Issues

  • Champion Health Freedom

    Posted by · October 19, 2024 6:43 PM

    STAND FOR HEALTH FREEDOM

  • Where Dennis Stands on the Issues

    Posted by · October 05, 2024 9:32 AM · 1 reaction

     

  • The Democrat Party Rigged the Primary Process for Biden

    Posted by · July 25, 2024 5:47 PM · 1 reaction

    A Primer on How the DNC has been Hoisted on Its Own Petard

    I ran for president twice in 2004 and 2008, in an attempt to truly protect and defend the Constitution by ending perpetual war, stopping government intrusion into Americans’ private lives, and transforming America’s role in the world so that we would have the capacity for a true domestic agenda of national prosperity.   

    I understand the tactics of the DNC and their media counterparts. I understand how they attempt total control of the nomination process, and attempt to silence opposition in order to advance internal and institutional agendas, which are destructive to our nation. 

    The meltdown of the 2024 nomination process began in August of 2022 when the Democratic National Committee (DNC) declared unity for the re-election of President Biden, heading off any challengers, and then, that December, approved rules so onerous as to make an effective run inside the party impossible.  

    Rules were crafted so minutely that no viable alternative to the President could emerge. Party leaders in a dozen states had discretion as to whether to even recognize another campaign.  

    Some states’ leaders declared early support for Biden, far ahead of a primary or caucus, to short-circuit  other candidates’ ballot access and fundraising. Endless barriers were put in place by the DNC, state by state, including guidelines that state party plans could be revised at any time.

    The State of New Hampshire’s legendary “First in the Nation” primary status was eclipsed in 2024, as was the historic role of Iowa’s first caucus.  That Biden finished 5th in New Hampshire with 8.4% and 4th in Iowa with 15.8% in 2020 was not a factor, said the DNC.

    The DNC crafted a rule that if a candidate campaigned in violation of the rule, including appearances or even internet ads in New Hampshire or Iowa, they would not receive their pledged delegates, even if he or she came in first. It’s called losing for winning. 

    This rule adversely affected the Democratic candidacies of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Marianne Williamson and, later on, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), and gave rise to Kennedy Jr.’s switch from rallying as a “Kennedy Democrat” to his independent run. Williamson continues her run inside the party.

    The DNC claimed such broad privileges to rig an election derived from a 1981 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Democratic Party v. Wisconsin, which prohibited cross-over voting in primaries, and, most importantly, derived from the precedent of Cousins v. Wigoda. The Court held there that the Constitution’s First and Fourteenth Amendments barred judicial intrusion into party affairs: “…the courts may not interfere on the ground that they view a particular expression as unwise or irrational.”   

    There is nothing illegal about the DNC fixing the process for Joe Biden. However, it is essential to dispense with the illusion that anything about this process was or is open.

    In other words, the DNC can make the rules, or change the rules in any way, shape or form, as it pleases. This process is not about transparency or fairness, it is about the special protection which political parties receive to subvert everyone else’s right to free speech. This is not unlike the execrable 1976 Supreme Court decision of Buckley v. Valeo, otherwise known as the ‘Money Equals Free Speech’ Doctrine.  So much for the hallowed “Equal Protection of the Law.”

    Buckley v. Valeo opened the door for corporate control of political parties, politicians and the political process itself, with these words: “The Supreme Court denies government the power to determine that spending to promote one’s political views is wasteful, excessive or unwise.”  

    Spending limits set by the Federal Elections Commission went out of the window.  Government and elected officials were more easily sold to the highest bidder. Political parties at the highest levels are handy brokerages in the sale, with favored donors and corporations often weighing in mightily on choosing candidates, or removing them. The DNC chose President Biden. 

    The DNC decided early in 2023, even if challengers emerged to President Biden, there would be no debates. Let that sink in. 

    The same questions that were raised immediately after the recent Trump-Biden debate, regarding the assumed cognitive deficits of President Biden, which the DNC had been aware of (and which were raised repeatedly in preceding years), were suddenly in full view of nearly 48 million people, deflecting deeper analysis of President Trump’s statements. 

    At that point every verbal miscue or mental lapse by President Biden became grist for a feeding frenzy in a media echo chamber, causing President Biden to hemorrhage support, driving him from the top ballot position which he would otherwise rightly claim as the  putative nominee. 

    The DNC’s machinations had guaranteed his quest for re-election, until it didn’t.

    Under those circumstances, the manner in which the President was yanked off the ticket felt more like a coup, orchestrated by party elites, donors and the media, than the product of reasoned decision-making followed by a respectable departure from the race and subsequent procession to Vice President Kamala Harris. 

    Precisely because of the way it was done, and how vigorously his relative fragility was exploited from within the party, President Biden now faces serious questions about his ability to remain in office for the next six months.  With the prospect of wider wars brewing in Europe and the Middle East the instability of American governance becomes a matter of global concern, and the question arises, who is running things?

    The immediate surge of delegate support (with President Biden’s blessing) would indicate that Vice President Harris is on a fast track to the Democratic nomination. However, her polling numbers were not appreciably better than President Biden’s, which makes her vulnerable.

    Every day is Election Day when polls are released and given as much gravity as the 24 hour news cycle requires.  Propelled by interest groups, the media can turn a tempest in a teapot into a hurricane.

    State primaries are now like a rotisserie league in baseball, a fantasy.  The actual rules of the DNC are laid bare for all to see.  The real bosses are free to choose, and choose again, and again if they must,  their own candidate in an undemocratic top-down process. Yesterday’s candidate was President Biden, chosen in a rigged process.    Kamala Harris chosen because of her status as VP and her own constituency.      

    You can bet that despite having sufficient delegates enroute to the convention, given today’s overt and covert toxic political climate within and between the major political parties, news stories will emerge which will attempt to topple Vice President Harris as well. Remember, President Biden had ALL the delegates a week ago. 

    A single mistake, faulty utterance or slip up on her part could give rise to a drop in the polls, and another orchestrated feeding frenzy in the media echo chamber, ushering in DNC Nominee 3.0.   An open convention is the DNC’s worst nightmare and will be avoided at all costs.

    When President Johnson announced on March 31, 1968 that he would not run for re-election, it set off a furious contest for the nomination, which eventually went to the insider, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, in a tumultuous, open convention where nine candidates vied for the nomination.

    The Democratic National Convention commences in little more than three weeks, on August 19th, in Chicago. Stay tuned.  We could be in for yet another surprise.

  • America Prepares for Global War and Restarts Automatic Draft Registration for 18-26 year olds

    Posted by · June 14, 2024 3:00 PM · 1 reaction

    Greetings to Young Americans: You are Automatically Registered for the Draft Conscription without Representation? Where and WHY are we sending our Kids to War?

    Our government is planning a big draft, conscripting millions of young Americans for an even bigger war!

    I call to your attention a Democratic amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was slipped into the almost trillion-dollar Pentagon war spending bill, by voice vote, in the House Armed Services committee.

    The Democratic Amendment to H.R. 8070, the National Defense Authorization (NDAA) reads:  

    Section 531. Selective Service System:  Automatic Registration.  SEC. 3. (a)(1) “Except as otherwise provided in this title, every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, shall be automatically registered under this Act by the Director of the Selective Service System.” 

    This amendment is in the NDAA legislation and there is no pending amendment to strip it from the bill.  So, when the NDAA passes, as early as this week, Congress will have taken steps to make automatic conscription the law of the land.

    Why an automatic draft?  Members of Congress and the President have an obligation to explain to the American people to which foreign land will their sons, and perhaps their daughters, be sent to die?

    The U.S. has been in a continuous “State of Emergency” since September 11, 2001, which provides a president with over 100 powers he would not ordinarily have.   Notwithstanding that the automatic draft provision will go into effect in a year,   a presidential order invoking emergency powers and/or an Act of Congress, could readily move millions from their civilian lives to the front lines of a war.

    WHAT WE KNOW:

    We know that America is fomenting wars around the world

    We know that the military industrial complex controls our government

    We know that we are on the precipice of a global war, provoking aggression rather than resolution with Russia, China and in the Middle East.  

    The only winners in these wars are the war profiteers.

    They’re now going to take our children to fight in unnecessary, destabilizing, dangerous, debt-creating wars.

    Just today President Biden committed the U.S. to an additional decade of support for Ukraine’s war with Russia.

     There is no other conceivable reason to require more than 16 million American males to be automatically registered for the draft, other than to prepare for a large-scale war. 

    The Selective Service System is the vehicle by which individuals are inducted into the armed forces.  This NDAA Automatic Registration amendment facilitates an efficient, large-scale draft.

    The new law will automatically register all males between the ages of 18 and 26.  Selective Service will notify in writing every young American male that they have been registered and will prescribe regulations which can require the registrant to provide “date of birth, address, social security account number, phone number and email address….”

    There are members of Congress who advocate that young women also be included in any draft, which could bring to 32 million the number of Americans of draft-eligible age.

    The U.S. currently has over 1,300,000 men and women, career soldiers, as well as volunteers, serving in the all-volunteer armed forces.  

    According to the new automatic draft law, undocumented immigrants, between the ages of 18 and 26, numbering at least 1.5 million, could also be conscripted, if it were to apply to women as well as men.

    A government conscription edict covering the undocumented could ironically do damage to the so-called “replacement theory,” where draft-eligible undocumented immigrants could decide to retreat to the other side of the border.  Military service may appeal to others as a path toward citizenship, since immigrants serving during “period of hostility,” can seek immediate naturalization.  

    The last time a draft was instituted in the United States was during the Vietnam War, when 1.9 million Americans were conscripted.  

    A total of 8.7 million Americans served during the course of that war, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, including married men, who were subject to the draft by Presidential order.

    Of 58,220 U.S. service fatalities in the Vietnam War, 17,671 were draftees.  

    President Biden’s recent D-Day speech, quoted in Politico, contained this noteworthy warning for young Americans: “The price of unchecked tyranny is the blood of the young and the brave.” 

    Years ago I had a conversation with then-Vice President Biden, who mused, painfully, about his own sons’ lives potentially being at risk in combat.  His deep love for his sons is reflective of all Americans’ love for their children.  Those parents and grandparents with a first-person understanding of the human cost of wars in Vietnam and Iraq may have a powerful  aversion to exposing their children and grandchildren to deadly conflict, unless there is a direct threat to the territory of the United States.

    Ukraine understands the price paid for war, having lost hundreds of thousands of its courageous sons and daughters in the ongoing war with Russia.  

    As Ukraine turns to conscription, there is push back coming from those who are subject to service but who understand they could well be facing a death sentence.   

    In Israel, the growing ultra-orthodox worshippers have been exempt from military service since the founding of Israel, but the government is being pressed to expand its military ranks creating a political squeeze on the Netanyahu ruling coalition.  

    Conscription is under discussion in Germany and Italy, while at least nine other European Union countries already use the practice to replenish their armed forces.

    Resistance does occur during a draft.  I well remember anti-Vietnam war rallies with the cry “Hell, no, we won’t go!”   But for a heart murmur and a high draft number, I would have joined my brother Frank Kucinich, Jr. on the battlefield in Southeast Asia.

    During the Vietnam war, an estimated 60% of all draft-eligible young men found a means to avoid getting conscripted, (including future a President by the name of Bill Clinton).  Some, fearful for their lives, fled to Canada or Sweden.  

    The Vietnam War ripped apart the country.  The protests over the war, fueled by compulsory service and rising casualty numbers of US troops, led President Lyndon Johnson to decide, on March 31, 1968,  not to run for reelection.  The draft was ended in 1973 and was reinstated by President Carter on January 23, 1980.

    We must have a national debate over America’s forever wars which have led to the automatic draft.    Just what, exactly, are America’s interests?  Our nation’s leaders’ diplomatic skills seem limited to putting a gun on the table and saying “Let’s talk.”

    Why does our government choose war over diplomacy?  

    As directly-elected representatives of the people, Congress, a co-equal branch of government, has a responsibility under Article One, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution to decide to formally take  this nation to a state of war.  

    Yet this congress, and others, have been content to appropriate money for war and then let the President take the responsibility, something the Founding Fathers sought to avoid in devising a system of checks and balances.     

    Congress must take up the question of war, long before the country institutes an automatic draft. An automatic draft is a preparation for war, dramatically altering the lives of young Americans.   They deserve an answer.  We all deserve an answer. America’s future is literally on the line.

    Postscript:  For my part, as a former member of Congress who is seeking re-election to the House of Representatives in November - -  upon my return to Congress, I will  bring forth legislation which will abolish automatic registration for the draft.  I believe it is honorable, a sacred obligation, to serve in defense of one’s country.   But our leaders have a deeper obligation, a solemn duty to explain why. They have not done so.