Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

To the editor;

At 71 years of age, I was proud to cast my vote in the presidential election at the Cooleemee precinct on election Tuesday. Now I sit here reflecting back on that historic event.

I came home just in time to vote after visiting my only daughter and her family in Florida where we watched an interview with retired U.S Navy Lt. Tony Bobulinski. After retiring from the military, Bobulinski said he “held a high level security clearance” then served as an instructor for the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command as well as becoming wealthy.

In this interview, Lt. Bobulinski told a credible story of how the Biden family utilized its connections with China, while the vice president officially served our country, to enrich itself. At the request of Hunter Biden, Bobulinski was invited to be the CEO of a company that would legally make millions for both his and the Biden family, including for VP Joe Biden after he left office.

What allegation could be more relevant to the 2020 election? As far as I can tell, aside from the station which aired the interview, this story got no coverage  nor did candidate Biden get any thorough questioning from any other reporters than the interviewer on the network where it originally aired. Why? There was surely plenty to investigate. I believe one Biden staffer did call it “Russia misinformation.”

I am astounded. Having served two terms as mayor of this small former Piedmont textile town, we all know that these textile days are, of course, over and that  fact is arguably due to China. For me, that makes it even more interesting that candidate Biden didn’t feel compelled to answer Lt. Bobulinski’s allegations about being compromised by the Chinese Communist Party.

And the media? That such a serious corruption accusation went unanswered by a presidential candidate seems to me a serious indictment of the major media outlets. Were they satisfied when his refusal to answer was falsely attributed to a nod from “intelligence agencies” or simply or a “smear”. Whoa. Ordinarily, this one story would have been enough to put a serious brake on any other candidate in modern American history. What in the heck is going on?

I have searched and searched but I can find no comment, no coverage, not even a challenge from the Bidens or any major news media to this rather huge accusation of compromising corruption by a president-to-be. From everything I can learn, Lt. Bobulinski is a patriotic, wealthy man who honorably served his country, has nothing to gain, and much to lose from that interview.  China remains our country’s most strategic adversary.  By the time you read this, it will all but be over but the certification by our electors.

The other thing I worry about are the repeated, hostile references on TV to the Electoral College. To many people, this weird sound set up may seem like an outmoded institution and a stupid election method especially to many people who understandably find it hard to grasp why our Founding Founders set things up this way. The main thing I can say is this:

We aren’t France. We are the United States of America. In fact, if you take a look at our Declaration of Independence (originally written cursive) you will notice that right up on top it states independence was being asserted by the 13 united—a small “u” (not capitalized)—and a large “S” States (capitalized). Why? Because it was a Federal government—-not a National government. Again—we are not France.

In other words, the individual states came together and together those states decided to form a federated government. If those states (not provinces) hadn’t joined together, each one was, unto itself, much like a country, with all the rights and privileges that entailed. That’s why, unlike France, we don’t have a national police force and we have states—not provinces. Each state has two Senators, no matter how big or small, because all the states are equal. The House of Representatives is based on representation determined by population. Think on it.

The small ‘u’ and capital ’S’ was one of the interesting bits of heritage that our Cooleemee fifth graders used to learn on their history field trip every year to Pearson’s Graveyard.

Things have truly turned upside down. This situation is deplorable.

Lynn Wells Rumley,    Cooleemee