“But more importantly, a ground shift has taken place in how Democrats think about abortion. Back in 2005, I wrote that the Democratic “safe, legal and rare” formulation regarding abortion was logically and morally untenable: If Democrats wanted abortion to be rare thanks to its inherent immorality, there was no reason for it to be legal. Democrats have finally come around: They’re now “shouting” their abortions, proclaiming them from the rooftops, suggesting that there is a moral good achieved by abortion.
Thus, Lena Dunham said just two years ago, “I still haven’t had an abortion, but I wish I had.” Thus, Chelsea Handler, who has had two abortions, explained in the pages of Playboy, “I don’t ever look back and think, ‘God, I wish I’d had that baby.'” Her article was accompanied by a picture of a woman’s hand with a raised middle finger with a pink bow around it; attached to the bow is a small card that reads, “It’s an abortion!”
Yes, abortion is now a signifier that you refuse to be ruled by the patriarchy. Avoidance of pregnancy may be a wise life choice, according to third-wave feminists, preventing women from being sucked into the grinding maw of maternal life. But abortion is something even better: a signal that you just don’t care about the system. The system demands that if you’re pregnant with a child, you make your own concerns secondary; the system must be fought.
Gloria Steinem once remarked, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” But modern-day feminists have determined that abortion isa sacrament specifically because women can get pregnant: Showing that control over your body even extends to the killing of your unborn child is a way of standing up against patriarchal concerns with women as the source of future generations.
For Michelle Wolf, abortion isn’t just another decision. It’s a giant middle finger to the moral establishment. And those who would fight abortion are desacralizing the mysterious holiness of a ritual that reinforces women’s control. No wonder Wolf thinks God blesses abortion; abortion is her god.”
It will be interesting to see what happens to the R party if this day should ever come to pass. What will they do if pro-life people, no longer needing to vote R to end abortion, decide they’re no longer tied to the party?
“For two generations every American who opposes abortion has known what he or she is supposed to do: Support the Republican candidate for president, no matter how mealy-mouthed his commitment to the unborn, without regard to the rest of his platform. Abortion opponents must do this because if elected, and assuming there is a vacancy, a Republican president may appoint justices to the Supreme Court who subscribe to a bizarre jury-rigged philosophy of constitutional interpretation, the logical concomitants of which, we have been told, are favorable to the cause. Treat this judicial body, most of whose business is dry interpretation of vague statutes in cases involving the application of few if any discernible general principles, as if it were a kind of miniature Senate — but make a point of telling people that you believe it exists simply to uphold the law (whose?), not to “make” it. Immure yourself in double-think; recognize that when a law of which you disapprove is struck down, the result is simply a faithful application of genuine constitutional principles; when a judgment you abhor is handed down by the same body, restrain the urge to decry it as immoral and content yourself to lament the unfortunate existence of a phenomenon known as “judicial overreach.” Do all of these things over and over again, paying no attention to the other consequences of your actions, until eventually the number of approved persons wearing robes at 1 First St. NE reaches five or more.
What was supposed to happen next? The secret, which you probably guessed but which you told yourself over and over again to ignore because the eventual day of reckoning seemed so far off, is that the leaders of the Republican Party these 20 years have not desired that there should be a “next.” The moment when finally it was time to seize upon a case — of which any number could be made to purpose overnight if a red-state legislature decided to ban or otherwise severely restrict abortion — and banish Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood and all their works and pomps to the outer darkness was meant never to arrive. If it did there would be no earthly reason for most of you to support this party, at least not in the same way in which so many of you have been accustomed to do; provisionally, tactically, under the right set of circumstances, you and they might do business (to put it in their lingo), but from thence forth your allegiance could not be counted upon. It would have to be earned.
Will this contingency, alternately dreaded and prayed for but always somehow impossibly remote, arrive anyway? It is difficult to say at this early juncture. But it is clear that one way or another the long period of movement activity in the sense in which it has long been understood is over. Either the gambit has succeeded and future Justice Kavanaugh and his coevals will one day accomplish that high purpose for which you were led to believe they had been appointed — or all your energy will have been misspent.
This second possibility is one worth considering. What would it mean if, in two years, say, the Supreme Court were to rule 6-3 in favor of striking down a law prohibiting abortion in the state of Missouri? Suppose Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, explaining in the impeccable legalese suitable to one of his class that the legislature of that state had overstepped its constitutional mandate. What would you do? Would you sigh along with the press release from the heads of the usual nonprofit groups and tell yourself that if only you vote in November 2020 for President Trump there might be a chance for him to appoint yet another justice who, under the right circumstances, might one day be part of a new judicial coalition that will give you a better result? Probably many of you will, for reasons both noble and ignoble, go on. Money, which is never hard to come by in politics, will not be wanting for you to rent offices, hire staff, issue communications — any activity except a formal acknowledgement of defeat. But others of you will not. You will be finally disillusioned. And then what? Time for the magic fire music.
What you must see, should you come to accept that you have been the dupes of sophists, economists, and calculators, is that the cause of the unborn has not, in fact, suffered an irreversible defeat. Yours is a fight that can never be lost because it is one for which victories are won every time a mother hears the first unmistakable cry of a child whom she has conceived and carried and will love, God willing, for the rest of her life. It is even possible that something else will rise up to take the place of the old movement, whatever becomes of Roe. But you must take care that the fate of any such movement will not be bound up in the flourishing of a party or of an intellectual or quasi-intellectual project or a boutique hermeneutical method. It must no longer be necessary to affirm that there is any necessary or even meaningful connection between the inherent metaphysical dignity of the human person and lower taxes.”
“Lisa Page, the infamous FBI lawyer who spent months commiserating with her lover, counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, about the prospect of Donald Trump becoming president, has apparently ignored a Congressional subpoena and could be held in contempt as early as Friday, according to reports.
Page and Strzok are best known for, not only potentially conspiring about a supposed “insurance policy” when it came to the 2016 election, but also for their illicit affair, which led Page to say the following about why she and her paramour used their work phones to communicate:
Deep within the report released Thursday from the inspector general for the Justice Department is the answer to a question that’s been floating around for six months: Why did Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, two officials with the FBI, engage in a months-long conversation disparaging 2016 presidential candidates and discussing FBI cases from their work cellphones?
Page explained to investigators that the reason was a personal one: “[T]he predominant reason that we communicated on our work phones was because we were trying to keep our affair a secret from our spouses.”
It’s hard to feel sorry for Ms. Page given that kind of willingness to sneak around when she cries foul about having to answer for her role in the misdoings of the FBI and the DOJ as it relates to the 2016 election. Strzok, as is now well known, was a part of both the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server and the investigation into possible Russian interference. And there have been questions ever since the House began looking at that weird, sensational dossier that led to questions about abuses at the secret FISA court and just how far up the chain the Trump disdain went.
CNN is reporting Page has been given a few options since she failed to appear for her hearing today.”
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“Adult film star Stormy Daniels, locked in a court battle with President Donald Trump over their alleged affair, was arrested Wednesday while performing at a strip club in what her lawyer described as a “politically motivated” setup.
Daniels was arrested at a club in Columbus, Ohio while performing an act she has done at nearly 100 strip clubs across America, Michael Avenatti wrote on Twitter.
He said Daniels was arrested for allegedly allowing a customer to touch her in a non-sexual way while on stage.”
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But thankfully for her, she has a scumbag lawyer on the case for her.
It appears the Yahoo article may be incorrect. Fondling is usually considered sexual in nature. It’s alleged she grabbed the backside of an undercover cop. and, uh, other things…….
“Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was performing at Sirens Adult Entertainment Club on Cleveland Avenue in north Columbus. According to an arrest report, Daniels began dancing around 11:30 Wednesday night. During her performance, officers in the club said they witnessed Daniels using her bare breasts to smack patrons. The officers also said they observed Daniels fondling the breasts of female patrons.
The report states that when the officers approached the stage, Daniels held the face of the female officer between her breasts. It also says she did the same to a male officer. The report goes on to say Daniels fondled the buttocks and breasts of another officer. At that point, court documents state that a fourth officer exited the club to request assistance to make an arrest.
Daniels was arrested by Columbus Police and charged with three counts of “Illegally Operating Sexually Oriented Business – Employee Knowingly Touch Any Patron,” according to online court records. She is scheduled to be arraigned in Franklin Municipal Court on Friday morning.”
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Some math from last night: 50% times 20% = 10%; 75% times 20% = 15%. Neither 10% nor 15% fall within the “60% to 70% window”.
The critical fact which neither Trump nor the Cult seem able to grasp is that natural gas supplies only 20% of Germany’s energy.
If folks are struggling with this issue, it is no wonder that the concept of Comparative Advantage is beyond their grasp. My father’s one question literacy test for voting (the algebra word problem) looks better every day.
Pro-life people still try to show that the fetus is really a baby, a life, a beating heart. Maybe that was relevant to some pro-choicers, or those on the fence, years ago, but it isn’t anymore.
These days, you will find many pro-choice people acknowledging that yes, this is a baby, but what the mother wants is more important than the baby’s life. As the article AJ linked above shows, there is more of a hardness of heart among many of them.
But we pro-lifers also have to back away from insisting that abortion is a matter of convenience for the mother. Many young women are in dire situations, and cannot see how they could possibly make it financially, or any other way, with a baby. Many of them are pressured into it by their boyfriends or families. One of the big accusations pro-choicers make against pro-lifers is that we are not compassionate towards the mothers. I believe more of us are than aren’t, but it is the uncompassionate remarks here and there that are latched onto as proof of how all pro-lifers think.
Your last line is correct, Kizzie. Loud mouthed men screaming only hurt Christian movements that quietly help women across the board of their problems with love and compassion.
Broward County’s schools and Sheriff are being sued for their failure to protect the children in their care. It probably has little chance of succeeding, but perhaps it will at least bring about some change. They can start with throwing out the Obama era policies they implemented that led to this well known and dangerous individual still being in school in the first place.
“As we’ve repeatedly seen, what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida was a complete and total failure of local government. The school system dropped the ball on the eventual killer, and so did the sheriff’s office. For all the talk of guns from the Parkland kids, it was their government–the people they seem to trust completely with firearms, I might add, while trying to disarm the rest of us–that screwed up so royally.
Now, a group of survivors wants to make those entities pay. Literally.
More than a dozen students who survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging that numerous officials failed to stop the Valentine’s Day massacre at their school.
The lawsuit names Broward County, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie, Broward County sheriff’s deputy and school resource officer Scot Peterson, Capt. Jan Jordan with the Broward Couty Sheriff’s Department and school security monitor Andrew Medina among the defendants. It alleges various civil rights violations under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments that caused “severe psychological injury and trauma” related to the Feb. 14 mass shooting that left 17 students and faculty members dead.
According to the suit, Runcie and Israel were “both well aware of the potential danger [suspect Nikolas Cruz] posed to the school and its students and faculty, yet they did nothing meaningful to enhance security from this known threat.”
Plaintiffs claim that Peterson, Jordan and Medina’s actions and inactions during the course of their response to the shooting directly led to the death, injury and traumatizing of children, and they blame the county for a lack of training and preventative policies that could have stopped the shooting.
“Numerous failures by numerous government actors, including law enforcement, strongly continued to Shooter’s ability to [carry out] this horrific attack, without which this attack could not have happened,” the plaintiffs allege.”
Ricky, I know it’s dull and tedious and your time has been all used up trying to understand comparative advantage and to convince other people that they are stupid for not agreeing with your conclusions, but this is a negotiation and context matters. I believe Trump was talking about the combination of oil and gas imported from Russia–estimated at between 50-75 percent. The argument was they should be importing more from us. If you can’t understand the word problem, maybe you should be the one who is refused a voting card. ;–)
If the Republican party could not end every disagreement with voters in ‘vote for me or babies will die’, we would quickly see how much or little our energies spent in political pursuits really matter. And how much or little we really have in common. I wonder what that would do to the church in America? I doubt it would be irrelevant.
Debra, That is not what Trump said. The Cult accurately quoted Trump yesterday. He said that Germany was completely controlled by Russia because Germany received 60-70% of its energy from Russia. That is demonstrably false. Facts matter. On this issue (and with Comparative Advantage) math matters. When Trump and the Cult misrepresent facts and are incapable of doing basic math, discussion becomes impossible.
“Get out the fainting couches! President Trump is in Europe, and once again he is saying the unsayable. The occasion is the NATO summit that began today in Brussels. Trump fired an opening salvo that included two themes, as reported by Bloomberg. The first is that Germany, in particular, undermines the alliance’s defenses against Russia by being too dependent on Russian natural gas:
“It’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia where we’re supposed to be guarding against Russia and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia,” Trump said before meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday morning.
Trump pressed on: “If you look at it, Germany is a captive of Russia, because they supply — they got rid of their coal plants, got rid of their nuclear, they’re getting so much of the oil and gas from Russia. I think it’s something NATO has to look at.”
Trump is right about this. Germany stupidly closed nuclear and coal power plants in favor of huge investments in “green” energy. Those investments, predictably, have failed to do anything other than drive the price of electricity unacceptably high. Germany is now backing away from its “green” policies in favor of natural gas. Where does it get most of its natural gas? From Russia.”
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“The concern about Russian influence in Central and Western Europe is well founded. In the past, Putin’s regime has demanded concessions from the West by threatening to cut off natural gas supplies. These first two headlines are from the New York Times; the Times may have forgotten, but the Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians haven’t: Russia Cuts Gas, and Europe Shivers, January 6, 2009; Gazprom Cuts Russia’s Natural Gas Supply to Ukraine, June 16, 2014; Telegraph: Putin mocks the West and threatens to turn off gas supplies, March 7, 2014; Financial Times: Europe supply in jeopardy as Putin warns of Ukraine gas cut, April 11, 2014. Given this history–and these links are just a few samples–why would Germany want to increase its dependence on Russian natural gas?
I think the answer is that German post-war guilt is now indistinguishable from lazy softness. Russia is playing a hard game, annexing Crimea, putting constant pressure on Ukraine, making preparations to invade the Baltics. Putin’s regime is trying to restore the Russian empire, and it is questionable whether Europeans west of Poland have the will to resist. Trump is obviously, and rightly, trying to stiffen their spines.”
“I agree with John’s analysis of the approach President Trump is taking at the NATA summit. In this post, I want to highlight the inconsistency, noted by John, between the left’s criticism of Trump’s approach and its claim that he is soft on, and maybe an instrument of, Putin.
Trump has made two main points in Europe. First, key NATO members aren’t doing enough in the area of defense. Second, key member nations are financing Putin through purchases of Russia gas.
What would be the effect if countries like Germany took Trumps criticisms to heart? Europe would be better able to defend itself from Russian aggression and Russia would lose some of the leverage it enjoys thanks to gas.
As to the first point, Zalmay Khalilzad, former Director of Policy Planning in the Department of Defense and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations, notes that many of NATO’s members have effectively disarmed since the end of the Cold War. Only eight of the 28 members spend the required 2 percent of GDP on defense. Anyone truly concerned about the Russian threat to Europe would find this intolerable. President Trump does. The American left doesn’t.”
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Anyone truly concerned about the Russian military threat to Europe would find this intolerable. President Trump does. The American left doesn’t.
The same is true about the massive sums of money Russia receives from Germany for gas and Germany’s support (along with Western European nations) of Nord Steam 2, which John discussed in his post. The fact that nations to the East of Germany, the ones most susceptible to Russia’s military, are bitterly opposed to that pipeline demonstrates the adverse security implications of Nord Steam 2.
Ukraine, which already confronts Russian military aggression, has the most to lose. As Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan stated in Kiev last year:
We advocate for a strong, independent, self-sufficient energy future for Ukraine. One that is not dependent on Russia and subject to being an instrument of Russian aggression. We are against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline for that very reason, which would for the European continent undermine our goals of energy diversification and energy independence but at least as significantly it would undermine Ukraine.
The Obama administration opposed Nord Stream 2 for the same reason. It differed from the Trump administration on this score only (not surprisingly) by being less forceful.
How does the left reconcile the clear anti-Russia implications of Trump’s positions on NATO and Nord Stream 2 with its mantra that Trump is some sort of Russian stooge? Perhaps by arguing that Trump’s attacks and demands will undermine, or even end, NATO.”
“Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has asked the offices of all 93 U.S. attorneys to each provide up to three federal prosecutors to assist the Justice Department in reviewing government records of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the New York Times reports, citing a letter it obtained.
Why it matters: The Times notes that this is an unusual move because department attorneys are not typically responsible for carrying out such a task. “The production of documents could slow down a confirmation hearing that has already shaped up as a sharp partisan battle. Democratic lawmakers say they want to inspect all of Judge Kavanaugh’s documents, including his staff work and over 300 opinions he has issued as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit,” the report notes.
What they’re saying: Former law enforcement officials told the Times that Rosenstein’s request is troubling.
“It’s flat-out wrong to have career federal prosecutors engaged in a political process like the vetting of a Supreme Court nominee. It takes them away from the mission they’re supposed to be fulfilling, which is effective criminal justice enforcement,” Christopher Hunter, a former F.B.I. agent and federal prosecutor for almost 11 years, told the publication.”
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"You are the lead investigator, you originated the investigation, you are the point of contact, you drafted the document, & here you are before you interviewed a single solitary witness saying 'F Trump,'" Rep. Trey Gowdy pulls no punches with Peter Strzok https://t.co/3x4HT39ijxpic.twitter.com/w3BTqgglAm
Rep. Gowdy: May 17 2017: Bob Mueller is appointed, Your friend Jim Comey has been fired…Do you remember how long it took for you to start talking about impeachment after Mueller was appointed?
What makes this even more ludicrous is Gohmert's a courtier of Trump, who humiliated his ex-wife by publicizing his affair in tabloids, paid off porn stars, sexualized his daughter, etc. The hypocrisy is staggering/more evidence of Trump's debasing effects on Republicans. https://t.co/mudkKRt5VG
Even Brit Hume who has become a part time Trumpkin was not impressed.
I did not think it possible anyone could make Peter Strzok seem a sympathetic figure in this hearing, but Louie Gohmert did. His behavior toward the witness was bullying and insulting, and elicited no information.
I was working today so I didn’t watch the Strzok hearing. Former Republican consultant Steve Schmidt was watching and had this to say:
The American people have watched an extraordinary clinic on the rot, decay, indecency, dishonesty and corruption of the TRUMP/GOP on live TV. The malice of most questions was only outdone by their stupidity, venality and dishonesty. May the stench of this disgrace long linger
Right, so what Trump did decades ago is relevant, but you can’t point out that Mr. Straight Arrow is a currently engaged in an adulterous affair. A clear violation of ethics for an agent and FBI attorney and the standards they’re to be held to. But you guys are OK with that.
Wandering Views 
When abortion becomes a sacrament.
https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2018/07/11/when-abortion-becomes-a-sacrament-n2499147
“But more importantly, a ground shift has taken place in how Democrats think about abortion. Back in 2005, I wrote that the Democratic “safe, legal and rare” formulation regarding abortion was logically and morally untenable: If Democrats wanted abortion to be rare thanks to its inherent immorality, there was no reason for it to be legal. Democrats have finally come around: They’re now “shouting” their abortions, proclaiming them from the rooftops, suggesting that there is a moral good achieved by abortion.
Thus, Lena Dunham said just two years ago, “I still haven’t had an abortion, but I wish I had.” Thus, Chelsea Handler, who has had two abortions, explained in the pages of Playboy, “I don’t ever look back and think, ‘God, I wish I’d had that baby.'” Her article was accompanied by a picture of a woman’s hand with a raised middle finger with a pink bow around it; attached to the bow is a small card that reads, “It’s an abortion!”
Yes, abortion is now a signifier that you refuse to be ruled by the patriarchy. Avoidance of pregnancy may be a wise life choice, according to third-wave feminists, preventing women from being sucked into the grinding maw of maternal life. But abortion is something even better: a signal that you just don’t care about the system. The system demands that if you’re pregnant with a child, you make your own concerns secondary; the system must be fought.
Gloria Steinem once remarked, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” But modern-day feminists have determined that abortion isa sacrament specifically because women can get pregnant: Showing that control over your body even extends to the killing of your unborn child is a way of standing up against patriarchal concerns with women as the source of future generations.
For Michelle Wolf, abortion isn’t just another decision. It’s a giant middle finger to the moral establishment. And those who would fight abortion are desacralizing the mysterious holiness of a ritual that reinforces women’s control. No wonder Wolf thinks God blesses abortion; abortion is her god.”
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It will be interesting to see what happens to the R party if this day should ever come to pass. What will they do if pro-life people, no longer needing to vote R to end abortion, decide they’re no longer tied to the party?
http://theweek.com/articles/783845/end-prolife-movement
“For two generations every American who opposes abortion has known what he or she is supposed to do: Support the Republican candidate for president, no matter how mealy-mouthed his commitment to the unborn, without regard to the rest of his platform. Abortion opponents must do this because if elected, and assuming there is a vacancy, a Republican president may appoint justices to the Supreme Court who subscribe to a bizarre jury-rigged philosophy of constitutional interpretation, the logical concomitants of which, we have been told, are favorable to the cause. Treat this judicial body, most of whose business is dry interpretation of vague statutes in cases involving the application of few if any discernible general principles, as if it were a kind of miniature Senate — but make a point of telling people that you believe it exists simply to uphold the law (whose?), not to “make” it. Immure yourself in double-think; recognize that when a law of which you disapprove is struck down, the result is simply a faithful application of genuine constitutional principles; when a judgment you abhor is handed down by the same body, restrain the urge to decry it as immoral and content yourself to lament the unfortunate existence of a phenomenon known as “judicial overreach.” Do all of these things over and over again, paying no attention to the other consequences of your actions, until eventually the number of approved persons wearing robes at 1 First St. NE reaches five or more.
What was supposed to happen next? The secret, which you probably guessed but which you told yourself over and over again to ignore because the eventual day of reckoning seemed so far off, is that the leaders of the Republican Party these 20 years have not desired that there should be a “next.” The moment when finally it was time to seize upon a case — of which any number could be made to purpose overnight if a red-state legislature decided to ban or otherwise severely restrict abortion — and banish Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood and all their works and pomps to the outer darkness was meant never to arrive. If it did there would be no earthly reason for most of you to support this party, at least not in the same way in which so many of you have been accustomed to do; provisionally, tactically, under the right set of circumstances, you and they might do business (to put it in their lingo), but from thence forth your allegiance could not be counted upon. It would have to be earned.
Will this contingency, alternately dreaded and prayed for but always somehow impossibly remote, arrive anyway? It is difficult to say at this early juncture. But it is clear that one way or another the long period of movement activity in the sense in which it has long been understood is over. Either the gambit has succeeded and future Justice Kavanaugh and his coevals will one day accomplish that high purpose for which you were led to believe they had been appointed — or all your energy will have been misspent.
This second possibility is one worth considering. What would it mean if, in two years, say, the Supreme Court were to rule 6-3 in favor of striking down a law prohibiting abortion in the state of Missouri? Suppose Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, explaining in the impeccable legalese suitable to one of his class that the legislature of that state had overstepped its constitutional mandate. What would you do? Would you sigh along with the press release from the heads of the usual nonprofit groups and tell yourself that if only you vote in November 2020 for President Trump there might be a chance for him to appoint yet another justice who, under the right circumstances, might one day be part of a new judicial coalition that will give you a better result? Probably many of you will, for reasons both noble and ignoble, go on. Money, which is never hard to come by in politics, will not be wanting for you to rent offices, hire staff, issue communications — any activity except a formal acknowledgement of defeat. But others of you will not. You will be finally disillusioned. And then what? Time for the magic fire music.
What you must see, should you come to accept that you have been the dupes of sophists, economists, and calculators, is that the cause of the unborn has not, in fact, suffered an irreversible defeat. Yours is a fight that can never be lost because it is one for which victories are won every time a mother hears the first unmistakable cry of a child whom she has conceived and carried and will love, God willing, for the rest of her life. It is even possible that something else will rise up to take the place of the old movement, whatever becomes of Roe. But you must take care that the fate of any such movement will not be bound up in the flourishing of a party or of an intellectual or quasi-intellectual project or a boutique hermeneutical method. It must no longer be necessary to affirm that there is any necessary or even meaningful connection between the inherent metaphysical dignity of the human person and lower taxes.”
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Hold her in contempt. Make an example of her.
And just a reminder, folks with nothing to hide don’t risk contempt charges by ignoring subpoenas.
https://www.redstate.com/slee/2018/07/11/cry-river-lisa-page/
“Lisa Page, the infamous FBI lawyer who spent months commiserating with her lover, counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, about the prospect of Donald Trump becoming president, has apparently ignored a Congressional subpoena and could be held in contempt as early as Friday, according to reports.
Page and Strzok are best known for, not only potentially conspiring about a supposed “insurance policy” when it came to the 2016 election, but also for their illicit affair, which led Page to say the following about why she and her paramour used their work phones to communicate:
Deep within the report released Thursday from the inspector general for the Justice Department is the answer to a question that’s been floating around for six months: Why did Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, two officials with the FBI, engage in a months-long conversation disparaging 2016 presidential candidates and discussing FBI cases from their work cellphones?
Page explained to investigators that the reason was a personal one: “[T]he predominant reason that we communicated on our work phones was because we were trying to keep our affair a secret from our spouses.”
It’s hard to feel sorry for Ms. Page given that kind of willingness to sneak around when she cries foul about having to answer for her role in the misdoings of the FBI and the DOJ as it relates to the 2016 election. Strzok, as is now well known, was a part of both the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server and the investigation into possible Russian interference. And there have been questions ever since the House began looking at that weird, sensational dossier that led to questions about abuses at the secret FISA court and just how far up the chain the Trump disdain went.
CNN is reporting Page has been given a few options since she failed to appear for her hearing today.”
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I see Ricky’s favorite “dancer” is in trouble. 🙂
https://www.yahoo.com/news/lawyer-porn-star-stormy-daniels-says-she-arrested-054601132.html
“Adult film star Stormy Daniels, locked in a court battle with President Donald Trump over their alleged affair, was arrested Wednesday while performing at a strip club in what her lawyer described as a “politically motivated” setup.
Daniels was arrested at a club in Columbus, Ohio while performing an act she has done at nearly 100 strip clubs across America, Michael Avenatti wrote on Twitter.
He said Daniels was arrested for allegedly allowing a customer to touch her in a non-sexual way while on stage.”
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But thankfully for her, she has a scumbag lawyer on the case for her.
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It appears the Yahoo article may be incorrect. Fondling is usually considered sexual in nature. It’s alleged she grabbed the backside of an undercover cop. and, uh, other things…….
So classy.
https://www.10tv.com/article/police-stormy-daniels-grabbed-backside-undercover-columbus-officer
“Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was performing at Sirens Adult Entertainment Club on Cleveland Avenue in north Columbus. According to an arrest report, Daniels began dancing around 11:30 Wednesday night. During her performance, officers in the club said they witnessed Daniels using her bare breasts to smack patrons. The officers also said they observed Daniels fondling the breasts of female patrons.
The report states that when the officers approached the stage, Daniels held the face of the female officer between her breasts. It also says she did the same to a male officer. The report goes on to say Daniels fondled the buttocks and breasts of another officer. At that point, court documents state that a fourth officer exited the club to request assistance to make an arrest.
Daniels was arrested by Columbus Police and charged with three counts of “Illegally Operating Sexually Oriented Business – Employee Knowingly Touch Any Patron,” according to online court records. She is scheduled to be arraigned in Franklin Municipal Court on Friday morning.”
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Not that you need it, but more here.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/stormy-daniels-arrested-strip-club-charged-sex-offenses-n890791
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Some math from last night: 50% times 20% = 10%; 75% times 20% = 15%. Neither 10% nor 15% fall within the “60% to 70% window”.
The critical fact which neither Trump nor the Cult seem able to grasp is that natural gas supplies only 20% of Germany’s energy.
If folks are struggling with this issue, it is no wonder that the concept of Comparative Advantage is beyond their grasp. My father’s one question literacy test for voting (the algebra word problem) looks better every day.
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🙄
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Pro-life people still try to show that the fetus is really a baby, a life, a beating heart. Maybe that was relevant to some pro-choicers, or those on the fence, years ago, but it isn’t anymore.
These days, you will find many pro-choice people acknowledging that yes, this is a baby, but what the mother wants is more important than the baby’s life. As the article AJ linked above shows, there is more of a hardness of heart among many of them.
But we pro-lifers also have to back away from insisting that abortion is a matter of convenience for the mother. Many young women are in dire situations, and cannot see how they could possibly make it financially, or any other way, with a baby. Many of them are pressured into it by their boyfriends or families. One of the big accusations pro-choicers make against pro-lifers is that we are not compassionate towards the mothers. I believe more of us are than aren’t, but it is the uncompassionate remarks here and there that are latched onto as proof of how all pro-lifers think.
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S/He who is faithful in a little is also faithful in a lot–and vice versa.
Throw her in prison for contempt.
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Your last line is correct, Kizzie. Loud mouthed men screaming only hurt Christian movements that quietly help women across the board of their problems with love and compassion.
We spend a lot of time cringing.
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Branco nails it again.
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Broward County’s schools and Sheriff are being sued for their failure to protect the children in their care. It probably has little chance of succeeding, but perhaps it will at least bring about some change. They can start with throwing out the Obama era policies they implemented that led to this well known and dangerous individual still being in school in the first place.
https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2018/07/12/parkland-survivors-file-lawsuit-broward-county-schools-sheriffs-office/
“As we’ve repeatedly seen, what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida was a complete and total failure of local government. The school system dropped the ball on the eventual killer, and so did the sheriff’s office. For all the talk of guns from the Parkland kids, it was their government–the people they seem to trust completely with firearms, I might add, while trying to disarm the rest of us–that screwed up so royally.
Now, a group of survivors wants to make those entities pay. Literally.
More than a dozen students who survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging that numerous officials failed to stop the Valentine’s Day massacre at their school.
The lawsuit names Broward County, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie, Broward County sheriff’s deputy and school resource officer Scot Peterson, Capt. Jan Jordan with the Broward Couty Sheriff’s Department and school security monitor Andrew Medina among the defendants. It alleges various civil rights violations under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments that caused “severe psychological injury and trauma” related to the Feb. 14 mass shooting that left 17 students and faculty members dead.
According to the suit, Runcie and Israel were “both well aware of the potential danger [suspect Nikolas Cruz] posed to the school and its students and faculty, yet they did nothing meaningful to enhance security from this known threat.”
Plaintiffs claim that Peterson, Jordan and Medina’s actions and inactions during the course of their response to the shooting directly led to the death, injury and traumatizing of children, and they blame the county for a lack of training and preventative policies that could have stopped the shooting.
“Numerous failures by numerous government actors, including law enforcement, strongly continued to Shooter’s ability to [carry out] this horrific attack, without which this attack could not have happened,” the plaintiffs allege.”
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Ricky, I know it’s dull and tedious and your time has been all used up trying to understand comparative advantage and to convince other people that they are stupid for not agreeing with your conclusions, but this is a negotiation and context matters. I believe Trump was talking about the combination of oil and gas imported from Russia–estimated at between 50-75 percent. The argument was they should be importing more from us. If you can’t understand the word problem, maybe you should be the one who is refused a voting card. ;–)
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AJ @7:49 AMEN!
If the Republican party could not end every disagreement with voters in ‘vote for me or babies will die’, we would quickly see how much or little our energies spent in political pursuits really matter. And how much or little we really have in common. I wonder what that would do to the church in America? I doubt it would be irrelevant.
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Debra, That is not what Trump said. The Cult accurately quoted Trump yesterday. He said that Germany was completely controlled by Russia because Germany received 60-70% of its energy from Russia. That is demonstrably false. Facts matter. On this issue (and with Comparative Advantage) math matters. When Trump and the Cult misrepresent facts and are incapable of doing basic math, discussion becomes impossible.
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Still obstructing, with the full support of Democrats, of course.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/07/12/strozk-hearing-hijacked-democrats/
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They didn’t like Gowdy’s pointing out the facts.
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Bull- 1
China Shop- 0
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/07/bull-1-china-shop-0.php
“Get out the fainting couches! President Trump is in Europe, and once again he is saying the unsayable. The occasion is the NATO summit that began today in Brussels. Trump fired an opening salvo that included two themes, as reported by Bloomberg. The first is that Germany, in particular, undermines the alliance’s defenses against Russia by being too dependent on Russian natural gas:
“It’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia where we’re supposed to be guarding against Russia and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia,” Trump said before meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday morning.
Trump pressed on: “If you look at it, Germany is a captive of Russia, because they supply — they got rid of their coal plants, got rid of their nuclear, they’re getting so much of the oil and gas from Russia. I think it’s something NATO has to look at.”
Trump is right about this. Germany stupidly closed nuclear and coal power plants in favor of huge investments in “green” energy. Those investments, predictably, have failed to do anything other than drive the price of electricity unacceptably high. Germany is now backing away from its “green” policies in favor of natural gas. Where does it get most of its natural gas? From Russia.”
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“The concern about Russian influence in Central and Western Europe is well founded. In the past, Putin’s regime has demanded concessions from the West by threatening to cut off natural gas supplies. These first two headlines are from the New York Times; the Times may have forgotten, but the Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians haven’t: Russia Cuts Gas, and Europe Shivers, January 6, 2009; Gazprom Cuts Russia’s Natural Gas Supply to Ukraine, June 16, 2014; Telegraph: Putin mocks the West and threatens to turn off gas supplies, March 7, 2014; Financial Times: Europe supply in jeopardy as Putin warns of Ukraine gas cut, April 11, 2014. Given this history–and these links are just a few samples–why would Germany want to increase its dependence on Russian natural gas?
I think the answer is that German post-war guilt is now indistinguishable from lazy softness. Russia is playing a hard game, annexing Crimea, putting constant pressure on Ukraine, making preparations to invade the Baltics. Putin’s regime is trying to restore the Russian empire, and it is questionable whether Europeans west of Poland have the will to resist. Trump is obviously, and rightly, trying to stiffen their spines.”
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Incoherent is right.
The referred to post from John is above this one.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/07/the-lefts-incoherence-on-trump-putin-exposed.php
“I agree with John’s analysis of the approach President Trump is taking at the NATA summit. In this post, I want to highlight the inconsistency, noted by John, between the left’s criticism of Trump’s approach and its claim that he is soft on, and maybe an instrument of, Putin.
Trump has made two main points in Europe. First, key NATO members aren’t doing enough in the area of defense. Second, key member nations are financing Putin through purchases of Russia gas.
What would be the effect if countries like Germany took Trumps criticisms to heart? Europe would be better able to defend itself from Russian aggression and Russia would lose some of the leverage it enjoys thanks to gas.
As to the first point, Zalmay Khalilzad, former Director of Policy Planning in the Department of Defense and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations, notes that many of NATO’s members have effectively disarmed since the end of the Cold War. Only eight of the 28 members spend the required 2 percent of GDP on defense. Anyone truly concerned about the Russian threat to Europe would find this intolerable. President Trump does. The American left doesn’t.”
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Anyone truly concerned about the Russian military threat to Europe would find this intolerable. President Trump does. The American left doesn’t.
The same is true about the massive sums of money Russia receives from Germany for gas and Germany’s support (along with Western European nations) of Nord Steam 2, which John discussed in his post. The fact that nations to the East of Germany, the ones most susceptible to Russia’s military, are bitterly opposed to that pipeline demonstrates the adverse security implications of Nord Steam 2.
Ukraine, which already confronts Russian military aggression, has the most to lose. As Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan stated in Kiev last year:
We advocate for a strong, independent, self-sufficient energy future for Ukraine. One that is not dependent on Russia and subject to being an instrument of Russian aggression. We are against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline for that very reason, which would for the European continent undermine our goals of energy diversification and energy independence but at least as significantly it would undermine Ukraine.
The Obama administration opposed Nord Stream 2 for the same reason. It differed from the Trump administration on this score only (not surprisingly) by being less forceful.
How does the left reconcile the clear anti-Russia implications of Trump’s positions on NATO and Nord Stream 2 with its mantra that Trump is some sort of Russian stooge? Perhaps by arguing that Trump’s attacks and demands will undermine, or even end, NATO.”
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The deep state is at it again.
Note the word “unprecedented.”
Tell him to pound sand.
https://www.axios.com/rosenstein-prosecutors-review-kavanaugh-documents–60cacccd-c1af-4606-8321-ef8c1c49b8a3.html
“Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has asked the offices of all 93 U.S. attorneys to each provide up to three federal prosecutors to assist the Justice Department in reviewing government records of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the New York Times reports, citing a letter it obtained.
Why it matters: The Times notes that this is an unusual move because department attorneys are not typically responsible for carrying out such a task. “The production of documents could slow down a confirmation hearing that has already shaped up as a sharp partisan battle. Democratic lawmakers say they want to inspect all of Judge Kavanaugh’s documents, including his staff work and over 300 opinions he has issued as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit,” the report notes.
What they’re saying: Former law enforcement officials told the Times that Rosenstein’s request is troubling.
“It’s flat-out wrong to have career federal prosecutors engaged in a political process like the vetting of a Supreme Court nominee. It takes them away from the mission they’re supposed to be fulfilling, which is effective criminal justice enforcement,” Christopher Hunter, a former F.B.I. agent and federal prosecutor for almost 11 years, told the publication.”
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Ouch. That had to sting.
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Long overdue.
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https://twitter.com/ewerickson/status/1017479205314088960?s=21
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Hmm. If math does not have the desired effect, let’s try a cartoon:
https://twitter.com/mishegaas/status/1017141606271672326?s=21
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Louis Gohmert is getting very bad reviews.
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Even Brit Hume who has become a part time Trumpkin was not impressed.
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I was working today so I didn’t watch the Strzok hearing. Former Republican consultant Steve Schmidt was watching and had this to say:
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You heard it here first:
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Right, so what Trump did decades ago is relevant, but you can’t point out that Mr. Straight Arrow is a currently engaged in an adulterous affair. A clear violation of ethics for an agent and FBI attorney and the standards they’re to be held to. But you guys are OK with that.
Seems hypocritical, no?
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Most of the ways Christians are talking about Trump, pro and con, is hypocritical.
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