“Is Joe okay? Biden Mumbles Through His First Speech as 2020 Presidential Candidate”
“Former Vice President Joe Biden gave his first speech as a Democrat presidential candidate in Pennsylvania on Monday, but it didn’t go that well as the 77-year-old man stumbled through the speech.
This is weird to me because when giving one-on-one interviews on TV Biden comes across as a well spoken adult.”
“President Trump moved to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror group following a visit from the president of Egypt earlier this month.
The designation would impose severe travel and economic sanctions on those who associate with the group, which has millions of members across the Middle East. Trump has asked his administration to figure out a way to make the designation happen, The New York Times reports. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed the news, which the New York Times reports has sparked internal debate in the administration. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security advisor John Bolton support the move, while others at the Pentagon are opposed and are working to propose a more moderate action.
“The president has consulted with his national security team and leaders in the region who share his concern, and this designation is working its way through the internal process,” she told The New York Times.”
“Former Minneapolis police officer found guilty in 2017 death of unarmed woman shot after calling 911”
“Former Minneapolis Police Officer Mohamed Noor was found guilty by a jury on Tuesday in the 2017 death of Justine Damond, an unarmed woman who was fatally shot shortly after she called 911 to report a possible rape.
The decision from the jury, which received the case on Monday, followed three weeks of testimony in the trial against Noor.
The former officer was found guilty of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. However, the jury found him not guilty of second-degree murder. Noor was taken straight from the courtroom into the custody of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Dept. His sentencing was scheduled for June 7.”
“Now that the Mueller report is out, effectively exonerating President Trump of colluding with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton, the Trump administration has begun investigations as to the origins of the phony Steele dossier and the illegal surveillance of his campaign. It’s a trail that’s unlikely to lead anywhere but to the office of embittered President Obama, and independent reporter Nicholas Ballasy got a chance to ask the Obama administration’s former deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, whether he thought this investigation would eventually lead.
His response was about what you might expect — nowhere Obama might be, along with a string of “narratives,” so fake that if you weren’t suspicious Obama knew anything about the abuses of power going on, you would be after hearing Rhodes.
There he is, in all his twerpy glory, situated between two bottles of screwtop wine, using the teenage girl’s favorite word “like” as a particle, and perhaps most significantly, blinking his eyes every time he insists that the Obama administration knew nothing about the Steele dossier or the effort to spy on the Trump campaign, even as Ballasy shows admirable restraint in not belting the guy across the table.
It’s interesting that he starts the interview confidently dismissive, but then, seemingly getting into his cups, gets more emphatic and detailed, repeating all sorts of defensive denials, even as the reporter was quite gentle on him.”
—————-
He knows what they did, and that he could go to jail for his part in it. This is the guy you want to put the screws to. You can tell, with the right pressure applied, he’ll sing like a canary.
“The clearest of all the laws concerning U.S. intelligence is Section 798, 18 U.S. Code—widely known in the Intelligence Community as “the Comint Statute,” or “the 10 and 10.” Unlike other laws, this is a “simple liability” law. Motivation, context, identity, matter not at all. You violate it, you are guilty and are punished accordingly.
Here it is:
a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, . . . any classified information—
(1) concerning the nature, preparation, or use of any code, cipher, or cryptographic system of the United States or any foreign government; or
(2) concerning the design, construction, use, maintenance, or repair of any device, apparatus, or appliance used or prepared or planned for use by the United States …or
(3) concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government; or
(4) obtained by the processes of communication intelligence . . .
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
On December 9 and 10, 2016, the New York Times and the Washington Post independently reported that anonymous senior intelligence officials had told them that, based on intercepted communications, the intelligence agencies agreed that Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee to help Donald Trump win the election. Their evidence was the fact of their access to U.S communications intelligence. A flood of subsequent stories also cited allegations by “senior intelligence officials” that “intercepted communications” and “intercepted calls” showed that “members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.”
Incontrovertibly, the officials who gave these stories to the Times and Post violated the Comint Statute, and are subject to the “10 and 10” for each count. There is no clearer instance of what the governing law is, of how it was violated, and of the punishment that this incurs.”
Consequently, there is no clearer indictment of our legal system than the fact that no one has been prosecuted for these violations, much less punished.”
“A Seattle Judge Sent A Homeless Man With 72 Convictions To Jail, The City Attorney Was Furious”
“This is the sort of thing that would only happen in Seattle (okay, maybe in Portland). A 55-year-old homeless man named Francisco Calderon punched a complete stranger in the mouth one day in November, giving him a bloody lip. The victim called 911 and Calderon was arrested and charged with assault. He pleaded guilty to the crime. That turned out to be his 72nd time being convicted of a crime, fourteen of those convictions were felonies. And yet, City Attorney Pete Holmes worked out a plea deal with Calderon’s public defender which would keep him out of jail. Instead, he would get probation and drug treatment. Enter Municipal Court Judge Ed McKenna whose job it was to sentence Calderon. McKenna wasn’t convinced no jail time was appropriate in the case and questioned the plea deal.
When the case was first brought to Seattle Municipal Court Judge Ed McKenna for sentencing on Dec. 10, he questioned the Assistant City Attorney about the plea deal in light of his Calderon’s long criminal history. The city attorney stood by the deal.
McKenna then asked that Calderon undergo a pre-sentencing review so he could better understand Calderon’s personal history before passing judgement. He also asked the Assistant City Attorney to review the plea deal, a message which could be interpreted as he was unhappy with it.
When the court’s probation department first contacted Calderon for the review, he refused to participate, telling officers “I don’t give a crap.”
Just days before a second sentencing hearing in January, he agreed to the review.
When sentencing day arrived, he refused to appear in court. McKenna had to sign an order for two marshals to forcibly remove Calderon from his jail cell. Calderon arrived in court handcuffed and chained around the waist with two marshals standing over him.
Having been literally dragged into court, Calderon pleaded to be allowed to serve probation instead of jail time, saying he didn’t foresee any future problems. Again, this is a person who is 55-years-old and who has been convicted of 72 crimes. Judge McKenna didn’t buy it:
“I’m not sure I have ever seen a more significant history of violent offenses,” McKenna said in court. “Everything in that criminal history tells me that he’s a violent offender and is going to re-offend.”…
“As a judge, I have a duty and responsibility to protect the citizens of Seattle and impose a sentence that I think is going to provide protection,” McKenna said in court. “I don’t think this court is willing to risk having someone else assaulted.”
So McKenna threw the book at Calderon. Instead of probation, he got 364 days in jail, the maximum possible sentence for the charge of 4th-degree assault. All of which seems perfectly sensible under the circumstances. But this is Seattle. In response, City Attorney Pete Holmes and director of the Department of Public Defense Anita Khandelwal wrote a letter accusing Judge McKenna of violating the canon of judicial ethics and specifically claimed he had invited a reporter and a local activist to court to witness the sentencing, perhaps as part of a “premeditated display.”
“The Left Continues to Peddle the Lie that Trump Represents a Threat to Press Freedom”
“Saturday night’s White House Correspondents dinner once again came and went without most Americans having paid it any serious attention, and for the third straight year, our president chose to miss this increasingly farcical event where journalists pat each other on the back for the fine jobs they believe themselves to be doing. What made this year’s event a little different than years past is that none of the other senior members of the White House staff attended, either.
“That decision came after Sarah Huckabee Sanders endured cruel taunts at the hands of last year’s featured speaker, comedian Michelle Wolf,” Emily Zanotti reports at The Daily Wire. “[D]espite a longstanding tradition of good-natured ribbing between the press and the president, through dueling speeches, the White House simply stopped RSVPing to the event.”
Without the luxury of roasting their political enemies in attendance to feign a comedic tone rather than a purely adversarial one, the organizers of the event dropped the façade of humor in favor of a “funerary tone” led by a historian rather than the traditional choice of a comedian.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the event offered anything short of bad comedy.
For example, the White House Correspondents Association’s president Olivier Knox committed to a “dark sermon,” according to Grabien News.
In February of 2017, he told the audience, “the president called us the enemy of the people,” he said. A few days later, he said, his son asked if Donald Trump was going to put him in prison. “At the end of a trip to Mexico,” he continued, “he mused that if the president tried to keep me out of the country, at least Uncle Josh is a good lawyer and will get you home.”
For the record, Trump has never threatened to imprison a journalist or prevent a citizen journalist from reentering the country from abroad. If Knox were an honest man, he might have told his son: “No, son, none of that will happen. You only believe that because a lot of people make their living by making up such nonsensical stories about how this president might do such things.”
But he certainly wouldn’t say that, because those are the lies upon which this entire event was centered. There was a calculated effort to portray this administration as uniquely at odds with a free and critical press in the scope of American history. For example, historian and host Ron Chernow quipped that “George Washington felt maligned and misunderstood by the press, but he never generalized that as a vendetta against the institution.”
Can any sane person, much less a “historian,” actually argue that Trump is the only president to malign the free press, as an institution, for spreading “fake news?”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt certainly did, and he remains a hero of the left despite having done so.”
————————-
And let’s face it, there was only Barry spying on the press, but they were OK with that, because it was Fox.
If he was an honest man, he wouldn’t lie to, or about, his son. But he’s not….
““I was driving my then 11-year-old son somewhere, probably soccer practice, when he burst into tears and asked me, ‘is Donald Trump going to put you in prison?’” So claimed the embarrassingly serious Olivier Knox, the White House Correspondents Association president, at the association’s annual grub fest on Saturday.
What Knox should have said is, “No, son, President Trump is at least open in his hostility. The First Amendment gives him the same rights as it gives us. It was President Obama’s dirty, covert war on the media that had me worried.” At this point, little Knox should have asked, “Did this sneaky, back-door attack prefigure Obama’s subversion of the Trump candidacy?” Now, there is a correspondent’s dinner I would pay to watch.
In May 2010, when Obama signed the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Law, few of America’s reporters and editors were aware that Obama as president represented the single greatest threat to press freedom in their professional lives. True to his reputation as messiah, Obama would soon make even the willfully blind see.
In May 2013, the illusion of an unfettered press disappeared like a magician’s bunny. It was in this month that the Associated Press learned Obama’s Justice Department had quietly seized all of the relevant records for twenty AP telephone lines a year earlier. These included the personal and professional lines of several reporters.
The seizure had to do with AP reporting on a covert CIA operation in Yemen. Although only five reporters were involved in that story, more than one hundred reporters used the lines and switchboards whose records were seized. AP President Gary Pruitt wrote Attorney General Eric Holder that the “government has no conceivable right to know” the content of those records. On Face the Nation, Pruitt boldly assessed White House strategy, “I know what the message being sent is: If you talk to the press, we’re going after you.””
“One of the strangest things about the series of psychodramas that surround the ongoing effort to remove President Trump before the 2020 election is progressive schizophrenia. In teenage fashion, one moment a player in the Trump removal intrigue is deemed by the media-progressive nexus a demigod. The next moment, he’s a devil. It depends solely on his perceived sense of utility.
Robert Mueller, Saint to Sinner
When Robert Mueller was appointed in May 2017 as special counsel to investigate alleged Trump campaign “collusion” with Russia following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, he was practically canonized as a secular saint. The media was giddy over his “all stars” and “dream team” of almost all liberal lawyers who shortly would prove the supposedly obvious: sure winner Hillary Clinton lost only because the vile Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin to sabotage her campaign by leaking John Podesta’s emails.
As the Mueller investigation lumbered along over the last 22 months, the media periodically announced that their newfound hero had inside information, privileged but unnamed sources, and high-ranking anonymous officials who confirmed “the noose was tightening,” the “walls were closing in,” and “a bombshell” was about to go off. It was as if pre-teenagers had group-talked themselves into seeing witches and goblins.
Mueller was just about to ensure Trump’s impeachment, indictment, or voluntary exile. More direct leaks apprised us that Mueller supposedly was sealing Trump’s fate by flipping the alleged sell-out Michael Flynn. Or was it the dastardly Carter Page? Or perhaps the supposed wannabe George Papadopoulos was Trump’s true nemesis. Or again, maybe the deified Mueller had so leveraged Stormy Daniels, or Michael Cohen, or Roger Stone, or Jerome Corsi that Trump would all but confess and slink off into infamous oblivion.
How even to digest such a cornucopia of conspiracy fruit! We saw Mueller’s SWAT teams and perp walks, and worshiped new heroes like Michael Avenatti and Andrew Weissmann who would all frog march Trump out of the White House. Fossils from our Watergate past, like Carl Bernstein and John Dean, creaked back into the limelight to furrow their brows and grimace what Mueller would do to Trump soon in comparison would make Nixon’s scandals look like minor misdemeanors.
And then no collusion. Nada. After 400 pages, 22 months and $34 million, Trump, Mueller found, did not collude with the Russians.
Oh, Mueller in his “Volume II” threw every bit of gossip, hearsay, anti-Trump testimony, and innuendo to sort of, kind of, and maybe suggest that in theory or in the abstract Trump could have been indicted for obstruction (of a non-crime), but then he could have not been as well.
The result? Now the media ambushes Mueller at Easter church services, sticking a mike in his once-consecrated Lincolnesque face as he leaves church. Progressives mutter that he let them down, that he did not let pit bull Andrew Weissmann off his leash, that the dream team was too dreamy—in other words, that Mueller was a Republican after all, a sell-out, a Trump puppet. In other words, in the world of the 13-year-old, the once cool Mueller is now in the out-crowd.”
———————-
I’m consistent. I’ve said Mueller was a fraud since day one. 🙂
I never understood how a group that was an un-indicted co-conspirator in a terrorist plot like CAIR, was ever allowed in in the first place.
Then I remembered it was thanks to the media for whitewashing their terrorist ties and support of terrorists, and Bush and Obama, for letting the wolves prowl among us.
This is un-American as it gets. This is 3rd world crap hole type stuff from an authoritarian govt. They are everything they accuse him falsely of being. They’re projecting.
The New York Attorney General’s Office, and now the state legislature, are targeting a political opponent: Donald Trump, his family, his businesses, and his allies.”
“The State government in New York has become part of the #Resistance to Trump, and not just on policy issues.”
“The law enforcement and legislative functions have been co-opted to target Trump because he is a political enemy. In the war on Trump, important norms are being broken. It’s disgusting and dangerous.
The most prominent norm being broken is by the new Attorney General, Latitia James, who campaigned on the promise to use the full force the the State’s law enforcement powers to target Trump and his family:
“We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well”
Such targeting of Trump didn’t start with James, she was following up on similar targeting by former (and disgraced) AG Eric Schneiderman and interim AG Barbara Underwood. We documented this long line of Democrat New York Attorney Generals weaponizing the Office for political purposes We wrote about it in December 2018, Incoming NY Attorney General vows to use full power of the State to get Trump.
Since taking Office, James has held true to her promise to target Trump, as CNN reported in early April 2019, The New York AG’s first 100 days of war against Trump:
So far, her office has subpoenaed two banks for records related to Trump Organization projects and has continued to pursue a lawsuit against the Trump Foundation, alleging it violated state and federal charities law. Asked by CNN about the lawsuit, Donald Trump Jr. dismissed it, saying there was “nothing to talk about — more nonsense.” She’s even pushed for the state assembly to pass legislation that would allow her office to pursue state charges for anyone the President pardons on federal charges…
Her office’s pursuit of tax records and details of President Trump’s businesses, along with efforts by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, could be critical leading into the re-election campaign as the Mueller investigation has ended and House Democrats are only now accelerating their investigations….
“I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate President,” James said during her campaign.
“Most of his business activities are performed in New York,” James told MSNBC earlier this month. “He engages in business in New York. He operates in New York. And it’s really critically important that New Yorkers, and as taxpayers … that we understand and know whether or not he devalued his corporations and he received some tax benefits thereof. That he engaged in false claims against New Yorkers and as a result of that we are seeking to see what we can do legally.”
James’ reference to “this illegitimate president” ends any doubt that she is politically motivated, not motivated by legitimate law enforcement concerns. The NY Attorney General’s Office has identified the political target, now it is searching for the crime.
James’ politicization of her Office doesn’t stop with Trump, his family or his businesses, she’s also going after a key Trump ally, the NRA, seeking to challenge its tax-exempt status:”
Kind of curious/astonishing that you neglect to mention that Angela Davis purchased weapons that were used to literally murder a judge. She is a radical, rabid anti-Semite and has no place in the public discourse.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham ahead of Barr testimony: "When the Mueller report is put to bed and it soon will be, this committee is going to look long and hard on how this all started. We're going to look at the FISA warrant process." https://t.co/U0hFpvmTbOpic.twitter.com/8WSUsHpJXt
Sorry Bob, you had your chance to editorialize it already. If they’re confused, that’s your fault.
And of course the press is misrepresenting it. That’s what they’ve done all along.
Barr on his call with Mueller: he says special counsel was concerned with media reports about his letter. He wanted summaries released to better inform the news coverage. "I asked him if he was suggesting my March 24 letter was inaccurate, and he said no." ..
…"But he said the press reporting was inaccurate. He said the press was reading too much into it. His concern focused on his explanation about why he did not reach a conclusion on obstruction and he wanted to put out more on that issue."
Barr says Mueller told him after sending him a letter raising concerns about the characterizations of the report that he was more upset at media depictions, not that Barr and the department had misrepresented his report pic.twitter.com/jk7wXiqa45
Here’s another thoughtful take on the synagogue shooting and our culture. I texted briefly with our pastor yesterday about this, he serves on the credentials committee with the Escondido pastor, and he said he seems to be handling it well. From what I’ve read of the church’s response, I’d agree.
Who’s to Blame When the Shooter Is One of Our Own?
The latest synagogue attack has shaken fellow Orthodox Presbyterians—but it implicates all of us living in a fallen world and divisive culture.
CARL TRUEMAN| APRIL 30, 2019
Last weekend’s news of another synagogue attack was shocking but, sadly, not a shock. Mass shootings, while thankfully not routine weekly occurrences, have become a matter of “when” rather than “if” in modern America.
Yet, this attack at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California stirred particular interest and questions among Christians since the suspect, 19-year-old John Earnest, was reported to belong to a Presbyterian church. In fact, he was apparently a member of a nearby congregation in my own denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC).
In our response to such evil, we instinctually want to find an explanation or pinpoint a source to blame—in this case, some (even within the OPC) learned about his affiliation and speculated about hate preached from OPC pulpits. Faced with another’s tragedy, we are tempted to put our enemies at fault and score points for our side. But such tidy speculation loses sight of the complexity of such matters and casually commits the serious sin of slander. …
… When murder has become routine and mass shootings are starting to become a part of life, it is time for Christians to examine with sorrow our complicity in a fallen culture. Perhaps details will later emerge around the particular thoughts, actions, and events that led this troubled young man to such a despicable act—his family, church, and the watching world will be waiting for the results of the police investigation—but the fact that he appears to have acted alone should not exempt us from serious self-examination in the meantime.
I learned long ago, to my chagrin, that provocative comments I made in the classroom could be picked up and used by students in harmful ways I never imagined and that we all are responsible for the way we speak and speak about others. Over the years, I have struggled to speak respectfully and appropriately about those with whom I disagree. Regardless of our scope of influence, our words have consequences, as does the tone with which we speak and write them. …
… we cannot respond with complacency. The OPC, like most churches, attracts a cross-section of society, including its fair share of misfits and socially marginal figures. Embracing sinners, as Christ himself did, also brings risks. I remember a professor of pastoral theology telling me that in any 150-person congregation, there’s likely someone engaging in spousal abuse; that proved true in my experience. Our congregations must be ready for the possibility of deeply disturbed individuals in our midst. …
… I do not know this alleged shooter, and I do not know what led him to commit such a terrible crime. But I suspect the anger that sadly characterizes so much of contemporary public discourse, and in which too many of us Christians, right and left, indulge, did not help.
This is not a moment for blaming “them” for what has happened. It is a moment to grieve with the family that has been destroyed by this senseless action, to examine our own part in this fallen culture, and to ask ourselves how we can truly represent something better to the watching world.
Carl R. Trueman is a professor at Grove City College and an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
______________________________________
“Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American communist, political activist, academic, and author. She emerged as a prominent counterculture activist in the 1960s working with the Communist Party USA, of which she was a member until 1991, and was involved in the Black Panther Party during the Civil Rights Movement.[4]
Davis is a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in its History of Consciousness Department. She is also a former director of the university’s Feminist Studies department.[5] Her research interests are feminism, African-American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. She co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison–industrial complex.
Davis’s membership in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) led California Governor Ronald Reagan in 1969 to attempt to have her barred from teaching at any California university. She supported the governments of the Soviet Bloc for several decades. During the 1980s, she was twice a candidate for Vice President on the CPUSA ticket. She left the party in 1991.[6]
After Davis purchased firearms for personal security guards, those guards used them in the 1970 armed takeover of a Marin County, California courtroom, in which four people were killed. She was prosecuted for three capital felonies, including conspiracy to murder, but was acquitted of the charges.[7][8]”
“There is no returning to the pre-Trump conservative consensus that collapsed in 2016.” So concludes a group of conservative thinkers who have issued a manifesto about how a rebooted conservatism needs to be.
According to Against the Dead Consensus, the Reagan-era conservative consensus–an alliance of libertarians, business interests, and cultural conservatives–shared a key belief with liberalism, one that has proven to be culturally toxic: the fetishizing of individual autonomy.
This mindset has manifested itself in personal freedom and free market prosperity, but it has also given us legalized abortion, the sexual revolution, and transgenderism.
Yes, the old conservative consensus paid lip service to traditional values. But it failed to retard, much less reverse, the eclipse of permanent truths, family stability, communal solidarity, and much else. It surrendered to the pornographization of daily life, to the culture of death, to the cult of competitiveness. It too often bowed to a poisonous and censorious multiculturalism.
The document neither endorses nor criticizes Donald Trump, with some of the signatories evidently supporting him and others not. But the rebooted conservatism it advocates seems to be in accord with his economic policies–reining in capitalism when it hurts blue collar workers–and with his concerns about uncontrolled immigration. …
,,, (Veith asks): Might this kind of conservatism win hearts and minds in the post-Trump era (whether that commences in two or six years)? Is it so culturally conservative that it will be a futile gesture? Or does this version effectively address the dysfunctions of our time? …
_______________________________
I’m glad to see discussions about where conservatism goes post-Trump. There seems to be a vacuum now that boasts few if any fresh voices that will be key for the future. There will be a lot of reconstruction ahead to re-craft a major conservative political party that can move forward.
Conservatism needs a reboot. It has for some time, for many of the reasons Veith noted. Capitalism, when used as a weapon against the worker, the taxpayer, and the US economy, benefits only the Chamber of Commerce crowd. While that was working just fine for them, not so much the rest. Conservatism became known for greed and money, and little else.
Like it or not, it’s why Trump was necessary. As I’ve been saying. You can’t rebuild it better, until you tear down the old dilapidated one first. Trump has been useful. He’s served a purpose while holding mostly to traditional conservatism. (judges, terrorism, tax cuts) His economic policies have been great for jobs, and wages are rising across the board. It’s no longer the rich man’s party. 🙂 His critics always miss that.
But Trump isn’t what’s important, he’ll be gone in 5-6 more years. It’s what we do with conservatism from here that matters. I don’t know where we’re going, but we ain’t going back to the old way. And that’s a good thing. 🙂
“The New York Times editorial board blamed President Donald Trump for the paper’s decision to publish an anti-Semitic cartoon.
The paper’s editorial board said in a Tuesday editorial that the president’s failure to stop a rise in anti-Semitism played a part in the image that “came to be published” in its pages.
After acknowledging the paper published a “bigoted” and “appalling” anti-Semitic cartoon in the headline and opening sentences of the editorial, the board quickly shifts to lecturing readers about the “insidious” nature of anti-Semitism and the particular danger of anti-Semitic imagery in this political moment.
The rest of the editorial amounts to one excuse: the paper published an anti-Semitic cartoon because of a larger context of hate fostered by Trump, not because of its own failure to vet the content that hits its pages.”
———————–
(editorial board collectively shakes fists at the omnipotent orange man)
Former Vice President Joe Biden gave his first speech as a Democrat presidential candidate in Pennsylvania on Monday, but it didn’t go that well as the 77-year-old man stumbled through the speech.
This is weird to me because when giving one-on-one interviews on TV Biden comes across as a well spoken adult.
This reminds me of a situation with one of my college professors. He had a noticeable, pronounced difficulty avoiding stuttering. It happened every day in class, throughout each lecture.
Therefore, it was a complete surprise when I needed to talk with him outside of class one day about I don’t remember what, and he did not stutter once during the several minutes when we were talking one-to-one, instead of in a classroom (group) situation.
Was nervousness in front of a group exacerbating the stammer? Was he more comfortable addressing one person than many?
Or perhaps was it due to something similar the article writer above conjectured about Biden?:
I’m guessing this was a prepared speech. Maybe he’s better with quick thinking than a prepared speech?
Just a thought, though I do agree a president would need to be a clear communicator, and need the ability to give prepared speeches in front of many.
I’m serious. People who continue to defend her have no standing lecturing anyone about human rights or bigotry ever again. They should get laughed out of the conversation.
The conduct of AG Barr over the last few weeks and in the hearing today has been shown to be unacceptable. I thought he was an institutionalist, committed to both the rule of law and his role as the lawyer for the American people. I was very wrong. He is protecting the President.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) interrupts Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and shuts her down after she repeatedly "slandered" Attorney General Bill Barr at his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. pic.twitter.com/1qMkT9ydTb
Senator Ted Cruz is mocking the Democrats right now at the Barr hearing. He is using their talking points against them considering Democrats “all of the sudden” stopped taking about Russia collusion.
Attorney General Bill Barr flashes a smile and even a chuckle as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) absolutely destroys Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee for their "exceptionally weak arguments" pic.twitter.com/InN93yMvSM
It appears Republicans are enacting strawmen to explain Democrats strategy. They’re not done with collusion but obstruction is more evident. Once the obstruction is peeled back, RICO will be more evident.
I don’t think Republicans will investigate the investigators….it sets a precedent. Not to mention it would force them to open up some possible dirty laundry of their own. Their strategy should be to minimize and distract.
Its clear Barr mischaracterized the report and tried to dictate the narrative. He has no credibility as AG.
The Venezuela crisis is misreported by western media. This is an attempted coup by a person and party who refused to run in the last election.
Here’s a leftist account. I agree with most but not all, some parts are too left even for me but it does give a different prespective on some of the problems
Biden (and Warren) made a mistake not challenging Hilary. They were at the top politically at the tims and even by losing to Hilary they would’ve built a profile and an organization ready for use the next election. Bernie has an advantage here.
Biden and Trump both have age issues. And any stumble or stutter will be seized on. There’s entire videos on youtube mocking Trump’s errors and Biden also provides material.
I liked Biden 14 years ago and he does have blue collar appeal but I think his time has past. Of course I’m a bigger fan of Sanders. I’d like to see Sanders run with either Harris or Warren as VP. Probably the former.
Wandering Views 
So much to talk about…..
Let’s get to it.
First up, drunk, or losing it? Neither is a good look for the Dem front runner.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/04/is-joe-okay-biden-mumbles-through-his-first-speech-as-2020-presidential-candidate/
“Is Joe okay? Biden Mumbles Through His First Speech as 2020 Presidential Candidate”
“Former Vice President Joe Biden gave his first speech as a Democrat presidential candidate in Pennsylvania on Monday, but it didn’t go that well as the 77-year-old man stumbled through the speech.
This is weird to me because when giving one-on-one interviews on TV Biden comes across as a well spoken adult.”
LikeLike
It’s. About. Time.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/30/trump-muslim-brotherhood-terror-group/
“President Trump moved to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror group following a visit from the president of Egypt earlier this month.
The designation would impose severe travel and economic sanctions on those who associate with the group, which has millions of members across the Middle East. Trump has asked his administration to figure out a way to make the designation happen, The New York Times reports. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed the news, which the New York Times reports has sparked internal debate in the administration. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security advisor John Bolton support the move, while others at the Pentagon are opposed and are working to propose a more moderate action.
“The president has consulted with his national security team and leaders in the region who share his concern, and this designation is working its way through the internal process,” she told The New York Times.”
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This is why rushing in a diversity hire is not a good idea for police depts..
https://www.foxnews.com/us/former-minneapolis-police-officer-found-guilty-in-2017-death-of-unarmed-woman-shot-after-calling-911
“Former Minneapolis police officer found guilty in 2017 death of unarmed woman shot after calling 911”
“Former Minneapolis Police Officer Mohamed Noor was found guilty by a jury on Tuesday in the 2017 death of Justine Damond, an unarmed woman who was fatally shot shortly after she called 911 to report a possible rape.
The decision from the jury, which received the case on Monday, followed three weeks of testimony in the trial against Noor.
The former officer was found guilty of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. However, the jury found him not guilty of second-degree murder. Noor was taken straight from the courtroom into the custody of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Dept. His sentencing was scheduled for June 7.”
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Ben has stepped in it.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/with_the_walls_closing_in_on_obama_ben_rhodes_weaves_a_sticky_narrative_web.html
“Now that the Mueller report is out, effectively exonerating President Trump of colluding with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton, the Trump administration has begun investigations as to the origins of the phony Steele dossier and the illegal surveillance of his campaign. It’s a trail that’s unlikely to lead anywhere but to the office of embittered President Obama, and independent reporter Nicholas Ballasy got a chance to ask the Obama administration’s former deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, whether he thought this investigation would eventually lead.
His response was about what you might expect — nowhere Obama might be, along with a string of “narratives,” so fake that if you weren’t suspicious Obama knew anything about the abuses of power going on, you would be after hearing Rhodes.
There he is, in all his twerpy glory, situated between two bottles of screwtop wine, using the teenage girl’s favorite word “like” as a particle, and perhaps most significantly, blinking his eyes every time he insists that the Obama administration knew nothing about the Steele dossier or the effort to spy on the Trump campaign, even as Ballasy shows admirable restraint in not belting the guy across the table.
It’s interesting that he starts the interview confidently dismissive, but then, seemingly getting into his cups, gets more emphatic and detailed, repeating all sorts of defensive denials, even as the reporter was quite gentle on him.”
—————-
He knows what they did, and that he could go to jail for his part in it. This is the guy you want to put the screws to. You can tell, with the right pressure applied, he’ll sing like a canary.
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Good question.
The answer?
Because we have corrupt deep state individuals in our govt. providing cover.
“The clearest of all the laws concerning U.S. intelligence is Section 798, 18 U.S. Code—widely known in the Intelligence Community as “the Comint Statute,” or “the 10 and 10.” Unlike other laws, this is a “simple liability” law. Motivation, context, identity, matter not at all. You violate it, you are guilty and are punished accordingly.
Here it is:
a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, . . . any classified information—
(1) concerning the nature, preparation, or use of any code, cipher, or cryptographic system of the United States or any foreign government; or
(2) concerning the design, construction, use, maintenance, or repair of any device, apparatus, or appliance used or prepared or planned for use by the United States …or
(3) concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government; or
(4) obtained by the processes of communication intelligence . . .
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
On December 9 and 10, 2016, the New York Times and the Washington Post independently reported that anonymous senior intelligence officials had told them that, based on intercepted communications, the intelligence agencies agreed that Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee to help Donald Trump win the election. Their evidence was the fact of their access to U.S communications intelligence. A flood of subsequent stories also cited allegations by “senior intelligence officials” that “intercepted communications” and “intercepted calls” showed that “members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.”
Incontrovertibly, the officials who gave these stories to the Times and Post violated the Comint Statute, and are subject to the “10 and 10” for each count. There is no clearer instance of what the governing law is, of how it was violated, and of the punishment that this incurs.”
Consequently, there is no clearer indictment of our legal system than the fact that no one has been prosecuted for these violations, much less punished.”
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OK……
I think I see the problem here…..
https://hotair.com/archives/2019/04/29/seattle-judge-sent-homeless-man-73-convictions-jail-city-attorney-furious/
“A Seattle Judge Sent A Homeless Man With 72 Convictions To Jail, The City Attorney Was Furious”
“This is the sort of thing that would only happen in Seattle (okay, maybe in Portland). A 55-year-old homeless man named Francisco Calderon punched a complete stranger in the mouth one day in November, giving him a bloody lip. The victim called 911 and Calderon was arrested and charged with assault. He pleaded guilty to the crime. That turned out to be his 72nd time being convicted of a crime, fourteen of those convictions were felonies. And yet, City Attorney Pete Holmes worked out a plea deal with Calderon’s public defender which would keep him out of jail. Instead, he would get probation and drug treatment. Enter Municipal Court Judge Ed McKenna whose job it was to sentence Calderon. McKenna wasn’t convinced no jail time was appropriate in the case and questioned the plea deal.
When the case was first brought to Seattle Municipal Court Judge Ed McKenna for sentencing on Dec. 10, he questioned the Assistant City Attorney about the plea deal in light of his Calderon’s long criminal history. The city attorney stood by the deal.
McKenna then asked that Calderon undergo a pre-sentencing review so he could better understand Calderon’s personal history before passing judgement. He also asked the Assistant City Attorney to review the plea deal, a message which could be interpreted as he was unhappy with it.
When the court’s probation department first contacted Calderon for the review, he refused to participate, telling officers “I don’t give a crap.”
Just days before a second sentencing hearing in January, he agreed to the review.
When sentencing day arrived, he refused to appear in court. McKenna had to sign an order for two marshals to forcibly remove Calderon from his jail cell. Calderon arrived in court handcuffed and chained around the waist with two marshals standing over him.
Having been literally dragged into court, Calderon pleaded to be allowed to serve probation instead of jail time, saying he didn’t foresee any future problems. Again, this is a person who is 55-years-old and who has been convicted of 72 crimes. Judge McKenna didn’t buy it:
“I’m not sure I have ever seen a more significant history of violent offenses,” McKenna said in court. “Everything in that criminal history tells me that he’s a violent offender and is going to re-offend.”…
“As a judge, I have a duty and responsibility to protect the citizens of Seattle and impose a sentence that I think is going to provide protection,” McKenna said in court. “I don’t think this court is willing to risk having someone else assaulted.”
So McKenna threw the book at Calderon. Instead of probation, he got 364 days in jail, the maximum possible sentence for the charge of 4th-degree assault. All of which seems perfectly sensible under the circumstances. But this is Seattle. In response, City Attorney Pete Holmes and director of the Department of Public Defense Anita Khandelwal wrote a letter accusing Judge McKenna of violating the canon of judicial ethics and specifically claimed he had invited a reporter and a local activist to court to witness the sentencing, perhaps as part of a “premeditated display.”
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They just keep digging….. and lying……
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/04/the_left_continues_to_peddle_the_lie_that_trump_represents_a_threat_to_press_freedom.html
“The Left Continues to Peddle the Lie that Trump Represents a Threat to Press Freedom”
“Saturday night’s White House Correspondents dinner once again came and went without most Americans having paid it any serious attention, and for the third straight year, our president chose to miss this increasingly farcical event where journalists pat each other on the back for the fine jobs they believe themselves to be doing. What made this year’s event a little different than years past is that none of the other senior members of the White House staff attended, either.
“That decision came after Sarah Huckabee Sanders endured cruel taunts at the hands of last year’s featured speaker, comedian Michelle Wolf,” Emily Zanotti reports at The Daily Wire. “[D]espite a longstanding tradition of good-natured ribbing between the press and the president, through dueling speeches, the White House simply stopped RSVPing to the event.”
Without the luxury of roasting their political enemies in attendance to feign a comedic tone rather than a purely adversarial one, the organizers of the event dropped the façade of humor in favor of a “funerary tone” led by a historian rather than the traditional choice of a comedian.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the event offered anything short of bad comedy.
For example, the White House Correspondents Association’s president Olivier Knox committed to a “dark sermon,” according to Grabien News.
In February of 2017, he told the audience, “the president called us the enemy of the people,” he said. A few days later, he said, his son asked if Donald Trump was going to put him in prison. “At the end of a trip to Mexico,” he continued, “he mused that if the president tried to keep me out of the country, at least Uncle Josh is a good lawyer and will get you home.”
For the record, Trump has never threatened to imprison a journalist or prevent a citizen journalist from reentering the country from abroad. If Knox were an honest man, he might have told his son: “No, son, none of that will happen. You only believe that because a lot of people make their living by making up such nonsensical stories about how this president might do such things.”
But he certainly wouldn’t say that, because those are the lies upon which this entire event was centered. There was a calculated effort to portray this administration as uniquely at odds with a free and critical press in the scope of American history. For example, historian and host Ron Chernow quipped that “George Washington felt maligned and misunderstood by the press, but he never generalized that as a vendetta against the institution.”
Can any sane person, much less a “historian,” actually argue that Trump is the only president to malign the free press, as an institution, for spreading “fake news?”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt certainly did, and he remains a hero of the left despite having done so.”
————————-
And let’s face it, there was only Barry spying on the press, but they were OK with that, because it was Fox.
If he was an honest man, he wouldn’t lie to, or about, his son. But he’s not….
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/04/son_it_was_obama_we_journalists_had_to_fear.html
“Son, It Was Obama We Journalists Had to Fear”
““I was driving my then 11-year-old son somewhere, probably soccer practice, when he burst into tears and asked me, ‘is Donald Trump going to put you in prison?’” So claimed the embarrassingly serious Olivier Knox, the White House Correspondents Association president, at the association’s annual grub fest on Saturday.
What Knox should have said is, “No, son, President Trump is at least open in his hostility. The First Amendment gives him the same rights as it gives us. It was President Obama’s dirty, covert war on the media that had me worried.” At this point, little Knox should have asked, “Did this sneaky, back-door attack prefigure Obama’s subversion of the Trump candidacy?” Now, there is a correspondent’s dinner I would pay to watch.
In May 2010, when Obama signed the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Law, few of America’s reporters and editors were aware that Obama as president represented the single greatest threat to press freedom in their professional lives. True to his reputation as messiah, Obama would soon make even the willfully blind see.
In May 2013, the illusion of an unfettered press disappeared like a magician’s bunny. It was in this month that the Associated Press learned Obama’s Justice Department had quietly seized all of the relevant records for twenty AP telephone lines a year earlier. These included the personal and professional lines of several reporters.
The seizure had to do with AP reporting on a covert CIA operation in Yemen. Although only five reporters were involved in that story, more than one hundred reporters used the lines and switchboards whose records were seized. AP President Gary Pruitt wrote Attorney General Eric Holder that the “government has no conceivable right to know” the content of those records. On Face the Nation, Pruitt boldly assessed White House strategy, “I know what the message being sent is: If you talk to the press, we’re going after you.””
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Progressive schizophrenia, from Victor Davis Hanson.
“One of the strangest things about the series of psychodramas that surround the ongoing effort to remove President Trump before the 2020 election is progressive schizophrenia. In teenage fashion, one moment a player in the Trump removal intrigue is deemed by the media-progressive nexus a demigod. The next moment, he’s a devil. It depends solely on his perceived sense of utility.
Robert Mueller, Saint to Sinner
When Robert Mueller was appointed in May 2017 as special counsel to investigate alleged Trump campaign “collusion” with Russia following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, he was practically canonized as a secular saint. The media was giddy over his “all stars” and “dream team” of almost all liberal lawyers who shortly would prove the supposedly obvious: sure winner Hillary Clinton lost only because the vile Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin to sabotage her campaign by leaking John Podesta’s emails.
As the Mueller investigation lumbered along over the last 22 months, the media periodically announced that their newfound hero had inside information, privileged but unnamed sources, and high-ranking anonymous officials who confirmed “the noose was tightening,” the “walls were closing in,” and “a bombshell” was about to go off. It was as if pre-teenagers had group-talked themselves into seeing witches and goblins.
Mueller was just about to ensure Trump’s impeachment, indictment, or voluntary exile. More direct leaks apprised us that Mueller supposedly was sealing Trump’s fate by flipping the alleged sell-out Michael Flynn. Or was it the dastardly Carter Page? Or perhaps the supposed wannabe George Papadopoulos was Trump’s true nemesis. Or again, maybe the deified Mueller had so leveraged Stormy Daniels, or Michael Cohen, or Roger Stone, or Jerome Corsi that Trump would all but confess and slink off into infamous oblivion.
How even to digest such a cornucopia of conspiracy fruit! We saw Mueller’s SWAT teams and perp walks, and worshiped new heroes like Michael Avenatti and Andrew Weissmann who would all frog march Trump out of the White House. Fossils from our Watergate past, like Carl Bernstein and John Dean, creaked back into the limelight to furrow their brows and grimace what Mueller would do to Trump soon in comparison would make Nixon’s scandals look like minor misdemeanors.
And then no collusion. Nada. After 400 pages, 22 months and $34 million, Trump, Mueller found, did not collude with the Russians.
Oh, Mueller in his “Volume II” threw every bit of gossip, hearsay, anti-Trump testimony, and innuendo to sort of, kind of, and maybe suggest that in theory or in the abstract Trump could have been indicted for obstruction (of a non-crime), but then he could have not been as well.
The result? Now the media ambushes Mueller at Easter church services, sticking a mike in his once-consecrated Lincolnesque face as he leaves church. Progressives mutter that he let them down, that he did not let pit bull Andrew Weissmann off his leash, that the dream team was too dreamy—in other words, that Mueller was a Republican after all, a sell-out, a Trump puppet. In other words, in the world of the 13-year-old, the once cool Mueller is now in the out-crowd.”
———————-
I’m consistent. I’ve said Mueller was a fraud since day one. 🙂
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And CAIR?
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I never understood how a group that was an un-indicted co-conspirator in a terrorist plot like CAIR, was ever allowed in in the first place.
Then I remembered it was thanks to the media for whitewashing their terrorist ties and support of terrorists, and Bush and Obama, for letting the wolves prowl among us.
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This is un-American as it gets. This is 3rd world crap hole type stuff from an authoritarian govt. They are everything they accuse him falsely of being. They’re projecting.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/05/new-york-state-government-joins-the-war-on-trump/
“New York State government joins the War on Trump
The New York Attorney General’s Office, and now the state legislature, are targeting a political opponent: Donald Trump, his family, his businesses, and his allies.”
“The State government in New York has become part of the #Resistance to Trump, and not just on policy issues.”
“The law enforcement and legislative functions have been co-opted to target Trump because he is a political enemy. In the war on Trump, important norms are being broken. It’s disgusting and dangerous.
The most prominent norm being broken is by the new Attorney General, Latitia James, who campaigned on the promise to use the full force the the State’s law enforcement powers to target Trump and his family:
“We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well”
Such targeting of Trump didn’t start with James, she was following up on similar targeting by former (and disgraced) AG Eric Schneiderman and interim AG Barbara Underwood. We documented this long line of Democrat New York Attorney Generals weaponizing the Office for political purposes We wrote about it in December 2018, Incoming NY Attorney General vows to use full power of the State to get Trump.
Since taking Office, James has held true to her promise to target Trump, as CNN reported in early April 2019, The New York AG’s first 100 days of war against Trump:
So far, her office has subpoenaed two banks for records related to Trump Organization projects and has continued to pursue a lawsuit against the Trump Foundation, alleging it violated state and federal charities law. Asked by CNN about the lawsuit, Donald Trump Jr. dismissed it, saying there was “nothing to talk about — more nonsense.” She’s even pushed for the state assembly to pass legislation that would allow her office to pursue state charges for anyone the President pardons on federal charges…
Her office’s pursuit of tax records and details of President Trump’s businesses, along with efforts by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, could be critical leading into the re-election campaign as the Mueller investigation has ended and House Democrats are only now accelerating their investigations….
“I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate President,” James said during her campaign.
“Most of his business activities are performed in New York,” James told MSNBC earlier this month. “He engages in business in New York. He operates in New York. And it’s really critically important that New Yorkers, and as taxpayers … that we understand and know whether or not he devalued his corporations and he received some tax benefits thereof. That he engaged in false claims against New Yorkers and as a result of that we are seeking to see what we can do legally.”
James’ reference to “this illegitimate president” ends any doubt that she is politically motivated, not motivated by legitimate law enforcement concerns. The NY Attorney General’s Office has identified the political target, now it is searching for the crime.
James’ politicization of her Office doesn’t stop with Trump, his family or his businesses, she’s also going after a key Trump ally, the NRA, seeking to challenge its tax-exempt status:”
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And speaking of un-American, Omar’s hanging out with terrorists again. And I mean that literally.
https://twitter.com/HashtagGriswold/status/1123311384350089218
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Yep.
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Watching that video of Biden, I wondered if he had had, or was having, some kind of medical issue. He didn’t seem drunk.
As for that homeless man sentenced to jail, at least he will have a bed to sleep in, and three meals a day for the next year.
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Git ’em Lindsey.
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Nope. No problem here.
https://twitter.com/CBP/status/1123361746566176769
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https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/us-border-patrol-agents-apprehend-two-huge-groups-illegal-aliens-new
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Sorry Bob, you had your chance to editorialize it already. If they’re confused, that’s your fault.
And of course the press is misrepresenting it. That’s what they’ve done all along.
——————-
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Here’s another thoughtful take on the synagogue shooting and our culture. I texted briefly with our pastor yesterday about this, he serves on the credentials committee with the Escondido pastor, and he said he seems to be handling it well. From what I’ve read of the church’s response, I’d agree.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/april-web-only/whos-to-blame-synagogue-shooting-orthodox-presbyterian.html
___________________________________
Who’s to Blame When the Shooter Is One of Our Own?
The latest synagogue attack has shaken fellow Orthodox Presbyterians—but it implicates all of us living in a fallen world and divisive culture.
CARL TRUEMAN| APRIL 30, 2019
Last weekend’s news of another synagogue attack was shocking but, sadly, not a shock. Mass shootings, while thankfully not routine weekly occurrences, have become a matter of “when” rather than “if” in modern America.
Yet, this attack at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California stirred particular interest and questions among Christians since the suspect, 19-year-old John Earnest, was reported to belong to a Presbyterian church. In fact, he was apparently a member of a nearby congregation in my own denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC).
In our response to such evil, we instinctually want to find an explanation or pinpoint a source to blame—in this case, some (even within the OPC) learned about his affiliation and speculated about hate preached from OPC pulpits. Faced with another’s tragedy, we are tempted to put our enemies at fault and score points for our side. But such tidy speculation loses sight of the complexity of such matters and casually commits the serious sin of slander. …
… When murder has become routine and mass shootings are starting to become a part of life, it is time for Christians to examine with sorrow our complicity in a fallen culture. Perhaps details will later emerge around the particular thoughts, actions, and events that led this troubled young man to such a despicable act—his family, church, and the watching world will be waiting for the results of the police investigation—but the fact that he appears to have acted alone should not exempt us from serious self-examination in the meantime.
I learned long ago, to my chagrin, that provocative comments I made in the classroom could be picked up and used by students in harmful ways I never imagined and that we all are responsible for the way we speak and speak about others. Over the years, I have struggled to speak respectfully and appropriately about those with whom I disagree. Regardless of our scope of influence, our words have consequences, as does the tone with which we speak and write them. …
… we cannot respond with complacency. The OPC, like most churches, attracts a cross-section of society, including its fair share of misfits and socially marginal figures. Embracing sinners, as Christ himself did, also brings risks. I remember a professor of pastoral theology telling me that in any 150-person congregation, there’s likely someone engaging in spousal abuse; that proved true in my experience. Our congregations must be ready for the possibility of deeply disturbed individuals in our midst. …
… I do not know this alleged shooter, and I do not know what led him to commit such a terrible crime. But I suspect the anger that sadly characterizes so much of contemporary public discourse, and in which too many of us Christians, right and left, indulge, did not help.
This is not a moment for blaming “them” for what has happened. It is a moment to grieve with the family that has been destroyed by this senseless action, to examine our own part in this fallen culture, and to ask ourselves how we can truly represent something better to the watching world.
Carl R. Trueman is a professor at Grove City College and an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
______________________________________
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Remember folks, she’s talking to/about a domestic terrorist here.
————–
Here’s some background on her idol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis
“Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American communist, political activist, academic, and author. She emerged as a prominent counterculture activist in the 1960s working with the Communist Party USA, of which she was a member until 1991, and was involved in the Black Panther Party during the Civil Rights Movement.[4]
Davis is a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in its History of Consciousness Department. She is also a former director of the university’s Feminist Studies department.[5] Her research interests are feminism, African-American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. She co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison–industrial complex.
Davis’s membership in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) led California Governor Ronald Reagan in 1969 to attempt to have her barred from teaching at any California university. She supported the governments of the Soviet Bloc for several decades. During the 1980s, she was twice a candidate for Vice President on the CPUSA ticket. She left the party in 1991.[6]
After Davis purchased firearms for personal security guards, those guards used them in the 1970 armed takeover of a Marin County, California courtroom, in which four people were killed. She was prosecuted for three capital felonies, including conspiracy to murder, but was acquitted of the charges.[7][8]”
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From Veith on “Rebooting Conservatism”
_____________________________
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2019/05/rebooting-conservatism/
“There is no returning to the pre-Trump conservative consensus that collapsed in 2016.” So concludes a group of conservative thinkers who have issued a manifesto about how a rebooted conservatism needs to be.
According to Against the Dead Consensus, the Reagan-era conservative consensus–an alliance of libertarians, business interests, and cultural conservatives–shared a key belief with liberalism, one that has proven to be culturally toxic: the fetishizing of individual autonomy.
This mindset has manifested itself in personal freedom and free market prosperity, but it has also given us legalized abortion, the sexual revolution, and transgenderism.
Yes, the old conservative consensus paid lip service to traditional values. But it failed to retard, much less reverse, the eclipse of permanent truths, family stability, communal solidarity, and much else. It surrendered to the pornographization of daily life, to the culture of death, to the cult of competitiveness. It too often bowed to a poisonous and censorious multiculturalism.
The document neither endorses nor criticizes Donald Trump, with some of the signatories evidently supporting him and others not. But the rebooted conservatism it advocates seems to be in accord with his economic policies–reining in capitalism when it hurts blue collar workers–and with his concerns about uncontrolled immigration. …
(read about the document here: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/03/against-the-dead-consensus )
,,, (Veith asks): Might this kind of conservatism win hearts and minds in the post-Trump era (whether that commences in two or six years)? Is it so culturally conservative that it will be a futile gesture? Or does this version effectively address the dysfunctions of our time? …
_______________________________
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I’m glad to see discussions about where conservatism goes post-Trump. There seems to be a vacuum now that boasts few if any fresh voices that will be key for the future. There will be a lot of reconstruction ahead to re-craft a major conservative political party that can move forward.
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Conservatism needs a reboot. It has for some time, for many of the reasons Veith noted. Capitalism, when used as a weapon against the worker, the taxpayer, and the US economy, benefits only the Chamber of Commerce crowd. While that was working just fine for them, not so much the rest. Conservatism became known for greed and money, and little else.
Like it or not, it’s why Trump was necessary. As I’ve been saying. You can’t rebuild it better, until you tear down the old dilapidated one first. Trump has been useful. He’s served a purpose while holding mostly to traditional conservatism. (judges, terrorism, tax cuts) His economic policies have been great for jobs, and wages are rising across the board. It’s no longer the rich man’s party. 🙂 His critics always miss that.
But Trump isn’t what’s important, he’ll be gone in 5-6 more years. It’s what we do with conservatism from here that matters. I don’t know where we’re going, but we ain’t going back to the old way. And that’s a good thing. 🙂
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Yes you can Mr. Barr, you just don’t want to say it.
So I will. It’s because the Obama admin was corrupt from Barry on down.
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So the NY Times gets called out for their anti-Semitism.
Their response?
Blame Trump. I kid you not. He has magical powers. 🙂
https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/01/nyt-editorial-board-trump-anti-semitic-cartoon/
“The New York Times editorial board blamed President Donald Trump for the paper’s decision to publish an anti-Semitic cartoon.
The paper’s editorial board said in a Tuesday editorial that the president’s failure to stop a rise in anti-Semitism played a part in the image that “came to be published” in its pages.
After acknowledging the paper published a “bigoted” and “appalling” anti-Semitic cartoon in the headline and opening sentences of the editorial, the board quickly shifts to lecturing readers about the “insidious” nature of anti-Semitism and the particular danger of anti-Semitic imagery in this political moment.
The rest of the editorial amounts to one excuse: the paper published an anti-Semitic cartoon because of a larger context of hate fostered by Trump, not because of its own failure to vet the content that hits its pages.”
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(editorial board collectively shakes fists at the omnipotent orange man)
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Quote from the 6:44 link:
This reminds me of a situation with one of my college professors. He had a noticeable, pronounced difficulty avoiding stuttering. It happened every day in class, throughout each lecture.
Therefore, it was a complete surprise when I needed to talk with him outside of class one day about I don’t remember what, and he did not stutter once during the several minutes when we were talking one-to-one, instead of in a classroom (group) situation.
Was nervousness in front of a group exacerbating the stammer? Was he more comfortable addressing one person than many?
Or perhaps was it due to something similar the article writer above conjectured about Biden?:
Just a thought, though I do agree a president would need to be a clear communicator, and need the ability to give prepared speeches in front of many.
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Revolting is what she is.
https://twitter.com/thejcoop/status/1123676951573561345
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Shut up you fraud.
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You’re the last one that should be saying anything here.
https://twitter.com/AndreaNRuth/status/1123677721295454208
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Interrupting the circus with some truth.
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https://twitter.com/michaelharger/status/1123650247547179008
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Preach it.
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Blow it up.
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https://twitter.com/MikayesFiona/status/1123659665282424834
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Time for Comey, Clapper, and the other criminal leakers to lawyer up, because your just reward is coming. 🙂
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It appears Republicans are enacting strawmen to explain Democrats strategy. They’re not done with collusion but obstruction is more evident. Once the obstruction is peeled back, RICO will be more evident.
I don’t think Republicans will investigate the investigators….it sets a precedent. Not to mention it would force them to open up some possible dirty laundry of their own. Their strategy should be to minimize and distract.
Its clear Barr mischaracterized the report and tried to dictate the narrative. He has no credibility as AG.
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The Venezuela crisis is misreported by western media. This is an attempted coup by a person and party who refused to run in the last election.
Here’s a leftist account. I agree with most but not all, some parts are too left even for me but it does give a different prespective on some of the problems
View at Medium.com
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Biden (and Warren) made a mistake not challenging Hilary. They were at the top politically at the tims and even by losing to Hilary they would’ve built a profile and an organization ready for use the next election. Bernie has an advantage here.
Biden and Trump both have age issues. And any stumble or stutter will be seized on. There’s entire videos on youtube mocking Trump’s errors and Biden also provides material.
I liked Biden 14 years ago and he does have blue collar appeal but I think his time has past. Of course I’m a bigger fan of Sanders. I’d like to see Sanders run with either Harris or Warren as VP. Probably the former.
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Ok. That was weird the link didnt work properly. Trying again
View at Medium.com
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HRW at 7:21…..
Let me just say.
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha! That’s hysterical.
You. Got. Nothing. 🙂
Hahahahahahahahaha!
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And HRW…..
Just wondering…. does it hurt when you lift those heavy goal posts you leftist keep moving?
I’m amazed you could even manage it, what with all that spinning you’re doing.
Although it is fun to watch…… continue…. please. 🙂
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