The enabling of tyrants

You’ve seen it all over the country. Governors shut down businesses and force their citizens to shelter at home while they’re out maskless at fine restaurants or wine bars. It’s the ultimate in do as I say, not as I do. So, why aren’t the citizens of these states as outraged as they should be? Because the federal government keeps bailing out tyrants.

We’re staring down the barrel of a $28 trillion debt. I don’t care what you think of this COVID crisis and who should pay, that is totally unsustainable. Everybody looks to Washington for a solution when Washington isn’t the problem. At least not this time.

Yes, at the beginning of this pandemic you had the federal government grounding airlines and urging states to shutter businesses. The feds paid for it with stimulus checks and oversized unemployment benefits. I said from Day One we were giving people an incentive not to work, but when has Congress ever listened to common sense?

Now Congress is doing it again, only this time it’s not the federal government’s fault. It’s the fault of cities and states who haven’t figured out that what they’ve been doing just isn’t working.

I remember when Governor Cuomo quipped that 90 percent of the people who were showing up at the ER with COVID were people who were sheltering at home. What did he do? He doubled down on sheltering at home. The problem was people weren’t going outside and were becoming vitamin D deficient. Studies have shown that 80 percent of the people hospitalized with COVID are vitamin D deficient. Have you heard Drs. Fauci or Birx urge you to get your vitamin D level checked? No. They just continue to scream at you to wear a mask.

No matter what the so-called experts tell you, masks simply don’t work. They actually give you a false sense of security. People believe they're bullet-proof from COVID if they just wear a mask, so they get too close to people with COVID for too long and they come down with it themselves.

Understand one thing. There are only two things that will protect you from COVID: time and distance. If you stay away from people and limit the time you are in contact with people to five minutes or less you greatly reduce your risk of contracting this virus.

But local and state governments, much like Cuomo back in June, still don’t get it. They close or greatly curtail restaurants. In Nashville there are over 5,000 restaurants. There has not been a single COVID outbreak at any of them. Isn’t that amazing? Don’t trust me. Check with the Metro Health Department. They release, periodically, the places where COVID is spreading. Not one restaurant is listed. There are several bars. That makes sense. You’re closer than six feet for more than 15 minutes. Where are you ever closer than six feet for over 15 minutes at a restaurant, except with the people you came with? Exactly. It’s just common sense.

In order to get control of this latest wave, cities and states are doing the same insane things they were doing before. And they’re bankrupting their citizens. If they’re too stupid to figure it out that’s between them and their own citizens. The rest of us shouldn’t pay for the continued stupidity.

You don’t have to close anything. You don’t have to put people out of work. Just keep your distance and watch your time spent around anyone. Imagine how many lives and how much money could’ve been saved if we just used some common sense.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.

The vax facts

The vaccine for COVID rolled out way ahead of schedule. The Trump Administration is calling it a modern miracle, but it is much more than that. This vaccine is a testament to President Trump’s ability as a businessman to get things done. This is one of the reasons he was elected in the first place. If anyone else had been elected instead, say Hillary Clinton, we would still be wandering around in a daze with draconian lockdowns and probably millions dead. There’s no way Hillary would’ve shut down travel from China, which means the death toll would probably be closer to the original estimates of 2-2.5 million.

Does Trump get credit? Not hardly. I will say that Jake Tapper threw him a bone on CNN, but that was an anomaly. Most news outlets ignore his gargantuan contribution to mankind. Instead, people like Andrew Cuomo of New York cast doubt on the safety of the vaccine. Not because of science, but because of Trump.

But the vaccine isn’t for everyone. The British have already warned that if you’re prone to allergic reactions you should stay away from it. The people who instinctively believe that the government is the solution to everything are already talking vaccination mandates. This should be a personal choice. We’ve heard for decades that it’s your body, your choice when it comes to abortion. Not so when it comes to a vaccine. Alan Dershowitz went so far as to say that you don’t have a right to infect someone else with COVID. Let’s use some logic and common sense. If I decide not to get vaccinated, I’m not putting anyone else’s life in danger except perhaps people who have made the same decision. With this thing being 95 percent effective, there’s really no way I’m going to infect someone who’s had the shot. That’s if I even get the virus.

I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I’m just using common sense. What are my odds of getting COVID? They’re pretty low. What are my odds of dying from COVID if I do get it? Probably way less than one percent. I’m doing what everyone should do and that’s my own personal health risk assessment. If you have underlying health issues you probably need to get the vaccine. If you’re not at high risk of dying from COVID then you’re probably safer not getting it. That evokes shrieks of horror from many, but it’s true. I’m weighing the known versus the unknown. 

People like Dr. Anthony Fauci are talking about developing vaccinations for children. There is no way a child should be getting this vaccination. They’re at very low risk of getting the virus, and they have practically no chance of dying from it. The only children who should ever consider this vaccine are those with underlying health issues that put them at risk of dying from COVID.

Fauci’s also saying we’re going to have to wear the masks through all of next year. Why? Once this vaccine is distributed to those most at risk the death toll will drop to near zero. Once that happens, this thing is over, for all intents and purposes. Will people still get it? Sure, but they won’t be dying from it, and that’s really all that matters.

People get the cold and flu every cold and flu season. We don’t shut down the country for it, although maybe now we do. Maybe we’ve reached the new normal where the government tells you every move to make. Not me. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going back to America.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.

Why election fraud matters

It can be damaging to your reputation these days to even consider that there was election fraud in the November 3 election. News networks cast you as a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist. So, it’s with that risk in mind that I inform you, without reservation, that there definitely was voter fraud in this most recent election. The only thing left to determine is if it was enough to overturn the official results. It appears that it is.

Consider Georgia, where everyone from the governor on down insists that they counted every vote three times. That sounds great, unless you consider that over 10,000 of those votes were cast by dead people. According to President Trump’s legal team, over 66,000 were cast by voters who were under the age of 18 on Election Day, the legal voting age. That’s not counting all the felons and out-of-state voters, which number in the tens of thousands. The officials in Georgia don’t seem the least bit interested in exploring Team Trump’s contention that illegal votes were cast. They just keep repeating that they counted every vote—thrice. Recounting a flawed vote count will only give you the same flawed result.

Then there’s Pennsylvania. A state law—Act 77—did away with the need for listing an excuse to receive an absentee ballot. The only problem is the Pennsylvania state constitution specifically lays out the excuses one must make to vote absentee. A law cannot circumvent the state constitution. Only a constitutional amendment can do that. Didn’t seem to matter to the U.S. Supreme Court. They refused to hear the lawsuit. Apparently they were swayed by state officials who argued throwing out illegal ballots would “sow chaos” across the country. The court’s duty is not to weigh the threat of chaos. It’s to follow the constitution. They failed.

Several other states, including Michigan and Wisconsin have similar problems. So much so that the state of Texas took the extraordinary step of suing four states because changes they made in how ballots are cast. This whole mess needs to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. The question is whether they’ll have the courage to take it on. SCOTUS involving itself in a presidential election is not without precedent. They did so in Gore v. Bush in 2000. They essentially told the Florida state supreme court that they couldn’t allow Democrat counties to keep counting ballots until Gore won. For some reason they’re hesitant to involve themselves in this one.

Is the Swamp so deep in DC that justice is no longer attainable? It appears so. Again, I have no idea if there’s enough voter fraud to overturn the official results. Neither does anyone else. That’s why our system should be diligently trying to get at the truth. It doesn’t appear that it is. It appears that the establishment is protecting the establishment.

Can you imagine the outrage if 66,000 underage votes were cast in Georgia and the state went for Trump? Would there be calls from the mainstream media to investigate? You bet. It shouldn’t matter who benefited from voter fraud. The fact that it exists should trouble us all, no matter your party affiliation. This goes to the very foundation of our republic. And we’re a republic, by the way, and not a democracy. Democracy is essentially mob rule, and our founding fathers were more afraid of that than any other form of government. They knew that mob rule would cater to the whims of violent mobs.

I say we’re not a democracy. Maybe we’re closer than I thought.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.

Diversity means nothing without excellence

America was built on exceptionalism. Many believe diversity is our primary asset. It’s not. Diversity’s great, but it’s only great when it happens organically. Forcing diversity never leads to greatness. Conversely, neither does discrimination. Both short-circuit the free market. Imagine how much faster this country would’ve advanced had it not been for discrimination. Countless black Americans were held back and held down because of prejudice. There’s no telling what we would’ve accomplished as a nation had that not been the case.

So, it was with much concern that I read that the Nasdaq, the second-largest U.S. stock exchange, filed a proposal with the SEC to mandate corporations have two ‘diverse directors’ on their boards. They want to require one who ‘identifies’ as a woman, and one who represents the GBLT community. What does this have to do with excellence? Nothing.

Nasdaq says three-quarters of the companies on its exchange right now would fall short. That means a massive makeover of boards of directors across the country if this thing goes through. And for what purpose? To allow some guy who wears a dress to be on the board? What does that have to do with anything?

We can expect much more of this in a Biden administration. I’m not saying this current play by Nasdaq is Joe’s fault. What I’m saying is this is the culture that’s been created by the left and Biden is more than happy to play into it.

Corporate America is obsessed with diversity. Again, I think diversity is great, but it’s secondary to excellence. If your workforce is primarily black or Hispanic or gay and these are the most qualified people out there then the system is working. There’s no doubt that, for many years, we had white folks in positions simply because they were white. We can all agree that was wrong. Then why would we now be doing the exact same thing, just with a different group of people? If discrimination is wrong, it’s wrong. It doesn’t matter who’s doing the discriminating, nor does it matter who’s being discriminated against. I’ve often said you don’t right the wrongs of the past by wronging the people of the present.

Let’s examine this policy the Nasdaq wants to force on corporate America. If you have two people on each board—one who identifies as a woman and one who’s gay or lesbian or transgender—then that means two people who are qualified might not be on the board. That’s not to say that a woman or a gay person or a lesbian or a crossdresser isn’t qualified. It’s only to say that being a woman or a gay person or a lesbian or a crossdresser isn’t in and of itself a qualification.

I wonder how many people who own stock in these companies give a rat’s rump about a board member’s gender or sexual preference. Not many. You would think we would evolve as a society to a point where none of that matters. Instead we’ve devolved to a point where that’s all that matters. We have now put excellence in the back seat. Being the best no longer means anything. It’s all about being diverse.

Vanderbilt’s football team fielded the first female player at a Power Five conference. Sarah Fuller kicked the ball just once, and for only 30 yards. For that she was named the SEC co-special teams player of the week. What an insult to Sarah. They may as well have just patted her on the head. Diversity at the expense of excellence is nothing to celebrate.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.

Another COVID freak-out

I detect a pattern. Hysteria poses as science in order to exert control. It’s happened over and over again in this country, and many of the same people still fall for it. Are you deliberately misleading people when you spout off about how humans are destroying the planet with CO2? Most are not. Most have just fallen for the line that there’s a ‘scientific consensus.’ Of course, there is no such thing. Even if there were, consensus doesn’t equal science. Ask for people who believe in manmade global warming to provide proof and they can’t. They just fall back on the line of ‘scientific consensus.’

We saw the same thing with the ozone scare several decades ago. The world came together to sign the Montreal Protocol in 1987 to ban CFCs. However, in 1991, long before most countries phased in their bans, the thinning of the ozone miraculously stopped. We now know that things like volcanos are far more responsible than humans for any hole in the ozone. In fact, CFC gases are four times heavier than air, so it’s unlikely that anything humans have emitted from their air conditioners ever made it the nine to eighteen miles to the ozone layer. But we certainly freaked out.

We’re seeing the same thing with face masks. Masks are the new global warming. I remember when health officials told us under no circumstances were we to wear a mask. Mask Nazis were caught on camera screaming at mask-wearers in grocery stores. How quickly times changed. Suddenly the mask Nazis were screaming at people for not wearing masks.

Recently, a man claiming to have COVID spit at two ladies hiking outdoors in the mountains because they weren’t wearing masks. I know. It’s getting crazy. Do masks protect you from COVID? There’s no evidence of that. Do they keep you from spreading it if you have it? Little evidence of that either. A new Danish study showed that people wearing masks contracted COVID at a rate of about 2 percent. People without masks contracted COVID at a rate of about 2 percent.

We’ve seen COVID cases surging across the country in the expected second wave. We knew it was coming because we could see what was happening in Europe. The interesting thing is the surge is happening everywhere, regardless of mask mandates. Proponents of masks will pick and choose data to show mask-mandated areas are dealing with the second wave better, but that data changes daily, and it’s easy to freeze-frame your window of choice to make your case.

The state of Tennessee is buying ad time to run a PSA urging people to wear a mask. The ad features an elderly farmer who talks about never missing a harvest and never missing a Sunday church service. He also has high blood pressure and diabetes. He says he chooses to live his life, and that’s why he wears a mask. A more irresponsible public health message in the COVID era could not have been conceived. We all know that the people who are dying are the elderly and those with underlying health issues. This man checks all the boxes, yet he’s encouraging people like himself to continue to live their lives, but just wear a mask. Evidence shows a mask will do nothing to protect him from COVID.

A recent CDC study found 85 percent of people with COVID were wearing masks. Use your common sense. If you’re at risk of dying from COVID, stay away from others until this thing is gone. That’s the only thing that will protect you.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.

Beware the zealots

 

Zealotry is tearing this country apart. Extremists on both the right and the left make it nearly impossible for reasonable people to be heard. I’ve taken a lot of heat from my radio listeners for demanding proof that the election was stolen. It’s easy just to chant “Stop the Steal,” but it’s another thing altogether to prove it. There are too many who don’t want to wait for proof. They’ve already jumped to the conclusion that the election was stolen.

There are also extremists on the other side, some even reside at Fox News, who believe it’s necessary to qualify any allegation of voter fraud with the disclaimer “unfounded.” Eric Shawn at Fox News is the worst. When Christine Blasey Ford accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her, did Shawn and others qualify her accusation as “unfounded?”

We don’t yet know what transpired in the recent 2020 election. Social media censoring tweets and posts and news reporters discounting anyone who questions the results does not illuminate the issue. Nor does assuming the election was stolen without any hard proof.

Zealots illuminate the edges of insanity. In a way they do the rest of us a service by clearly showing where the side of the cliff is. That doesn’t mean the truth lives in the mushy middle. It means that reasonable people can stand just to the right or left of center and disagree, but disagree reasonably.

Most of the zealotry we’ve witnessed lately in this country comes from the left. Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other radical groups seek to sow disunity while simultaneously calling for unity. Unity to them means you drop any opposition to them and acquiesce. 

Now the shoe is on the other foot. The aggrieved are now the 73 million people who voted for Donald Trump, and they’re expected to go quietly into the night. The Trump voters have reason to be angry. Make no mistake, there was voter fraud in the 2020 election. We have multiple instances of dead people voting. We have some counties where over 100 percent of the registered Democrats voted. There was fraud. The question is if there was enough voter fraud to overturn the results of the election. That remains to be seen.

Of Trump’s legal team, Sidney Powell has made the most compelling case. She has a sworn affidavit from someone who worked for the software company that supplies the software to the Dominion voting machines used in many states. This whistleblower says the developers built in a back door to allow tampering. If true, that’s a very serious accusation, but it’s going to take more than just that to prove voter fraud. If a back door was built in, you have to prove that someone used it. And you have to prove that they used it widely enough to change the results of the election. That’s a tall order. It doesn't help her case that the Trump legal team has now distanced itself from her. She either has the proof or she doesn't. Some aren't waiting around to see.

A woman called into my radio show suggesting it was time for “patriots” to do what the left has been doing and burn the country down. What the extremists on the left have been trying to do is destroy the country. Patriots—real patriots—should be trying to preserve it. You don’t preserve a nation by burning it down. Yes, I’m well aware of Thomas Jefferson’s quote that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Jefferson also meant that as a last resort.

This election process is not yet over. Lawsuits and recounts are as much of the process as the actual voting. If your side feels as if the election were not fair, they have the right to bring their grievances to election officials, and, if necessary, take their case to the courts. The highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, should now be beyond question to conservatives. With Amy Coney Barrett on the bench, the constitutionalists should expect a reasoned opinion from six of the justices. Since John Roberts has been questionable in recent decisions, they should at least expect five voices of reason. That’s a majority. If President Trump’s case reaches the Supreme Court, which it’s likely to do, and at least five justices don’t see enough evidence of voter fraud to overturn the results of the election then it’s over. There should be no blood in the streets. This is how our system works. If you truly believe that conservatives such as Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are in league with the left to steal the election then you are the textbook definition of a zealot.

It’s time to end zealotry and let the process play out. At the end of the process we’ll have the next president of the United States, and the republic will survive.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.

Voter fraud is real, and it should be investigated

The outcome of the 2020 election may still be in doubt—despite what the mainstream media tell you—but something that is no longer in doubt is that voter fraud is real. This narrative by the Democrats that voter fraud is a myth is, itself, a myth. We’ve always known it. Now we’re seeing it firsthand across the country.

The Heritage Foundation keeps a database of voter fraud cases from every state. All one has to do is click on a state and see the documented, litigated, prosecuted cases of voter fraud. Everybody from “Wormy” Hodge buying votes in Tennessee (yeah, that’s what he actually calls himself) to Harry Sandoe Maxwell in Pennsylvania. Maxwell was enlisting people to sign absentee ballots on behalf of dead people. Wormy was a deputy who was buying votes in the sheriff’s race. His man won, but was subsequently removed from office. Wormy got probation and community service. Maxwell got probation and a $500 fine. 

And that’s the problem. Even when people get caught they very rarely suffer the consequences. In other words, it’s worth the risk.

Attorney General Bill Barr instructed his department to investigate voter fraud in the 2020 elections “if there are clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.” Democrats, of course, flipped out, as if Barr were intervening on behalf of President Trump. Richard Pilger, DOJ’s head of Election Crimes Branch, resigned in protest. It’s interesting to note that Pilger was neck-deep in the IRS scandal. Investigations revealed that he had conspired with Lois Lerner at the IRS to target Tea Party organizations. How in the world this guy was still at DOJ is a mystery, but his departure may actually open up an avenue for genuine investigations into voter fraud. And remember, Barr says they’re investigating only accusations that may affect the outcome of the election. Any other cases of voter fraud will be deferred until after this election is settled and certified.

So far the Republicans have collected 131 affidavits representing over 2,800 incidents of voter fraud. The left-wing media shout at them for proof, but they refuse to interview even one person who has filed an affidavit of fraud. James O’Keefe at Project Veritas has released at least two videos from postal workers who say their superiors were instructing their employees to back-date mail-in ballots that came in late to the day of the election.

Is all this enough to change the results of the election? Who knows? That’s why we need a full-scale investigation. The fact that the Democrats don’t want to see should tell you everything. Voter fraud is real, and voter fraud is real because it’s easy and basically without risk.

We have to make it where it’s not worth the risk. We need a federal law for federal elections. If the people in Monroe County, Tennessee want to let a guy off with a slap on the wrist for fixing a sheriff’s race then fine, but when it comes to elections that affect the rest of us there should be serious consequences. Congress should impose a minimum mandatory sentence of one year in jail for blatant voter fraud. I’m not talking about voting in the wrong district. I’m talking about willfully trying to change the outcome of a race. Then and only then will we put an end to voter fraud. The penalty has to make it not worth the risk. Maybe then we can restore the American people’s faith in our elections. 

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.

CDC buries data on masks

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to believe anything that comes from our health experts these days. The CDC released a study on September 11 that sought to discourage people from dining out. However, when you actually dig into the numbers of the study you find that fewer than half of the infected group they studied had actually done so. The control group, a similarly sized group who had visited a healthcare facility but who did not test positive for COVID, had a little less interaction with a restaurant. Therefore the study concluded that restaurants posed a higher risk. That may actually be true. It’s difficult to determine from one study.

The glaring omission from the study had to do with face masks. The vast majority of both groups (85 percent of the infected group and 89 percent of the control group) wore masks either often or always. Only about 3 percent from each group never wore a mask. Yet in one

group you had infections and in the other you had none. That tells me much more about masks than it does about restaurants. The common denominator in both groups was a mask, which appeared to make absolutely no difference. About the same percentage of people in each group wore masks. One group had zero infections, the other had 100 percent infections.

It took a month for someone to actually notice this data inside the study. Who really reads the full study anyway? We rely on our news media to sift through these studies and tell us what’s in them. They failed us for a full month. Thank God some conservatives actually bothered to read the study or we might never have known.

People ask me why I’m so against masks. I’m not. I’m against bovine scatology. When there’s good science to back something up I’m all in. I wear my seatbelt religiously because the stats show that I’m safer wearing one than not. We have no such stats for masks. And it’s not because the coronavirus is so new. There have been mask studies for years, and they all show pretty much the same. Face masks are virtually ineffective in stopping any kind of virus. Even the CDC and our so-called health experts like Drs. Fauci and Birx were telling us early on not to wear face masks, to save them for the health professionals. They told us then that masks were ineffective in stopping the spread of COVID, which led me to wonder why we were saving them for the health professionals.

Then they did a 180, and suddenly the mask Nazis who were screaming at you at the grocery store for wearing a mask and putting healthcare workers at risk were screaming at you for not wearing a mask.

One of my sons asked me why it was conservatives were less likely to wear a mask. There are a couple of reasons. Conservatives tend to not like being told what to do. The other reason is conservatives tend to be independent thinkers. If you’re going to require them to do something you damn well better have a good reason. There just isn’t any scientific evidence to suggest wearing a mask stops the spread of COVID. In fact, there are dozens of graphs out there showing the COVID curve in various cities and countries. No matter at what stage the mask mandate came in, the curve spiked then ramped down the other side. There’s not an instance I’ve seen where masks made any difference.

I’m more than willing to follow the science. There just isn’t any on masks.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.

Trump ain't the problem

I got a call from a distressed listener. His concern was quite similar to the concerns of many others from whom I’ve heard over the last couple of years. The country is more divided than he’s ever seen it, he said. The insinuation was this was Trump’s fault. Although it coincides with Donald Trump’s election to the presidency it is not Trump’s fault.

As I explained to this distressed listener, what we’re seeing across the country by way of riots is a manifestation of an utter panic that has set in on the far left. For decades they had Republicans who would go along to get along. Illegal immigration was only a matter of how much of it we tolerated, not a

complete war on it. Illegal immigration is one of the means by which the left plans to totally transform (ie: destroy) the United States. Donald Trump vowed to stop it. Even though his plan has endured many roadblocks, we are now steadily building a wall across the porous sections of our Southern border, and stiffer enforcement of existing laws is discouraging the waves of illegals that we saw under Obama.

One of the overlooked aspects of Trump’s presidency is his handling of China. I don’t mean that it’s totally overlooked by the media. It’s being overlooked as a great source of disdain and consternation by the socialist/Marxist left in this country. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Marxists have looked to China as one of the world’s last remaining utopias. These people truly want to turn the United States into China. Those groups would include Black Lives Matter, which is headed up by avowed communists who brag they are “trained Marxists,” and Antifa, which sells itself as an anti-fascist group, when in fact they are Marxists. Make no mistake that Marxism would be just as disastrous for this country as fascism. 

The only problem with Antifa is they can’t really find any Nazis to fight. Sure, there are small groups of neo-Nazis scattered here and there, but they don’t even remotely pose a threat to our liberty and safety. Antifa does. They are the ones relentlessly burning cities that don’t have the backbone to confront them.

But who is really dividing the country? It’s liberals. They constantly pit rich against poor, gay against straight, white against black. It’s been their tactic for decades. Divide and conquer. They are masters at creating imaginary bogeymen. The mean old conservatives are going to take away your health care. The mean old conservatives are going to take away your abortion. The men old conservatives are going to take away (fill in the blank). It’s the Democrats and the liberals who are divisive. They attack Trump at every turn. His only sin (if you can even call it that) is returning fire ten-fold. The lesson is if you don’t want to be obliterated by Trump, don’t attack him first.

I understand people who are concerned about the turmoil in the country, but understand where this comes from. The left is in an all-out meltdown because Trump is actually taking action against them where other Republican presidents were afraid to. China is a classic example. What Trump has done with China needed to happen at least 20 years ago. No president—Republican or Democrat—was willing to take them on. As I’ve written before here in this space, I think Trump’s longterm goal is to bring the CCP to its knees as Reagan did with the Soviets.

Don’t misinterpret unrest for injustice. This was a long time coming.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.

Media ignore the true Russia collusion story

The left-wing media are frantically trying to paw dirt on top the story that Hillary Clinton was the one who orchestrated the Trump-Russia collusion hoax to deflect attention from her illegal e-mail server. John Ratcliffe, the Director of National Intelligence, declassified information regarding the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation at the request of Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The newly declassified information points to a briefing by CIA Director Brennan for President Obama on information they had unearthed that Hillary was the source of the rumor that Trump was colluding with the Russians.

The left-wing media—those that bothered to report the story—tried to discredit it by saying that both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee had found no evidence that the story was true. They found no evidence to support it because they

apparently didn’t look. Let’s review what we do know.

Hillary Clinton paid for the now-debunked Steele dossier through her law firm, Perkins, Coie. Ironically, this was the same law firm for the Democrat Party. She labeled the payment to Perkins Coie as “legal services.” Sounds like money laundering to me. That alone should be worth an investigation, but for some reason too many politicians in Washington are afraid to investigate the Clintons. I wonder why.

Here’s what we definitively know. We know that the whole Trump-Russian collusion story was a hoax. There’s not one bit of evidence that it was true. So, if we know it wasn’t true then someone must’ve started the rumor. If we were to put together a list of suspects, who would be at the top of the list? That’s right, Hillary Clinton. She had the motive. She had the means. And we already know she paid for a bogus dossier that said what? That Trump colluded with the Russians. Hello! So, if you’re the intelligence community and you come across some information that tells you Hillary might have been behind the scheme, don’t you think you should investigate? 

Someone in the intelligence community did. According to the declassified info from the DNI, someone in the intelligence community sent the info to then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok. Apparently they ignored it. No, they did more than ignore it. They went after Trump instead.

There was never any serious evidence that Trump colluded with Russia. That’s obvious because there couldn’t be any serious evidence for something that simply wasn’t true. Yet Comey and Strzok continued to go after Trump. These were either two of the most inept cops to ever work for the FBI or two of the most corrupt. I’ll let you be the judge.

The question now is will anything come of the declassified information? Not likely. Comey was either unwilling or too scared to charge Hillary with obviously breaking the law in the e-mail server scandal. We know Peter Strzok’s problem. He had a serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

The scariest part is the incurious media. You know what I always say. Media bias isn’t necessarily what they tell you, it’s what they don’t. Not telling you that Hillary was Suspect #1 the entire time in this whole charade is frightening. I’ve come to not believe anything I hear from the left-wing media unless I can independently confirm it. That’s probably a healthy way to operate. Unfortunately most people don’t have the time or inclination to confirm everything they read, hear, or see. And the mainstream media are counting on your ignorance. Please don’t give them the satisfaction.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.

The Ever-changing Democrat Message

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the Democrats keep changing their message. Joe Biden’s primary campaign theme was COVID. He was trying to portray the president as inept and uncaring. Two things happened to that message. First, the virus is largely in our rearview mirror. Yes, there are certain cities that continue to want to politicize it, but the people are finally starting the realize the truth. It’s best summarized in a Swiss analysis of the virus. They found that if you’re of school age or working age you have a better chance of dying on the way to work or school than you do from coronavirus.

That’s not to say that COVID isn’t deadly. It most certainly is. However it’s deadly if you’re in the high-risk groups. That would be the elderly and those with serious underlying health issues.

The other thing that happened to Biden’s COVID message was the Republican convention. For weeks the left-wing media had been telling their audiences the riots across America were actually peaceful. The media had to cover the RNC, and the speakers at the podium let the American public in on the truth. There were, in fact, riots all over America, and the rioters were people who wanted Joe Biden to be president.

The Friday after the convention, Biden switched messages. Yes, there were riots all across America, but they were Trump’s fault. This was Trump’s America. By then only the most braindead Biden supporter was buying that line. Everyone else knew the riots were, and are, aimed at police. What everyone doesn’t yet know is those behind the riots—Antifa and Black Lives Matters—are Marxist organizations that want to tear down America and rebuild it in the image of the Soviet Union.

When the “Trump’s America” message failed the Democrats pivoted to their latest lame claim. The wildfires in the West are caused by global warming and Trump, in Biden’s words, is a “climate arsonist,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. What it unwittingly does is open the door to the truth. The wildfires in the West have nothing whatsoever to do with global warming or climate change. One of the fires that burned over 10,000 acres was set accidentally by fireworks at one of those ridiculous gender reveal parties. The others have been deliberately set by arsonists.

The left-wing media and some law enforcement agencies have tried to shoot down the theory that the arsonists are Antifa. The evidence is still coming in on that. What we do know is that some of those arrested have been seen at anti-police rallies. Logically one could conclude that they could very likely be Antifa. Time will tell. What we know definitively is the fires are not caused by global warming. Governor Gavin Newsom points to record heat in California, yet the all-time heat records for most every city in California remain intact. Plus, how does a hot day cause a fire? Does he believe the forests just spontaneously combust? No, the wildfires are from decades of forest mismanagement coupled with arson and stupidity. It’s a deadly combination.

The problem with the Democrats’ messages is they play catchup. The real danger is their own supporters. Do you really believe the guy who tried to assassinate the two deputies in Compton was a Trump supporter? And where was the condemnation from BLM? Where was the outrage from Antifa? There was neither condemnation nor outrage because they support it. They cheer it on.

The Democrats try to imagine all sorts of problems in America, but the problem is them. 

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.

The Invisible Exploited Children

What’s up with all the missing children lately? We saw the report of the U.S. Marshals’s Operation Not Forgotten which rescued 26 children and safely located another 13. They also arrested 26 adults. More recently Operation Homecoming found 8 more children in Indiana. Over the last few weeks, U.S. Marshals have found 72 missing children. That, however, is just a fraction of the children who go missing each year.

The FBI’s National Crime Information Center says there were 421,394 missing children last year. Many are caught up in custody disputes

when one parent essentially kidnaps his or her own kids and goes on the run with them. Many of those children are never located. Too many children are kidnapped for the underground sex trade in this country. It’s unbelievable but true. Accurate numbers are hard to come by, but the State Department estimates between 15,000 and 50,000 women and girls are trafficked each year just in the United States.

When the story on Operation Not Forgotten broke and then was quickly pushed aside by political and COVID news, one of my sons asked me why this wasn’t the biggest story in the country. It’s hard to say why. I think part of the reason is it’s such an ugly story people tend to look away. We don’t want to think that child sex slaves are being traded right here in our country, but they are, and we need to start paying attention.

It’s not like the story is new. The U.S. Marshals have aided in the recovery of over 1,800 children since they first teamed up with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2005. There are some QAnon posts that attempt to make this look like something new and tie it to some Democrat-run sex ring, but there’s no evidence of that whatsoever. What there is evidence of is an ongoing problem of exploited children and a near blackout of the story by the media.

The problem lies in separating the parental disputes from the child sex trade. I, by no means, make excuses for parents who flee the state with their children, but at least we can get our minds around that. What is unfathomable is anyone who would sexually exploit a child. What’s even more despicable is it’s sometimes the parents themselves. U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott told WOIO-TV, “We’ve had some cases where the mother or father, or both, may have been prostituting their own child.” Can you imagine? Most of us can’t.

So, what do we do about it? Unfortunately, there’s not much we as citizens can do about it. Law enforcement is tracking down as many of these animals who exploit children as they have leads. What we can do is pay more attention to the problem. What we can do is support news outlets that shine a light on the problem. What we can do is insist our local officials make our own communities as inhospitable for child trafficking as they possibly can. What we can do is care.

The fact that Operation Not Forgotten got so little press is an indication of our indifference. So many people like my own sons are much more outraged because they’re barely adults themselves. It’s easy for them to think, “that could’ve been me.” For the rest of us, we need to be thinking, “that could’ve been ours.” It’s only after we personalize this issue that it will ever go away.

We think of child sex trafficking as just a third world problem. It’s not. It’s our problem too. 

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.