.’ We’ve buried refugee children held hostage in his damn facilities.  What inhumane treatment will he sanction for the unhoused?”  A staffer for the LA Mayor added “They don’t know the work that we’re doing.”  “They’re just not thoughtful — and, quite frankly, not smart enough to know what we’re doing.”  Uh huh.  Getting human beings off the streets, into clean housing, and providing food and medical care is inhumane, while letting them die on the street is humane.  I rest my case.  Brain damage.  But, let’s remember, it’s not their fault.  It’s the magnetic field inside their heads.  They’re just sick.  Maybe, just maybe, those people wearing the tinfoil hats that all this time we thought were crazy are really the sane ones, and it’s Democrat elected officials who are nuts.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal had an opinion piece by University of Oklahoma history Professor Wilfred M. McClay, entitled, Weaponizing History.  In it, Professor McClay reminds us that the true purpose of history is to open up reality to us, by providing a balanced and honest record of the achievements and foibles of humanity.  The Professor warned that history, as it is being taught today, is being used to narrow minds, instead of of to expand them.  History should be used to tell the complex stories of the past, which necessarily must present both the positive and negative features of historical figures.  Instead, as Professor McClay points out, history is being used as a bludgeon, with which to strike out at our forebears.  Heroes of the past are now demonized, with any and all who come to the attention of the historical witch hunters being compared to Nazis.  Hence, AOC (All Out Crazy) compares immigration detention facilities to concentration camps, gabbling about how “This is an opportunity for us to talk about how we learn from our history.”  As Professor McClay points out, Nazi concentration camps are not part of OUR history.  If AOC really wants to talk about concentration camps, though, I suppose someone should explain to her that the closest we ever came to them were the internment camps into which that great Progressive Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt forced American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II.  That last musing was mine, not that of Professor McClay, and it illustrates precisely the manner in which the Left is weaponizing our history.  It is indisputable that FDR put Japanese Americans into internment camps, and that they were deprived of their property, as well as their liberty.  However, to pass judgment on FDR based upon this single act alone does him a disservice.  And more to the point, to teach students about only about this part of FDR’s presidency does a disservice to history.  History is weaponized by means of a brutal simplification of the historical record.  To those who would wield the historical bludgeon, figures from the past must be purely good or purely evil.  Reality, and hence history, is not so simple.  Enter the New York Times, Project 1619.  In a recent NYT magazine, the paper proposed a history curriculum which would teach that everything that has made the United States exceptional grew out of slavery.  In the stilted view of 1619, the year the first slaves arrived on our shores, the United States declared its independence from Britain solely for the purpose of perpetuating slavery, fearing that Britain would abolish slavery in the colonies.  It is said that you are entitled to your opinion, but not to your own facts.  The Times wants to teach our children this nonsense, without the least regard for the fact that it simply isn’t true.  I come from the law, where truth is a defense.  For the New York Times, however, and for the pseudo-historians and grievance mongers who put together this garbage, history is not the truth.  Our kids are in enough trouble being taught American history from the perspective of the late, unlamented Communist Howard Zinn.  Our Revolution was fought for liberty, not for slavery.  Britain outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in 1808.  The United States outlawed slave importation at the same time.  It’s in our Constitution.  As Casey Stengel said, “You could look it up.”  Slavery had been abolished in many Northern States in the 1770’s and 1780’s.  True, Washington and Jefferson, and some others owned slaves, and that is the bludgeon with which their memories are being besmirched.  That they owned slaves is a fact to be taught, but it’s not the whole story.  Thomas Jefferson drafted an anti-slavery provision for the Declaration of Independence.  The provision was taken out.  That it was excised to secure the votes of Southern colonies for independence, however, is not proof that America was conceived to perpetuate slavery, but rather is one of those complex factors that is part of history, but not HISTORY itself. The excision reflected the economic reality of the time, which doesn’t excuse the sin of slavery or justify is continuation, but simply provides context.  For the historical weaponizers, however, it’s all or nothing, and a focus on any one negative trait or act is sufficient to damn an historical figure for eternity.  Consider the controversy over a George Washington mural in a San Francisco public school.   The mural was painted in 1935 by a Communist.   Part of the mural depicts Washington interacting with slaves and native Americans.  The artist wanted to show Washington warts and all, not just simply as “the Father of his Country” astride a white horse.  Bravo.  The idiotic School Board decided that the mural could be disturbing to teenagers because it was “racist and degrading,” and wanted to pay $600,000 to have it painted over. (Which seems a bit high.  I know a guy who would do the job for $3,000.  He uses a roller).  The Board recently decided to cover it up instead.  That is, instead of really teaching history, instead of exposing students to all the complex facts about the people of the past, and instead of preparing students  to engage in critical thinking, they prefer to cover up our history to advance an agenda.  This is not education, but rather educational malpractice.  Professor McClay reminds us that, done right, history rescues precious memories from the darkness into which they would otherwise disappear.  He writes, “Our task is to to recover the humane insight of Herbert Butterfield, who taught that the historian should be a ‘recording angel’ rather than a ‘hanging judge,’ let alone a summary executioner.”

Ever since Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, or AOC (All Out Crazy) came out with her nutty Green New Deal, the whacky pack of Democrat presidential candidates nearly all have declared their support for the plan.  To recap, the Green New Deal is a Pie in the Sky wish list of Socialist bull crap, all dressed up as a solution to the global warming, climate change hoax.  Much like all Democrat boondoggles, it has a catchy title that hides it’s true purpose.  “Green,” because who could object to anything they call Green.  And “New Deal” to appeal to imbecile Democrats who are longing for the good old days when Democrats “saved” America from the Great Depression.  Like they say, when the facts conflict with the legend, repeat the legend.  Like it or not, the Old New Deal created social welfare programs at a time when no social safety net existed.  Latter day Democrats rail on and on about social welfare spending as though we aren’t already going broke funding existing programs.  But I digress.  The Green New Deal purports to be a “fix” for climate change, which is a collosal Leftist exercise in arrogance.  It’s unclear whether man is responsible for today’s rising temperatures any more than he was responsible for the drastic temperature increases 12,000 years ago, and real scientists say that, if all man made CO2 contributions were stopped i.e.,if all people croaked, the CO2 level would go down by only 3%.  Anyhow, the Green New Deal proposes to end all fossil fuel use.  Close down the coal and oil industries, mandate “renewable” energy, wind, solar, pond scum, etc. No more internal combustion or diesel engines.  Electric cars, trucks and buses.  Mandated refits of all buildings for energy efficiency.  And let us not forget outlawing cow farts, so no more beef.  If this sounds like a radical plan to deal with a situation  that it has no chance of making any better, that’s only because it is.  AOC’s former political director let the cat out of the bag, admitting that the plan really had nothing to do with climate, but instead was a ruse to permit the government to gain control of the entire economy.  In other words, Communism/Socialism wasn’t selling on its own, so they disguised it as environmentalism.  As I’ve noted before, when the Berlin Wall came down, all the Reds turned Green.  The AOC Green New Deal would cost trillions of dollars that we don’t have.  Bernie Sanders, the redest of all the greens, has proposed his own Green New Deal, with what Bernie calls, “an historic $16.3 trillion price tag.”  Ruinous is more like it.  Bernie the Red makes no attempt to disguise his plan as anything but good old-fashioned Communism, pledging “a wholesale transformation of our society.”  Under Bernie’s Old Red Deal, fracking would be outlawed, and there would be no more oil drilling offshore or on public lands.  No more oil pipelines, and no more nuclear power.  All electricity and transportation would run on renewable energy. We will spend $1.52 trillion on renewable energy and $852 billion to build energy storage capacity.  “I’m cold, get me another $800 billion battery!”  All homes will use electric heat.  That’s the most expensive heat you say?  Not to worry, the government will winterize all homes, and the government will keep prices stable.  Uh huh (you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan).  What’s more, after 2035, with “public provision of renewable” energy, electricity will be free.  (Just like college tuition).  Bernie promises to prosecute fossil fuel companies for criminal activity.  Just like his mentor Joe Stalin, “Show me a profit, and I’ll show you a crime.”  If companies think they can do business overseas, think again.  The IRS will “monitor all investments” and will sanction any company that threatens the “global emissions goals.”  Sounds like fun.  What about all those workers Bernie is putting out of work?  Fear not.  Bernie’s giving them a 5 year “wage guarantee,” “a 4 year college education,” and early retirement.  In other words, Welfare for All.  And don’t worry, if anyone actually chooses to work, Bernie says he will be creating 20 million new jobs. (No doubt for winterizers, IRS agents and windmill repairmen).  They all will be good union jobs, comrades.  Bernie says he’ll pay for this nonsense by using the defense budget.  It’s for the best.  I don’t think solar powered airplanes and electric tanks would scare anybody.  Bernie the Red doesn’t give much detail about taxes in his plan.  He says the 20 million new workers will pay taxes.  I’ll bet. If these are the same 20 million he’s putting out of work, that might be a wash, though.  He says the rich will pay their fair share.  We might finally find out what the fair share is.  How about 90%?  Bernie says he will take on the fossil fuels billionaires.  I wonder if he includes Tom Steyer in this one?  Why are we going to destroy our economy and way of life, just when we finally have reached the energy independence that even Democrats demanded that we get to?  We have no choice.  There’s a climate emergency, and “we will end the injustice of 100,000 Americans dying every year from air pollution.”  Now the CDC does not list air pollution as a cause of death.  There are some 160,000 deaths a year from “chronic lower respiratory disease,” but these consist mostly of COPD, emphysema, and other smoking related maladies.  Interestingly, Bernie doesn’t propose outlawing smoking.  Government can’t give up all that tax revenue.  Besides, we may have to burn all the bodies just to keep warm.  One more thing, Bernie is concerned only with “winterizing” homes, not with cooling them.  The plan for Summer is sweat.  But then again, since we won’t have to work anymore, who’s going to sweat?  We might sit in the cool grass, but wait, there’ll be no grass (lawns anyway), because Bernie plans to make you transform your lawn into a family farm or forest.  I think the pixies came out of the forest and stole what was left of Bernie’s brain.  If one of these nuts gets elected, God help us.

It’s late August, and this time of the year often has been called the silly season, because so many people are away on vacation that very little of consequence happens, leading to some strange news stories.  The Congress is on one of its many long recesses, a/k/a vacations.  This actually is a blessing, because the House, which is controlled by Democrats, only does things that harmful, crazy, or illegal.  The Senate, on the other hand, regardless of which Party controls that body, does nothing useful – ever.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, though, as legislative paralysis is far preferable to legislative mischief.  As a result, there is precious little news coming from the Congress.  Good.  The Democrat presidential candidates are still going at it hammer and tongs, or is that hammer and sickle?  So far, the Dem presidential wannabes have promised to provide all kinds of free stuff, including healthcare, college tuition and loan repayment.  They also promise the Green New Deal, open borders, higher taxes, welfare and healthcare for illegal aliens, less military spending, and more every other kind of spending.  The Dems agree on only one thing, they hate Donald Trump.  As usual, Joe Biden has managed to provide lots of newsworthy material.  Not because of any accomplishment or noteworthy statement by Joe, however, but because every time Joe opens his mouth he seems to insert his foot into his yapper.  First, Biden, who left office in 2017, claimed that kids from the 2018 Parkland shooting visited him as Vice-President.  Then, Joe doubled down on dementia when he announced that two of his heroes, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, were killed in the late 1970’s, which I guess proves that Biden is about 10 years behind reality.  Biden followed up this gaffe by telling everyone that he was a coal miner, presumably toiling away in the coal mines of Delaware.  President Trump spent a couple of weeks at his New Jersey golf club, so the fake news media had less material from the President to lie about.  The media did its best though.  In the midst of one of the most sustained periods of economic growth, with more people working than ever before, and unemployment at historic low levels, the media decided to stoke fears of recession.  You see, there is this inversion of bond rates, with the yields on longer term bonds lower than those on shorter term bonds, or was it the other way around?.  I don’t remember.  My head hurts just thinking about bond yields.  Anyhow, that meant that recession was on the way, so the media managed to get the stock market to drop 800 points on these phony fears.  It quickly bounced back, and not many noticed anyhow, as most stock brokers were out in the Hamptons, or on Martha’s Vineyard.  President Trump played along with the economic issue, first saying he was in favor of a payroll tax cut, and then announcing he was not in favor of such a cut.  This helped out the media, which got to report, “Trump changes his mind,” which means he either doesn’t know what he’s doing, or that he’s lost his mind and should be removed with the 25th Amendment.  It’s the silly season, remember?  The weather has been pretty hot, though, so President Trump cooled things down by talking about the last thing you would expect to hear about during the Dog Days of Summer – Greenland.  That’s right, Greenland, which any devotee of Jeopardy knows is the world’s largest island.  Out of the blue (or is it out of the white?), it was announced that the U.S. is interested in buying Greenland from Denmark.  No doubt a latter day Trump’s Folly.  Trump was scheduled to meet the Danish Prime Minister on an upcoming trip to Europe.  Then things went wrong.  The Danish PM was asked about the potential sale of Greenland, and she labelled it “absurd.”  President Trump, ever the arbiter of executive civility, took offense, announced that no melencholy Dane was going to be permitted to badmouth the United States, and cancelled his trip to Denmark.  That’ll teach them.  Yes, the silly season is upon us, but have no fear.  In about two weeks, Summer will be over.   Congress will come back to town and get down to the serious work of threatening to impeach a President who repeated investigations have found to be legally blameless.  I can’t wait.

A recent addition to the annals of the “Liberals can dish it out, but can’t take it” department is the hilarious viral video of CNN’s Chris Cuomo, threatening a man on Shelter Island because the man dared to approach him and call him by the name “Fredo.”  Cuomo went nuts, and in so doing, proved that he doesn’t deserve to be referred to by that appellation.  All I can say is, “Fredo, you broke my heart.”  Some explanation is in order for those who may not have been aware of the Fredo nickname.  Fredo, of course, was the second son of Vito Corleone, affectionately known as The Godfather.  In the movie, Fredo is a not too bright, bumbling, incompetent boob, who is not trusted to handle important Family business.  In the film, Fredo sits idly by while his father is shot five times in the street, unable even to get his gun out of his pocket.  He then sits down on the curb, sobbing, “Papa!”  In short, Fredo is what the Sicilians would call a “citrulu,” literally translated as, a cucumber, but meaning someone who is dense, and possibly intellectually challenged, hence, a vegetable.  Chris Cuomo was given the nickname Fredo by none other than Rush Limbaugh, who, after a number of his stupid political pronouncements, declared Chris to be “the dumbest of all the Cuomo’s.”  The name stuck, and was taken up by others in the conservative media.  President Trump even got into the act, once describing Cuomo as “an unchained lunatic,” “perhaps the dumbest person in broadcasting.”  This all led up to the confrontation on Shelter Island.  A man approached Chris Cuomo and asked, “Hey Fredo, can I take a picture with you?”  Now, the man claims that he knew Cuomo only by the name “Fredo” and that he thought that really was his name, but that’s clearly nonsense.  Simply put, the guy was a wiseacre provocateur.  Cuomo, political commentator for CNN, and host of the CNN show Cuomo Prime Time, fancies himself a moderate voice of reason, “The only reason I do this job is to call bullshit on people and to be a witness to history.”  How noble.  Proving that we live in a world where there is an alternative universe, parallel to our own, in which there is an alternative reality, in January 2018, Rolling Stone magazine did a puff piece on Chris Cuomo, in which it touted him as, “CNN’s toughest news anchor.”  The Rolling Stone writer, clearly a denizen of the parallel universe where down is up and good is bad, wrote, “He’s brash, brusque and completely disinterested in partisan spin.”  This on CNN no less (and there is no less).  For its readers who recoil at the prospect of hearing two sides of an issue (no, not that!), the magazine went on to note that “CNN often goes out of its way to present both sides.”  Uh huh.  It’s true, CNN presents commentators from both sides.  Some say President Trump is a traitor who should be hanged, drawn and quartered, while others offer the opposing view that the President is merely a minor criminal, who ought to be imprisoned for the rest of his life.  But back to Fredo Cuomo.  On hearing the wiseacre call him “Fredo,” Cuomo erupted, telling the man he was going to have a problem.  The moderate voice of reason shouted, “I’ll fucking ruin your shit!  I’ll fucking throw you down these stairs!”  He called the guy “a punk-ass bitch.”  A measured response to be sure.  Then, in true progressive fashion, Cuomo cast himself as a victim.  He claimed that the name “Fredo” is an ethnic slur, the equivalent of “the N word” to Italians.  CNN immediately supported Cuomo, announcing that he “defended himself from a verbal attack with the use of an ethnic slur.”  Apparently asking a liberal a question is “an attack.”  But CNN, as a journalistic slur, must know about slurs.  It was all very dramatic, and also dumb.  I’m not sure there is a slur for Italians quite as vitriolic as the “N word,” but if there was, I suppose, guinea, dago, greaseball or wop might be a bit more insulting than “Fredo.”  Anyhow Chris, as the moderate voice of reason that you claim to be, wouldn’t the better response to the provocateur have been to simply walk away?  After all, it’s what you said Nick Sandman and the other Kentucky kids should have done when the old Indian starting banging his drum.  And for that matter, if it’s so insulting to be called “Fredo,” because it compares you with a mobster, do you really think acting like a more violent mobster than Fredo ever was was the best way to handle the situation?  What’s more, if “Fredo” is the equivalent of throwing around the N word, then why do you and your CNN cohorts use that word to descibe others?  CNN has called Donald Trump the “Fredo” to Valdimir Putin’s Don Corleone.  CNN has called Devin Nunes “Trump’s Fredo.”  On Chris Cuomo’s own show, Ana Navarro has called Donald Trump, Jr. “Fredo.”  Vanity Fair magazine (in which fairness is seldom encountered), has said that “Anyone connected with the Trump Administration is an absolute Fredo.”  So maybe a “Fredo” is just a weakling.  No matter.  The hypocrisy rolls on.  Chris Cuomo had no sympathy for conservatives like Sara Sanders, Pam Bondi or Ted Cruz, when obnoxious protestors hounded and drove them from public places.  But, some wiseacre dares to shout “Fredo” on a crowded island, and Cuomo becomes the Italian equivalent of Rosa Parks?  Give me a break.  Chris Cuomo’s performance on Shelter Island did prove two things.  First, he can dish it out, but he can’t take it.  And secondly, he’s much more aggresive and violent than Fredo Corleone ever was, so he shouldn’t be called “Fredo” anymore.  Since little things make him lose control of himself, maybe he now should be called “Sonny.”