Author: donelsonfiles

2024 Elections

This election is an election that no one seems to want but primary voters spoken otherwise.   I had a discussion with a friend who is hard core GOP and frequent guest on the Donelson Files, and he feared Trump may not be able to win and while both of us agreed that the lawfare against Trump was sign of lawlessness of the Biden administration, there were question of Trump the candidate and his discipline. 

There are strengths of Trump, namely he doesn’t care what the establishment feels about him, and he now understand the enemy since they have been fighting him but since he failed to debate, we don’t utterly understand a second Trump administration. He loves America. There are times that he makes statement that often sends the wrong direction including a recent comment to Israel that they are losing the PR battle, leaving one wondering what was going on in his mind.  Or when he bragged about how he threatens NATO countries he could care less what the Russians do in his first administration if they didn’t increase their spending.  There are times to say things and be diplomatic and there are times they are not, and Trump quite frankly don’t always know when to shut his mouth and what to say.   

We do know what a Biden administration will be like and if he dies in office or forced out due to health issues or dementia, the policy will continue.  His lawfare campaign against Trump is a message sent to all  Republicans, his DOJ will go after his political opponents and his efforts to censor ideas opposed to him are threat to the constitution.  His green policies is based on grinding the Middle Class down and his immigration policies have simultaneously undermine legal immigration while his allowance of illegal immigration is changing the nature of our country but not in a racial way but in a class way since even the legal immigration 90 percent of entry are people of color, Asians, Hispanics and Black. Most of the legal immigrations come in with skills and education whereas many of those coming in illegal are poorer and less educated and significant amount are criminal elements.  Biden and Democrats want a generation of docile workers and individuals who will be more likely to be dependent upon welfare, producing a future Democratic voting bloc.

With increase criminal behavior of the illegal group along with less education will put additional strain on many communities and worse they will compete for jobs at the lower end which puts these new immigrants in competition with  many poorer people of color in particular blacks and Hispanics already here legally for those jobs.  Many Hispanics and Blacks are starting to resent the newer illegals immigrants since it is impacting their lives as well the safety of their communities.  Recently New York started to hand out debit cards with 1400 dollars for illegal staying in New York, reinforcing the Democratic plan to trap as many of the illegal on welfare before finding a way to make them legal.   

Green new deal of Biden means that the average Middle Class will pay higher prices for food, transportation, and energy.  Climate change alarmists are perfectly willing to put the basics out of the reach of the middle class.  

So, in the case of Trump,  we may not know the full extent of his policies, but we know the following.  After four years, Trump was the victim of witch hunts and when he had his chance to do lawfare against Hillary Clinton who was truly guilty of misuse of classified documents, he chose not to, but I suspect he may be willing to punish those who punished him and his supporters.  Trump will not surrender to the climate alarmists cause, and in his first term, he attempted to enact a more modest foreign policy and his tax and regulation policies were similar to the Reagan approach, but he was not particularly good at cutting the budget.   There was no war on Democracy during the Trump first administration but in the Biden administration, there was enough to indicate it is the Democrats who are declaring a war on democracy.

As mentioned in previous writings, Republican governors have led the way of getting things done, whereas our congressional leaders have shown an ability to get nothing done in an embarrassing fashion as they simply eat each other up. House sacked McCarthy, then moved on to Mike Johnson, who is now under threats for how he managed the recent budget fights.  James Lankford with the blessings of Mitch McConnell got suckered into a “border compromise” that would have allowed nearly two million immigrants coming across the borders.  While GOP governors have shown competency, the Congress has been the complete opposite. 

Trump is the last line against the socialism of America and as I have mention in my last two books, the Democratic Party is the party of socialism, but Republican has yet to synergize Populism and conservatism.  They have yet decided what kind  of party they are. Trump must also decide what party he is leading.

Stupid Prospal To Save The Plant

Here is a thought exercise.  If someone told you that over the past six decades as the weather warmed up, and CO2 increased, we would see more prosperous planet with more people moving into the middle class, the planet greener, and for many in the developed world, the Middle Class will access to increase travel and lifestyle that was only available to the rich generations earlier, you would think that was a good thing.  As the planet got greener, we would see increase agriculture production in which we are able to feed more than double population from sixty years ago better diets. Less people die in warmer weather from exposure than colder weather, you would think that was good.  As the planet got warmer, the world became a better place to live and despite predictions otherwise, a warming planet is a variable for a better future!

We live in an era in which up is down and down is up, an upside world in which our so-called experts want  a colder planet.   Makes no sense but here we are with some of the idiotic ideas to save the planet which would result in the end of civilization as we know it and the Middle class in the developed world grinded into poverty and billions of those in the developing world starving to death and the survivors will merely barely getting by. 

Some of the dumb ideas include:

  1. Blocking the sun to reduce climate warming what could go wrong? In 1981, Carl Sagan and others warned of a nuclear winter as result of a nuclear exchange with small percentages of nuclear arsenal release.  Now the Biden administration is seriously considering plans to do this, introduce a nuclear winter without of the nuclear weapons.  White House cautiously opens the door to study blocking sun’s rays to slow global warming – POLITICO and supported research by Bill Gates. A Bill Gates Venture Aims To Spray Dust Into The Atmosphere To Block The Sun. What Could Go Wrong? (forbes.com)  Remember more people die in cold weather and introducing cold weather would shorten growing season.  This will put billions around the world on the verge of starvation.
  2. Reducing farmer yields, taking farmland out of circulations, reduced any use of fossil fuels or nitrogen for fertilizers.  Our elites want us to eat bugs in place of meat since raising cows and pigs is bad for the planet.  What we are talking about is engineering massive famines beginning in the developing world. Joe Biden’s Net-Zero Agenda Spells Trouble Down on the Farm and at the Supermarket – Watts Up With That?
  3. Eliminate fossil fuels that power our civilization with no replacement. So far EV’s are not selling due to their high cost but despite that the average American don’t want them, the Biden administration will force us to buy them.  How do you recharge your EV’s without fossil fuels plant?  Without fossil fuels, we are talking about returning our world to the 18th and early 19th centuries.  As a result, poverty increase, and economic prosperity declines and that is a best-case scenario.

Just look at some of the ideas and the results is increase poverty and increase death from lack of food, higher food and energy prices, unreliable energy,  and widespread poverty.  The reality is that many are waking up to the cost of net zero and finding they are not interested in paying the price in higher prices and lower living standards. 

Many climates alarmist viewed the Pandemic lockdowns as a model for a future declared climate emergency and never mind the Pandemic lockdowns were a complete failure in stopping the virus and the loss of freedoms and various mandates resulted in loss of businesses and increase excess mortality.  This is the plan on a larger scale that is being planned by the climate alarmists. 

Sri Lanka has already experimented with these ideas and within two years, the country went from being a food exporter to the food importer, the economy and government collapsed, and people put on the verge of starvation. Sri Lanka Begging Russia and India for Fuel: A Nation Wrecked by Green Agricultural Policies – Watts Up With That?, From Sri Lanka to Salinas – Watts Up With That? We had a grand experiment when a warmer climate, a little extra CO2 and rise of free market economy showed that the complete opposite happened, increase prosperity, greener planet, more food being raised, higher GDP per capita.  That is what the climate alarmists want to stop and instead replace if with a world with more poverty, people starving in the billions and a decreased standard of living..  We have done our experiments and guess what the climate alarmists want to see happen.  The opposite of what will make this a better world.

To Vote or not Vote For Trump

To vote for Trump or not to vote for Trump, that is the question.  As someone who voted for Ron DeSantis in the Iowa Caucus, I viewed it as a time for a change and DeSantis earned my vote through his performance during the Pandemic and his governing of Florida.  I helped to elect Trump in 2016 and supported his efforts in 2020, so I have done my duty for Trump and will vote for him because we can’t have four more years of Biden.  For many voters, it is a case of voting for the lesser of two evils and Joe Biden is the worse choice. After nearly four years of his administration, we should no longer have any doubts about another four years of Biden being a complete disaster.

The Biden’s administration has been one disaster after another beginning with his foreign policy and his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan which left billions of dollars of equipment in the hands of our enemies and for many veterans, they saw twenty years of sacrifice wasted.  Putin invaded Ukraine because of the Afghanistan withdrawal and his view of Biden weakness and let us not forget, the Obama-Biden foreign policy allowed Russia to take Crimea and portion of Ukraine in 2014.   While one can make the case for aiding Ukraine (and let not forget Trump administration provided Ukraine with offensive weapons),  Biden has done a poor job of doing just that.

His Middle East policy is turning into a complete disaster that has gone from bipartisan support for Israel to stabbing Israel in the back as Democrat Party has shifted toward out right antisemitism.  Senator Schumer demand for Israel to replace government to allow peace to move forward along with the two-state solution is one example of this.  Schumer demands of Israel (which we assume had the White House blessing) destroyed a bipartisan support for Israel and put the Democrats on the side of Hamas being left in power and able to declare victory.  Somehow we must preserve the border of the Ukraine while allowing Israel to put their own security at risk and leaving our own border undefended against what can only be described as invasion as Biden administration allows unlimited illegal immigration.   

Let be real and understand that while Trump handling of the Pandemic was bad, Biden’s policies were worse, and Biden did inherit a growing economy that was escaping the fallout of the lockdown.  In spite of Trump Pandemic bumbling, the last six months of his administration featured a 20 percent increase of GDP growth and close to 55 percent of job losses due to the lockdown had already been recovered and it would take two years for Biden to complete the job.

Biden also inherited a world somewhat at peace with Middle East stable and the Abraham accord uniting Israel and many Sunni states against Iran who was suffering financially from the sanctions.  Ukraine was at peace, and we focused on China as a main threat.  Biden inherited an economy recovering from the lockdown and more stable world.  He could have done nothing with the economy and kept Trump policies in place on foreign policy, maybe the Middle East would not be exploding, and Europe still would be at peace. On the economic side, if Biden did not nothing and allowed the economy to recover, he would have an economic expansion without inflation and the middle class would actually have seen their income go up.  He would easily be on his way to winning an election rout over Trump instead of being neck and neck with Trump.

Biden record on civil liberty should be a red flag for we know that the Biden administration worked with or coerce social media to remove any individuals whose views didn’t correspond with theirs, the DOJ have gone after pro-lifers and treated parents who showed up at School board meetings as terrorists.  And the persecution of Donald Trump is nothing  more than banana Republic stuff in which we are still looking for a real crime in the “91” indictments just as the two impeachments were impeachments in search of impeachable offenses. What Biden has done is a real war on democracy. My own view is that many within the GOP or the conservatives who no longer support Trump might be concern over Biden’s lawfare against a political opponent.

As for Mike Pence recent proclamations that he won’t vote for Biden and won’t vote for Trump, leaves me to ask, who is he going to vote for?  The problem with Pence thoughts is that Trump populism he fears can be combined with traditional conservatism.   Henry Olsen wrote a book on Reagan combining populism and traditional free market ideas (The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism: Olsen, Henry: 9780062475268: Amazon.com: Books)and Victor Davis Hanson discussed that there are different kind of populism and not all populism is bad (Dueling Populisms | Hoover Institution Dueling Populisms.)  Trump in his first term that one can combine Trump populism with Reagan conservatism.  Mathew Continetti acknowledge that Trump has put together a new coalition which has added many Hispanics and Black voters. (America’s Political Realignment Is Real (freebeacon.com)

As I have written, Republican governors are busy showing that ideas of tax reform, getting government spending under control, school choice and allowing parents to have more say in their children education as well as looking closer at what is taught in school.  These ideas are working, and many Republican run states are having an influx of people moving in and many Democratic run states are seeing many escaping their policies.( Update jobs recovery – by Tom Donelson/ F of F (substack.com) and Grand Strategy – by Tom Donelson/ F of F (substack.com)

My question for Mike Pence, what was so conservative about how his Covid task force in which he ran?  Much of our freedom ended up under siege and while it is true that Trump was the President and the buck stops with him, Pence did nothing to change policies that we know of. Pence has never stated on foolishness of the lockdown. He must along long with Trump answers for those mistakes.

I am sympathetic with many who view the Trump-Biden rematch as battle of which candidate is the worse, but it leaves the question, who do you vote for?  We know that four more years of Biden means less security abroad, less economic freedom at home, and our civil liberties will be under siege.  Trump is a flawed candidate and a flaw human being, but he is certainly better than Biden.  He and Pence botched the pandemic by allowing the lockdown to happen and not quickly reversing policies, but Biden approach was much worse and at least Trump allowed a federalist approach to happen which many Republican governors ignored Fauci’s science and opted for actual science.  Much of the recovery over the last six months of the Trump administration can be traced to these governors who ignored the Fauci’s approach. 

Climate the Movie

A funny thought occurred to me, dealing with Michael Mann, noted climate alarmist scientist and the inventor of the famous hockey stick. The thought was Mann own hockey stick with excessive CO2 and rise in temperature coincided with the most rapid growth of prosperity world have ever seen. We have seen more people being fed better diets, less people living in poverty, and multiple rise in economic growth and GDP per capita growth.  Mann own research supports the narrative that higher CO2 and warmer temperatures are not bad for the planet but are variables that is actually good for the planet.

Climate the Movie directed by Martin Durkin and produced by Tom Nelson is full of many gems that debunk much of the science behind the recent Climate crisis scare.  Durkin interviews many experts and when I say experts, I mean some of the leading scientists in the field including Will Happier, Richard Lindzen, Steve Koonin, and John Clauser among others.  These experts have taught at Princeton, MIT, University of California among others and Clauser was just rewarded a Nobel Prize in Science. That is an elite group of experts.

The film examines the science behind climate change alarmist arguments, beginning with the actual climate history of this planet which goes back hundred of million of years of data collected. We find that our planet has been warmer and CO2 levels higher but life flourished.  Even in the past thousands of years, we have seen our planet as warm if not warmer than today including the Roman warming period and the Medieval warming period. 

The scientists noted that we are living through overall cooling period that has lasted for thousands of years and many of the scientists interviewed added we are also in the midst of a CO2 dearth and as one scientist noted, we may have come close thousands of years ago of a catastrophic event when the CO2 sunk to extreme low and if it had reached lower, life as we know it would cease to exist. 

The case made by the scientist are far superior to the arguments of the alarmists and this has been shown when these ideas get explored side by side.  A few years, Richard Lindzen and a team debated a team led by Galvin Schmidt and after the debate, many who sided with Schmidt reversed their position and changed over to Lindzen  (going into the debate, nearly two out of three favored Schmidt assertion we had a climate crisis but afterwards a plurality sided with Lindzen.  Schmidt never has debated a climate opponent again.)  Two years ago, Steve Koonin debated Andrew Dessler in Greenwich village and again the results were the same, Koonin changed 20 percent of the audience over to his side and easily won the debate.  It got so bad for Dessler that he was forced to apologize to Koonin about an article he coauthored attacking Koonin position and Koonin’s book, Unsettled.

So why isn’t the position of climate skeptics taken more seriously?  As the film makes clear, despite the expertise of these individuals, the reality is that there is a systemic censoring of their ideas.  Many scientific journals will not publish their ideas, they are attacked as deniers and many younger scientists understand that to take a position counter to the narrative will cost them their academic career plus government grants goes to those who accept the narrative of climate crisis. They are shunned and there is an attempt to silence anyone who dares to oppose the climate alarmist point of view.  The term denier was originally designed to equate these brilliant minds as no better than holocaust deniers.  During the recent Pandemic, we saw similar attempts to censor opponents of the lockdowns, but the evidence was so overwhelming that the lockdowns were failures, it was hard not to hide the anti-lockdown arguments.  The one optimistic view  that film leaves us with is that when the average voters see the price of the alarmists ideas of dealing with the crisis, they are starting to rebel including farmers who being told, don’t farm, to the rise in energy cost for the average consumers.  Developing nations around the world, in particular Africa, are being told they have to forsake fossil fuels that led to prosperity of much of the  developed world and many don’t like the message they must continue to live in poverty.  China and India are developing coal plants for energy and ignoring by policies that will reduce their own ability to prosper.   They may pay lip service to green arguments but in practices, they simply don’t care and ignore the alarmists arguments.

This film is worth the view and remember that when fossil fuels along with free market economics began to take hold on a worldwide basis, we saw prosperity never before experienced.  While much of the environmentalist movement has used this “crisis” to declare war on free market, the reality is that without fossil fuels whose development came as result of market economy has allowed much of the middle class to enjoy a lifestyle that was reserved only for the rich a century ago.  One place you can see the film is here Climate The Movie: Watch Here – Watts Up With That?.

Joshua wins easily over Ngannou

Anthony Joshua scored a brutal KO Win Over Francis Ngannou in a fight that many thought would be competitive, but Ngannou was hoping to repeat the close fight against Fury, which included a Ngannou knockdown of Fury.  A few thought Ngannou should have been declared winner of his bout with Fury but not this fight.  Joshua dominated from the opening bell which included two knockdowns before the final knockout caused by a vicious right hand.  In two minutes, Joshua did to Ngannou what many thought Fury would do. This was a fight between one of the best heavyweights versus an MMA star fighter trying to adjust to boxing. 

Joshua spent the first half of the opening round avoiding Ngannou’s left hooks and then as Ngannou attempted to switch to a southpaw stance, Joshua nailed him with a right hand that sent Ngannou tumbling backward.  Ngannou got up at the count of eight but as the second round began, Joshua sent Ngannou down a second time and then finally a vicious right sent Ngannou down for good.  Three right hands and that dealt the end of Ngannou. 

Joshual came in this fight prepared and took his opponent seriously while Ngannou managed to get a big PPV payday financed by the Saudi’s based on his close fight with Fury.   Joshua treated Ngannou as a newcomer as he exploited his opponent sieve-like defense. 

Right now, Joshua is not in line for a title shot as Fury fights against the undefeated Usyk includes a two-fight contract so that blocks Joshua from any big fight against Fury.

In another fight,  Joseph Parker fought against Zhilei Zhang, a big punching Chinese fighter.  Parker embarrassed Deontay Wilder with an easy decision and against Zhang, he survived two knockdowns in the third and eighth round to win a majority decision.   In the third round, a straight left jab sent Parker down and in the eighth round that he was winning, a Zhang short right sent him down.  Parker landed more punches in eight of the twelve rounds and with the two knockdowns, this was a close fight on the scorecard, a majority decision. 

Parker landed 101punches  to 75 punches for Zhang, and seventy-nine power shots to Zhang 40 power shots. The final score was 114-112, 115-111 for Parker, and one judge 113-113 even.  It was close fight due to the Zhang two knockdowns.  I had it 114-112 but I could see the 113-113 score as well.  Parker boxing skills allowed him to survive.    Parker had beaten two big bangers in Wilder and Zhang.  What should we take from this? 

Francis Ngannou was a good MMA fighter, but he still has a way to go to be an elite heavyweight and Joshua came in this fight ready to rumble.  Maybe a better question is why did Fury did so badly against Ngannou, is this a sign of decline in Fury or did he simply not take the fight seriously?  Parker showed his boxing surviving skills as he got up from two knockdowns to win an important fight against Zhang.