“I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them.
Yet, we must try to honor them — not for their sake alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.
Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: the United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we — in a less final, less heroic way — be willing to give of ourselves.
It is this, beyond the controversy and the congressional debate, beyond the blizzard of budget numbers and the complexity of modern weapons systems, that motivates us in our search for security and peace. War will not come again, other young men will not have to die, if we will speak honestly of the dangers that confront us and remain strong enough to meet those dangers.
It’s not just strength or courage that we need, but understanding and a measure of wisdom as well. We must understand enough about our world to see the value of our alliances. We must be wise enough about ourselves to listen to our allies, to work with them, to build and strengthen the bonds between us…
…I can’t claim to know the words of all the national anthems in the world, but I don’t know of any other that ends with a question and a challenge as ours does: Does that flag still wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”
President Ronald Reagan
Memorial Day May 31, 1982
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreagan1982memorialdayspeech.htm
–Saul Anuzis
Click Here for Past Commentary from Saul
60 Plus Weekly Video Rewind
Rand Paul floats perjury charge for Dr. Fauci, the MSM comes to terms with a possible Wuhan Lab leak after denying it for over a year, and Chipman wants to ban the AR-15!
Links to the articles discussed in the video:
https://dailycaller.com/2021/05/26/aged-poorly-trump-critics-mocking-lab-leak-theory/
https://thefederalist.com/2021/05/26/bidens-anti-gun-atf-pick-says-he-supports-ban-on-ar-15s/
Help Us Fight Corporate Tyranny!
We have launched “the Corporate Accountability Initiative” to send a message to public companies on Wall Street. We own your stock. We fund your companies. We have the power. Stop disregarding us, stop offending us, stop screwing us over! Or we’ll pull our money from your companies!
Join the Fight! Visit https://www.60plus.org/fightwithwayne/
Memorial Day
Memorial Day is an American holiday, observed on the last Monday of May, honoring the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Memorial Day 2021 will occur on Monday, May 31.
Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971. Many Americans observe Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries or memorials, holding family gatherings and participating in parades. Unofficially, it marks the beginning of the summer season.
Outcry as Belarus diverts flight, arrests opposition figure
Exiled opposition activist Roman Protasevich detained after his flight from Greece to Lithuania was diverted to Minsk.
A founder of a messaging app channel that has been a key information conduit for opponents of Belarus’s authoritarian president has been arrested after a passenger plane on which he was travelling was “forcibly” diverted to the capital, Minsk, following an alleged bomb threat.
The presidential press service said President Alexander Lukashenko personally ordered a MiG-29 fighter jet accompany the Ryanair plane, which was en route from Athens to Vilnius – to the Minsk airport.
The Belarusian Interior Ministry said Roman Protasevich was arrested at the airport. Protasevich, 26, is a co-founder of the Telegram messaging app’s Nexta channel, which Belarus last year declared as “extremist” after it was used to help organise large protests against Lukashenko.
Protasevich, who had fled the country for Poland, faces charges that could carry a prison sentence of up to 15 years.
The diversion and Protasevich’s arrest drew immediate international condemnation, calls for the activist’s release, sanctions and an investigation by the United Nations’ civil aviation body.
Biden Unveils Budget Request For $6 Trillion In Spending, Highest Since World War II
President Joe Biden unveiled his 2022 budget request Friday, proposing a $6 trillion spending package that would bring the U.S. to its highest levels of spending since World War II.
Biden’s plan includes funding for his American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan, among other major initiatives. The plan calls for an increase in spending to $8.3 trillion by 2031, with each year adding a $1.3 trillion budget deficit. If that rate is maintained, the U.S. would surpass even its sustained spending levels of World War II by 2024.
Key aspects of the plan include increased spending for infrastructure such as roads and bridges, providing “at least” four years of free education to every American, climate change initiatives, programs aimed at ending gun violence and dozens of other initiatives.
Biden Had It Right on Crime—in 1993. He’s in Trouble Now.
If violent crime rates keep rising like they have over the last year, it will reaffirm long-held stereotypes about bleeding-heart liberalism.
On the mournful anniversary of the blatant murder of George Floyd, an inconvenient truth confronts American politics: Violent crime has shot up dramatically in cities over the past year, amid the pandemic, yes, but also amid a wave of policing protests and radical reforms.
Luckily, after a year where the number of shooting victims in New York City doubled, there is a leader who supports commonsense criminal justice reform and yet has a record of speaking plainly about “predators on our streets” and the need to remove them while also dealing with root causes: “It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re the victims of society. The end result is they’re about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe, shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons.”
Or, rather, there was a leader who knew how to talk about getting violent crime under control. To confront what threatens to be an emerging crime epidemic, the kinder, gentler Joe Biden of 2021 might want to recall and channel some of the Joe Biden of 1993, who understood the personal real-world danger of out-of-control crime and the political danger of being tagged as a “soft-on-crime” Democrat.
First, though, some context is in order. Between the early 1960s and the 1980s, the crime rate doubled, peaking around 1991. It continued to fall for two decades after the passage of the 1994 crime bill, sometimes called the Biden bill, before the violent crime rate began slowly rising around 2015—mostly in a few big cities.
DHS chief Mayorkas should reread George Orwell’s novel
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas is reportedly considering the development of tools that would help America’s children discern truth from lies and know when they are being fed “disinformation.”
The Washington Times, which first reported the story, says a department spokesperson declined to give details, but that more information would be revealed “in the coming weeks.”
Mr. Mayorkas might want to start by fact-checking his recent claim that the U.S. southern border is “closed.” He made the statement when news pictures showed waves of people crossing the border. Should kids believe him, or their “lying eyes”?
Should anyone, regardless of political party or persuasion, be comfortable with government telling especially children what they can believe and whom they can trust? This is what totalitarian states do. It’s called propaganda.
We are already inundated with political correctness, cancel culture and woke-ism. TV networks spend more time delivering opinion and slanting stories to particular points of view than what once resembled — if not objective journalism — then at least fairness.
Senate Passes Republican-Led Bill Forcing Biden To Declassify Intel On Link Between Wuhan Lab, Pandemic
The U.S. Senate passed a bill this week forcing President Joe Biden to declassify intel on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
The bill’s passage comes after a report emerged Tuesday that the Biden administration had shut down a Trump-era investigation into whether the pandemic originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Following backlash over the report, Biden released a statement saying he was increasing pressure on the Intelligence Community to find the origins of the pandemic.
The Senate unanimously passed a bill on Wednesday from Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Mike Braun (R-IN), which was introduced in April, that forces the Biden administration to declassify intelligence related to any potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the origins of the pandemic.
A new report published this week by The Wall Street Journal stated that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — China’s only Biosafety level-4 laboratory — were hospitalized in November 2019 with symptoms consistent with COVID-19.
U.S. R&D Spending Continues to Climb (Somebody Should Tell Congress)
As I noted on Wednesday, the Senate is now considering “The United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021” (formerly known as the “Endless Frontier Act”), which is primarily* intended to boost federal funding for research and development in the United States by tens of billions of dollars. If you were to listen to the bill’s advocates, you’d think that the United States was suffering from a dramatic decline in R&D spending over the last several decades, and that other countries — particularly China — had raced ahead. New data from the U.S. and National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) and the OECD, however, paint a different picture.
First, the NCSES’ latest report on R&D expenditures shows that total U.S. spending reached an all‐time high in 2019, both in total, inflation‐adjusted dollars ($584.4 billion) and as a share of GDP (3.06%):
DNC, RNC already breaking fundraising records ahead of 2022
The two largest political party committees are stockpiling record amounts of cash ahead of the 2022 midterms and laying the groundwork for an expensive 2024 clash.
The Democratic National Committee raised $63.7 million through the first four months of 2021, more than twice as much as it raised over the same period after the 2016 election. The DNC had $56.3 million in the bank through April, six times its 2017 total. The Republican National Committee raised $57.6 million through April and ended the month with a whopping $90.5 million in the bank. The RNC reported having twice as much cash on hand as it did during the same point in Donald Trump’s first year in the White House.
That’s according to Federal Election Filings released last week. The influx of donations to the top political parties is another data point indicating that the next two elections could be even more expensive than the last two record-breaking contests. Congressional candidates are also setting new fundraising benchmarks to start the 2022 cycle.
