I an NOT "Proud to be an American."

by Rod Williams, Feb. 28, 2025- I am disgusted. I am nauseated. I am outraged. I am ashamed to be an American. 

What transpired in the oval office today was a disgrace. The United States went from being a champion of freedom and a beacon of hope to the world to being an enemy of democracy. We went from being the good guy, to being an ally of perhaps the most brutal murderous thug on the planet. We switched sides. 

I am not quite shocked or surprised. The writing was on the wall. During Trump's time on the world stage, he has shown he has an affinity for dictators. I can only assume it is because he wants to be one himself. During Trump's campaign and since taking office this time and at other times while on the world stage, Trump had said nice things about Putin and denigrated Ukraine. Trump's betrayal of Ukraine and siding with Putin was not unexpected. This is what I thought we would get with Trump. Expecting it, however, does not mean accepting it and does not lessen my disgust.  

Trump is a narcissistic bully and a psychopath. Everything is transactional with him. Trump has no empathy, morals, or principles. He is a totally despicable human being. In the proposed rare earth minerals deal, if Ukraine agreed to give us $500 billion of their rare earth minerals, what would happen if Putin said to Trump, ''let us take Ukraine and we will give you $600 billion?" I think Trump would betray Ukraine in a heartbeat. 

If possible, I think Vance may be a more despicable person than Trump. For one thing, I think Trump makes things up on the fly. Trump responds to perceive petty slights. He is transactional and evil, but he is a dumbass. Vance is smart and calculating.  J. D. Vance has been even more transparent than Trump in signaling which side he was on regarding Ukraine.  When Vance was a candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio in 2022, he said to Steve Bannon on the War Room podcast that he thought it was ridiculous that the U.S. was focused on the border between Ukraine and Russia. “I gotta be honest with you,” he told Bannon, "I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” My contempt for J. D. Vance cannot be overstated. J. D. Vance is a piece of shit.

There have been other times in my life when I have been embarrassed for my country. There have been times when I think we overreached. There have been times when I think we made strategic and tactical mistakes. There have been times when we had to cut our losses and abandon those who had placed their trust in us. Despite it all, I believed our motives were good. I believed we were that shinning city on the hill. We made mistakes, but I never doubted that our desire for the world was righteous.  I never doubted we were a good people. Even at our worst, when we abandoned allies, I still thought that we wanted a peaceful and just world. We could not always win, but we wanted the good guys to win. Our sympathy was with the victims, not the aggressors. Despite our failures, I always knew out sympathy was with those who wanted a just world where the mighty did not just run roughshod over the weak and just take what they want. We did not always get what we wanted, things did not always play out the way we wanted them to, but I never doubted where our sympathies lie. 

We are now one of the bad players in the world. We are now part of the problem. No one should ever trust us again. Beyond just what happens to Ukraine, this is a dark day for the world. The U. S. cannot be counted upon to do the right thing anymore. In fact, our democratic allies like Canada and Denmark and others need to fear the United States. Who knows when we may join China and Russian and start dividing up the world. Other nations of the world must wonder whose side we are on. At a minimum, other nations of the world must conclude that the United States cannot be counted on to come to their aid should a larger and more powerful nation threaten their sovereignty.  The days of collective security are over. Recognizing that, all countries capable of developing nuclear weapons, may conclude that to take responsibility for their own security they should join the nuclear club. That makes for a much less safe world. 

There may be a glimmer of hope that Ukraine can survive without US support but not much. Maybe, somehow a deal can still be struck. Without guarantees however, Russia will take a piece of Ukraine now and gobble up the rest later.  Trump would not care as long as Putin waits until Trump leaves office and Trump can claim glory for himself. 

This really sucks. I know not everyone voted for this. Nevertheless, this is done in our name. And this is who the majority of my fellow Americans voted for. I am disgusted and sickened. 

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TN Congressman John Ross announces run for governor

John Ross

by Rod Williams, Feb 28, 2025- As expected Sixth District Congressman John Ross is running for Governor. He made it official Wednesday speaking before a Republican women's group in Williamson County. He would be running to replace Gov. Bill Lee who is term limited. Ross is serving his first term in Congress.  He previously served as Tennessee’s agriculture commissioner. He is also a farmer, attorney, and owner of an IT training enterprise. 

Senator Marsha Blackburn has all but announced she is running for Governor saying she is being encouraged to run and saying she is considering running. Almost a regular on Fox News and a darling of Trumpy Republicans, she would be the front runner should she run. Being Senator, she has statewide name recognition and a campaign apparatus and contacts whereas John Ross is hardly known outside the sixth congressional district.

Another person who is sometimes mentioned and has been laying the groundwork for running for years is Knox County mayor Glenn Jacobs. He has said he will not run if Blackburn runs. Tim Burchett of the 2nd congressional district, which is the Knoxville area, is also considering a run. 

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Trumpism is less a political project than a moral reboot.

click above watch this one-minute clip that shows the kind
 of vile garbage spewed by Andrew Tate

 By Nick Catoggio, The Dispatch, Feb. 27, 2025- The Tate boys are on their way back to America and some very respectable conservatives are mad about it.
The Tate boys, for the blissfully uninitiated, are Andrew and Tristan, dual citizens of the United States and the United Kingdom but lately residents of Romania. I wrote about them when news spread last month that the Trump administration had begun pressuring the Romanian government to let them travel abroad.
Why couldn’t they travel, you ask? Because that’s what tends to happen when you’re under arrest on suspicion of human trafficking and money laundering.
Romania isn’t the only nation where Andrew Tate is facing criminal charges. He’s in hot water with UK authorities for alleged sexual misconduct and is being sued there by four women who claim that he raped and abused them. But Andrew had a political ace up his sleeve: Over the last few years, he built a following among young American men for his commentary on what we might charitably call “gender relations.” (Continue reading)

Rod's Comment: I am sure the Trumpinistas will find a way to justify this and will defend our dear leader's action on behalf of the Tates. 

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Former Tennessee state senator reports to federal prison for campaign finance scheme conviction

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Harwood Salons Present Dr. Samuel Gregg, Has Market Liberalism Failed

 

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The Heartland Journal Interviews Justin Owens, President CEO Beacon Center of Tennessee

From Heartland Institute, Feb. 26, 2025- Joining us is Justin Owen the President & Chief Executive Officer of the Beacon Center of Tennessee and Beacon Impact. He advances the strategic growth and mission of both organizations. He previously served as the Beacon Center’s director of policy and general counsel. Justin advances Beacon’s mission – empowering Tennesseans to reclaim and protect their freedoms – by promoting free market solutions at the state and local level. Justin has led the effort to enshrine right-to-work in the Tennessee Constitution, has helped bring about Tennessee’s private school choice program, stop an expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, usher in comprehensive tort reform, scale back government red tape, and assisted in the repeal of collective bargaining by government unions. Under his leadership, Beacon also helped repeal Tennessee’s Hall Income Tax and death tax, saving taxpayers nearly $4 billion to date. For more info go to https://www.beacontn.org/people/justin-owen

Rod's Comment: The Beacon Center is an organization I support, and I am proud of the work they do in Tennessee. Watch this video to learn what they have accomplished and what issues they are working on now. 

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How the Elite rigged Society (and why it’s falling apart) | David Brooks

by Rod Williams, Feb 27, 2025- This is good. In this short video David Brooks speaking before the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship explains what went wrong with society. He says the elites, and he in a self-deprecating humorous way explains that he is a member of the elites, have privatized morality and destroyed the social moral order. 

He says the elites also gave us "populist" like Donald Trump and J. D. Vance and Elon Musk. He explains that Trump and his team are not conservative. Conservatives, he says, believe in gradual change, in constitutional governance, and norms. Brooks speaks of the moral and cultural crisis facing America and the importance of embracing humanism in these dark times.      

David Brooks is a long-time conservative spokesman, bestselling author, columnist for The New York Times, and a contributor to The Atlantic. He is also a commentator on The PBS Newshour. 

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Ukraine had the Audacity to Defend itself when Invaded.

by The Editors, National Review, February 20, 2025- Predictably enough, the Ukrainian government has objected to its exclusion from the peace talks Trump administration officials held with their Russian counterparts this week in Riyadh and, for its trouble, is getting slammed by what is supposed to be its ally, the United States.

In breathtaking remarks to reporters, President Trump poured contempt on Ukraine for its frustration. “But today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years,” Trump said of Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine. “You should’ve ended it in three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

Uh, Ukraine didn’t fire Russian missiles at itself or direct a Russian armed column at its own capital in 2022. There’s moral equivalence, and then there’s a total moral inversion.

When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back, Trump came back at him harder, calling him a “Dictator without Elections” who “probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going.”

Ukraine is indeed under martial law at the moment because it’s been invaded by a hostile power and there’s a war on. You don’t need to portray Ukraine as a shining city on a hill to acknowledge that it is much more committed to democracy and the rule of law than is Russia, whose malign autocratic leader Trump never thinks to call “a dictator.”

Needless to say, Ukraine is not the problem here. As far as the Kremlin is concerned, its sins are its existence as a sovereign state with a national identity distinct from Russia’s, and its failure to roll over and accept its assigned role as a defenseless satellite state of Mother Russia.

That a large, partially Russian-speaking neighbor was embracing democracy only compounded its offense in the eyes of the Kremlin, which worried about a potentially dangerous example for its own people.

And so, Ukraine has been twice invaded by a Russia eager to grab its territory and resources and bring it to heel. Since 2014, Ukraine has been subjected to a level of violence and criminality that reflects Russia’s utter contempt for the laws of armed conflict.

The anti-Ukraine influencers and advisers in Trump’s ear contend that Ukraine antagonized Russia by seeking to join the Atlantic Alliance. In reality, Russia’s efforts to destabilize Ukraine began with the January 2005 “Orange Revolution,” in which pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko (who had been “mysteriously” poisoned with dioxin during the campaign) captured the presidency.

By 2010, Yushchenko was replaced by the “non-aligned” (read: pro-Putin) Viktor Yanukovych. But Yanukovych’s efforts to placate the Kremlin soon ran afoul of Ukraine’s parliament. In late 2013, he unilaterally abrogated a deal passed by the Ukrainian Rada that would have established free trade and travel relations with the European Union. Yanukovych’s maneuver ignited protests that culminated in the Maidan Revolution, in which over 100 civilians were killed by security forces before Yanukovych fled to exile in Russia.

It was Ukraine’s integration with the European Union, not NATO, that inflamed Moscow, and it was the ouster of their puppet in Kyiv that occasioned the first invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in early 2014.

The fact that Russia failed in its subsequent attempt to swallow Ukraine whole in 2022 is a testament both to the determination of the country’s defenders as well as Moscow’s atrophied military and dated tactics. But Moscow’s adventurism still poses a real threat to U.S. security and that of its treaty-bound allies on NATO’s frontiers.

It is certainly true, as we noted the other day, that Ukraine isn’t going to get all of its territory back or join NATO. Acknowledging this is cold-eyed realism; humiliating and undercutting an ally, perhaps with worse to come in the form of a sweetheart deal for Moscow, is not.

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