Recent articles by Morgan

How To Get The DEI Out Of DOD

Military service is a calling.

Faith, family and sacrifice lie at the core of why most people raise their right hand and pledge their lives to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. The best military officers with whom I have served have a quiet and purposeful sense of that old-fashioned sentiment — duty, honor, country.

Those values have been under a full frontal assault. After spending a generation in the fear and loathing of men and their “toxic masculinity,” the left now stands surprised that those same men commit suicide at increasing rates, want to become women or voted for President Donald Trump by massive margins.

To push back, three battles await the next secretary of Defense.

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Trump Is Back And Foreign Leaders Are Taking Notice

Less than a week after the landslide election of former President Donald J. Trump, America’s enemies are running for cover.

A Hamas spokesman told Newsweek it seeks an immediate end to the war. Russia’s Vladimir Putin remarked to reporters that Trump’s desire to end the Ukraine crisis “deserves attention at least.” China’s Xi Jinping congratulated Trump on Thursday, expressing the pair would “find the right way to get along in the new era.” World leaders know that the past four years of U.S. dithering, insecurity, and shame are over.

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Trump isn’t letting neocons off the hook

Trump is right: it’s all too easy to send other people to war. The irony of Donald Trump is that he is not just fighting against the radical left. He is in a vicious bar fight with the neoconservative right, too.

Who are neocons? Short answer: the D.C. desk jockeys who think democracy can be exported by American firepower.

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Trump as Hitler, courtesy of the New Republic, June 2024

Calling Trump “Hitler” makes Kamala Harris look desperate

How long have Democrats been calling their Republican rivals “Hitler?”

Former President Donald J. Trump was still in diapers on the eve of the 1948 election when President Harry Truman compared Thomas Dewey and his running mate Earl Warren to Hitler, warning, as The New York Times reported, that if they were to win it would “bring a Fascistic threat to American freedom that is even more dangerous than the perils from communism and extreme right ‘crackpots.’”

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Biden Needs To Stop Asking For A Ceasefire And A Two State Solution

But like a Bruce Springsteen song, the Biden-Harris administration continues to repeat itself calling for an Israeli cease-fire. In Dec. 2023, less than six weeks after Hamas’ medievally brutal attack on Israel, President Joe Biden claimed Netanyahu was losing support due to “indiscriminate bombing“ of civilians.

Never mind that Israel is fighting for its very existence. Never mind that Israel’s tactics work. Never mind that Hamas killed 46 American citizens and holds seven American hostages to this day. Never mind that Israel takes greater precautions to prevent civilian casualties than any army in the history of warfare.

By Biden-Harris logic, the U.S. would have started shipping Band-Aids to Tokyo after the Battle of Midway or airdropped crackers to Germany once we bagged Normandy.

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Kamala Isn’t Just Stupid, She’s Dangerous

Democrats seem genuinely surprised by the lackluster performance. The New York Times lamented her “verbal acrobatics” and “verbal jujitsu.” CNN took note that the veep was sticking to “friendlier interviewers with targeted audiences.”

Have they not been paying attention these past two and a half months? Perhaps they’ve been too caught up in the puke-green vibes of Kamala’s brat summer.

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Israel’s Iron Fist

The hard truth remains: deterrence only works when your enemies believe you will act. Israel understands this. They know, as Israel’s fourth prime minister, Golda Meir, once said, that they have “no place else to go.” They fight not just for land, but for existence.

Indeed, Israel is at war with a different strain of the same mind virus that inspired September 11, which makes it all the more revolting that the Biden-Harris administration is trying to thread a political needle. Instead of staunchly backing one of our most loyal allies, the Democrats say Israel has a “right to self-defense” and in the same breath, call for a ceasefire.

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Zelensky Jumps Into The Presidential Race With Support For Democrats

Imagine if during the presidential election of 1940, Winston Churchill came to the United States and criticized the Republican candidate running against President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Can you picture the great statesman asking America for lend-lease dollars while at the same time admonishing Wendell Willkie and his running mate?

You probably can’t fathom it, because Churchill wasn’t a tool.

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Biden Stumbles Towards World War III

What Trump made clear — and ABC blithely ignored — is that the Biden administration is risking a world war over Ukraine. The last time we got this close to the use of nuclear weapons, the issues at hand were West Berlin and Russian missiles 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Then, unlike now, the American people clearly understood what was at risk. The presidents who oversaw those crises explained their calculus to the public.

But the Biden administration has edged the country closer and closer to a world war with little public debate. The United States is currently mired chest-deep in what strategists coyly call a “proxy war” with Russia. We’re supplying weapons, military advice, money and intelligence — and Ukraine is providing the warm bodies.

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Harris-Walz Insult Service Members — Again

It is staggering to consider that the sitting vice president of the United States doesn’t know or care that thousands of American troops remain in a war zone. It is also shameful, given that these troops are coming under attack with weapons funded by the Biden-Harris policyof restoring billions of dollars to Iran that were frozen by former President Donald Trump. 

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Trump Vs. The Washington Foreign Policy Blob

Critics of Trump’s foreign policy hate his tough talk. They mock his ALL CAPS proclamations. They rolled their eyes when he warned North Korea it would be “met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.” They cringed with self-loathing when Trump tweeted Old Glory after the U.S. military assassinated Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani. They scoffed at Mr. Trump’s vow to “obliterate” the head of the Taliban, Abdul Ghani Baradar, if any Americans were harmed during the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan. Trump’s legions of haters think it impolitic and crass that Trump showed Baradar a spy-satellite picture of his own home or promised Vladimir Putin the United States would hit Moscow if Russia invaded Ukraine.

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Kamala Harris Reminded Americans She Plans To Carry On The Biden Legacy

Our founders clearly defined the number one job of the federal government: to “provide for the common defense.” Sadly, there were no questions in CNN’s 20-minute infomercial about what Harris plans to do with our nation’s armed services. It was a bizarre omission by interviewer Dana Bash, given that America’s military is the largest discretionary line item in the budget and the president is the commander-in-chief.

As close as Bash got to the military was asking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz if he “misspoke” when he described himself as having gone to war. “I certainly own my mistakes when I make them,” Walz said. He also claimed his “weapons I carried in war” comment was a grammatical error. Stolen valor, typo — same, same.

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The Party of War

When I first went to work on the Hill, I was shocked at how rarely anyone asked: “Is this in the best interest of national security?” Or: “How will this benefit the American taxpayer?” After asking those questions myself — at every meeting I took — I often received blank, bewildered stares in return.

Like a drunk passing a saloon, most swamp creatures just can’t seem to wait to sidle in and order up American ground forces, a naval flotilla or air power. And since only 1% of Americans serve in the U.S. military, relatively few constituents seem to object.

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Trump Rallies Prove Average Citizens Remain Engaged — With A Thirst For Truth

America, which spent most of the 20th century fighting the lock-step propaganda of Pravda and the Kremlin’s vozhds, now finds itself on the precipice of electing a woman who believes in Soviet-era price controls: “I will work to pass the first ever Federal ban on price gauging on food.” She said “gauging” not gouging, but no journalist even asked if it was a verbal slip or a grander scheme to prevent Walmart from setting its own price for Corn Flakes.

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Tim Walz Has Stolen Valor

What so offends his fellow veterans, despite his 24 years of National Guard service, is that Walz claims to be a warrior but never deployed to war.

There’s an expression for that kind of bragging: stolen valor.

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Once Again, Biden Doesn’t Have A Strategy For Ukraine. Where’s The Money Going?

When the law to give Ukraine another $61 billion made its way through Congress back in April, lawmakers appropriated the money with strings attached. One big string was section 504 of the bill, which stipulated that within 45 days, the administration had to present a strategy for the war. That strategy was due on June 4 — the Biden administration’s homework is now two months late.

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Biden Still Has The Nuclear Codes

Our enemies likewise know America’s commander-in-chief is no longer at the wheel if in fact he ever truly helmed our ship of state. Events such as the secretary of defense disappearing for days on end earlier this year suddenly make more sense. Why check in with a boss who has clearly checked out?

Fortunately, America’s chain of command remains intact — the U.S. military has the discipline and resolve to weather the absence of a leader who gets tired after 4 p.m., as has been widely reported about Biden. But our enemies smell weakness at the very top of the command structure. Will they act in the next five and a half months while a very lame duck finishes his term?

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Trump Reveals What A Sane National Security Policy Would Actually Look Like

When I began my career in journalism in the 1990s, I kept Donald Trump’s number handy in case I needed a good quote. The brash New Yorker always had just the right turn of phrase to explain a complicated business question in a way people could understand. My readers appreciated his common sense.

Thirty years later, that common sense came across strongly in his acceptance speech at last week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Trump’s critics hate his use of superlatives and hyperbole, but it is hard to dispute his underlying points. The former president laid out his commander-in-chief credentials in clear language with sound strategy.

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Trump in the bull’s-eye: Lowering the political temperature won’t be easy

What is a young, impressionable American to think when told by the leader of the free world that to “save democracy,” we must “stop Trump”? Mr. Biden has repeatedly invoked variations of his 2022 quote “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

The day before a gunman tried to assassinate Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden “strove to turn the nation’s attention back to former president Donald J. Trump,” according to The New York Times, and raged that his political rival is a “convicted criminal,” “business fraud” and rapist.

Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Biden got his wish. All eyes are now on Mr. Trump, where they are likely to remain until he is once again president.

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Biden May Help Create A Generation Of New Republicans

The president’s condition didn’t surprise Republicans because we have been sending each other memes for years — Biden lost on stage and falling off a bike; Biden being led away by the Easter Bunny or coached by Jill; Biden falling up Air Force One’s stairs or toppling over at the Air Force Academy graduation.

The president’s infirmities, mumbles and rambling at the debate seemed no worse than usual.

But to Democrats?  The uncut, unvarnished, unscripted Joe Biden was a disaster.

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Biden’s Most Shocking Lie

For a commander-in-chief to forget the troops who have given their last full measure of devotion on his watch is unconscionable. In August 2021, trying to fulfill Biden’s foolish Afghanistan orders, 11 Marines, one Army soldier and one Navy corpsman were killed in the bombing at the Hamid Karzai International Airport Abbey Gate in Kabul.

Did Biden also forget the three service members who were killed just this January in a drone attack in Jordan?

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Europeans Aren’t Concerned About Threat Of Russia Invading Continent After Ukraine

Ukraine has revealed many of NATO’s weakness. These led a professor of war studies at the University of Warwick, Anthony King, to remark that Europe has “systematically demilitarized itself because it didn’t need to spend the money. They have basically gone to sleep.”

That ambivalence toward defense comes across in another recent survey of Europeans. Sixty percent of Italians, 47% of Germans and 40% of the French are in favor of cutting off arms shipments to Ukraine. Across Europe, 60% think that Ukraine will be an economic burden. Among the French, Spanish and Italians, more than 40% either don’t know or don’t care who wins the war in Ukraine.

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Biden Needs To Learn From JFK’s Handling Of The Cuban Missile Crisis

Today, few Americans grasp how closely the Biden administration is dancing to outright war with the world’s largest nuclear power. Biden’s national security team continues to secretly escalate American involvement in Ukraine and publicly downplay the risk.

Earlier this month it was reported that Biden quietly approved allowing Ukraine to use American offensive weapons to strike deep inside Russian territory. Yet, despite this enormous strategic decision, Biden carries on per normal, freezing up at Juneteenth concerts and licking ice cream—there’s been no policy speech from the president, no seven-step outline for victory, no warning to the American people of the risks involved.

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Lessons from Normandy

Thursday’s 80th anniversary of D-Day likely marked the final major ceremony to be attended by survivors of the Juno, Omaha, Gold, Utah, and Sword beach landings. Precious few veterans of history’s largest amphibious invasion will be present for the 90th. As they leave us, we lose the knowledge of the last Americans to experience firsthand what it took to win a war between global powers.

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The Left Have Stuck Their Claws Into The Military — But House GOP Is Fighting Back

House Republicans are fighting to keep the military about breaking things and killing people, what they call a “focus on lethality.” Most of their efforts will likely get stripped out by the Democrats when the bill goes before the Senate. But with the upper chamber looking increasingly red in November’s election and Donald Trump leading in the polls, this year’s House bill may well be a harbinger of what to expect next spring.

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Remember the Fallen on Memorial Day

As an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, I have buried 173 fellow service members. Some have died young, like Joshua Kaleb Watson, an ensign just out of Annapolis, shot by an Islamic terrorist in Pensacola. Others have been old men, like Hormer Kapula, a World War II vet who died at 101 years old.

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Biden’s Inflationary Agenda Is Squeezing Out Military Funding

President Biden kicked off the discussion for 2025 by presenting the weakest presidential budget request in living memory. Our commander-in-chief asked Congress for $849.8 billion. Considering inflation is galloping along at 3.5%, the president’s request represents a $64 billion cut to America’s armed forces.

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The Ukraine Blame Game Begins

Instead of punishing the Biden administration’s staggering incompetence and fiduciary malfeasance, it seems Congress will reward it, bringing the Ukraine grab bag to $185 billion by next week.  

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US Navy Personnel Need To Be Refocused On A Warrior Ethos—Starting With The Basics

The past seven years haven’t made the job of being a ship commander in the Western Pacific any easier. Seventh Fleet’s area of responsibility sprawls over 36 maritime countries encompassing 50 percent of the world’s population. It faces the densest shipping environment on earth and routinely confronts China, North Korea, and Russia. Ships like the McCain keep sea lanes open and often sail, alone, under the full knowledge that thousands of Chinese anti-ship missiles like the YJ-12, YJ-18, YJ-83, DF-21, and DF-26 are trained on its every move.  

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Biden’s Two-State Solution For Israel: Michigan And Nevada

The blind religion of today’s modern American progressive deems strength immoral and whiteness a sin. Likewise industry and wealth are the products of a corrupt patriarchy, and therefore unjust. Despite the fact that 20 percent of Israelis are of Arab descent, to progressive thinking, Israel’s strength, prosperity, and whiteness make them oppressive occupiers of territory they’ve inhabited since the days of Moses. 

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feilong, dragon, shenlong-8634302.jpg

Red China is Watching

Today, the Chinese Communist Party spends billions tracking and monitoring their own people with facial recognition, social scores, and a growing web of dystopian devices and methods. 

These same tools are being used against the American public.

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Trump or Biden: Who War it Better?

In December, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report that Iran has obtained enough nuclear material, that if enriched, could make three nuclear weapons in a matter of weeks. If you think Iran is brazen and unchecked now, wait until it joins the ranks of the world’s nuclear powers.

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The Stench of Ukraine Corruption is Wafting Westward

In early 2014, while American politicians like John McCain were over-promising Ukrainians, “America is with you,” Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian oil and gas company. It was his access to DC power, not his oil and gas expertise, that earned Hunter a $1 million annual salary from Burisma.

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atomic bomb, mushroom cloud, explosion-1011738.jpg

NEWSMAX: Will Biden Stumble into World War III?

If your enemy believes it he at war with you, are you at war?

Americans see our involvement in Ukraine as a “proxy war” and most of us are going about life as normal, attending soccer practices and texting one another memes during staff meetings. 

By contrast, the Russian people believe their nation is under attack from the United States.  So great is this belief that a majority of Russians (54 percent) claim to live “under constant fear” of nuclear attack.

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Destroying Space Command

Those briefing the president pointed out that Peterson is already home to Northern Command and NORAD. Locating yet another combatant command in the same geographic footprint made little strategic sense. Don’t put all your generals in one basket.

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Morgan Murphy Southern Journal for Southern Living on New York 2001

Southern Journal

I grew to love it, though. City time is like dog years: A year in New York equals 7 in Alabama. So when I moved home last April, I had some reentry problems after spending 42 years as a New Yorker. All my black New York clothing had to be discarded. Driving home from the Empire State, I pulled in a rest stop in South Carolina and overheard an old lady ask her friend, “Since when do the Amish drive Cadillacs?” Driving is a big change. Manhattanites use their horns like breathing—it is a natural and constant function, vital to sustaining life. In Birmingham, a horn is a device used as a sort of automotive wave, often blown to get a friend out of his house. My city friends are amazed that in rural areas, one is supposed to raise a two-fingered salute to all passing cars and people. Anything less is rude.

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Tips on Tipping

The best tip on tipping doesn’t involve money. Your server is not your servant.  Look up from the menu when they come to the table.  Don’t begin sentences with “Give me the . . .” or “I’ll have the  . . .”  Try, “May I please have the prime rib?” or “I see you’re busy, but could I have some more water when you have a chance?”   Waiters are some of the hardest working people in business—give them the respect, as well as the tip, they deserve.

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