“Wind is part of the British Open. It is an examination and it took me a long time to pass the examination. Eighty per cent of the fellows out there have not passed the test.”
— Gary Player.
“I never felt I could be a complete professional without having won the British Open. It was something you had to do to complete your career.”
— Arnold Palmer.
On a sunny day, playing on a firm and dry Royal Birkdale course, leader Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns tied The Open scoring record, both shooting an -8 under par, 62.
Cameron Young is tied for 2nd at -6 under par. Sam Burns is at -5 under par. Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, and Tommy Fleetwood are 4 back at -4 under par.
Bryson DeChambeau finished in 2nd place behind Lucas Herbert, . . until he didn’t. The R&A reviewed Bryson’s play on Hole 5, determined that he improved his lie (a big golf no no), and levied a 2 stroke penalty upon him, turning a bogey 5 into a triple bogey 7. He dropped from -7 under par, to -5 under par.
Before the R&A levied the penalty on Bryson DeChambeau, Bryson informed the officials that if they penalized him, he would not play the remainder of the tournament. What an a$$! Let’s see if he tees it up today, but for his behavior, Bryson DeChambeau should be shunned by his peers and the fans. Go ahead and quit, you big fat loser!
The President spoke to the nation in prime time on Thursday evening. The president started his much-anticipated address by saying we are safer, stronger, and wealthier than ever before. We overtook a nation in disrepair, including battling the worst inflation in 48 years, men in women’s sports, and being laughed at around the world. We were considered a dead nation, but now economic investment is soaring, more Americans are working than ever before, and inflation experienced its largest monthly decline in six years. The president then elaborated on Trump accounts, border security, and rebuilding our military. Trump said we’ll be seeing the “fruits of that labor” in Iran shortly.
But then the President revealed some uncomfortable truths about foreign interference in our country’s elections. He detailed how the Chinese hacked into voter files, paid journalists to write hostile stories against President Trump, and how national intelligence agencies and analysts hid evidence about Chinese interference in our elections from the President and the Congress. Burn bags of documents detailing this information were discovered. In 2020, the intelligence agencies knew of almost 300,000 ineligible foreign voters (i.e. illegal aliens), and did nothing. Today it is known that California’s voter rolls contain almost 200,000 illegal alien voters. Various Democrat get out the vote organizations in Michigan and Pennsylvania were paid to produce illegal ballots. The amount of fraud and evidence of foreign interference is shocking.
Naturally, the Democrats do not want to hear anything about voter fraud or Chinese interference. CNN, MS NOW, CBS, ABC and NBC refused to air the President’s address. CNN issued a statement that it would be “dangerous” for them to air a presidential address unless they could review the speech and fact check it in advance. Dangerous?!?!
The very people who could not shut up about the Russia! Russia! Russia! hoax do not want to discuss actual, documented foreign interference in our nation’s elections. Because the Chinese aided China Joe, and opposed Mr. Trump. And Democrats are happy to tell you, Orange Man Bad.
Now you know one of the reasons that The Observations always referred to China Joe as China Joe. The name fits.
Representative Brandon Gill (R. Tx.) introduced legislation requiring all naturalized citizen applicants to be proficient in the English language. I cannot believe that it is not already the law.
“Having all white male doctors is just as bad for the medical profession as having all white male congressmen. Let me just say, I have a black doctor and I sought my black doctor out. In fact, black doctors are in high demand because black patients know that culturally competent care can be the difference between care and cure or life and death. Republicans cry DEI and say it’s unfair. They say we should only rely on so-called objective standards for medical competence. But objective according to who? You cannot standardize test your way into empathy or taking people’s pain seriously or cultural competency. MCAT scores don’t translate to better care for black people.”
–Representative Summer Lee (D. Pa.).
Really? We should license doctors based on the color of their skin? You chose a doctor because of his skin color? And there are no objective standards. You, Representative Lee, are an ignorant racist.
Senator Thom Tillis (R. N.C.) says that he will not support Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination until he meets with the “Epstein survivors”. Senator Tillis is such an a$$.
Following the death of Senator Lindsey Graham (R. S.C.), President Trump ordered that all U.S. flags should be flown at half-staff for a period of time. Every State lowered their flags to half-staff, EXCEPT for New York, New Jersey, and Virginia. Because Governors Hochul (D. N.Y.), Sherrill (D. N.J.), and Spanberger (D. Va.) ignored the President, and ignored a sigh of respect for the late Senator Graham. And these are the “moderate” Democrat Governors.
United Airlines will reroute passengers who object to landing at Donald Trump Airport in Palm Beach, Florida. For free. Now seriously, who really cares what the name of the airport is where they are headed? TDS. And United is an enabler of TDS.
“If you can drive to McDonald’s, you can go find some place that has fresh food or canned food, or you can order it online.”
–Celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian.
Mr. Zakarian dismissed the idea pushed by Democrats of “food deserts”. He made the point that we live in the United States, a country where you can get anything, almost any time.
Speaking of McDonald’s, the chain is adding 2 new breakfast sandwiches to its menu. Look for the Honey Brown Butter Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit and the Honey Brown Butter Chicken Biscuit.
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You Don’t Have Rights If You Can’t Remember You Have Them
BY: Brandon Morse (July 10, 2026).
I was reading Bob Hoge’s article on what went down during the Pride Parade in Fort Worth, Texas, and was just as angry as everyone else at the threat from a police officer to street preachers to hand them citations for “offensive speech.”
I became even more concerned, however, when a second police officer more or less reinforced what the first officer had said, though it seemed he didn’t have the same ire in his demeanor as the first officer did. He was doing what he was told, it seemed, but what he was told to do is somewhere between outrageous and unforgivable.
For those who haven’t seen it yet, the video below shows a female police officer threatening to hand a ticket to a street preacher at a Pride Parade for “offensive speech.” As you know, the Constitution has a lot to say about that.
Or maybe it doesn’t, and what it has to say is short and sweet: “The people can say what they want.”
The threat was to cite them for “disorderly conduct,” but as is pointed out, this has to be accompanied by the “conduct” part, and the street preachers weren’t exactly harming anyone, doing property damage, or waving their junk at children, which, I guess, is way more forgivable nowadays than preaching the love of Christ.
The fact that this happened in my home state, which is supposedly one of the largest bastions of freedom in the U.S., made me angry on a personal level.
But it also reinforced something I’ve been saying for some time, and that’s the attack on your rights is far more subtle than you think.
Ask yourself this: What would’ve happened if the police officers hadn’t run into a street preacher with a camera and an understanding of the Constitution? What if it were some random person who doesn’t know any better and believed that they could, indeed, face legal punishment for speaking in ways that offend people?
How often do you think that happens a day here in America, and you just don’t hear about it?
My guess would be that it happens far more than you think.
Our rights are like America itself in that if you attack it directly, you’ll suddenly find yourself at the tail end of a losing battle before you think the battle has even begun. A direct assault is more or less impossible. To get a right removed from the Constitution takes so much time and legal loopholes that attempting to get something removed is hardly worth the effort.
If you want to defeat America, you have to do it from within and slowly. You have to subtly convince more and more people that the country is evil and not worth maintaining through media, universities, and trends. You have to make people forget what the USA is, what it stands for, and define it only by its faults until the people have no pride in it and no desire to uphold it. You get cheers when you say things like “we’re going to fundamentally change the country” instead of the angry reactions and resistance you would without the furtive manipulation.
This is also how you make people give their rights away. You vilify some of them, like the Second Amendment, but for the others, you just operate as if they don’t exist. You use pressure and intimidation (such as threats of citations for offensive speech) to make people believe they aren’t actually protected by anything.
The hope is that soon, people will forget they have them. They won’t fight for them when threatened, and might even scoff at their rights because they’ve been vilified so effectively. The erosion of the memory of our rights will have been so quiet and subtle that there will be enforcement that defies it that won’t be fought because the people won’t remember they have a tool to fight for it.
Then, one day, if the devil has his way, those rights will be dissolved in Washington, either to complete silence or to raucous applause. Either way, the job will have been done effectively, and the long campaign will finally have accomplished its end. You will no longer be free officially, but in truth, you wouldn’t have been free for a long time because you were told there was a cage around you and you never thought to see if there was for yourself.
That’s the hope, at least.
The strategy to combat it is simple. In fact, it’s being done with these officers.
Raise hell, call for firings, hold people accountable, and make sure everyone knows that these rights are still here and protecting us all. Be legally vicious about it if you have to.
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Democratic socialism offers communism with better branding
Rhetoric may sound softer, but the hostility to capitalism and private property remains
BY: Robert Knight, The Washington Times (July 12, 2026).
Political terms are quickly evolving, especially during this election cycle.
“Democrat” once meant “liberalism,” which became “progressive.” This is giving way to “democratic socialism,” which is shorthand for communism — although it pretends not to be.
Several candidates in recent Democratic primaries ran using communist rhetoric, and others campaigned — and won — under the banner of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Defeated Democrats included Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, a left-winger who was the lead counsel to House managers in President Trump’s first impeachment inquiry in 2019.
Mr. Goldman’s crime was being pro-Israel, something that until recently would not have been controversial in a city with more Jews than any other in the world.
The big news last week was Graham Platner’s withdrawal from Maine’s U.S. Senate race. The disgraced socialist candidate had been embraced by most major Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer.
At an April campaign rally in Portland, Mr. Platner was hailed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, who said he was “my kind of man” and later repeated that characterization several times.
This was long after photos had surfaced of his DSA affiliation, his past statements about being a communist and an anti-Zionist who backed Hamas, and many sexual abuse allegations by women. There was also the Nazi chest tattoo that he had sported for years (but the meaning of which he denied knowing).
The image: a skull-and-crossbones Totenkopf, a symbol for the death camp guards of the SS.
As a Babylon Bee headline said: “Dems Wishing There Had Been Some Sort of Sign That Platner Was a Bad Person.” After Mr. Platner withdrew from the race, the satirical site ran a spoof photo with this: “Nazi Really Regretting Getting Graham Platner Tattoo.”
Although two women — one a Republican, the other a Democrat — came forward with credible abuse stories reported in The New York Times in early June, Democrats shrugged. It took a rape accusation against Mr. Platner by the aforementioned Democratic woman, reported in Politico on July 6, to finally trigger buyer’s remorse.
Democrats are now scrambling to find another socialist nutcase by July 27 to face Republican Sen. Susan M. Collins in November.
The DSA was founded in 1982 by socialist Michael Harrington, who took pains to include language in its platform disavowing communism. In 2025, the party’s convention dropped the clause.
This made perfect sense because the DSA’s platform is virtually indistinguishable from that of the Communist Party USA. Both are committed to ending free market capitalism, defunding police, erasing national borders, promoting all things LGBTQ and embracing anti-Zionism, which is shorthand for hatred of Jews. So why pretend anymore?
One good reason to keep pretending would be to win elections. Most voters, especially those older than 35, would support the American way of life over communism’s horrific track record. From the Soviet Union to China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, the Chavez-Maduro regime in Venezuela and others, it is an unbroken litany of tyranny.
Once ensconced, the “power to the people” socialists abolish private property, persecute religious people, impose a state-controlled media, create mass poverty and commit mass murder.
It is only because America’s leftist-dominated educators and media have done such a good job covering this up that so many young people have a benign view of socialism and even communism. They like the idea of free stuff at someone else’s expense, as promised by Sen. Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent and democratic socialist who helped launch Mr. Platner’s campaign.
In “The Communist Manifesto” (1848), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels criticized socialist movements as insufficiently revolutionary. Marx later wrote that socialism was a major step on the road to communism. This view was adopted by Vladimir Lenin after his Bolsheviks took over the Russian Revolution of 1917 and murdered the merely socialist “useful idiots.”
Socialism and communism spring from the same poisoned roots: atheism and collectivism. Both ideologies are at war with Christianity’s and Judaism’s biblical belief that people are created in the image of God and thus human life is sacred. The Bible also supports private property and the rule of law.
The only real difference between socialism and communism is the means of acquiring power. Socialists such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a communist and Islamist, are gaining power via the ballot box amid a shocking takeover of the Democratic Party.
Mr. Mamdani finally threw Mr. Platner overboard Tuesday, telling him to drop out.
It is vital that Americans realize what will happen if this truly red movement — increasingly powered by an Islamist movement — is not stopped. Socialism is the final stage of collectivism before the guns come out to crush all resistance, including the “useful idiots” who enabled it.
As Mao Zedong said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Democratic socialists won primaries in solidly Democratic districts in New York, Colorado and California. Yet it may well be a very different story around the nation in the midterm elections in November, especially in toss-up districts that Mr. Trump won in 2024.
Republicans must connect the dots for voters. They need to make Mr. Platner and other radical candidates symbolize where the Democratic Party would take the nation if they win control of Congress this year and the White House in 2028.
GFK
Observations From The Fifth Estate 