Opinion
By Dave Scott, 8-9-24
Last week during a Fernandina Beach “We The People” forum for candidates for Circuit Judge 4th Judicial Circuit, Group 34, Ashley Cox told the largely Republican audience that she was a conservative. Her opponent, Nancy Cleaveland, stated that she too is a conservative.
There is evidence Ms. Cox didn’t tell that group the truth, far from it. I didn’t attend the session but talked with several folks that did.
I was told that most political questions directed to the two were answered with “Canon law prevents us from answering questions like that” leaving little to differentiate between them. Nor do their educational and legal backgrounds appear different or contain many clues.
Local Citizens for Defending Freedom Executive Director Jack Knocke, who attended, dug deeper and discovered that “conservative” Ashley Cox is a registered Democrat while Ms. Cleaveland is indeed a registered Republican.
In fact, while poking around Jack also discovered that Ms. Cox contributed $500 to failed Democrat gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum’s campaign when he unsuccessfully ran against Ron DeSantis in 2018. This is the same Andrew Gillum who was found inebriated in early 2021 in a Miami Beach hotel room with two other men, one a male escort, and three bags of suspected crystal meth on the bed and on the floor. Following the incident Gillum admitted he was bisexual and admitted himself into a rehab center.
For a gal that wants to be a judge, Ms. Cox obviously isn’t a good judge of character. And her voter registration certainly doesn’t reflect that of a conservative.
Both Jack and I find it odd that no one at the forum asked either of the candidates in the nonpartisan race how they are registered, I guess assuming that if they said they were “conservative,” it was presumed they were Republican. I’ve never met a Democrat who admits being conservative and would assume they are a rare if not nonexistent species hereabouts.
I contacted Ms. Cox and asked her if she was a registered Democrat or Republican. She responded saying: “I am very sorry, but the Judicial Canons say that even ‘privately’ judicial candidates cannot answer that question.” Jack and I looked that up and by golly, she’s right. What a stupid law.
I again contacted Ms. Cox asking about the $500 contribution to Gillum. She did not respond, even to say she can’t comment.
Further research reveals more interesting information about Ms. Cox including the fact that there is a lot of money flowing into her campaign with lawyers contributing in droves. I’m suspicious of lawyers that work in packs or PACS. Contributors include Farah and Farah as she stated at the forum. Also funding Ms. Cox’s campaign is more than $330,000, much of it coming from Republican PACS. Why would Republican PACS contribute to a Democrat, particularly one that funded a Democrat opponent of DeSantis? What am I missing here?
I wrote earlier that I am voting for Ms. Cleaveland, a registered Republican, and a true conservative, and I’m sticking with that decision. She has the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police and Republican State Senator Clay Yarbrough, among many others. She’s also a member of the Federalist Society. That’s good enough for me.
Ms. Cox, her PAC of lawyer contributors, Democrat voter registration, and political contributions to Democrat Andrew Gillum tell me everything I need to know about her.
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Mt. “Nomore”, Not Mt. Rushmore: Despite what an addled aging Nancy Pelosi says, Joe Biden and his legacy don’t belong on Mt. Rushmore, but instead rotting in a dumpster with no hope of ever surfacing again.
The Democrat’s far-left radical duo of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz not only want to continue it but add onto the national and international misery it created if they win the election. The selection of Walz makes one believe that the Democrat party must be involved with the Make A Wish Foundation.
Americans reviewing Biden’s long and depressing heritage that has resulted in horrible problems for our nation need to be reminded of the damage that has been inflicted and what to expect if the socialist Harris-Walz ticket is elected. Following is a sampling:
- By 2023 the median sale price of a house was almost 35 percent higher and even if they were affordable, soaring interest rates – going from less than 3 percent to almost 8 percent since 2020 – have put them out of reach for the average American. Electricity has risen about 30 percent and aggregate prices at the grocery store are up by more than 25 percent and wages have decreased due to inflation
- Following the Monday, August 4 dramatic stock market plunge even Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” told his audience: “If you’re in the stock market, if you care about your paycheck, you go with Trump. That’s what you do.” According to economists “Bidenomics“ cured the economy of growth and price stability, replacing them with anemia and inflation.
- Tim Walz and friends.Harris and Biden boast about “robust job creation” but fail to mention that that the majority of those hires are government employees who contribute to the massive tax-sucking bureaucracy and add more smothering regulations and taxes on an already suffocating business community and tax payer. Employment is essentially where it was in 2019.
- The more than $30 trillion national debt is the greatest debt ever by any nation. It is the GOAT (greatest of all-time) of national debts. It is beyond gigantic! The interest on it is now more than the U.S. spends annually on the defense budget. Biden and Harris continue to find new ways to spend even more of our money in loan forgiveness scams and inviting millions of new people into our already struggling Social Security program. They are deliberately increasing our national debt to suicidal levels to buy votes.
- In foreign policy Biden fell flat on his face coming out of the starting gate with his humiliating Afghanistan surrender that killed 13 American soldiers, provided the Taliban billions of dollars’ worth of high tech weapons, a massive strategic airbase close to China, and another staging ground to launch international terrorist attacks.
- After the Afghanistan disgrace the Biden-Harris duo followed up further displaying their ineptitude in foreign policy in the Middle East and Ukraine, exhibiting weakness and incompetence on all fronts. China is not the least impressed by this timid administration and has been militarily emboldened, recently flexing its air and sea muscle.
- Under Trump Iran was broke, up against the ropes economically and there was no negotiating on nuclear capabilities. Biden’s “Don’t” diplomacy is a joke and Iran is rolling is cash due to Biden’s lifting of sanctions and inexplicable attempts at appeasement and is just a few weeks away from having nuclear weapons.
- Their DEI nonsense is hollowing out American military strength, just as it’s poisoning the rest of American society. The Biden-Harris administration has prioritized DEI and LGBTQ+ initiatives for the military. They’re spending more on this rubbish than on warfighting capabilities. As a result recruitment is down drastically and these two have no idea of how to fix it other than to continue saying “diversity is our strength.”
- The Biden-Harris administration has created cadres of DEI officers that are shaping the culture, the personnel, and the budgeting process throughout the federal government, which controls trillions of dollars of public resources to ensure America will be permanently ruled by people who act and think like those who run Columbia, Harvard, NYU, etc.
- The Biden-Harris combo followed the Democrat party’s lead in its weaponization of the Department of Justice, the IRS, and the FBI. The Hunter Biden laptop and the phony Russian collusion scams are key examples. The DOJ put out a memo essentially saying that parents protesting at local school board meetings were potential domestic terrorists. The FBI moved to investigate Catholic pro-life groups and concerned parents at school board meetings as potential domestic terrorists. While hundreds of pro-life pregnancy centers have been targeted for arson and vandalism by pro-abortion extremists the DOJ stays silent. The legal targeting of Trump, his staff and supporters is continuing to be exposed. Is there more to the Butler assassination attempt than the Secret Service so far has admitted to? Hopefully not, but rumors are spreading.
- Climate hysteria and electric vehicle fantasies are adding to the high cost of energy and other commodities while the U.S. sits on the largest oil reserves in the world. The Biden-Harris duo refuse to allow energy companies to extract them, instead fantasizing about windmills and solar panels that require massive amounts of energy produced by coal in China to manufacture, have to be junked after 10-20 years, mar the landscape, create landfill and other serious environmental issues such as killing birds and whales. Oh, they don’t work either.
- A wide-open border so far has allowed an estimated 15-20 million unvetted illegal aliens to pour into the U.S. causing economic and criminal turmoil nationwide. City and county budgets are strained by illegals crowding into local schools, housing projects, local hospitals, shelters, etc. Law enforcement is on constant alert as illegals with gang backgrounds run rampant. Harris had one job, that of border czarina. Her failure is epic. When she started there was a border. It no longer exists.
- International criminal drug cartels are freely moving illegal drugs into the U.S. across the wide-open border causing death and misery at an unprecedented rate.
- The frightening rise in antisemitism is making American streets look like Germany’s Kristallnacht in 1938. It’s spreading dangerously and rapidly throughout college campuses spilling onto city streets. The White House has never condemned it. Iran has all the “useful idiots” it wants in Washington, D.C., many like Democrats Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar currently sitting in Congress slavishly serving only the deranged Iranian mullahs.
From now on the term “Biden-Harris Administration” and the word “incompetent” will be synonymous. Adding far left Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as the Democrat VP candidate makes it even worse. As the late journalist H.L. Mencken said of Democrats: “They seem to be quite unaware that their opponents have rights.” He went on to add: “They have only one genuinely novel idea: whatever A earns belongs to B. A is any honest and industrious man or woman. B is any drone or jackass.”
In a nutshell the Democrats via Biden and Harris govern the country as though they own it. Harris-Walz will be worse, they’re the most socialistic duo ever presented to American citizens.
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Speaking of Kamala Harris: During a black journalist gathering in Atlanta recently when Donald Trump was asked by ABC correspondent Rachel Scott if he thought Kamala Harris was a DEI hire he should have answered saying: “Well, Biden said he would appoint a woman of color as vice president and he didn’t cite any qualifications. What do you think?’
Harris has displayed she’s the archetype of the actual meaning of DEI – Didn’t Earn It.
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Republished with the author’s permission. Read The Dave Scott Blog– subscribe Free
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
