Author: Californiacontrarian

On Sept. 26 this year thirty-two-year-old André Williams of Houston, Texas, gave his mother the surprise of her life.
André was very thankful for the sacrifices his parents made to raise him and his siblings. His mother works in healthcare, and his father is an electrician; both worked hard to provide a stable and loving foundation for André and his two siblings.
In his youth, André enjoyed sports, art, and playing music at church, with his supportive parents encouraging him to follow his interests. Ambitious and hardworking, he quickly excelled in his career, working his way up the career ladder. He’s now been a program manager at Microsoft for three years.
“I’ve been successful in my life, through multiple things: through my career, through other adventures of my things that I’ve invested in, and things like that,” André said.

André didn’t just talk the talk, he walked the walk
After his mother had been diagnosed with progressive heart failure, André decided to pay off his mother’s mortgage. Since August of 2023 the young man had been saving up to pay off his mother’s mortgage.She had ten years left on a thirty year mortgage. After achieving his goal and getting together enough money to clear 10 years of his mom’s mortgage, André was planning to visit his parents’ home in Mount Vernon, New York. He was eagerly anticipating the moment he could place the check in his mother’s hands.
Unfortunately, Hurricane Helene threw a wrench in that plan.
The Surprise
Unable to see his parents in person, André created a video and sent it to his sister, asking her to play it for their mother on Sept. 27. He launched into the heartwarming message by thanking his mother for 32 years of “unconditional love” and unwavering support. “Nothing you’ve done is in vain,” he said in the video. Then, right before her eyes, he revealed the check that would pay off her remaining mortgage.
His mother, who had not been expecting any of this at all, put her head down and wept.
“She was very appreciative,” André told The Epoch Times, adding that she shed “a lot of tears” and felt “a lot of gratitude.””I think giving back to your parents is one of the greatest gifts you can give,” he said.

Kudos to André Williams! There aren’t many like him!
12/1/24

Recently from the New York Times an op-ed titled:
“Musk Wants to Cut $2 Trillion in Federal Spending. Is It Possible?”
Basically the NYT’s answer is, “No!” The conclusion of the op-ed states, “This means Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy will not need to win just one political fight to cut $2 trillion, but potentially hundreds or thousands of fights.”
I may be a contrarian, but my money is on Musk and Ramaswamy, and not on the NYT.
A recent op-ed, 11/20/24 in the Wall Street Journal, by Musk and Ramaswamy is quite interesting, and explains some of the various philosophies and tactics that they will use.
I found the following paragraph especially interesting formative:
“Conventional wisdom holds that statutory civil-service protections stop the president or even his political appointees from firing federal workers. The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation. But the statute allows for “reductions in force” that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to “prescribe rules governing the competitive service.” That power is broad. Previous presidents have used it to amend the civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme Court has held—in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen (2021) that they weren’t constrained by the Administrative Procedures Act when they did so. With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of “rules governing the competitive service” that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.”

Again without a second thought I am going with Musk and Ramaswamy’s DOGE over the pessimistic opinion of the New York Times.

11/29/24

One of the more amazing stories of the day came from a very small county in far southern Arizona.
From Daybreak Insider via the New York Times (NYT):
“As the elected treasurer in Santa Cruz County, Ariz., for more than a decade, Elizabeth Gutfahr’s job was to safeguard public funds for one of the state’s smallest counties. But while that money was meant for libraries, fire districts, schools and the like, Ms. Gutfahr siphoned off $38 million to acquire about two dozen vehicles — including Cadillacs and a Mercedes — buy real estate and renovate her family ranch, the Justice Department said this week. Ms. Gutfahr, 62, who held the post from 2013 through early 2024, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Tucson to one felony count each of embezzlement by a public official, money laundering and tax evasion. She could face up to 35 years in prison when she is sentenced in February (New York Times).”

I had never heard of Santa Cruz County before reading this piece. What kind of place is Santa Cruz County? In order to learn more about this place, I did a number of Google searches.
First off, it appears to be poor.
From Wikipedia:
The median income for a household in the county was $29,710, and the median income for a family was $32,057. Males had a median income of $27,972 versus $21,107 for females. The per capita income for the county was $13,278. About 21.40% of families and 24.50% of the population were below the poverty line, including 29.% of those under age 18 and 23.2% of those age 65 or over.

Second: Owing to its border location the population of Santa Cruz County is mainly Hispanic. It is the smallest county by area in Arizona.

The third thing that I was interested in involved the political affiliation of Elizabeth Gutfahr, as the initial article from the NYT never mentioned if she was a Democrat or a Republican.
After multiple searches from different newspapers mainly in Arizona, the best I could learn was that Santa Cruz is a strongly Democratic county. In fact Santa Cruz County remains as the most Democratic-leaning county in Arizona.

Whenever I read about a possible crooked politician, to me it is usually immediately clear to which political party that politician is affiliated with … if he/she is a Republican, it is usually stated in the first sentence. Whereas, if he/she is a Democrat, that fact is usually hidden deep in the article or, as is often the case with the NYT, it is never mentioned.
Ergo, since the political party of Elizabeth Gutfahr is not mentioned and she resides in a heavily Democratic county, my suspicion is that she is … ? Hmmm!
11/27/24

For what it’s worth, the Dems are complaining about some of Trump’s picks for various cabinet positions. To paraphrase, “So and so is not qualified to be XXX.” My first response to this is, “Compared to Who?”
NB: the following has not been taken from the Babylon Bee!
From Townhall:
“Let’s take a look at current Biden HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.
As the former Attorney General of California, Becerra is not a doctor and has no prior health experience. He’s a hardened, leftist zealot whose only record on health includes suing nuns in order to force them to provide birth control — a move that was found wildly unconstitutional and a blatant violation of their First Amendment rights. Eventually, the nuns were victorious at the Supreme Court.
Next, we move on to former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who was chosen as Biden’s Transportation Secretary because he “likes trains” and could use allocated funding to pursue the left’s social justice agenda under the guise of “infrastructure.” Before getting the job and being confirmed by the Senate, Buttigieg’s only background in transportation was failing to fill potholes in South Bend, Indiana.
Both of these amateurs were confirmed by senators. I’m not going to get into the number of men pretending to be women, like HHS Assistant Secretary Richard “Rachel” Levine, who are stacked all over the Biden administration. They weren’t placed there because they knew what they were doing, instead, they satisfied the Democrats’ identity politics agenda and rejection of meritocracy, especially in a bureaucratic government.”

But these are not the only unqualified lulus. Look at some more of the unqualified random losers that Biden picked.
From X:
Jared Bernstein, Chair of Council of Economic Advisors – not an economist, Bachelor’s degree in music, masters in sociology

Mayorkas, DHS Secretary – no security background, lawyer, Asst U.S. attorney, Obama transition team

Jennifer Granholm, Energy Secy – no energy background, Michigan Governor

Gina Raimondo, Commerce Secretary – No trade background, Gov of Rhode Island

Deb Haaland, Interior Secy – New Mexico Congressman

All of the above are much more unqualified compared to Trump’s picks.

11/26/24

Those who have been reading my blogs for a while will recognize that over and over I have asked the same basic question … “Why do Democrats constantly seem to do things which only hurt the little guys?”
Which group does inflation hurt more than anybody? Obviously, inflation hurts those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder more than any other group. Those who are living paycheck-to-paycheck are devastated when the price of eggs, milk, and bread increase.
Which group is hurt the most when gas prices are sky-high? Again, those who are forced to live a great distance from where they work, because they cannot afford homes that are closer to where the jobs are. In the Biden years, it is not those who drive Electric Vehicles that are hurt when the price of gas is out of sight, but rather it is the little guy.
In years past these little guys, for whatever reason, voted for Democrats. Could it be that the little guys are waking up?

From the Epoch Times:
College graduates favored Republican candidates in every election but one from 1988 through 2004. That began to change in 2008 and accelerated in 2016 when Democrats gained a solid majority of 55 percent among college graduates and held it the next two elections.
At the same time, voters without a college diploma have increasingly voted Republican. The shift began in 2012, when Republicans gained two percentage points among this demographic, landing at 48 percent. By 2024, Trump had reached 63 percent support from those with a high school education.
A similar migration occurred in terms of income. In 2012, 60 percent of voters with household incomes less than $50,000 voted Democratic. By 2024, that number had dropped to 44 percent.
This election also marked a tipping point for upper-income voters. In 2024, a majority of households earning more than $100,000 per year voted Democratic for the first time since the data had been tracked. The Republican share from this group was 46 percent, the lowest ever.
In certain regions of the country there seems to also be a change.
The Blue Wall of industrial states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, had been solidly Democratic in presidential elections from 1992 until 2016, when President-elect Donald J. Trump won all three. Trump carried those states again in 2024.
Trump also eroded Democratic support in traditional party strongholds like New York, New Jersey, and California. While Harris carried all three by a comfortable margin, she gained a smaller share of the vote than either Biden in 2020 or Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Are these changes merely a reflection of a Harris being a poor candidate, or are those who actually work for a living (the ‘little guys’) starting to realize that the Democrats are not their friends?
11/25/24

On Sundays I write about individuals who are worthy of our praise and admiration. Shelley Luther is such a woman, as she recently got elected to a State House seat in Texas. These days women are getting elected left and right, so what is so special about this woman, Shelley Luther?
To understand let’s go back to March, 2020 when she was forced to close her hair salon and wasn’t given a clear date on which she could reopen. A local county judge continued to delay the date.
“When he finally pushed it back a final time I just woke up one day and I said, ‘I have to open; my stylists are calling me, they’re not making their mortgage,’” Luther said. Behind on her own mortgage, she reopened her shop in April, but she was arrested and jailed for seven days and ordered to pay $500 for each day the salon was open.
Dallas County Judge Eric Moyé said he would consider a lesser sentence if Luther admitted she was wrong and apologized for what he characterized as her “selfish” actions.
To that Shelley Luther responded, “I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I’m selfish, because feeding my kids is not selfish. I have hair stylists that are going hungry because they’d rather feed their kids.
“So, sir, if you think the law is more important than kids getting fed, then please go ahead with your decision, but I am not going to shut the salon.”
She was thus jailed. Eventually the state Supreme Court ordered that Luther be released after state officials, including Attorney General Ken Paxton, spoke out to support her. She was released from jail on May 7, 2020.
However, Shelley Luther wasn’t finished.
Luther later unsuccessfully ran for state Senate in 2020 then lost to an incumbent Reggie Smith in the 2022 Republican primary for Texas House District 62.
In 2024 she defeated Smith in the March primary and proceeded to the 2024 general election. She ran on issues such as border enforcement, election integrity, and the prohibition of sexual content in public schools.
“Shelley Luther will fight to preserve Texas values, and she won’t back down when things get tough,” her website stated.
On November 5, 2024 Republican Shelley Luther earned 77.7 percent of the vote, beating Democrat Tiffany Drake, who received 22.3 percent, in District 62.
Shelley Luther is to be admired as she is a poster child for perseverance and persistence.
11/24/24

As many of you are aware, I firmly believe that Joe Biden was fraudulently elected President in 2020. Back in 2020 when I went to bed late on election night (Pacific time), Trump was ahead by quite a large margin. When I awoke the following morning, Joe Biden had been “elected” President! A miracle? Both Mike Pence and the Supreme Court both ducked, and consequently we Americans have been punished by four years of incompetence in the White House. Over the last four years I have been told multiple versions of, “That’s life!,” and “You’re wrong; grin and bear it!”
However, just the other day I read an op-ed posted in Amac on 11/14/24 by Paul Ingrassia, a graduate of Fordham University and Cornell Law School, and a two-time Claremont Fellow. In his opinion there are multiple logical reasons to assume that, indeed, the 2020 election was fraudulent.
The title of Ingrassia’s rather long and comprehensive piece is:
“Donald Trump’s Win Against Kamala Harris Proves Beyond All Doubt That 2020 Was Stolen”
“Back in 2020 Trump and his supporters were vilified because they simply wanted Congress to carry out its constitutional duties to allow state legislatures to review the electoral process, and investigate very real allegations of fraud in a select number of precincts nationwide.  The idea that a presidential election can be stolen in an era and electorate as polarized as ours, is not a ludicrous assumption – quite the contrary.  As was observed in both 2016 and 2020, the presidential race could be decided by a few ten thousand voters dispersed across a handful of battlegrounds.  Really, in 2020, you can boil the election down to three particular counties: Fulton County in Georgia, Maricopa County in Arizona, and Philadelphia County in Pennsylvania, and find sufficient evidence of outcome-determinative fraud.  Three counties are theoretically all that it would have taken to steal the 2020 presidential election.
Had Republican auditors and state legislatures been allowed to carry out their jobs and conduct a thorough investigation into just these three counties, it could have theoretically been enough to win the election for President Trump.  In 2020, the combined electoral vote output of Georgia (16), Arizona (11), and Pennsylvania (19) was 46, meaning President Trump would have won the election if he carried all three – or even just Georgia and Pennsylvania, which would have gotten him to exactly 270.  Thus, the argument that the election was stolen based on systematic fraud in a handful of counties distributed across the country is not only logical, but exceptionally plausible.
The plausibility is heightened by the response by the Democratic Party – and broader Left wing political coalition – that rendered it verboten to even speak the words “election fraud” without suffering massive personal costs.  Usually, a telltale for nefarious activity is being bullied into not speaking about a particular subject.”

Ingrassia’s opinion is bolstered by the numbers of votes counted in 2020 compared to 2024. Basically the numbers come down to the fact that the combined vote of Trump and Harris – 148 million and counting – is about seven million less than four years ago, but far surpasses by wide margins every previous election in American history.
The argument that it was easier to vote in 2020 due to special laws (of dubious legality, mind you) enacted in the lead-up to that race, making it easier to vote from home or extending the election period,fails because 1) many of those laws (albeit in abridged forms) have not been totally repealed, as evidenced by the fact that this year’s election took place over many weeks and was not limited to a single day; and 2) Donald Trump, again, obtained more votes this year than he did four years ago. 

As it currently stands, Kamala’s 72 million votes (a number also likely inflated due to outstanding fraud in states like Arizona, Nevada, California, Pennsylvania, and New York) represents a 12.5 percent decrease over the four-year period.  If the trends were consistent, Donald Trump should have received only 66.5 million votes this year – instead, he is on pace to get about ten million more than that figure.”

My suggestion, if you are still dubious of Ingassia’s arguments that the 2020 election was fraudulent, is to read his entire piece, and then to let me know if you are then more or less convinced of the fraud of 2020.

11/23/24

A few days ago I read a piece in Epoch Health that introduced me to a new acronym … GRAS, which stands for Generally Regarded As Safe. If a substance is GRAS, it means that it underwent a less rigorous approval process by the FDA than products approved as food additives. While the FDA sets an allowable limit for food additives, it does not set one for GRAS substances.
As most of you are aware, RFKJr has been nominated as Secretary of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration.
“Americans are being poisoned,” former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated throughout his campaign. He linked the nation’s poor diet to rising health care costs for chronic diseases and shorter lifespans.
(Americans have a life expectancy that is five years shorter than other developed nations and that may be because 50 to 70 percent of the American diet is ultra-processed foods—the highest consumption rate in the developed world. Many of the food additives and ingredients used in the United States are already restricted or banned in Europe.)
Kennedy has primarily scrutinized several key food ingredients, including high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), seed oils, and food dye.

During his campaign, Kennedy repeatedly emphasized the risks of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the most common sweetener in American processed foods.
HFCS is a cheaper ingredient than sugar. Ultra processed food makers adopted HFCS rapidly in the late 20th century. Between 1970 to 1990s, HFCS consumption increased by more than 1,000 percent, the greatest change in the American diet over that time. This increase coincided with the emergence and rise of obesity in the 1980s.
HFCS is currently approved by the FDA as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS).

Kennedy has repeatedly criticized the wide consumption of processed vegetable oils, also called “seed oils.”
During his campaign, he said that seed oils are everywhere and are the most common ingredient in the processed foods that make up the American diet.
Seed oils also have a higher omega-6 fatty acid content than omega-3 fatty acids. Research has linked higher omega-6 fatty acid consumption with a whole host of chronic diseases like Type-2 diabetes, inflammatory diseases, and more.
Most seed oils, like canola, soybean, corn, and sunflower oils, are approved by the FDA as GRAS.

The GRAS system, introduced in 1958, is one of the most criticized aspects of American food regulation.
Food ingredients that are categorized as food additives undergo relatively rigorous premarket safety review, with the FDA setting an allowable limit.
But GRAS ingredients do not have to undergo this premarket review if the substance has a long history of use, or if there is a scientific consensus on safety.
In 1997, the FDA proposed a new regulation that allowed companies to self-determine GRAS status without submitting it for affirmation from the FDA. This change was gradually phased in and made official in 2016. As a result, companies no longer have to notify the FDA when they have a new GRAS substance.
This created a major loophole, with the primary one being that “there are unknown ingredients in the food supply that the FDA and the public doesn’t know about,” Jennifer Pomeranz, associate professor of public health policy and management at NYU School of Global Public Health, told The Epoch Times.
Congress may need to update the 1958 legislature to make it clear that the FDA should review GRAS applications, Pomeranz said.
I can hardly wait for RFKJr to get into office!
11/22/24

A multitude of things were just reported that only emphasize the ludicrousness of Biden’s border policy … or perhaps, better stated, his non-border policy.
From the NY Post:
“Tren de Aragua has already set up shop in these 16 states, Homeland Security warns”
The vicious Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) has expanded its territory to at least 16 US states — an area that includes half of America’s population, The Post has learned.
Homeland Security officials last week were warned in an internal department intelligence memo about TdA’s growing presence across the country, most recently in Washington, DC, Virginia, Montana and Wyoming.
The gang already has footholds in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin, according to the memo and previous reporting by The Post.
TdA members embedded themselves in the waves of millions of migrants who crossed the US-Mexico border during the Biden-Harris administration. With no information-sharing between the US and Venezuela to detect the gang members, they were easily released into the US, according to US Border Patrol sources.

Even a Biden’s Homeland Security memo admits that violent migrant crime is exploding. And the thugs’ “violent tendencies” have only grown, warns the memo.
Make no mistake: This is not anti-migrant scaremongering, as the left might claim; it comes from officials at Alejandro Mayorkas’ Department of Homeland Security, the very agency that’s not only failed to keep violent gangs out of the country but has virtually invited them in.

Also Jose Ibarra, the illegal immigrant and Tren de Aragua gang member accused of viciously murdering 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley, was found guilty of all charges in an Athens, Georgia courtroom Wednesday.
Judge Patrick Haggard handed down the guilty verdicts on a range of charges, returning to the bench just 19 minutes after the prosecution and defense presented their closing arguments.

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, declared the Biden administration “has blood on their hands” for the murder of Georgia college student Laken Riley who was killed by an illegal migrant earlier this year.

I could not agree more as what happened to Laken Riley was completely predictable!
11/21/24

Right now, our President is acting as if he wants to be remembered as the one who was ultimately responsible for starting WWWIII. He is a lame duck president, and his successor vows to end the war in Ukraine shortly after he enters office, so what does this man of dubious mental capabilities do? … he gives Ukraine permission to use American-made weapons to attack inside Russia.
Ukraine had long been seeking permission to use long-range weapons inside Russian territories, but Biden had remained opposed. Previously, Biden said he felt allowing U.S. missiles to be used on Russian territories could draw the United States and other NATO members into direct conflict with nuclear-armed Russia.
From Fox News:
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a revised nuclear doctrine on Tuesday stating that any attack on Russia supported by a country with nuclear power could be grounds for a nuclear response.
Putin signed the new policy on the 1,000th day of the war with Ukraine and the day after President Biden authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia.
The doctrine also states that Russia could respond to aggression against its ally Belarus with nuclear weapons, The Associated Press reported.
Though the doctrine doesn’t specify that Russia will definitely respond to such attacks with nuclear weapons, it does mention the “uncertainty of scale, time and place of possible use of nuclear deterrent” as key principles of deterrence.
It also contains a broader range of conditions that would trigger the use of nuclear weapons, noting that they could be used in response to an air attack involving ballistic and cruise missiles, aircraft, drones and other flying vehicles.

Today’s news in what could be the next step towards disaster … the U.S Embassy in Kyiv shuts over ‘potential significant air attack.’ The warning comes one day after Russia said that Ukraine used U.S.-made long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to strike its territory.
“Out of an abundance of caution, the Embassy will be closed, and Embassy employees are being instructed to shelter in place,” a statement published on the embassy’s official website stated.

Come on, Joe, really?? Trying to increase the possibility of expanding this war just before you are ready to step aside.
Even Jimmy Carter did not try to start a war! Does this make any sense?
11/20/24