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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News


It ain’t the national elections in November that matter

The Declaration of Independence

Much analysis and punditry is on-going in both the conservative and liberal press on whether Trump or Biden will win the presidential election come November. Similarly, those same pundits spend much ink considering the fate of the House and Senate. Will the Republicans retake the House? Will the Democrats retake the Senate?

All important. The fate of our country hangs in the balance, and based on the irrational behavior of the Congressional Democrats these past four years, giving them control of both houses of Congress will not bode well for the nation, especially if the increasingly mentally-incapacitated Joe Biden wins the presidency. Since the 2016 election the Democrats and Washington administrative state have foisted on us a fake Russian collusion investigation and a fake impeachment trial against Trump. They clearly wish to do more. If they win both houses and Trump wins the presidency I predict that within six months they will move to remove him from office, using another set of fake charges but really instigated by their blind hatred of Trump and their refusal to accept defeat in an election.

Even, so these national elections are not the most important elections coming in November. What really will tell the tale for the future is how the elections at the local and state levels play out. For you see, it is those governments by their very actions that give us a peek into the future. What they do will percolate upward with time.

Let us do a quick survey of some of the worst local governments to get an idea who really should be thrown out of office.

For example, all of the worst lock downs and abuses of power since March have been issued by state governments. Trump and Congress had nothing to do with it. The economic crash was instigated by state edicts, by governors and city officials panicking over a disease that at this point is quite comparable to the flu (it is more deadly to the sick elderly, but relatively harmless to everyone else). And while a few of these state governments and governors have been Republican, the governors with the most oppressive and least effective policies in connection with COVID-19 have almost all been Democrats, such as in states like New York, California, Michigan, New Jersey, and Illinois.

Similarly, rioting and looting have ravaged Democratically-controlled cities like Seattle, Portland, Chicago, and Minneapolis. In the Twin Cities the damage left over from the riots is so bad that insurance policies will be insufficient to pay for repairs.

Worse, in Minnesota, Seattle, and Portland, home to the worst riots and the most serious destruction, the local governments have been instigating policies that will actually encourage more riots and looting. In Minnesota the city council has moved to disband the police. In Seattle the local council has forbidden police from using some of the most practical and non-violent anti-riot tools, such as tea gas and pepper spray. Members of that same council have repeatedly come out in support of the riots and looting.

In Portland the riots have now been on-going for almost two months, and show no signs of stopping. Until last week the Democrat mayor, Ted Wheeler, had consistently blamed President Trump for the violence, even though federal officials have been generally denied access to the city and have limited their actions to protecting federal buildings.

And if he wasn’t blaming Trump, Wheeler and his Democratic cohorts were blaming his own police department. The result? Portland police are retiring or quitting in unprecedented numbers. Local citizens are being told they cannot depend on the police for help.

In Chicago, widespread looting took place yesterday after police returned fire against a fleeing suspect who had shot at them. How dare they respond shot for shot? The response of the Mayor, Democrat Lori Lightfoot?

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot pushed back in a letter to the White House, writing: “We need you, as president, to take a leadership role in enacting meaningful and common-sense gun legislation, which you so far have refused to do.”

Chicago meanwhile has some of the strictest gun control laws on the books. It is also the home of more gun crime than you see on the streets of Beirut. It also has a city government that — even as it tries to disarm its citizens — is moving to defund its police department.

In New York the high taxes and hostility to the police are also driving both the police to retire or quit as well as thousands of middle and upper class citizens to flee. The result there? A 50% increase in the murder rate in 2020.

All of these cities are controlled entirely by the Democratic Party. All except New York have been in the control of that party for many decades, and in New York Republican control under Guiliani and Bloomberg was very shallow and transitory. The bulk of elected officials there were always Democratic.

Across the nation, Democratically-controlled strongholds have experienced rioting, looting, violence, and collapsed economies. Cities have become bankrupt due to failed lock down policies. Crime has run rampant. The freedoms of decent law-abiding citizens have been squelched, even as those same Democratic governments have allowed violent Antifa protesters to pillage and riot while releasing thousands of convicted criminals, some quite violent and who immediately confirmed the justice of their sentence by committing more violence.

Thus, the real elections that will matter in November will not be the presidential election, or even who controls Congress. The real decision will be made by the voters at the local level. Will they continue to support these failed Democratic administrations, as they have done in almost all these inner cities now for decades, or will the public finally throw these bums out?

Unfortunately, the signs all point to “No!” Based on all the evidence presently on hand expect no changes to the make-up of any of these local governments come November. None. Not only are there few signs of the public changing its local voting habits, they are also being given few other options. In these cities there generally is no local vibrant two party system. The Democrats dominate, and will do whatever they must to maintain power.

And sadly it appears the public is willing to go along. You see, it appears that even if the citizens in these cities had an alternative to the Democrats, they have made it clear in recent years that they would not vote for that alternative anyway. For example, in the 2016 election the three largest counties in Oregon, including and surrounding Portland, voted 70% for Hillary Clinton. The local city government is all Democratic, with strong majorities endorsing that party in every election. The situation is similar in New York, in Chicago, in Minnesota, in Seattle, in Detroit, and in every urban city under failed Democratic control.

The voters in these places are creatures of the Democratic Party, and anything it wishes to do to its opponents — and to them — is fine by them.

We should thus also expect the violence to continue, the economic lock downs to expand and become more oppressive, and the restrictions on freedom to escalate. We can’t have freedom if it means a robust opposition to Democratic abuses is allowed. Such opposition must be squelched, at all costs.

Persecution is now cool and they will be coming for you next.

The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.

 

Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

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17 comments

  • MDN

    Perhaps sanity will prevail if this is an accurate portent of voting behavior this year. One can only hope.

    https://conservativerepublic.co/the-2020-red-wave-could-be-starting-already-in-virginia-citizens-just-voted-3-democrats-out-of-office/

  • Andi

    Small typo in third paragraph:

    “give us a peek”

  • janyuary

    Robert, you are so very right that it comes down to the local level, that is it precisely. We truly are approaching civil war territory in this country.

    Here in CA, Arnold Scwarzenegger was a Republican. So was Meg Whitman. I use those names because they’re more recognizable, but that happens across the ticket more often than not: Functional Democrats, yes, but registered Republican.

    So in some parts of this country, when you vote R with the best and most hopeful of intentions … well …. after 30 years, it constantly going sideways left anyway, opens one’s eyes. And the vote fraud is practically laughable. I believe it’s well past any ballot box here in California. Yet … this state’s resources, not to mention its people, are among the most mistakenly stereotyped and assessed in the nation …! New York as well, I expect, as that state is a lot like mine except a lot smaller.

    On the national stage, I say all bets are off because the critical balance of actual folks on the ground are invisible in any news media projection of what’s going on. They also have zip representation at the ballot box. There, it is the choice of Coke or Diet Pepsi and they hate both. Look at England to see how goes the “choice” of “conservative” — it morphs into a more apologetic Democrat.

    I say press on and progress toward liberty, and tell those who call regression to tyranny “progressive,” to pound sand. Go on offense. Just don’t be surprised if voting R accomplishes very little. It’s flat predictable.

  • Andi: Thank you again. Fixed.

  • Gary

    My 14 yo daughter read your essay and spent twenty minutes discussing various points. The only thing that really surprised her was your reference to Bloomberg being a Republican. We live in California, so I was more than a little surprised that she knew who Bloomberg is/was. Even before Zoom, California student would never be exposed to any of your perspectives regarding politics. So, there are a few people paying attention..

  • Gary: I should have noted that Bloomberg was really a Republican in name only. In almost all policy issues he has always been a liberal Democrat, which is why he ran nationally as a Democrat.

    He took the Republican Party nomination in New York because it was a very convenient way to bypass the corrupt Democratic Party machine in New York, which was very unlikely to give him the candidacy.

  • janyuary

    Robert and Gary: ONLY when one votes for a “Republican in name only,” aka a functional Democrat registered as a Republican, does one increase leftism in BOTH parties.

    This is universally denied by every single “pragmatic” conservative and Republican I have known over the past 45 years (I was one of them for about 30 of those years) and that denial is how we got here.

    In California, for three decades folks who want to vote for less government end up voting to increase leftism in both parties because they are so convinced that any Republican is better than a Democrat … when in truth, a lefty Democrat only increases leftism in his own party.

    It is time to walk away from obsolete models, labels, and parties, toward liberty and the Constitution.

  • Cotour

    “It is time to walk away from obsolete models, labels, and parties, toward liberty and the Constitution.”

    Ditto.

  • F16 Guy

    The Alinsky play book (Rules For Radicals) has been used quite effectively by the Left, as have the idea’s of the Communist Manifesto ( short-term demands—among them a progressive income tax; abolition of inheritances and private property; abolition of child labour; free public education; nationalisation of the means of transport and communication; centralisation of credit via a national bank; expansion of publicly owned land, etc.—the implementation of which would result in the precursor to a stateless and classless society.)

    The expectation that “this election” (or any) will fix the Left’s influence on society is foolhardy. We all know the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again is not, and will not, work.

    The America founded under the Constitution is dying and will soon be dead.

    Those with the ability to see the future of America will understand that we are now a country of conservatives and Marxists, and that it is time to divide the country accordingly, before the entire country succumbs to the Left. The precedent exists for such a division, and unless someone far smarter than me has a better idea, it’s time we stop hoping for a partisan solution and instead, seek answers outside the box.
    Can we call these divided entities successful for at least one of the two:
    Dakotas Vietnam Korea
    Carolina’s Ireland Etc.
    Virginia Israel

    Trump will be out of office either in 2020 or 2024. What then? Our worse fears have not yet been realized, mark my words.

  • Cotour

    Allan West.

  • Cotour

    Thats, Allen, not Allan.

  • James Street

    Update from Seattle: Last night (Monday 8/10/2020) the Seattle City Council voted to “defund” the police, though less than the 50% they initially promised. Immediately after that Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best resigned. Carmen Best was the first Black woman Police Chief in Seattle. She actually did a pretty good job trying to navigate through the crazy, but apparently there is a limit.

    You are correct Robert. The leftists in Seattle will double down on voting for radical leftists.

  • Cotour

    IMO, the long term leftist “Progressive” plan?

    Devalue major cities in the United States, then either buy the majority of the real estate up for pennies on the dollar and / or confiscate them for non payment of taxes.

    “Equality” the Marxist way.

  • SteveS

    Only 11 State Governors are even up for election this year, and those States do NOT include Michigan, nor California, nor New York, nor Virginia, nor Illinois. I don’t know how many mayors of major cities are up for election this year: Chicago isn’t, New York isn’t, Portland is but Seattle isn’t, Austin is but Houston isn’t…. A goodly number of State Legislatures are also elected in off-years. If there is any effect to realize from our current political mess of riots and mayhem and lockdowns and all, that effect will be years in developing. It isn’t going to be this election.

  • Cotour

    Ah, its going to be Kamala, well played Joe (NOT).

    https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/11/joe-biden-vp-pick-kamala-harris-393768

    All she brings is arrogance to the table.

    On a scale of 1 to 10, she’s a 2. Brings nothing IMO to the table. And this is someone who is presidential material? I think not.

    Sleep easy.

  • Milt

    Yep, The Kamal. And after Sleepy Joe leaves office after a few months because of health reasons, she will be our new president. Won’t *that* be wonderful?

    Per Robert’s original observations about our increasingly dysfunctional Democrat-run urban areas, the real puzzle is how on earth so many otherwise sane residents could possibly side with officials who essentially want to sacrifice their cities on the alter of ideology, no matter how many lives — white and black — and business — owned by whites and blacks — are destroyed in the process. And make no mistake, these “leaders” WANT to destroy their own communities so that a new, “better” society can be created from the ashes.

    Are the residents of Portland, then, mostly True-Believing ideologues who are willing to destroy their own community and its economy in the name of “social justice” and being woke? Do they have a suicide complex? Possibly, many / most of them *do,* but where does that leave the more rational people and business owners who also live there? Oh, right. They are just “casualties” in the People’s Revolution, and you have to “break eggs,” etc., to build their shining statist Utopia.

  • wayne

    “How Media Manipulates You By Distorting Facts”
    Michael Malice : The Rubin Report
    May 2020
    https://youtu.be/kk8vV_kEWUU
    28:26

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