Maybe instead of pushing gun control the school should just do their jobs.
You can guarantee this info will be used in the lawsuits filed against the school. They dropped the ball. Had they done as required, it may have prevented the shooting in the first place.
“Confessed mass shooter Nikolas Cruz had no criminal record despite dozens of disciplinary infractions, but there was one case in which Broward County school administrators were obligated to send him before a judge — and didn’t do it.
After trashing a middle-school bathroom in 2013, Mr. Cruz received a three-day referral to a newly created diversion program called Promise designed to help kids who had committed misdemeanors avoid arrest and stay out of the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
He didn’t show. At that point, school policy dictated that he should have been hauled before Judge Elijah Williams of the Broward County Delinquency Division, and yet there is no record that it ever happened, according to Timothy Sternberg, a former assistant principal who helped run Promise from 2014-17.
“There’s negligence here because no one ever followed up,” Mr. Sternberg told the Washington Times.
Since the deadly Feb. 14 school massacre in Parkland, Florida, Broward County officials have been accused of creating a lax disciplinary climate in their drive to reduce suspensions, expulsions and arrests, an environment that allowed Mr. Cruz to act out for years without serious consequences.
Files obtained by the Orlando Sun Sentinel show that Mr. Cruz committed 58 infractions from 2012-17 at Westglades Middle School and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, even though he was enrolled in 2015 at another school, Cross Creek, for students with emotional and behavioral disorders.”
After nearly every episode, Mr. Cruz received the same type of punishment — detention, an in-school suspension or out-of-school suspension for one to three days—which also went against district policy.
A repeat offender like Mr. Cruz should have been brought before the district’s Behavior and Intervention Committee to decide “whether this student is appropriate for another setting,” Mr. Sternberg said.
“When you look at the discipline data, it’s not progressive,” said Mr. Sternberg, who sat on the committee. “It’s a one-day [suspension], and then he does the infraction again, and he gets another one-day. There’s no progression of discipline whatsoever.”
As a result, “With the child, it does create a false sense of ‘I can do this and nothing’s going to really happen to me,’ ” he said.”
“A Mexican citizen living in Houston stole another woman’s identity to vote illegally, the Texas attorney general’s office says.
Laura Janeth Garza, 38, was indicted last week on two counts of illegal voting. Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Monday that his office planned to prosecute the case.
Paxton’s office says Garza, who used the alias Angie Yadira Zamora, illegally registered to vote in Harris County after stealing a U.S. citizen’s identity. Authorities learned of the case when the victim applied for a passport and discover that one already had been issued in her name to someone else.”
Garza voted in 2004, 2012 and 2016, according to the attorney general’s office. She is charged with ineligible voting and voter impersonation in the November 2016 election.
Garza was being held at the Montgomery County jail Monday, with bail set at $150,000. She faces up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine if she is convicted.”
AJ, There is no inconsistency. Pence can appear to be both a sniveling sycophant and one who is working to establish himself as the leader of the Cult if Trump is removed from office. That is exactly what Trump worries about and why Pence lavishes such praise on The Great Leader.
“John Hinderaker calls it “the worst scandal in Minnesota history,” and one can only hope he’s right. The local Fox affiliate spent five months tracking the flow of cash going out in carry-on baggage through Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, and more importantly, where it originates. That turns out to be in large part from government day-care payments that end up being for non-existent enrollees (via Instapundit):
In the morning of March 15, Fox 9 chased a tip about a man who was leaving the country. Sources said he took a carry-on bag through security that was packed with $1 million in cash. Travelers can do that, as long as they fill out the proper government forms.
Fox 9 learned that these cloak-and-dagger scenarios now happen almost weekly at MSP. The money is usually headed to the Middle East, Dubai and points beyond. Sources said last year alone, more than $100 million in cash left MSP in carry-on luggage.
The national, go-to expert on what is behind these mysterious money transfers is Glen Kerns.
“What we were interested in is where it was going,” Kerns said.
He is a former Seattle police detective who spent 15 years on the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, until his retirement.
“It’s an outright crime, it’s unbelievable,” he said.
The cash is going through hawalas, supposedly to family members of refugees, where banking systems are either unreliable or non-existent. We’ll come back to this in a moment, but it’s not clear just how much gets to “families” at all. Kerns discovered that some hawalas have other priorities:
“I talked to a couple of sources who had lived in that region and I said, ‘If money is going to this Hawala do you think it is going to al Shabaab?’” said Kerns. “And he said, ‘Oh definitely, that area is controlled by al Shabaab, and they control the Hawala there.’”
He said when the money arrives, whether it was intended for legitimate purposes or not, al Shabaab or other groups demand a cut.
In other words, at least some portion of this cash flow finances terrorism. But where does all this cash originate? After all, the communities that use hawalas are primarily refugees. It turns out that much of it comes from Minnesota taxpayers, using day care centers as a front:”
“Fifteen years ago the share of Protestants among the 18-29 group was 34 percent versus 19 percent who had no religion. Today it’s 22/35. The decline in Protestants within the group isn’t purely a function of younger Americans being less religious, though. Young adults are more diverse racially and ethnically so they’re also more likely to include Americans who don’t practice Christianity at all.
Protestants still outnumber the non-religious among Democrats, 36/23, but you can’t understand that number without understanding the racial divide on the question. Black Americans, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, are still solidly Protestant at 61 percent (in fact, they’re the most Protestant demographic group tested here and it isn’t close). White Protestants, meanwhile, are all but vanishing from the Democratic ranks. Blend them together and that’s how you end up with a baseline of 36 percent across the entire party. If you’re white and Protestant these days, odds are very good that you’re a Republican. But even there, the numbers are down. Whereas the GOP was 60 percent Protestant in 2003, it’s 49 percent now. Not even a majority anymore.
A fascinating detail: The rise across the population in non-religious people is basically entirely at the expense of Protestants. Catholics are steady as she goes over 15 years, although there are racial footnotes to that too.
The Catholic share is steady but the demographics are not. Catholicism is also shrinking among whites, as a PRRI survey found last year. The reason the faith isn’t losing ground as a share of all Americans is because the Latino population is growing and Catholicism is the most common faith among Latinos. They also lean Democratic, of course, which means the left is headed (unless it’s already there) towards a party where whites are pretty uniformly secularists, blacks are Protestants, and Latinos are Catholic.”
The conniving, backstabbing and leaking is common behavior in a personality cult. In the Reagan White House, staffers were united behind the goal of making conservative changes. In Trumpland, everyone is jockeying for position and seeking to remain in the good graces of the paranoid and fickle leader.
The Trump effect on Christianity will not fully show up in polling for a few years. Expect it to be devastating as anecdotal stories from Dreher, youth ministers and others would indicate.
It has taken decades for the full effect of free trade globalism to show on Christianity. Selling Jesus at a profit does have consequences. I suspect the Trump effect will simply be to purge the church institutions of the some of the political vanities it has embraced –a sort of laxative to clean out the gunk that has been clogging the Body. If it serves to bring to their senses those who have been secretly (or not so secretly) flirting with Mammon and false gods, it is well worth the momentary discomfort. But I fear that some of those now bemoaning Trump do not know how self righteous and self serving they appear to those who have had their doubts all along about the wisdom of allowing trade-based ideologies and methods into the pulpit.
“A young Palestinian man boasted to National Public Radio on Tuesday about putting swastikas on incendiary kites and flying them into Israel, saying that “Jews go crazy” when they see it and “we want to burn them.”
NPR host Steve Inskeep reported live from the Gaza Strip after a wave of violence on Monday following mass violent demonstrations at the border fence with Israel. He spoke with a 19-year-old Gaza resident, who was holding a homemade white kite.
“This is a kite that’s going to go to the Jews,” the Palestinian said through a translator.
The incendiary kite, designed to catch fire, was decorated with “writing claiming Jerusalem for Palestinians” and with swastikas, the primary symbol of Nazism.
“Why do you put that on there?” Inskeep asked.
“The Jews go crazy for Hitler when they see it,” the Gazan said.
“The Israelis know that people are flying kites with swastikas,” Inskeep said. “They know this, and they use it to discredit you, to say this shows you’re bad people. What do you think about that?”
“This is actually what we want them to know, that we want to burn them,” he replied, according to Inskeep.”
————————-
These aren’t demonstrators, they’re terrorists, and should be dealt with as such.
“On Monday, Kemberlee blogged about the “protests” by Palestinians on Israel’s border as the U.S. opened its embassy in Jerusalem. We all know these weren’t protests. Hamas organized this assault since March and called it the “Great Return March.” Other groups participated with Hamas.
The terror groups have mourned their dead and propped them up as martyrs.”
>>>>>>>>>>
“So while the media claimed Israel killed so many children, think about the organizations those children belonged to. In the image below, the male on the far right is 16-year-old Ahmed Adel Mousa al-Shaer. (Islamic Jihad Movement Al Quds is the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a separate terror group from Hamas, which receives a lot of finances from Iran. It has also seen a power surge as the international community takes down Hamas. Yes, it’s main objective is the destruction of Israel.)”
Debra, I never heard Milton Friedman or Thomas Sowell praised from the pulpit. I never even remember hearing Reagan praised from the pulpit. I never heard Tip O’Neill or Sam Donaldson condemned in a pastoral “prayer” as CNN and Congress were condemned on Sunday in one of our large Bible churches. The fusion of The Trump Cult and something calling itself Christianity is something new and unique.
“The fusion of The Trump Cult and something calling itself Christianity is something new and unique.”
Ummm, yeah, except it’s not.
Democrats have done this with black churches for at least the last 30 years. When Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton preach from the pulpit, it’s the Democrat party platform they’re preaching. And they have been for decades.
And on the right I have little doubt that in LDS and other Mormon churches are doing much the same for the Romneys and McMullins of the world.
It’s been done. Repeatedly. Although it may be a first for white, evangelical type churches, it’s not new.
“Palestinian Arabs are human beings, which means they are possessed of free will, agency, and the natural capacity to reason like any other people. This basic, incontestable anthropological reality needs to be frequently restated today since our media and foreign-policy establishment has apparently concluded the opposite.
The latest media assault on Palestinian agency came Monday, as Israelis celebrated the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, while Palestinians attempted to infiltrate en masse the barrier fence that separates the Jewish state from the terrorist-run Gaza Strip to the south.
By the Western media’s dim lights, the blame for Hamas’s criminal stunt and the casualties it caused lay with . . . anybody and everybody but Hamas and the Palestinians.
The narrative emerged early on Twitter, and the social-media platform’s deplorable tendency to flatten reality into cheap, emotive images no doubt accelerated its dissemination. The juxtaposition–of “Jivanka” and Benjamin Netanyahu celebrating in Jerusalem while Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians at the Gaza border–proved irresistible to reporters. The BBC’s Katty Kay, for example, was quick to point out that President Trump’s warm words for the Jewish state came while there were “41 dead on the Israel Gaza border today.” An AFP White House correspondent posted the two sets of images side-by-side–a smiling and clapping Bibi next to a photo of fire and smoke from Gaza–with the words: “Quite the disconnect.” He had garnered more than 2,600 retweets as of this writing.
Then there was Peter Beinart (Marshall, declined): “While Jewish + Christian bigots celebrate an occupied city, Jewish soldiers kill people fleeing an open-air prison. As a great lover of Zion said long ago, ‘This is not the way.’” Yes, “fleeing.” That is an interesting way to describe a concerted, Iranian-regime-funded operation to violate Israeli sovereignty and do “whatever is possible, to kill, throw stones,” as the Washington Post quoted one of the “protesters” describing the movement’s goals.
The Palestinians’ more sophisticated friends know what Hamas is all about. They understand that young men whipped into a frenzy by an organization that exists to destroy world Jewry, per its charter, aren’t exactly latter-day Freedom Riders. But they think that the Palestinians can’t help themselves. While they expect Israel–a state encircled by hostile populations and threatened with nuclear extinction by the Iranian mullahs–to behave like Norway, of the Palestinians they have the most dismal, if any, expectations.”
Actually, I’m sure that stuff has happened in plenty of white churches over the years, too, AJ. Hard as it may be to believe, the things any lone, single one of us has heard or remembers hearing do not compose the totality of all events.
You guys are right. The fusion of The Trump Cult and various churches is like what Jeremiah Wright did. I don’t know if Mormons do politics in their temples, but I don’t consider them a church.
I should have been more specific. The fusion of Trumpism and Christianity is something new for white, formerly orthodox churches.
So, what….. that makes it OK to drop f bombs like candy at a parade?
That’s not journalism, it’s crass trash. It reads like the whining of a disgruntled employee. One too cowardly to put their name on their crass allegations. It’s trash.
“As of March 1, 2017, there were 32 countries that still did not have an ambassador. Some of these nations are key allies or strategic regional partners. The list includes Belgium, Egypt, and Ireland.
Singapore’s businesses are tremendously successful, and are looking to invest in the United States.
A city-state island with a population of 5.6 million people, Singapore is the financial center of Southeast Asia. It was the pick of top US officials like secretary of state Mike Pompeo and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as a country that is diplomatically neutral, highly secure, and well practiced at pulling off sensitive events.
The US and Singapore have had friendly relations for almost half a century. More than 30,000 Americans live in Singapore, 4,200 American businesses operate in the city-state, and the free trade agreement between the two countries supports 215,000 American jobs abroad. The regional headquarters for US companies Airbnb, Google, and Facebook are all in Singapore.
The US is Singapore’s largest foreign investor. US companies have invested more than $180 billion in Singapore, with total investment to the nation reaching $228 billion in 2016. And since signing a bilateral trade agreement in 2004, US and Singaporean trade has increased by more than 60%. The US has a $20 billion trade surplus with the small, Southeast Asian country.
The lack of an ambassador to Singapore is directly tied to the Deep State hoax that the Russian collusion story has been revealed to be. In February of this year, K.T. McFarland, a former deputy national security adviser, has asked for her nomination to that post to be withdrawn.
Her confirmation process had dragged on for months as senators questioned her role in the Russian issue that has dogged the Trump administration.
Ms McFarland, 66, is the second ambassador-designate within a week to drop out of a key post.
On Tuesday, Dr Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor and senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, was dropped as the ambassador-designate to South Korea. He had apparently disagreed with the White House’s approach to the Korean peninsula.
The last Ambassador to South Korea was Mark Lippert and Marc Knapper, formerly Deputy Chief of Mission under Lippert, is serving as Chargé d’Affaires ad interim in the absence of an ambassador. The Trump administration plans to nominate Admiral Harry Harris, the head of the US military’s Pacific Command, to the post of ambassador to South Korea.
I would urge my politically active friends to contact their congressional representatives about fast tracking ambassadorial appointments, placing those for South Korea and Singapore on top of the stack.”
Rubio is on a mission to become Peggy Noonan’s “sane Donald Trump”. Right now there seems to be a little conflict between the sane version and the real version.
“U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Tuesday blocked a call for an international investigation into Israel’s tactics in clashes with Gaza protesters, and blamed Iran and terrorist proxies for causing the violence.
“In recent days, Hamas terrorists, backed by Iran, have incited attacks against Israeli security forces and infrastructure,” Haley told the U.N. Security Council during a Tuesday session. “There is far too little discussion in the Security Council on Iran’s destabilizing presence in Syria, its promotion of violence in Yemen, its support for terrorism in Gaza, and its dangerous and illegal weapons buildup in Lebanon.”
Trump and Israeli officials drew widespread condemnation on Monday, as thousands of Palestinians protested the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Dozens of Palestinians were killed in the ensuing clashes.
A proposed U.N. statement from Kuwait offered on Tuesday called for an investigation to decide if the Israeli Defense Forces violated international bans on “willful killing and willfully causing great suffering,” but Haley praised their tactics and blamed Hamas, and blocked it from consideration as she did so.
“Hamas maps and social media show the fastest routes to reach Israeli communities in case demonstrators make it through the security fence,” she said, citing media reports. “They have reported on Hamas messages over loudspeakers that urge demonstrators to burst through the fence, falsely claiming Israeli soldiers were fleeing, when in fact, they were not.””
————————–
They sent their own people to their demise, used them as cannon fodder, and their deaths as propaganda material. Tells you all you need to know.
A DC judge ruled that Mueller has the authority to prosecute Manafort for money laundering and other crimes. Will Manafort try to cut a deal? What does he know?
Wondering about the response here to Trump’s bailout of a Chinese telephone company, ZTE. Due to their illegal component sales to North Korea the company was boycotted by the US and is now broke . The left is linking the bailout to Chinese investment in Trump’s Indonesian properties. drain the swamp…….
Interesting that AJ’s link indicates that Christianity in America is linked to immigration as white American becomes nonreligious. Curious the how the evangelical right doesn’t support immigration.
The timing of the Jerusalem embassy opening was probably deliberate. I’m sympathic to the Palestinians but they have the worst leadership either religious fanaticism with Hamas or corruption with Fatah.
Wandering Views 
Maybe instead of pushing gun control the school should just do their jobs.
You can guarantee this info will be used in the lawsuits filed against the school. They dropped the ball. Had they done as required, it may have prevented the shooting in the first place.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/14/nikolas-cruz-violated-obamas-promise-diversion-pro/
“Confessed mass shooter Nikolas Cruz had no criminal record despite dozens of disciplinary infractions, but there was one case in which Broward County school administrators were obligated to send him before a judge — and didn’t do it.
After trashing a middle-school bathroom in 2013, Mr. Cruz received a three-day referral to a newly created diversion program called Promise designed to help kids who had committed misdemeanors avoid arrest and stay out of the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
He didn’t show. At that point, school policy dictated that he should have been hauled before Judge Elijah Williams of the Broward County Delinquency Division, and yet there is no record that it ever happened, according to Timothy Sternberg, a former assistant principal who helped run Promise from 2014-17.
“There’s negligence here because no one ever followed up,” Mr. Sternberg told the Washington Times.
Since the deadly Feb. 14 school massacre in Parkland, Florida, Broward County officials have been accused of creating a lax disciplinary climate in their drive to reduce suspensions, expulsions and arrests, an environment that allowed Mr. Cruz to act out for years without serious consequences.
Files obtained by the Orlando Sun Sentinel show that Mr. Cruz committed 58 infractions from 2012-17 at Westglades Middle School and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, even though he was enrolled in 2015 at another school, Cross Creek, for students with emotional and behavioral disorders.”
After nearly every episode, Mr. Cruz received the same type of punishment — detention, an in-school suspension or out-of-school suspension for one to three days—which also went against district policy.
A repeat offender like Mr. Cruz should have been brought before the district’s Behavior and Intervention Committee to decide “whether this student is appropriate for another setting,” Mr. Sternberg said.
“When you look at the discipline data, it’s not progressive,” said Mr. Sternberg, who sat on the committee. “It’s a one-day [suspension], and then he does the infraction again, and he gets another one-day. There’s no progression of discipline whatsoever.”
As a result, “With the child, it does create a false sense of ‘I can do this and nothing’s going to really happen to me,’ ” he said.”
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There is a disturbance in The Cult.
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Jeffress vs. The Benedict Option
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/jeffress-vs-the-benedict-option/
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This is a great moment of opportunity for the Libertarians.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/reason.com/archives/2018/05/15/fight-the-populist-right-the-progressive/amp
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Sheesh Ricky, pick a side already.
Is Pence out to control Republican politics and overstep the President as one of your links seeks to convince us…….
Or is he……….
“In one gathering, Vice President Mike Pence famously praised Trump once every 12 seconds for three minutes.”
As the other one states?
Make up your mind.
It’s almost like you’ll post anything, even if it contradicts the very last thing you posted, as long as it’s anti-Trump.
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Doing the job Americans just won’t do….
Oh, wait………
And also note, this is not a victim-less crime.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2018/05/14/mexican-citizen-stole-womans-identity-vote-texas-elections-authorities-say
“A Mexican citizen living in Houston stole another woman’s identity to vote illegally, the Texas attorney general’s office says.
Laura Janeth Garza, 38, was indicted last week on two counts of illegal voting. Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Monday that his office planned to prosecute the case.
Paxton’s office says Garza, who used the alias Angie Yadira Zamora, illegally registered to vote in Harris County after stealing a U.S. citizen’s identity. Authorities learned of the case when the victim applied for a passport and discover that one already had been issued in her name to someone else.”
Garza voted in 2004, 2012 and 2016, according to the attorney general’s office. She is charged with ineligible voting and voter impersonation in the November 2016 election.
Garza was being held at the Montgomery County jail Monday, with bail set at $150,000. She faces up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine if she is convicted.”
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AJ, There is no inconsistency. Pence can appear to be both a sniveling sycophant and one who is working to establish himself as the leader of the Cult if Trump is removed from office. That is exactly what Trump worries about and why Pence lavishes such praise on The Great Leader.
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Here’s your introduction to “The Worst Scandal in Minnesota History.”
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/05/15/daycare-terrorists-100-million-cash-flies-minneapolis-year-money/
“John Hinderaker calls it “the worst scandal in Minnesota history,” and one can only hope he’s right. The local Fox affiliate spent five months tracking the flow of cash going out in carry-on baggage through Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, and more importantly, where it originates. That turns out to be in large part from government day-care payments that end up being for non-existent enrollees (via Instapundit):
In the morning of March 15, Fox 9 chased a tip about a man who was leaving the country. Sources said he took a carry-on bag through security that was packed with $1 million in cash. Travelers can do that, as long as they fill out the proper government forms.
Fox 9 learned that these cloak-and-dagger scenarios now happen almost weekly at MSP. The money is usually headed to the Middle East, Dubai and points beyond. Sources said last year alone, more than $100 million in cash left MSP in carry-on luggage.
The national, go-to expert on what is behind these mysterious money transfers is Glen Kerns.
“What we were interested in is where it was going,” Kerns said.
He is a former Seattle police detective who spent 15 years on the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, until his retirement.
“It’s an outright crime, it’s unbelievable,” he said.
The cash is going through hawalas, supposedly to family members of refugees, where banking systems are either unreliable or non-existent. We’ll come back to this in a moment, but it’s not clear just how much gets to “families” at all. Kerns discovered that some hawalas have other priorities:
“I talked to a couple of sources who had lived in that region and I said, ‘If money is going to this Hawala do you think it is going to al Shabaab?’” said Kerns. “And he said, ‘Oh definitely, that area is controlled by al Shabaab, and they control the Hawala there.’”
He said when the money arrives, whether it was intended for legitimate purposes or not, al Shabaab or other groups demand a cut.
In other words, at least some portion of this cash flow finances terrorism. But where does all this cash originate? After all, the communities that use hawalas are primarily refugees. It turns out that much of it comes from Minnesota taxpayers, using day care centers as a front:”
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So it’s not a Trump thing at all, and he’s not the reason for it, as some have alleged.
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/05/14/poll-no-religion-now-outnumber-protestants-among-millennials/
“Fifteen years ago the share of Protestants among the 18-29 group was 34 percent versus 19 percent who had no religion. Today it’s 22/35. The decline in Protestants within the group isn’t purely a function of younger Americans being less religious, though. Young adults are more diverse racially and ethnically so they’re also more likely to include Americans who don’t practice Christianity at all.
Protestants still outnumber the non-religious among Democrats, 36/23, but you can’t understand that number without understanding the racial divide on the question. Black Americans, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, are still solidly Protestant at 61 percent (in fact, they’re the most Protestant demographic group tested here and it isn’t close). White Protestants, meanwhile, are all but vanishing from the Democratic ranks. Blend them together and that’s how you end up with a baseline of 36 percent across the entire party. If you’re white and Protestant these days, odds are very good that you’re a Republican. But even there, the numbers are down. Whereas the GOP was 60 percent Protestant in 2003, it’s 49 percent now. Not even a majority anymore.
A fascinating detail: The rise across the population in non-religious people is basically entirely at the expense of Protestants. Catholics are steady as she goes over 15 years, although there are racial footnotes to that too.
The Catholic share is steady but the demographics are not. Catholicism is also shrinking among whites, as a PRRI survey found last year. The reason the faith isn’t losing ground as a share of all Americans is because the Latino population is growing and Catholicism is the most common faith among Latinos. They also lean Democratic, of course, which means the left is headed (unless it’s already there) towards a party where whites are pretty uniformly secularists, blacks are Protestants, and Latinos are Catholic.”
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The conniving, backstabbing and leaking is common behavior in a personality cult. In the Reagan White House, staffers were united behind the goal of making conservative changes. In Trumpland, everyone is jockeying for position and seeking to remain in the good graces of the paranoid and fickle leader.
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The Trump effect on Christianity will not fully show up in polling for a few years. Expect it to be devastating as anecdotal stories from Dreher, youth ministers and others would indicate.
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It has taken decades for the full effect of free trade globalism to show on Christianity. Selling Jesus at a profit does have consequences. I suspect the Trump effect will simply be to purge the church institutions of the some of the political vanities it has embraced –a sort of laxative to clean out the gunk that has been clogging the Body. If it serves to bring to their senses those who have been secretly (or not so secretly) flirting with Mammon and false gods, it is well worth the momentary discomfort. But I fear that some of those now bemoaning Trump do not know how self righteous and self serving they appear to those who have had their doubts all along about the wisdom of allowing trade-based ideologies and methods into the pulpit.
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For those questioning Israel’s motives these last few days…….
While their methods may seem harsh, sometimes that is exactly what is required. The govt of Israel takes it obligations to it’s citizens seriously.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/gazan-boasts-npr-driving-israelis-crazy-putting-swastikas-kite-want-burn-them/
“A young Palestinian man boasted to National Public Radio on Tuesday about putting swastikas on incendiary kites and flying them into Israel, saying that “Jews go crazy” when they see it and “we want to burn them.”
NPR host Steve Inskeep reported live from the Gaza Strip after a wave of violence on Monday following mass violent demonstrations at the border fence with Israel. He spoke with a 19-year-old Gaza resident, who was holding a homemade white kite.
“This is a kite that’s going to go to the Jews,” the Palestinian said through a translator.
The incendiary kite, designed to catch fire, was decorated with “writing claiming Jerusalem for Palestinians” and with swastikas, the primary symbol of Nazism.
“Why do you put that on there?” Inskeep asked.
“The Jews go crazy for Hitler when they see it,” the Gazan said.
“The Israelis know that people are flying kites with swastikas,” Inskeep said. “They know this, and they use it to discredit you, to say this shows you’re bad people. What do you think about that?”
“This is actually what we want them to know, that we want to burn them,” he replied, according to Inskeep.”
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These aren’t demonstrators, they’re terrorists, and should be dealt with as such.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/05/hamas-other-terror-groups-mourn-their-dead-from-yesterdays-border-assault/#more-249868
“On Monday, Kemberlee blogged about the “protests” by Palestinians on Israel’s border as the U.S. opened its embassy in Jerusalem. We all know these weren’t protests. Hamas organized this assault since March and called it the “Great Return March.” Other groups participated with Hamas.
The terror groups have mourned their dead and propped them up as martyrs.”
>>>>>>>>>>
“So while the media claimed Israel killed so many children, think about the organizations those children belonged to. In the image below, the male on the far right is 16-year-old Ahmed Adel Mousa al-Shaer. (Islamic Jihad Movement Al Quds is the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a separate terror group from Hamas, which receives a lot of finances from Iran. It has also seen a power surge as the international community takes down Hamas. Yes, it’s main objective is the destruction of Israel.)”
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LA Times headline:
When Gavin Newsom issued marriage licenses in San Francisco, his party was furious. Now, it’s a campaign ad
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Debra, I never heard Milton Friedman or Thomas Sowell praised from the pulpit. I never even remember hearing Reagan praised from the pulpit. I never heard Tip O’Neill or Sam Donaldson condemned in a pastoral “prayer” as CNN and Congress were condemned on Sunday in one of our large Bible churches. The fusion of The Trump Cult and something calling itself Christianity is something new and unique.
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“The fusion of The Trump Cult and something calling itself Christianity is something new and unique.”
Ummm, yeah, except it’s not.
Democrats have done this with black churches for at least the last 30 years. When Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton preach from the pulpit, it’s the Democrat party platform they’re preaching. And they have been for decades.
And on the right I have little doubt that in LDS and other Mormon churches are doing much the same for the Romneys and McMullins of the world.
It’s been done. Repeatedly. Although it may be a first for white, evangelical type churches, it’s not new.
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You can always rely on the media to pick the wrong side in most matters.
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/media-agency-palestinian-israel/
“Palestinian Arabs are human beings, which means they are possessed of free will, agency, and the natural capacity to reason like any other people. This basic, incontestable anthropological reality needs to be frequently restated today since our media and foreign-policy establishment has apparently concluded the opposite.
The latest media assault on Palestinian agency came Monday, as Israelis celebrated the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, while Palestinians attempted to infiltrate en masse the barrier fence that separates the Jewish state from the terrorist-run Gaza Strip to the south.
By the Western media’s dim lights, the blame for Hamas’s criminal stunt and the casualties it caused lay with . . . anybody and everybody but Hamas and the Palestinians.
The narrative emerged early on Twitter, and the social-media platform’s deplorable tendency to flatten reality into cheap, emotive images no doubt accelerated its dissemination. The juxtaposition–of “Jivanka” and Benjamin Netanyahu celebrating in Jerusalem while Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians at the Gaza border–proved irresistible to reporters. The BBC’s Katty Kay, for example, was quick to point out that President Trump’s warm words for the Jewish state came while there were “41 dead on the Israel Gaza border today.” An AFP White House correspondent posted the two sets of images side-by-side–a smiling and clapping Bibi next to a photo of fire and smoke from Gaza–with the words: “Quite the disconnect.” He had garnered more than 2,600 retweets as of this writing.
Then there was Peter Beinart (Marshall, declined): “While Jewish + Christian bigots celebrate an occupied city, Jewish soldiers kill people fleeing an open-air prison. As a great lover of Zion said long ago, ‘This is not the way.’” Yes, “fleeing.” That is an interesting way to describe a concerted, Iranian-regime-funded operation to violate Israeli sovereignty and do “whatever is possible, to kill, throw stones,” as the Washington Post quoted one of the “protesters” describing the movement’s goals.
The Palestinians’ more sophisticated friends know what Hamas is all about. They understand that young men whipped into a frenzy by an organization that exists to destroy world Jewry, per its charter, aren’t exactly latter-day Freedom Riders. But they think that the Palestinians can’t help themselves. While they expect Israel–a state encircled by hostile populations and threatened with nuclear extinction by the Iranian mullahs–to behave like Norway, of the Palestinians they have the most dismal, if any, expectations.”
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Actually, I’m sure that stuff has happened in plenty of white churches over the years, too, AJ. Hard as it may be to believe, the things any lone, single one of us has heard or remembers hearing do not compose the totality of all events.
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You guys are right. The fusion of The Trump Cult and various churches is like what Jeremiah Wright did. I don’t know if Mormons do politics in their temples, but I don’t consider them a church.
I should have been more specific. The fusion of Trumpism and Christianity is something new for white, formerly orthodox churches.
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That photo with the article in Ricky’s 8:18 kinda looks like Pence is stabbing Trump in the gut. 😀
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This is how your President spends his day. Sorry about the language. We are dealing with Trump, Hannity and White House aides.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/sean-hannity-donald-trump-late-night-calls.html
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So, what….. that makes it OK to drop f bombs like candy at a parade?
That’s not journalism, it’s crass trash. It reads like the whining of a disgruntled employee. One too cowardly to put their name on their crass allegations. It’s trash.
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“Democratic Party’s intransigence and Deep State shenanigans are stifling American success.”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/05/why-is-there-no-american-ambassador-to-singapore/
“As of March 1, 2017, there were 32 countries that still did not have an ambassador. Some of these nations are key allies or strategic regional partners. The list includes Belgium, Egypt, and Ireland.
Singapore’s businesses are tremendously successful, and are looking to invest in the United States.
A city-state island with a population of 5.6 million people, Singapore is the financial center of Southeast Asia. It was the pick of top US officials like secretary of state Mike Pompeo and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as a country that is diplomatically neutral, highly secure, and well practiced at pulling off sensitive events.
The US and Singapore have had friendly relations for almost half a century. More than 30,000 Americans live in Singapore, 4,200 American businesses operate in the city-state, and the free trade agreement between the two countries supports 215,000 American jobs abroad. The regional headquarters for US companies Airbnb, Google, and Facebook are all in Singapore.
The US is Singapore’s largest foreign investor. US companies have invested more than $180 billion in Singapore, with total investment to the nation reaching $228 billion in 2016. And since signing a bilateral trade agreement in 2004, US and Singaporean trade has increased by more than 60%. The US has a $20 billion trade surplus with the small, Southeast Asian country.
The lack of an ambassador to Singapore is directly tied to the Deep State hoax that the Russian collusion story has been revealed to be. In February of this year, K.T. McFarland, a former deputy national security adviser, has asked for her nomination to that post to be withdrawn.
Her confirmation process had dragged on for months as senators questioned her role in the Russian issue that has dogged the Trump administration.
Ms McFarland, 66, is the second ambassador-designate within a week to drop out of a key post.
On Tuesday, Dr Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor and senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, was dropped as the ambassador-designate to South Korea. He had apparently disagreed with the White House’s approach to the Korean peninsula.
The last Ambassador to South Korea was Mark Lippert and Marc Knapper, formerly Deputy Chief of Mission under Lippert, is serving as Chargé d’Affaires ad interim in the absence of an ambassador. The Trump administration plans to nominate Admiral Harry Harris, the head of the US military’s Pacific Command, to the post of ambassador to South Korea.
I would urge my politically active friends to contact their congressional representatives about fast tracking ambassadorial appointments, placing those for South Korea and Singapore on top of the stack.”
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Rubio is on a mission to become Peggy Noonan’s “sane Donald Trump”. Right now there seems to be a little conflict between the sane version and the real version.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/05/14/marco-rubio-slams-trump-reversal-on-chinese-company-zte.html
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I do like this lady. 🙂
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/nikki-haley-blocks-un-statement-on-gaza-violence-walks-out-on-palestinian-envoy
“U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Tuesday blocked a call for an international investigation into Israel’s tactics in clashes with Gaza protesters, and blamed Iran and terrorist proxies for causing the violence.
“In recent days, Hamas terrorists, backed by Iran, have incited attacks against Israeli security forces and infrastructure,” Haley told the U.N. Security Council during a Tuesday session. “There is far too little discussion in the Security Council on Iran’s destabilizing presence in Syria, its promotion of violence in Yemen, its support for terrorism in Gaza, and its dangerous and illegal weapons buildup in Lebanon.”
Trump and Israeli officials drew widespread condemnation on Monday, as thousands of Palestinians protested the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Dozens of Palestinians were killed in the ensuing clashes.
A proposed U.N. statement from Kuwait offered on Tuesday called for an investigation to decide if the Israeli Defense Forces violated international bans on “willful killing and willfully causing great suffering,” but Haley praised their tactics and blamed Hamas, and blocked it from consideration as she did so.
“Hamas maps and social media show the fastest routes to reach Israeli communities in case demonstrators make it through the security fence,” she said, citing media reports. “They have reported on Hamas messages over loudspeakers that urge demonstrators to burst through the fence, falsely claiming Israeli soldiers were fleeing, when in fact, they were not.””
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They sent their own people to their demise, used them as cannon fodder, and their deaths as propaganda material. Tells you all you need to know.
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A DC judge ruled that Mueller has the authority to prosecute Manafort for money laundering and other crimes. Will Manafort try to cut a deal? What does he know?
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/05/15/us/politics/ap-us-trump-russia-probe-manafort.html
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Wondering about the response here to Trump’s bailout of a Chinese telephone company, ZTE. Due to their illegal component sales to North Korea the company was boycotted by the US and is now broke . The left is linking the bailout to Chinese investment in Trump’s Indonesian properties. drain the swamp…….
Interesting that AJ’s link indicates that Christianity in America is linked to immigration as white American becomes nonreligious. Curious the how the evangelical right doesn’t support immigration.
The timing of the Jerusalem embassy opening was probably deliberate. I’m sympathic to the Palestinians but they have the worst leadership either religious fanaticism with Hamas or corruption with Fatah.
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