 With Christmas just a week away, I thought I would write something upbeat and holiday or Christmas related. I was struggling with finding a topic that wasn’t politically or socially oriented. I did not want to find myself ranting about things like why hardly anyone says “Merry Christmas” anymore and it has been replaced by the politically correct “Happy Holidays” or why stores and businesses are reluctant to play Christmas music because someone might be offended. But I was reading an article about the origins of the Christmas classic – “White Christmas” – and found it interesting…and I hope you might, too.
I think that most of us in the “older” generation can hear Bing Crosby’s voice singing that classic song and can probably recall every note and word…even without a karaoke machine feeding us the words. And, I bet even the “younger” generations have heard Bing belting out that song. I was surprised to learn that this is the best-selling single in the history of the world. Even beating out another holiday classic, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” (I know, shocking, isn’t it). Irving Berlin wrote that song in 1940 as part of the music for a movie, Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby. The film would debut in 1942 but Bing Crosby first sang that song publicly on his NBC radio show in 1941 less than three weeks after Pearl Harbor was bombed and tens of thousands of young American men were in the midst of or headed to battles in World War II. While most people now associate this song with someone staring out the window, perhaps writing Christmas cards to distant relatives and friends, and hoping for snow on Christmas, the original audience to its 1941 introduction associated that song with war. Families who sent loved ones overseas to war could only dream of a Christmas like the ones they used to know. And soldiers preparing to go to war or already deployed overseas, would hear that song and dream of snowy treetops and carefree children. Soldiers requested that song again and again on armed forces radio stations. When Bing Crosby was asked what was the most difficult thing he ever had to do during his entertainment career, he said that in December 1944, he was doing a USO show with Bob Hope and the Andrews Sisters in Northern France and, at the end of the show, he had to stand on the stage and sing White Christmas with 100,000 GI’s in tears without breaking down. A lot of those soldiers were killed a few days later in the Battle of the Bulge. The song became even more popular after the war. The record company actually wore out the original master tape by 1947 and Bing rerecorded the version we hear today. White Christmas has become a Christmas song for any time and place. As Americans, we are privileged to hear it that way…but, hopefully, we can also remember the dark history from which it arose and better appreciate every peaceful Christmas we are lucky enough to enjoy with family and friends. Merry Christmas. Jerry Hashimura Pahrump, NV  I got asked again recently why I carry a gun and I still get asked on occasion by my more liberal or left-leaning relatives, friends, and colleagues, why I carry a gun. It’s not because I’m scared. Not because I’m paranoid. And not because I have some fantasy about defending myself. I carry because I know evil exists and I won’t let it take the people I love without a fight.
Because of my background in martial arts, many of my more liberal minded friends have asked, “Why do you need to carry a gun, you’ve had a lot of training to defend yourself?” Sure, I’m fairly confident one-on-one when no one is armed. But I cannot predict if the threat may be armed or it might be two or three-on-one. I am not letting myself or my loved ones be killed without at least an even chance. I have no problem putting myself in harm’s way to protect my loved ones. On November 20th, 2025, in Tiffin, Ohio, a small town of about 17,000 people, a mother went to her home around 6:25 p.m. to collect her personal belongings because of an ongoing domestic violence situation. She was accompanied by a 29-year-old friend and father of her oldest child (7-years old). She thought her 42-year-old husband, and father of their 7-month-old baby, was working out of town. She did not know he had surreptitiously come home and parked his car around the corner. When she and her friend were in the house gathering her belongings, she heard the 7-year-old scream. They ran outside. Her husband was in the driveway and opened fire on her friend. He then shot the 7-year-old and their 7-month-old baby. He shot the friend again and then shot himself. He and the baby died at the scene and her friend and 7-year-old died later at the hospital. Who shoots anyone in such a situation, let alone a 7-year-old child and a 7-month-old baby? A crazy, evil person. That is why I carry. Your local TV news, newspaper, and the internet are filled with stories of crazy, evil people doing unimaginable and violent things. As recently as this past July 5th in my small rural community, at a “Movies in the Park” family event, a 22-year-old young man was shot and killed. They arrested three suspects – two are 18 and one is 19. Within the last few days, they arraigned three juveniles (17, 15, and 15) in Las Vegas for killing a 19-year-old woman in a park. These three had gone into the park with the intention of robbing people and when this young woman resisted, they killed her. This is why I carry. A quick Google search of violent crimes returned a laundry list of random shootings and evil people doing what they do in nearby Las Vegas, including a roadside argument that resulted in an 11-year old child being shot and killed, a 41-year old man shooting and killing the mother of his two children, and a man shooting his girlfriend and taking her two children. I don’t have to mention such places as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles – the news seems constantly filled with evil people doing violent and bad things…and that’s just the ones that make the news. Having worked in the legal business for over 40 years and having volunteered at the Sheriff’s Office in my community for many years, I’ve seen too many instances to count of evil happening that just don’t get reported. Oftentimes, it is random and violent. If I could predict when it might happen to me or someone I love, my carrying a gun habit might be different. But the world does not work that way. That is why I carry. I see only two paths in life. You can accept that evil exists in the world and be prepared or you can pretend it doesn’t exist. One of those paths gets people killed on a daily, if not hourly, basis. I’ve heard it said that you have to be your own cavalry; you need to be a protector of your children, spouse, and loved ones. I’ve said and written this before, it’s an oft used cliché but very, very true…when seconds count, help is minutes away (or hours in some instances). While masculinity gets mocked today and being a protector (male or female) gets laughed at as some outdated notion, I don’t care what other people think about me or how I decide to live my life. I go back to Rhett Butler’s ending line in Gone with the Wind, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” I carry a gun because I value the life I have and the people I love will not be taken from me by some crazy person or random act of violence without a fight. I am not willing to die politely. Evil is real and I believe being a protector is everyone’s responsibility. Evil does not announce itself; it doesn’t wear a sign saying, “Here I am, watch out.” I want to be trained and I want to be ready. The mother in the story above will have to live with this horrific story for the rest of her life. Her friend died unable to protect himself, his son, or the 7-month-old baby. My point is not that he should have had a gun (but wouldn’t it have been nice if he did); my point is that you or I should not have to live with the regret of being unprepared. I’ve heard many people say that they could not kill another person, even if their life were in danger. I see things differently. If some crazy person threatens the life of my wife, my son, or me, I have no problem taking that person’s life before I see my loved ones killed. Life is fragile. Evil is real. Be a protector. Jerry Hashimura Pahrump, NV  It did not come as a surprise to me to be reading an article on another textbook example of the Democrats’ hypocrisy.
On the one hand, they attack billionaires and large corporations for their influence on politics in America and not taking care of the “common” citizen, while the other hand is out there taking the billionaires and big corporations’ money and stuffing it in their own pockets. Is it only conservatives who see this behavior as hypocritical? I doubt it. The Democrats see it but believe – and rightly so – that their constituents won’t lift up their skirts to see who is funding their favorite Democrat’s campaign and only listen to (and believe) the words coming out of their mouths. Why would Democrats give up on a winning strategy and forfeit money coming into their campaign fund…I guess they believe it’s only hypocritical if you are caught. One of the biggest hypocrites is Jon Ossoff, a Democratic senator from Georgia who is at risk in the 2026 midterm elections. He believes his winning strategy for the upcoming midterm elections is to attack billionaires and corporations, saying such things as, “The vast sums of corporate and billionaire money in our political system, with or without Trump, are why ordinary people are so ill-served by elected officials in Congress.” He insists he is fighting the “money that corrupts politics.” In his successful bid for Congress in 2021, he attacked wealthy people who “manipulate elections.” But more than seventy billionaires have filled his campaign coffers with almost half a million dollars. During this current election cycle, billionaire donors to Ossoff’s war chest are Illinois Governor JB Pritzker ($3.9 billion net worth), the infamous George Soros and his son and wife (family net worth $24.5B), Patricia Stryker ($4B net worth), and the list goes on and on. I’m sure these billionaires are not the ones Ossoff alleges might influence politics so he’s okay taking their money. NOT. And let’s not overlook the various Political Action Committees (“PACs”) who have donated to Ossoff, funded by “small” corporations like Amazon (worth $2.5 trillion), Home Depot ($352 billion), Verizon ($172B), Boeing ($155B), and Pfizer ($143B). I’m confident Ossoff believes these are not large corporations who may try to influence our political “leaders” as the retail, telecom, airline, and pharmaceutical industries have never had an interest in legislation that might affect their businesses. Again – NOT. Nick Puglia, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign, which works to elect GOP candidates in the Senate, said, “Jon Ossoff is a hypocrite and a liar. He says one thing in Georgia and does another when he thinks no one is looking.” James Talarico, a Democrat running for Senate in Texas, entered the race saying he is taking on “billionaire megadonors and their puppet politicians.” Of course, he didn’t mean the billionaires who donated $90,000 to his campaign…he must have meant some whole other group of billionaires. Talarico raised $6M in the first three weeks of his run for the Senate and I would bet my usual dollars to donuts that a large, large, large portion came from PACs funded by these bad “billionaire megadonors” and trillion- and billion-dollar corporations. If Talarico isn’t going to become a puppet to these billionaires, he should return the $90,000 – but has not – and he should ensure his campaign coffers are not filled by PACs funded by billionaires or billion-dollar corporations – but, again, he is not. Talarico’s spokesperson was quoted as saying, “If there are billionaires who believe they should be taxed more and their outsize political influence should be limited, they are welcome in this movement.” So, you expect us to believe the billionaires who are donating to Talarico’s campaign want to be taxed more? They want to have less political influence? Me thinks you are smoking too much of the “wacky tabacky.” The Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota, Peggy Flanagan, who is running for the Senate, pledged not to take any corporate PAC money because “the only people Peggy wants to be beholden to are Minnesotans,” yet she has accepted donations from the DLPGA PAC, which counts as its largest donor Meta Platforms (worth $1.62 trillion), as well as Amazon (worth $2.5 trillion), and Lockheed Martin (worth a measly $103 billion). Angie Craig, another Democrat from Minnesota running for the Senate, released a video, “Billionaires Get Richer, Families Get Hungrier” and said Republicans are working to benefit corporations. Some of her largest donors have been PACs for UBS Americas (managing $2.1 trillion), Cigna Group (worth $73 billion), Fox Corporation (worth $27B), and General Mills (worth $24B), along with donations from billionaires Mark Heising and Jennifer Pritzker. I guess she’s not ashamed to take money from these billionaires as families go hungry. Come on, Angie, we see what you’re doing. I guess I should not be surprised by these two hypocrites from Minnesota, after all, their fearless leader is Governor Tim Walz – who isn’t the dumbest person in Minnesota but he better hope that person doesn’t die or he will claim the title. There are many more examples of these Democratic hypocrites and I couldn’t possibly list them all here. I’m petitioning Webster’s Dictionary to put these Democrats’ pictures opposite the definition of “hypocrite” so that people can actually see what true hypocrites look like. I’m not saying there aren’t conservatives taking donations from billionaires and large corporations but they are not talking out of both sides of their mouth while doing so. Should there be campaign donation reform and better transparency? Probably. I don’t know what reform would be fair and equitable (though those two words don’t seem to be in the Democratic vocabulary). And, in the end, I guess neither the Democrats nor Republicans are interested in cutting off access to big bucks. But I, for one, wouldn’t mind these candidates having smaller campaign bank accounts so I’m not constantly inundated with internet, broadcast media, and print campaign ads, mailers, and billboards. I can do my own research on candidates and they are wasting their money thinking they will change my mind with a 30-second ad or billboard blocking my view of our beautiful desert. Unfortunately, there are too many people allowed to vote who would be convinced to vote for someone based on a catchy phrase, 30-second ad pandering to what they want to hear, or a campaign promise that will never be fulfilled. It’s too bad you don’t have to pass a civics test to exercise your right to vote; we might elect better representatives if we had to pass a test. Jerry Hashimura Pahrump, NV  The national debt seems to pop up in the news quite regularly but no one, including me, really seems to care. How did the debt get so big and what should or can we do about it?
Today, the national debt stands at roughly $38 trillion. That number is almost too hard to imagine. Let me give you some perspective. If you were to spend $1,000,000 every single day, $38 trillion would let you spend $1M a day for 38,000,000 days…that’s 104,109.5 years. That lets you buy a boatload of beanies and weenies! Some of you are old enough to clearly remember the summer of 1999. The Sixth Sense was the number one movie at the box office – remember, “I see dead people” – and the Department of the Treasury issued a statement that the net market borrowing for the U.S. for the period July through September of that year was estimated to be a minus $11 billion. In other words, the Treasury Department was paying down the national debt. That would be unheard of today. The Treasury Department routinely issues these estimates throughout the year. In April 2025, the Treasury Department estimated it would need to borrow about $554 billion for the July-September quarter. Again, to add some perspective and using $1M a day spending, $554B would let you spend that $1M every day for 554,000 days (1,518 years). It is a ridiculous amount of money to borrow. But three months later, Treasury revised that estimate to $1.007 trillion – a difference of more than 80% in the wrong direction. It’s no wonder the U.S. is so far in debt if our money “geniuses” at Treasury give a first estimate that is off by 80%. If I were to underestimate my taxes owed by 80% too little, the IRS might be a tad irritated and I would be residing in an exclusive gated men’s community for three to five years, or maybe two years with good behavior. With the July-September quarter behind us, we now see that the amount Treasury borrowed was $1.058 trillion – so their second revised estimate was only off by another $51 million. I guess when you’re spending trillions and estimating billions, $51 million is just a rounding error. You or I could probably do as well or better than the Treasury by using a Ouija Board or be blindfolded and pull numbers from a hat. If you were the financial analyst at a big corporation being off by this amount of money, you’d be shown the door very quickly – but, of course, no one at Treasury or any government employee (elected or hired) has lost their job over managing the national debt (and I use the word “managing” rather loosely because I cannot see any real managing going on). The national debt reached $37 trillion on August 11th and $38 trillion just 70 days later – so an additional $1 trillion in just over two months. The phrase “spending money like a drunken sailor” comes to mind. In the end, what did America get for its $38 trillion? One of the big-ticket items was a long, long war in Iraq and Afghanistan – which Sleepy Joe Biden ended abruptly and then decided to donate billions of dollars of military equipment to the Taliban. There was also a financial system bailout in 2008 and then a series of bailouts and spending efforts during COVID. Ask yourself, though, has going into debt to the tune of $38 trillion made you better off? Is the United States more secure and safe? Is America more powerful? More free? Is America more prosperous and affordable after we accumulated all of this debt? If we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is “no” across the board. I believe President Trump is trying the make us more secure, things more affordable, the U.S. more powerful, and tried cutting costs via DOGE (which the Democrats crapped on at every turn because saving government money is a bad things to Democrats). But, of course anything President Trump wants to do is always an uphill battle with the Democrats and Lamestream Media. I swear, if Trump cured cancer, the Democrats press release would be, “Trump puts cancer doctors and nurses out of work.” The net interest on the national debt in fiscal year 2025 exceeded $1 trillion. The bottom line is that the U.S. government doesn’t collect enough money to pay for everything they promised. For now, the difference is made up by borrowing more and more and more. But this cannot last forever. I don’t want higher taxes, no one does (except the socialist Zohran Mamdani, Mayor-elect of NYC). I don’t want to see Social Security payments reduced. I don’t want to see Medicare benefits drastically reduced. No one wants that. But I don’t know what the answer is for this debt crisis. We need elected officials that are fiscally responsible but I do not see that happening anytime soon. I doubt many of our elected officials can even spell “deficit” or understand the extent of our fiscal emergency. They continue to be paid during government shutdowns and manage to accumulate a net worth of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on a $200,000 annual salary; they don’t see any fiscal emergency. What I see in our future is the U.S. government defaulting. Not defaulting on its debt, but defaulting on the promises it made to voters who put them in office. The public expects Social Security to be there when they retire; they pay into it their entire working life. The public expects the military to be well-equipped and ready to fight America’s battles to keep us safe. They expect a functioning government to provide essential services. But – how long can the current situation sustain itself? Your guess is as good as mine (and certainly better than the Treasury Department guessing the amount it needs to borrow). All I can say is, take a deep breath, it’s going to be a wild ride. Jerry Hashimura Pahrump, NV |
Authors"The Grassroot Conservative" publication is a collection of Southern Nevada authors with strong independent voices writing on the issues that matter. Matt Sadler is the editor-in-chief of this new eMagazine and blog, Each author brings life experience, talent, and insight to each thoughtful article. Archives
February 2026
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