Thank You, President Trump
The military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro, the dictator of Venezuela, was both bold and brilliantly executed. Maduro sat atop a criminal government that had been almost certainly voted out of office and was only able to remain in office due to the most blatant kind of fraud. Venezuela was once a prosperous country, which was ruined by Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro through systemic and massive corruption, leading to skyrocketing inflation, which caused massive shortages of food and medicine. Some will remember starving Venezuelans stealing animals from the zoo to eat. Maduro has turned Venezuela into a hellhole of poverty; crime and violence are rampant as the basic necessities of life are financially out of reach for most citizens due to the economic mismanagement and chaos wrought by the socialist government.
Maduro’s government has been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with drug trafficking and narco-terrorism. The flow of drugs into this country has had serious consequences, with over 100,000 Americans dying of drug overdoses in 2023. Illegal drugs have afflicted the high and the low, the rich and the poor, and kill indiscriminately. The number of lives ruined by drugs is many times the number of deaths, and all of us know someone who has either lost a family member or witnessed the ruin and heartache it leaves in its wake. The United States government and President Trump have waged war on the drug cartels who are responsible for these tragedies induced on American families. These drugs are not only illegal, but they also kill constantly. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their lives due to drugs and the cruel cartels that earn billions of dollars from the illegal distribution and sale of drugs.
Democrats On The Wrong Side Of Everything
Once again, the Democrats are howling, hissing and hollering about bringing Maduro to justice.
Yet again, the Democrats run away from doing anything to deter crime. The Democrats are the party of defunding the police, the party that wishes to replace law enforcement professionals with social workers armed with fly swats into potentially deadly situations. The Democrats once again side with the criminals and cartels.
In 2020, when asked if they believed in open borders, every Democratic presidential candidate on the stage, including Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, all nineteen of them, raised their hands to indicate their support. It was a deliberate policy, and they have never acknowledged that with open borders, the illegal drugs flow into this country. A war of drugs and criminal cartels has, in truth, been waged against our people for quite some time. It is long past time that we should have stopped the drugs from coming to our country. Not only does crime cost our people and country blood, but also cold, hard cash. The University of Chicago, no citadel of Republicanism, conducted a study on the cost of crime and concluded the annual cost of crime in the US was between $4.7 and $5.8 trillion. The study calculates the “direct costs of law enforcement, criminal justice, and victims’ losses and the indirect costs of private deterrence, fear and agony and time lost to avoidance and recovery.”
It is way past time to bring those responsible to justice. In a world where criminals are not prosecuted for their crimes, there is no justice, social or otherwise. It is also long overdue for the Leftists to demand justice for the families who have suffered the torments of hell on earth due to addiction and the death of a loved one. It is way past time for America to stand up for our people and do something to protect us. God Bless President Trump and the United States of America!
Congratulations, Jeff
Fortunately, the gridlock in Congress has receded enough to have President Trump’s four nominees for the Board of Directors for TVA to be confirmed. One of our own was nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate. Jeff Hagood, a well-known local attorney, was sworn in last week.
Hagood is well-known for not only being an excellent attorney but also deeply involved in our community. Jeff Hagood, an enthusiastic alumnus of the University of Tennessee, remains a vocal and avid Volunteer. Hagood has done countless things to better our community, and his appointment to the TVA Board of Directors is an excellent one. Jeff Hagood can be depended upon to continue to serve his community and hometown with ability, integrity and conservative compassion.
Please Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent
In 2019, the Tennessee General Assembly mandated that our state would observe daylight saving time year-round. Unfortunately, Congress has yet to change the law, and federal law supersedes state law. That makes the law passed by the General Assembly unenforceable. At least nineteen of our states have passed laws making daylight saving time permanent with federal permission. Many other states have considered it. Under existing law, states can exempt themselves from daylight saving time by choosing to remain on standard time continuously, which only Arizona and Hawaii have chosen to do. The U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands also stick to standard time all year round.
Then Senator Marco Rubio proposed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would have kept the U.S. on daylight saving time continuously. That bill passed the Senate unanimously in 2022, but bogged down in the House. Let’s urge the House of Representatives to try again as soon as possible. I realize we have bigger fish to fry, but let’s fry them with more sunlight in the evenings.
