Drew Nickell is back on the Radio Thursday, 31 May 2018 at 1:00 PM, EDT

I’ll be sitting in  on the Nora Firestone Show, where I will be discussing President Trump and what makes him so very different from his predecessors, his controversial decision to relocate the American Embassy to Jerusalem, multi-departmental corruption within the United States government and its assault on the Bill of Rights, as well as the political polarization that has gripped our nation.

This show will also appear as a “Facebook live” broadcast, so I hope you will join me there.

If you live outside Hampton Roads, and would like to tune in on the internet, here is a link to that live broadcast :

http://lightningstream.surfernetwork.com/Media/player/view/WKQA-AM_gsl.asp?StreamingServerName=nick11&OnDemandServerName=nick10&targetWidth=1000&targetHeight=800&call=WKQA-AM&od=0

Here is a link to the replay of this broadcast:

https://www.facebook.com/drew.nickell.7/videos/10209488661893461/

-Drew Nickell

Memorial Day- Remembering What It Is and What It Is Not

True or False:

Memorial Day is a day we set aside to honor all of those who serve our nation in the Armed Forces of the United States.

If you answered “true,” you are not correct.

True or False:

Memorial Day is a day we set aside to honor all of those, living or dead, who have served our nation in the Armed Forces of the United States.

If you answered “true,” you are not correct.

True or False:

Memorial Day is a day we set aside to honor those who have served our nation in the Armed Forces of the United States, but who are no longer with us.

If you answered “true,” you are still not correct.

True or False:

Memorial Day is a day we set aside to honor those who died while serving in the Armed Forces of the United States.

If you answered “true,” you are still not quite correct.

True or False:

Memorial Day is a day we set aside to honor those who lost their lives in battle while serving in the Armed Forces of the United States.

If you answered “true,” then you are quite correct…

Unlike Armed Forces Day which honors those who serve and have served our nation in the Armed Forces, and unlike Veterans Day which honors those who have served in the Armed Forces of our nation in times of war, Memorial Day carries a special place in the heart of this nation because it honors those who gave their lives in combat while our nation was at war. For those who made the supreme sacrifice- giving their very lives so that this nation might live and so that the world might someday be free, we set aside this day each year to remember those whose lives were cut short because they fell in battle when we were at war.

By all means we should show our respect for those who serve in our Armed Forces, and it is well we honor those who once served in the Armed Forces, whether in wartime or not, because each of these individuals heard the call of their country to defend us in times of war and in times of peace. It is altogether fitting that we do so.

With the deepest of respect to all of those men and women who have thus served, it is also incumbent upon each of us to remember the thousands of lives that were sacrificed while serving this nation in times of war because without this ultimate sacrifice, we might not be enjoying the blessings of liberty that we enjoy today as citizens of a free and independent United States of America.

General John J. “Blackjack” Pershing, the Supreme Allied Commander of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, perhaps said it best when he said,

“Time will not dim the glory of their deeds.”

This quote was once referenced on the main entrance at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, and the lettering was subsequently relocated on a war memorial just outside Oriole Park at Camden Yards, in that same city. Nevertheless, the sentiment rings true, despite the demolition of the stadium where the lettering once reminded us of this sacrifice, and whether or not the lettering even remains, for as long as we remember the true meaning of Memorial Day.

So, whether we rush to take advantage of Memorial Day sales, or choose to spend the day sunning on the beautiful beaches of our country, or enjoy watching Memorial Day parades or even spending time with our friends at our backyard bar-b-ques, let us each resolve to remember all of those men and women who died so that we might live.

Happy Memorial Day, America.

 

-Drew Nickell, 25 May 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2

Ahhh…to be a Democrat in 2018…

Ahhh, to be a Democrat in 2018…it must boggle the mind and torture the soul…

After all, to be a Democrat in 2018, means that…

…you hope and pray that Bob Mueller will find some reason…any reason…to instigate impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump, even if that means the fabrication of evidence where a crime wasn’t committed in the first place…

…you hope and pray that, in his attempts to de-nuclearize the Korean peninsula and bring about a formal end to the Korean War after 65 uneasy years of ceasefire between North and South Korea, that President Donald Trump will fail and fail miserably…

…you hope and pray that enough illegal aliens will enter the United States to overwhelm the social safety net and instigate calls for full citizenship to be conferred upon anyone who wants it, without regards to the circumstances of how any of them got here in the first place, thus proving that President Donald Trump’s desire to build a wall along our southern border is pointless……

…you hope and pray that, somehow, someway, President Donald Trump has an illicit affair with one or more of his White House staffers/cabinet members, so that you can prove he is a misogynist womanizer like you have claimed all along…

…you hope and pray that the economy goes into the worst depression of all time, putting millions out of work, inflating the U.S. Dollar to the point of insolvency and causing mass starvation here in the United States, so you can prove that President Trump’s economic policies only benefit his rich friends…

…you hope and pray that hundreds of young African-American males will be gunned down by white police officers to bring racial unrest to an all-time high level, so you can blame President Donald Trump for his racist rhetoric…

…you hope and pray that there are hundreds more school shootings which will prompt nation-wide gun confiscations and the subsequent outlawing of the National Rifle Association…

…you hope that there is such an epidemic of teenage pregnancies, that abortion becomes a taxpayer-funded right for all, to show that President Donald Trump’s decision to curtail funding of Planned Parenthood was wrong…

…you hope and pray that World War III breaks out in the Middle East as the direct result of President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, relocate the U.S. Embassy to that city, and withdraw from the JCPOA Iran deal…

To be a Democrat in 2018 simply means that you want the United States to fail, so that it can be replaced with a European-style socialist state, whose sovereignty is turned over to an international order of bureaucrats…

…it’s not what the American people want, but who cares what they want, as long as Democrats are elected to office? Then, and only then, can you get rid of Donald Trump and resume your quest to destroy our country.

 

-Drew Nickell, 23 May 2018

 

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2

The Poisoned Fruit of Corruption within the United States Government

As it becomes ever clearer, during Barack Obama’s presidency, highly placed operatives within the United States government sought to actively usurp the 2016 Election via two critical modus operandi:

– The Department of Justice under Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch, including its Federal Bureau of Investigation under Obama’s Director James Comey, and the Department of State under Obama’s Secretaries John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, all knowingly and willingly conspired to cover up crimes committed by Secretary Clinton, with regards to her illegal use of a private server while Secretary of State, her illegal dissemination of classified documents to unauthorized personnel and her willful destruction of subpoenaed evidence relating to this and other activities under investigation by Congress. Without credible investigation of these crimes, the Justice Department refused to pursue grand jury indictments, refused to thoroughly examine the evidence related to these crimes and refused to question Mrs. Clinton adequately, prior to clearing her of further action.

– The Department of Justice under Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch, acting Attorneys General Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein, including its Federal Bureau of Investigation under Obama’s Director James Comey, the National Security Agency under Obama’s NSA Director James Clapper, the Central Intelligence Agency under Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan, and Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice, knowingly and willingly used salacious and unverified information, paid for by the Clinton Campaign, to pursue FISA warrants without proper disclosure to the courts, while Obama’s United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power and his National Security Advisor Susan Rice sought to illegally unmask U.S. citizens caught up in this surveillance, and all in an effort to thwart the campaign and sabotage the subsequent presidency of Donald Trump. In an effort to manufacture evidence and create suspicions of criminal activity on the part of Trump and his campaign, the FBI planted a spy (or spies) into the Trump campaign very early on in 2016, all at the behest of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and which ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel, one Robert Mueller. To facilitate and instigate this appointment of a special counsel,  classified information was leaked to the media by operatives of James Comey and at his own direction. Further, the Department of Treasury under Obama’s Secretaries of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and Jacob Lew, and its Internal Revenue Service under Obama’s Commissioner Doug Schulman, illegally targeted campaigns and political organizations representing conservative, libertarian and Republican interests by indefinitely tabling requests for tax exemption certification and by using its powers to otherwise harass and intimidate private citizens for their involvement in same.

Sadly, if President Trump had been defeated by Hillary Clinton, none of this subterfuge would ever be known, and the guilty would have retained and broadened their power under the most illicit of means.

For all of these many departments, bureaus and agencies, under all of these many members of the Obama’s Administration to have acted in such coordinated fashion, at the behest of Hillary Clinton and to the detriment of Donald Trump, this effort could have only been instigated and overseen by the president, himself and his chief of staff- namely Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett, respectively…

…and it is they who have left to this country the poisoned fruit of the most corrupt administration in American history.

-Drew Nickell, 21 May 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2

The Royal Fascination

Two hundred forty years ago, this fledgling nation was at war with Great Britain to sever its ties with the British Crown. Thirty-six years later, we were back at war with Great Britain, when that country’s Royal Navy impressed (meaning capture and involuntary servitude) American sailors on the high seas and threatened to take back what they had lost in the American Revolution.

Since that time, the ebbs and flows of the Anglo-American relationship have largely been amicable- especially since 1917, when the United States entered the First World War and in 1941, when we again entered the Second World War. In both instances, our one-time adversary relied upon our assistance to defeat Germany (along with Germany’s allies) and the trans-Atlantic friendship between the United Kingdom and the United States was thus sealed for many generations.

All that said, it is difficult to understand America’s fascination with Britain’s royal family. After all, it was the concept of a ruling dynasty that was and is the philosophical antithesis of what America is all about. Where Britain has always been a society based on class, the American experiment has always facilitated upward mobility regardless of one’s background and heritage- especially since the end of slavery and segregation. To suggest that a perpetual dynasty rule over a nation, decade after decade, century after century, is an anathema to Americans as well as her Western Hemisphere neighbors.

This fascination with the British royals was piqued three times in the twentieth century- in 1952 when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, in 1983 when the Prince of Wales married Lady Diana Spencer, and in 1997 when Lady Diana died from injuries sustained in a vehicular accident while travelling in a Paris tunnel. This fascination continued in this century, especially when Prince William married Catherine Middleton and when this marriage produced the “royal issue” of two boys and a girl, in 2013, 2015 and in 2018.

Tomorrow, May 19th, Prince William’s bearded younger brother, Prince Harry, will marry an American divorcee, one Meghan Markle- an action which caused his great-great uncle, Edward the VIII, to abdicate the crown in 1936 when he married another American divorcee, Willis Simpson. Adding to the palace intrigue of Harry’s nuptials is the fact that Ms. Markle is the bi-racial child of a white father and a black mother- an historic first for any member of Britain’s royal family.

Yet even the novelty of Prince Harry’s marriage to Ms. Markle doesn’t quite explain America’s ongoing fascination, and seeming obsession, with all things royal.

As an exchange student in the spring of 1980, back when the world was young no less, I found the trappings of the British monarchy to be quite curious and, to a lesser extent, somewhat comical given my own upbringing in the comparatively unceremonious and unadorned United States. I thought to myself that the richly festooned uniforms of the British military, though stylish, seemed to be akin to fancy giftwrap covering popinjay soldiers- admittedly a biased view from this naïve and unsophisticated “colonial.” In my study of British history, both here in the States and at the University of London’s Birkbeck College, I came to understand why Britain must have its monarchy, and even came to support its continuation. Yet I still could not understand why Americans could be so enthralled with something so utterly un-American as a reigning monarch and her family.

Almost forty years later, I still don’t quite “get” it.

So, in the early hours of tomorrow morning, televisions around the United States will be tuned in to the pomp and ceremony of a royal wedding. The interest in it will be keen and even, perhaps, voyeuristic for many millions in the country…

…perhaps presenting an opportunity to this skeptic to catch up on some reading, and break away from his addiction to the oh-so-contemporary phenomenon of breaking news.

 

-Drew Nickell, 18 May 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2

The Left’s Assault on the Bill of Rights

Hard though it might be for some to realize it, there is in the second decade of this century, a war on the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights. The war on the Bill of Rights is being waged by the political left, whether they are referred to as “progressives,” “liberals,” “socialists” or “Democrats.”

Take a stroll through each of the Constitution’s first ten amendments, passed in 1798, and one can easily see that these rights are under perpetual assault by those very same politicians and political activists who claim to be the voices of tolerance. In reality, however, they are anything but tolerant.

For instance, the First Amendment guarantees the freedoms of speech, religion, the press and free assembly. A visit to most institutions of higher learning in 2018 reveals the imposition of speech codes, proscription of religious activities, censure of conservative writings and the attendant restriction of conservative groups to assemble in protest. It is often stated that what begins in academia today, will be in the larger scope of society tomorrow, and this trend of intolerance against conservative expression on university campuses should sound an alarm to all of us who cherish these rights.

With regards to the Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms, it is obvious which side of the political equation seeks to either repeal the Second Amendment outright, or severely restrict this right, altogether.

The Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure has been eroding for decades, but this erosion has been most recently facilitated by activist judges who seek to legislate from the bench what they cannot get representative government to enact. One needs look no further than the early morning raid on the president’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, and the pre-dawn raid on Paul Manafort to know that a politically-activated FBI can obtain warrants from sympathetic judges to pursue political inquisitions at the behest of partisan interests. The same holds true for the Fifth Amendment rights to due process and how these rights are selectively protected for certain people, namely Hillary Clinton, and not others- essentially anyone remotely connected to Donald Trump.

Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendment rights which guarantee due process, individual protection against excessive bail, fines or cruel and unusual punishment were most notably violated when the maker of an internet video, falsely blamed for instigating the raid on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was arrested and imprisoned for more than two years without trial, all because the Obama Administration lied about the circumstances which led to the attack in an effort to cloak their own culpability during Barack Obama’s re-election campaign that year.

Ninth and Tenth Amendment rights relegated to the people, or those rights which are otherwise reserved to the several states comprising the union, have long been under siege by the creeping and steady growth of federalism- most notably in the realm of social engineering on issues of abortion, education and regulation of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. Federal guarantees of abortion rights since Roe v Wade (1973), federal control of education curriculum since the passages of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965) and the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) and the medical insurance dictates of ObamaCare (2010) have signaled the encroachment of the federal government on those respective areas that previously were reserved to the several states. It wasn’t conservatives who promoted this encroachment- it was the fruits of political activism on the left.

As the mid-term elections of 2018 approach, followed by the general election of 2020, voters should be well aware as to which national party seeks to preserve their constitutional rights and which party seeks to further erode these rights, prior to casting their ballots. They won’t be correctly informed about this comparison by a biased national mainstream media, which has effectively become a propaganda vehicle for the left, but perhaps this is all part and parcel of an agenda to wage a larger war on freedom, independence and representative government- the very antithesis of state-ism, socialism and totalitarianism which are the pursuits of “progressives,” “liberals,” “socialists” or “Democrats.”

Failure to recognize these truths imperil this nation beyond any and all else.

 

-Drew Nickell, 16 May 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2

May 14th, 2018 – a Promise Made, a Promise Kept

There are a few occasions when a symbolic move can prove to be of great substance, as well. Today, May 14th, 2018 marked such an occasion.

Seventy years to the very day after U.S. President Harry S. Truman became the first world leader to recognize the modern state of Israel, the United States Embassy was officially relocated to the Israeli capital of Jerusalem.

On December 6th of 2017, President Donald J. Trump made history when, on behalf of the United States, he formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel- a move seemingly obvious and inconsequential on its face, but in fact a very substantive and remarkable move on the part of a U.S. President.

The decision to relocate the American embassy from Tel Aviv, some forty miles away from Jerusalem, has its roots in 1995 when Congress passed legislation calling for its relocation. In subsequent order, Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama all failed to act upon this legislation because they heeded the so-called “expert” advice from State Department apparatchiks, that doing so would interfere with the peace process in the Middle East.

Twenty-two years later, their successor Donald Trump defied these “experts” and even members of his own cabinet, like former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and announced the formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and his intention to move the U.S. Embassy, accordingly. Widely criticized by those opposed to such a move, both within and outside the United States, the president ignored his naysayers, stuck to his resolve and the United States Embassy in Jerusalem was formally opened today, five months following his announcement.

While Palestinians in the Gaza strip violently protested the move, Israeli defense forces held the protesters at bay along the Israeli/Palestinian border where several Palestinians were killed and hundreds of others were wounded.

Representing the United States were U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman (appointed a year ago, tomorrow), Trump’s daughter Ivanka, her husband and senior adviser Jared Kushner, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan. Also in attendance, were several representatives of the U.S Senate and House of Representatives.

It was Kushner who delivered the keynote speech, following a live video feed from President Trump, and both reiterated the reasoning and importance of the embassy’s relocation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu followed Kushner with his own remarks, recalling his days as a young boy traversing neighborhoods nearby the site of the embassy and extolling the gratitude and appreciation of his county for what President Trump has done.

“This is a great day,” said Netanyahu, “A great day for Jerusalem. A great day for the state of Israel. A day that will be engraved in our national memory for generations.”

He went on to thank President Trump for “having the courage to keep his promise” to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, saying that “Jerusalem is the eternal, undivided capital of Israel.” Netanyahu closed his speech saying, “God bless the United States, God bless Jerusalem, and God bless the state of Israel.”

Notably absent from the proceedings were representatives of the United Kingdom, France and Germany, countries whose leaders have opposed the recognition of Jerusalem and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to that ancient city.

While relocating an embassy just forty miles may not seem to be such a big deal, in the annals of world history, it is a very big deal and one of major consequence in a world grown weary of tensions in the Middle East. Having that particular issue- the recognition of Jerusalem and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy, effectively takes that issue off of the table in any negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It is hoped that the removal of this key sticking point will facilitate future peace negotiations between the two parties, provided that Palestinians come to recognize Israel’s right to exist- the other major hurdle preventing a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.

Unlike his predecessors, President Trump has shown the determination to keep his oft-stated 2016 campaign promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Israel’s capital, in the face of widespread and vehement opposition. This, along with last week’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), fulfilling another campaign promise and also in the face of widespread opposition, sends a message to the world that Trump is a man of his word…something that will be in his favor when he sits down with the Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un next month in Singapore.

If Trump is able to achieve what was once thought to be impossible- bringing a formal end to the Korean War and verifiably de-nuclearizing the Korean peninsula, he will go down in history as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents in the area of international relations…

…but don’t tell that to the mainstream media, the Democrats and the anti-Trump/NeverTrump Republicans who are fixated on his impeachment. They have their heads mired in a porn star and ridiculous allegations of Russian collusion.

Once again…advantage Trump.

-Drew Nickell, 14 May 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2