Cagle World

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

The left is truly dumbing down America’s kids.

It’s nothing new.

But based on the insane education policy recently implemented by the state of Oregon, it looks like the future of America’s already awful public school system is getting worse.

Last month, as the media just learned, Oregon’s Gov. Kate Brown quietly signed a bill that dropped the requirement that high schoolers had to prove they were proficient in reading, writing and math before they graduated.

The bill’s supporters claim that considering math and reading as essential skills all these years has been, you guessed it, unfair to kids of color who do not test well.

They claim the new bill was written “to truly reflect what every student needs to thrive in the 21st century.”

And they say that it will specifically help the state’s “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”

Only in our upside-down and dumb world of woke politics, which assumes that only white kids can learn to read and count, could someone actually believe that the futures of kids of color will be helped by lowering education standards.

Guess those progressives in Oregon missed the 2017 movie “Hidden Figures,” the true story of the brilliant black women whose computer-like math skills helped NASA safely send John Glenn into Earth orbit – and bring him back – in 1962.

What the people in charge of Oregon are doing is sad enough.

What’s even sadder is that Fox News and a dozen conservative pundits are the only ones who seem to be outraged.

I don’t expect the liberals at CNN or the New York Times to care. But where are the kids’ parents?

Black and brown parents in Oregon and every major U.S. city who can’t afford private schools, or who are unable to homeschool their kids, should be marching and protesting and raising holy Hell with local politicians of both parties.

Black and brown communities should be voting out their school boards and demanding that schools get back to teaching the basics.

That means teaching their kids how to read, count and think – not what to think.

Most of all, though, black and brown parents should be demanding school choice, so that they are no longer forced to send their kids to the crappy public school in their designated district.

All parents should have as much choice in choosing their kids’ taxpayer-financed education as they do in choosing a car dealer or a grocery store – more actually.

Everyone would see how wrong – and stupid — it would be if parents in poor city neighborhoods were forced by law to buy their food only at the crummy local grocery because it’s within the boundaries of a carefully drawn government “Grocery District.”

Parents should be given a school voucher for what their city school district spends per student – upwards of $20,000 a year in most big cities – and be allowed to spend it at any public or private school they want.

For at least half a century black and brown and white kids trapped in our inner-city public school systems have been getting a fourth-rate education.

Seventy five percent of them can’t read or do math at their grade levels – but they’re automatically passed to the next grade anyway.

And most of the kids that do “graduate” from our worst city schools are barely qualified to run a register at a McDonald’s, much less go to a college or get an entry-level job with a future.

That’s because kids aren’t being taught the basics.

Instead, they’re being taught Critical Race Theory, a racist and twisted way of looking at our history that teaches school kids to hate America and hate white people.

I’m so glad the people who founded this country are dead so they can’t see what’s going on.

I’m also glad Martin Luther King Jr. is dead, so he can’t see how our failed educators are using the BS of Critical Race Theory to judge people by the color of their skin and not their character.

–

Copyright 2021 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

Yesterday I went to my urologist for one of my regular checkups.

I’ll spare you the medical details, but my trip to the doctor gave me a quick lesson in why there are still millions of Americans who are not returning to their jobs.

What normally happens at the urologist’s office is that after I pee in a bottle, a staffer or assistant takes my blood pressure, draws a sample of my blood and does an ultrasound on my bladder.

Then the doctor himself comes in, we have a quick conversation, he inspects me, tells me I’m fine and I’m out the door.

But yesterday, no one took my blood pressure or gave me an ultrasound.

When I asked the doctor why that was, he said, “We don’t have the help anymore. We’re so shorthanded we can’t do all the normal things.”

The clinic was understaffed because its workers can “earn” more sitting on their butts opening state and federal unemployment checks than they could if they returned to their jobs.

If you recall, starting at the end of March 2020, the Trump administration’s $2.2 trillion Cares Act included $600 a week for Americans who lost their jobs because of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Added to existing state unemployment benefits, millions of restaurant workers, retail workers and even part-time Uber drivers found themselves on easy-chair street.

This March Biden’s American Rescue Plan cut the unemployment relief check to $300 a week, but his regime kept the generous federal gravy train running until Sept. 4.

Given the way everyone’s talking about lockdowns again because of the delta variant, don’t be surprised if those $300 checks keep coming till Christmas.

What was so sad, my urologist said, is that despite having no patients during the early days of the pandemic, his medical group decided to stay open so its employees would have a paycheck.

“Then one day the federal government decided to send checks to them,” he said, “and they went home – and never came back.”

You wonder why those federal employment numbers keep coming in lower than expected while so many restaurants and small businesses are clamoring for workers?

To put it simply, people are being paid too well by the feds not to work.

It’s not that they can’t find a job. Every storefront in America has a “Help Wanted” or “Hiring for All Positions” sign in its window.

They just can’t get their backsides off the couch – if they’re actually at home.

A lot of unemployed Americans apparently are in Vegas, which is so crowded you can’t find a hotel room and the average wait for an Uber is more than half an hour.

Restaurants everywhere are really hurting because no one wants to take a pay cut and go back to work.

This week I saw the owner of a restaurant in New York crying on TV that he was so short of help he had to clean the toilets himself.

And now in New York City and LA they’re saying no one will be allowed to eat indoors unless they can prove they’ve had a COVID shot.

The health Nazis in charge want restaurants to start checking people at the door to make sure their vaccination papers are in order.

So who does Mayor De Blasio actually think will fill those new doorman jobs, the chef, the bartender or the restaurant owner?

I guarantee whoever thought up that stupid idea never gave a second’s thought to how it would affect the restaurants in New York City that already are understaffed and barely breathing.

If I ran a restaurant in LA, I’d go straight to the Southern border and hire a dozen illegal aliens – and I guarantee you they’d be happy to go to work.

I’d rather hire someone who walked here from Central America than some lazy American who won’t get off their couch.

–

Copyright 2021 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

Will Donald Trump’s endorsements in the 2022 Republican primaries be a double-edged sword for the party?

Based on the surprising results of this week’s special House runoff election in Texas, they could be.

The Republican-only election in a congressional district near Fort Worth was a runoff between Susan Wright, who was endorsed by Trump, and a freshman state representative named Jake Ellzey.

According to all the experts, Wright should have won fairly easily.

She was the widow of Rep. Don Wright, whose COVID-19 related death in February triggered the election.

She was a solid conservative in a conservative district.

And she had the backing of Donald Trump.

Trump did not appear in person for her, and local pols say his support was “half-hearted,” but the ex-president appeared in TV spots for her and his political action committee gave her money and bought ads attacking Ellzey.

When the votes were counted, however, Ellzey beat Wright with relative ease, 53 to 47 percent.

Ellzey is a former Navy combat pilot and a conservative who out-hustled Wright and was endorsed by former Texas governor Rick Perry and fellow combat veteran Rep. Dan Crenshaw.

After he won, Ellzey said his victory proved that the people of his district wanted a positive “Reagan Republican outlook for the future of our country.”

Evoking my father’s name always makes me smile.

But Ellzey’s win – or Wright’s loss – makes me wonder about how much Trump will help or hurt Republicans next fall when they hope to regain the House and Senate.

When Trump enthusiastically endorses one Republican candidate in a primary and gets his followers to come to the polls to defeat the others, he runs the danger of hurting the party’s chances in the general election.

To win in the fall – as we painfully learned last year — Republicans have to do more than just get out their base.

They also have to capture the votes of independents and moderate Democrats.

When I look at the 2022 mid-terms, I think, “Yeah, as a candidate you might want Donald Trump’s unconditional and avid support in the Republican primary. But how are you going to win-over those independents and moderate Democrats in the fall?”

Those crucial voters may end up hating you – because of their hatred of Trump – more than they hate the way the Pelosi-Biden Democrats are wrecking the economy, blowing up the Southern border and mishandling the war against COVID.

And so Donald Trump becomes a double-edged sword—you want his endorsement for the Republican primary, but because of him in the general election you’re liable to lose independents, suburban women and moderate Democrats.

And to win you are going to need those voters – just as my father did in 1980.

He won not because Republicans showed up and voted for him, but because millions of independents and moderate Democrats did.

He needed them. The Republican Party always needs them because nationally, and in most swing states, it’s badly outnumbered.

Wright should have been elected. Most wives who run for their dead husband’s seats do so. She had the feel-sorry vote and the name recognition. Plus, she had the support of Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz.

But Ellzey upset her.

It was a special election, so turnout was low, and it may have been a one-off election that means nothing for next fall.

Or it could be a wake-up call for the GOP’s leaders – a warning that Trump’s power within the Republican Party could hurt their big plans for next fall.

Wright’s surprise loss also should force the party’s grand poohbahs to ask themselves, what was it that Dan Crenshaw knew that they should also know?

–

Copyright 2021 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

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Making Sense by Michael Reagan

I don’t know how long I’ll be able to take the Tokyo Olympics.

The Games are barely underway, but I’m already turned off by the annoying political grandstanding.

On Wednesday, our cocky women’s soccer team took a knee just before the start of their match against Sweden. So did the Swedish team and the referee.

Then, as every international soccer fan knows, the Swedes proceeded to crush mighty Team USA, 3-0, ending its 44-game winning streak and making it very hard for our women to win the gold medal everyone predicted they’d win.

Women’s teams from Great Britain, Chile and New Zealand also proved they could be virtuous social justice warriors by taking to their knees before their games started.

I’m not exactly sure what – or who – all these international athletes were protesting.

Here at home, it’s usually racism, discrimination and inequality, all of which exist around the world in varying degrees and all of which we all agree are not good things.

But even without the unwelcome but predictable intrusion of politics, the Olympic Games in Tokyo were not going to be so great to watch.

First of all, because of Japan’s recent surge in COVID cases, there will be no spectators.

Plus, no athletes hugging. No handshakes. No joyous team celebrations. Just empty stadiums and arenas – and too much politics.

I’m already really tired of all the woke politics that are poisoning sports – and everything else in America, from public health to college campuses to late night TV shows.

Sports used to be a place where for a couple of hours you could escape the never-ending political troubles in the world.

But pro basketball already has been wrecked by the politics that have destroyed its TV ratings and turned off a huge segment of its fan base. The NFL’s TV ratings also have plummeted because of politics.

Now politics are ruining the Olympics.

I know I wasn’t the only American who was not sad when our powerhouse men’s basketball team – composed primarily of NBA all-stars – lost two games in the warmups to the Olympics.

How can anyone feel sad for a bunch of multimillionaires who’ve been taking knees during the National Anthem, pointing fingers at their country for being systematically racist and charging half of their white countrymen with being white supremacists?

By disrespecting the country that has given them more freedom, opportunity and riches than any other country on Earth, these social justice athletes – professional and amateur – are only hurting themselves and their causes in the long run.

If anything, by unfairly slurring all white people as inherently racist, they’re actually turning some white people into racists – including some of their own fans.

My wife Colleen and I watch and enjoy international soccer all the time. We don’t see superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo taking knees and spoiling their sport with the poison of politics.

When I turn on the Olympics I don’t want to see politics, either. I want to watch a good sporting event, be proud of my country’s athletes and root for them to win.

Americans used to feel proud when our teams went to the Olympics and racked up medals in track and field or swimming, especially when the great USA-USSR rivalry was a proxy for the Cold War.

But when our women’s soccer team was humiliated by Sweden this week, it didn’t bother me one bit – because of the politics. Millions of other Americans clearly felt the same.

Because of politics, our Olympics teams don’t make a lot of us proud anymore.

–

Copyright 2021 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

Since I’m spending this week vacationing with my family in Newport Beach, I thought I’d talk to my son Cameron and let him do a little ranting.

Cameron is 43. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two little girls, ages 3 and 5.

His wife works full-time as a home loan processor and he has one of the toughest jobs in the world – stay-at-home dad.

That means for the last 15 months Cameron has been the parent who’s had to deal the most with the unpredictable craziness of California’s oppressive and unpredictable war on COVID-19.

He was the one who went to his daughter’s swimming lesson and had to watch the instructor stand in the pool wearing a mask.

“I wondered if it was like waterboarding yourself,” Cameron joked a few hours before Los Angeles County announced on Thursday that because of the recent rise in COVID cases — not deaths or hospitalizations — everyone must again wear masks in indoor public spaces — no matter what their vaccination status is.

Cameron has never been a fan of mandatory face masks — to say the least.

He’s no Dr. Anthony Fauci, but he knows forcing school kids to wear bacteria-laden masks six hours a day in class and during recess not only defies common sense, it makes kids sick.

Cameron knows a lot of people – old and young, white and black, Latino and Asian – and he knows those who got hit hard by COVID and who didn’t.

“I know a 95-year-old who got COVID and nothing happened. My wife’s mother’s boyfriend was on chemo and got COVID and he’s fine.”

Cameron knows that those are just two COVID cases with positive outcomes and that the death toll from the virus in LA County is nearly 25,000 people.

But he says you never hear those kinds of good stories because of the media’s constant negativity.

“All you hear is fear-mongering. It’s been fear-mongering from the beginning. I don’t believe a word these people are saying.”

I really get upset when I see the media blaming Trump for the disproportionate percentage of blacks and Latinos who’ve not got the vaccine.

Are there Trump supporters not getting vaccinated? Yeah. Biden supporters — who are black? Yeah. Hillary supporters — who are Latinos? Yeah.

Don’t tell anyone in the Biden White House or at CNN, but millions of unvaccinated Americans don’t support either political party.

Some won’t get vaccinated for sensible scientific reasons – because they’re young and healthy, or pregnant, or they’ve already had covid and recovered.

Some think the vaccines haven’t been tested well enough. Some will never get vaccinated for religious reasons.

Some simply don’t like or trust vaccines – or a federal government that forces potentially unsafe vaccines on them.

It shouldn’t surprise you that Cameron voted for Donald Trump.

But despite what Biden’s surgeon general and some liberal pundits want everyone to believe, President Trump is not the reason he has not been vaccinated – and never plans to be.

As he says, “I think the vaccine should be for people in high-risk categories – if you have a compromised immune system, you’re a 300-pound diabetic or over 70.”

Cameron says Trump has nothing to do with his Latino friends not getting vaccinated, either.

“They think it’s just weird. It’s stupid. It’s American silliness — crazy gringos.”

“They’re in all age groups. Armenians and Russians that I know think the same. They don’t believe the hyperbole. A lot of them are young and healthy and feel their immune systems are fine.”

As for his daughters, Cameron says, “They will not get vaccinated. There’s no way. They are 3 and 5. I’m not going to do it.”

And he doesn’t care who Fauci says should still be wearing masks or getting the COVID vaccine.

“That guy could get a job working for the Weather Channel because they’re the only people on the planet that could be more incorrect than him.”

–

Copyright 2021 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

Knock knock.

“Who’s there?”

“Tony and Joe.”

“Tony and Joe who?”

“We’re with the government and we’re here to help.”

“Get off my property! My father said those were the nine most terrifying words in the English language.”

“Come on, man! Open your damn front door.”

“OK. But first take off your masks so I can see who you are.”

“Mr. Reagan, we’re here to tell you where you can get your free COVID-19 vaccination.”

“No thanks, Joe. I know where to get a shot – at every corner drugstore and grocery. Even Dodger Stadium…”

“But our records show you haven’t been vaccinated yet. Why not?”

“That’s my private business, Tony.”

“But we have prizes and bribes – let me see my notes …. Yes, a free dinner, a free lottery ticket, a trip to Disneyland.”

“No thanks, Joe. I don’t want the vaccine. Now please remove your foot from my door so I can close it.”

“But health experts and big drug companies say everyone needs to get a jab.”

“That’s your problem, Tony.”

“And I promised that 70 percent of the country would be vaccinated by July 4th. You’ve got to do your part to help win our war on COVID.”

“Sorry, Joe. I’m not getting the vaccine.”

“What about your two granddaughters, ages 3 and 5. The NSA data says they haven’t been vaccinated. You realize they won’t be allowed in pre-school this fall unless they get their COVID shots, don’t you?”

“My granddaughters will be vaccinated over my dead body. Kids their age don’t get COVID and don’t need a vaccine. You guys need to start following the science.”

“What’s wrong with you, Mr. Reagan? Are you a Trump supporter? Some kind of insurrectionist? Where were you on Jan. 6, by the way?”

“I was here in L.A., Tony — in my basement, wearing a mask. Now excuse me, I’ve got an opinion column to do.”

Slam.

If Joe Biden, Tony Fauci or any of their underlings really come snooping door-to-door to check our vaccine status and tell us where we can get the COVID vaccine, they’ll be wasting their time.

Every person on the planet by now knows where you can get a free COVID shot – everywhere.

There’s one simple reason millions of people have not gotten the vaccine yet – because they don’t want it and don’t want to be forced to get it.

There also are a lot of people who don’t need the vaccine because they’ve already had COVID and have natural antibodies.

Other people, including school kids, are at little risk because they are young and healthy and because they are not already very old, very sick or very fat.

A lot of people don’t trust the COVID vaccines for a bunch of understandable reasons.

They are new. They were developed quickly and they were barely tested.

The big drug companies that made them were given immunity from liability for their side-effects.

And because the government is now bribing people to get the vaccine, it puts the fear into many already suspicious people that there is something in that vaccine they don’t want in their bodies.

Meanwhile, with its snooping and vaccine-pushing policies it seems like the Biden administration is secretly trying to turn everyone into a libertarian.

Health and Human Services czar Xavier Becerra actually said the government “absolutely” has the right to know everyone’s vaccination status. That’s scary – and just more government control.

If you don’t get the vaccine, I’m fine with that.

You have nothing to fear if you are vaccinated and I’m not, and vice versa.

Live your life and be happy you’re protected – just don’t ask the government to push the vaccine on others who don’t need it or don’t want it for any reason.

And don’t tell Joe or Tony I was actually vaccinated months ago. But based on what I know today, I would “de-vaccinate.”

–

Copyright 2021 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

When hammer-thrower Gwen Berry turned her back on the American flag at the Olympic Trials last weekend, it made me think of Sergeant William Carney.

Berry probably doesn’t know who Carney was.

Neither, I bet, do the Black Lives Matter activists who spent last summer blindly tearing down statues of historical figures to protest the racist origins of America and the systemic racism they claim exists today.

Thanks to the lousy way history is taught in our schools, most Americans – of every color – have never heard of William Carney.

But who he was, what brave things he did on a Civil War battlefield, and what he thought about America and its flag should have become common knowledge many July 4ths ago.

Carney was born a slave in Virginia in 1840, but his father escaped to the North on the Underground Railroad and made enough money in Massachusetts to purchase the freedom of the rest of his family.

In 1863 Carney, at age 23, joined a local militia and became part of the all-Black Company C of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment.

As shown in the Oscar-winning 1989 movie “Glory,” the historic 54th and 55th regiments were founded to prove that Black men could be good, brave soldiers – and they quickly proved it.

During the bloody battle of Fort Wagner in Charleston, S.C., in 1863 Carney saw that the soldier carrying the 54th regimental colors had been wounded.

He left his position and ran into the thick of the fighting to save the American flag from being captured or hitting the ground – which was something they cared about deeply in those days.

Despite being hit four times by bullets, Carney was able to bring the U.S. flag safely to Union lines, where he collapsed.

It took 40 years for Carney’s battlefield heroics to be rewarded, but in 1900 he was awarded the Medal of Honor in Boston.

The first Black person to receive the award, he explained his heroics by simply saying, “I only did my duty.”

Can you imagine how Carney – a former slave – and the other patriotic Black men who enlisted in the 54th and 55th would react today to the protests of Gwen Berry or the constant complaints of the BLM crowd and Critical Race Theorists?

America’s not perfect now, and it never was.

But BLM and the others are fixated on the past – on the shameful stuff that our white ancestors did to blacks that we regret and are ashamed of but can’t do anything about today.

That shameful stuff includes the horrors of slavery, 70 years of legalized racism in the Jim Crow South, the de facto discrimination and segregation in the North and white race riots like the Tulsa Massacre of 1921.

Activists need to acknowledge all the good that has been done to make America a better, fairer, freer country that lives up to its founding ideals.

Blacks in America live far better and freer lives than Carney’s generation could ever dream of living.

Yet they constantly disrespect the flag and the country it represents, which they claim was founded on racism and is still systematically racist.

Gwen Berry said this week she doesn’t hate America.

She said she turned her back to the flag because she doesn’t like the third (and basically unknown) stanza of the National Anthem, which she claims “disrespects” Blacks with its brief reference to slaves.

Berry says she knows her history, but she really doesn’t. She and the BLM and its allies have no appreciation of what life was like for Black people like Carney and his generation.

They take a knee to the National Anthem or turn their backs on the same flag that Sergeant Willian Carney, a former slave, loved and risked his life to keep from touching the ground.

What would Carney say to Gwen Berry, Colin Kaepernick and the members of BLM today?

He’d probably want to turn his back to them. Download the movie “Glory” if you want to see why.

–

Copyright 2021 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

On Wednesday, did I hear the president of the United States say Americans need to get F-15s and nukes if we really want to keep the government in line?

I did hear it.

Biden apparently was trying to make fun of us “gun nuts” who say Americans need the protections of the Second Amendment to own firearms in case we have to prevent the government from taking away our liberties.

It was garbled and choppy, because Biden went off the Teleprompter, but he said:

“Those who say the blood of Patriots, you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government … if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

Today I’m not sure if I should buy an F-15 or a bomb shelter – or both.

Biden’s address on how his administration intends to combat rising gun violence and soaring crime rates in our biggest cities was another big liberal gift to the gun industry.

It was filled with the usual stupid arguments and unchecked “facts” from the gun-control crowd.

Biden talked about responsible hunters knowing you don’t need to outfit your deer rifle with 100-round clips – clips that don’t exist on this planet.

He talked about how we need to ban AR-15 “assault rifles” (again) to reduce gun violence, even though more Americans are stabbed to death each year than are killed by rifles.

The vast majority of gun homicides – 20,000 last year, the highest in 20 years — are committed in cities with handguns – often stolen ones.

Few of those handguns were sold to the shooters by the rogue dealers whom Biden called “merchants of death” who “are breaking the law for profit.”

The idea that an up-and-coming gangbanger in the Latin Kings of Chicago stops by the corner gun store to pick up a new Glock on his way to kill a rival is a liberal myth that will not die.

Gun-control nuts, Biden and the liberal media still think buying a gun over the counter is as easy as buying a six-pack, but that’s only because they’ve never had to buy one.

Here in California, where I live, buying any kind of gun – and ammo – involves a lot of paperwork and a three-day wait for the ATF to do its background check.

My son Cameron and I buy what we need to hunt with all the time at the same gun store.

The owners know exactly who we are, but they aren’t the ones who do the background check each time we buy a box of shotgun shells – it’s the government.

The gun store sends the information in and when we’re approved we go and pick up the shotgun shells. That’s how it works in the real world.

It’s pretty clear that people like Biden who are making these decisions have never hunted and never actually had to go out and buy a pistol for protection.

They don’t have to buy a gun because the people around them – their bodyguards and private security – do it.

At the end of his address Biden said something about giving high school kids a job instead of a gun when they graduate.

That was a great soundbite, I guess, if you think guns are the main cause of crime.

But what Biden should be calling for is for kids in our cities to be given a proper public education instead of the horrible one they’ve been getting for half a century.

About 75 percent of black and brown kids in grammar school are reported to be unable to read or do math at their grade level, yet now they’re being taught critical race theory and that the country was founded on racism.

Oops, sorry. I’ve got to stop. The contractor is here to see if I can fix up my garage to fit an F-15.

–

Copyright 2021 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

I think I can still hear them partying in the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin and his inner circle are toasting each other with shots of vodka and loud singing.

I can’t understand Russian, but I recognize the tune – “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

After the thrashing Putin gave to President Joe Biden at their “summit” meeting in Switzerland this week, the devilish former KGB operative has every reason to celebrate.

Someone asked me on a scale of 1 to 10 what score I’d give to Biden for his G7 meeting in Britain and his one-on-one meeting with Putin in Geneva.

I gave Biden a five for just showing up in Europe. Then I started subtracting – all the way down to zero, because that’s what the U.S. got from Biden’s trip.

The G7 leaders were a joke.

All they did, besides welcome Joe into their club of declining countries, was issue a weak communique after three days of posing for group photos on a beach in a posh holiday spot on the Cornish seacoast.

Biden supposedly wanted the G7 to join him and be tough on China for its human rights abuses, its takeover of Hong Kong and its non-market economic policies and practices.

But the leaders of the world’s most advanced countries – who are deep in the economic pocket of China – chickened out.

Instead of ripping into China for unleashing a virus that killed 3.5 million people around the world, they meekly urged its Communist rulers to be more transparent and show more respect for human rights.

The G7, which was more interested in showing how progressive it is, pledged to vaccinate poorer countries, create a global tax for corporations and spend many billions to fight climate change.

The G7 was a useless three-day publicity stunt for mediocre prime ministers and presidents, but Biden’s meeting with Putin in Geneva was the diplomatic disaster it was predicted to be.

Russia and Putin got everything they wanted – and paid nothing for it. Plus, they got it all before Biden even left the ground in Washington.

We – i.e., Biden – had already shut off our oil pipeline, begun destroying our booming energy sector and okayed Russia’s natural gas pipeline to Germany.

What did Biden get from Putin – whose military is closing in on Ukraine and playing war games off the coast of Hawaii?

Nothing.

President Biden let Putin off the hook about Ukraine.

Okaying the natural gas pipeline to Germany has already given Russia enormous economic and political leverage over the European Union.

(Unlike Biden, Putin knows that in 2021 whoever has the oil and gas still calls the shots – and no one is going to take away that geopolitical weapon with windmills and Parisian climate treaties.)

For good measure, Biden – trying to get tough? – gave Putin a list of 16 places in America that are off limits to cyberattacks by Russians in or out of the government.

Hello? Does that mean everything else is OK to attack, Putin might ask? To his credit, Biden didn’t send Putin the 16 URLs.

After the so-called summit, Biden made things worse by letting Putin hold a press conference by himself where he trashed America – and no one could challenge him.

Then, as Biden was leaving his own solo press conference, he got mad at a CNN reporter who had the nerve to ask him why he was so confident that “killer” Putin would change his behavior and turn into the Russian equivalent of Old Joe Biden.

Will someone please tell me what good came out of Biden’s un-summit for America?

Apparently, our president doesn’t know that when you go into a negotiation with a foreign adversary you don’t give them everything they want beforehand.

When my father was negotiating with the Soviets in the 1980s, someone asked him to sum up his strategy on the Cold War. He answered, “We win, they lose.”

If President Biden had been asked the same question before meeting Putin this week, he should have answered “They win, we lose.”

Because that’s exactly the message he conveyed.

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Copyright 2021 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

President Biden is taking his first trip overseas as President.

After stopping in England he’ll summit with European leaders in Brussels and then move on to his mano-a-mano meet-up with Vladimir Putin in Geneva.

I pray to God he does a great job, but I worry Putin will eat Joe alive.

Historically, left-wing dictatorships like Russia, China and North Korea have done that to our leaders when they go visiting overseas.

When they make deals with us, left-wing countries like to play the geopolitical version of Rodney King’s famous plea “Can we just all get along?”

But as we’ve proven time and time again, the answer is always no. We can’t get along with leftists overseas – or at home.

And now that “Joe O’Biden” and the Democrats are in power, the stage is set for another round of foreign policy blunders.

We’ve watched Russia and China test the Biden administration’s backbone since Day One.

While Biden has been weakening our military, Russia is gearing up to attack Ukraine and harboring cyber criminals who’ve used ransomware to shut down our gasoline pipelines and meat processors.

But Biden also removed economic sanctions on Russia that allowed the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to energy-dependent Germany to proceed — which gives Putin a strategic political weapon to bully Europe with that he’ll be sure to use.

Meanwhile, Biden and left-wingers in Congress are doing their best to weaken our healthy oil and gas industry in the name of saving the planet from the mythical green monster of global climate change.

As for China, it’s been militarizing islands in the South China Sea for decades and presidents of both parties have done nothing.

Now Communist China is continuing to strangle the last breaths of democracy in Hong Kong and making threatening noises about invading Taiwan.

Iran’s mullahs, meanwhile, are licking their lips over the prospects of Biden re-signing the Iran nuclear agreement, which the Obama administration signed in 2015 and Trump withdrew the U.S. from in 2018.

That bad Obama deal lifted some economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for it dismantling most of its nuclear weapons program and allowing extensive international inspections.

Iran is no longer in compliance. But Biden says if Iran returns to compliance we’ll return to a bad deal that probably will lead to a revival of Iran’s nuke program and ratchet up Middle East tensions between Iran and Israel and Saudi Arabia.

My father once said to me that you can be elected president of the United States but there comes a point when you become the president of the United States.

That’s so true.

And if you refuse to become the president, and if you still refuse to understand that the rest of the world looks to America to be strong and not weak, then you’ve emboldened the enemies of America and freedom.

Like my father also once said, there were four wars during his lifetime – none of which was started because America was too strong.

That’s why I fear for my kids and grandchildren today.

Are they going to be facing World War III in 20 years because we’re defunding our military and bent on “getting along” with brutal dictatorships that hate us and want to do us harm?

Are we allowing China and Russia to become buddies because their common enemy is the USA and their common goal is world dominance? If you don’t see trouble coming, you’re blind to history and geopolitical realities.

President Biden keeps telling us “America is back.” But back to what?

Allowing Russia, China, North Korea and Iran to gain military and economic strength relative to America?

It’s been the traditional mission of the left – whether the left is focused at home or overseas – to weaken America.

Biden, consciously or not, is doing just that with his messaging. He keeps saying “America is back,” but what he’s really doing is putting America on its back.

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Copyright 2021 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.