“Why Aren’t Any Evangelicals on the Supreme Court?
Soon, the court will likely have six conservatives with Catholic roots. And that wouldn’t be possible without the rise of white evangelical politics.”
“President Donald Trump’s repeated pursuit of conservative Christians for Supreme Court seats follows a simple political logic: White evangelical voters have been Trump’s most loyal supporters, and they care deeply about appointing conservative judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade and ban abortion. Hence Trump’s appointment of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
What might seem remarkable about these picks, however, is that while white evangelicals have been Trump’s most loyal supporters, and routinely cite the selection of judges who will overturn Roe as their top priority, when it comes time to make court appointments, it’s conservative Catholics, not evangelicals, who end up getting the nod.
In fact, of the current Supreme Court’s conservative majority, it is only Justice Gorsuch whose Catholic identity is somewhat unclear—he was raised Catholic but has attended Episcopalian churches since marrying his wife, a Brit, and those close to him consider his Catholic and Episcopalian identities as fluid.
It’s fair to ask why the huge evangelical influence on politics hasn’t resulted in any evangelical justices on the nation’s highest court. With the exception of Harriet Miers, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was withdrawn by President George W. Bush less than a month after its announcement, the recent history of judicial nominees is devoid of evangelical Christians. In fact, while Miers’ nomination was scuttled for questions about her qualifications, her religious affiliation itself became controversial when the administration attempted to use it to respond to conservatives’ concerns over her record.
Outside of the ill-fated Miers nomination, there are two reasons for the evangelical absence: Supply and demand. The pool of properly credentialed conservative evangelical lawyers and judges is far shallower than the deep conservative Catholic reservoir. As evangelical Americans have deliberately separated themselves from mainstream culture, setting up alternative schools and colleges, they’ve largely removed themselves from the elite institutions that produce America’s top-level judges and lawyers. There are a handful of evangelical law schools, but no equivalent of Harvard or Yale—or of the elite Catholic institutions like Notre Dame or Georgetown.
At the same time, a powerful strain of socially conservative jurisprudence has emerged, much of it driven by the creation and rise of the Federalist Society, producing lawyers and judges who hold conservative beliefs in addition to graduating from and teaching at the country’s top law schools and serving in its most elite firms.”
The problem isn’t that he didn’t say it, because he clearly did. The problem is they don’t believe him, and never will no matter how many times he says it.
“Trump did condemn white supremacists, too bad so many people won’t listen
Did you know Joe Biden said, “many fine people … continue to display the Confederate flag.””
“Can we once and for all kill off the distortion that Donald Trump called white supremacists “very fine people?” In the very same comments people are always quoting, Trump said “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the White nationalists.”
The discredited issue rose like a zombie when presidential debate moderator Chris Wallace asked Democratic candidate Joe Biden to address “President Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville three years ago, when he talked about ‘very fine people’ on both sides.” The former Vice President then gave an emotional account of the events, and repeated the “very fine people” comment, adding that “no president has ever said anything like that.”
Yes, Trump did, and has repeatedly, denounced white supremacists
Wallace’s question and Biden’s answer were based on a false premise. Yet it was amplified when Wallace asked President Trump if he was willing to denounce “white supremacists and militia groups,” and Trump answered “sure, I’m willing to do that,” before moving the discussion to left-wing violence. Somehow “sure” was not translated into a yes answer by some observers, and the president was left on the defensive again. Some prominent Republicans are urging the president to unequivocally denounce white supremacy, as he previously has time and time again.
A simpler and more direct answer would have been that yes President Trump denounces white supremacists and militia groups, has always denounced them, and always will. Because that is the truth.
Democrats persistently quote President Trump’s comment out of context, twisting his words to mean the opposite of that he plainly meant, namely denouncing extremism. The president made the “fine people” statement at an August 15, 2017 press availability, during a spirited discussion with journalists. Here is what he said in context:
“You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. … I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name. … So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the White nationalists, because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and White nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people. But you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group.””
“When The Media Ask Trump To Denounce White Supremacy, They’re Accusing Him Of It
No matter how many times Trump condemns white supremacy it will never be enough for the media because their motive is to smear Trump as racist.”
“When the mainstream media ask President Trump or Trump administration officials to denounce white supremacy, it’s not a question — it’s an accusation. That’s why they won’t accept Trump’s clear, unequivocal, numerous denunciations of white supremacy and racism. The point isn’t to get a clear answer, it’s to smear Trump as a racist.
Trump no doubt knows this, which is why he seems to resent being asked the question at this point. And who wouldn’t? No matter how many times he condemns white supremacy, the questions keep coming.
Hence one of the major media narratives spun out of the presidential debate earlier this week is that Trump “refused to condemn white supremacy.” Never mind that any honest person watching on Tuesday night, or who went back and read the transcript, knows that he did just that — although maybe not in the exact terms Chris Wallace and Joe Biden and the mainstream media demanded.
Nevertheless, the press latched onto this line and won’t let it go. John Roberts of Fox News harangued White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany about it Thursday morning, asking for a “definitive and declarative statement” on whether Trump denounces white supremacy.
McEnany replied, correctly, that the question had been answered by the president himself the day before, and on the debate stage Tuesday night, and many times over the past three-and-a-half years, directly quoting Trump’s denunciations of white supremacy from August 2019 and August 2017, and noting that just last week Trump said he’d like the Ku Klux Klan to be designated a terrorist organization. “He has condemned white supremacy more than any other president in modern history.”
But in a show of abject bias and buffoonery, Roberts and other White House reporters wouldn’t accept McEnany’s answer. “
“Perhaps they are channeling a line from an Oscar Wilde play: “I can resist everything except temptation.” But leftists should have resisted the urge to be nasty. Decency demanded it.
The president of the United States tests positive for the coronavirus, is soon moved to a hospital and given a cocktail of drugs to fortify his body for the fight ahead. Whereupon truly awful people erupt in joy, revealing themselves to be self-hating Americans.
Some take to Twitter to exhibit their soullessness, enough so that the site, which too often blocks routine conservative viewpoints, vows it will suspend users who wish for the president’s death. It is shameful that such a statement is even necessary.
Others try to veil their pleasure, yet their satisfaction is unmistakable in their self-righteous scolds of “We told you so” and “He had it coming.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi displayed her heart of stone by saying the president had issued a “brazen invitation” to the deadly virus by meeting with people and holding rallies.
She impeached him over next to nothing, tried to have him removed from office and still calls him a Russian agent. Now she resents that he continued to do the routine things a president should and must do. If he had stayed hidden in the White House bunker for his own safety, then she would have had real reason to complain.
The depravity doesn’t end there. Consider this quiz: Which of the following two comments came from a Chinese government-affiliated newspaper and which came from The New York Times?
No. 1: “Now There’s No Spinning Away Pandemic’s Toll”
No. 2: “President Trump and the first lady have paid the price for his gamble to play down the COVID-19.”
The answer is that No. 1 is a Times headline and No. 2 is a tweet from the editor of the Global Times, but forgive yourself if you guessed wrong because, in fact, the sentiments are nearly identical.
There’s more. The editor of the Global Times went on to say that the president’s illness “may also negatively affect his re-election,” which echoes The New York Times’ first-day claim that the president’s positive test “could prove devastating to his political fortunes.”
By Friday, even before the president entered the hospital, the Gray Lady had advanced her argument into the fever zone by speculating — or was it a hope? — that Trump’s illness “could raise questions about whether he should remain on the ballot at all.”
Right, and the world could end tomorrow, but it probably won’t.
Still others revealed their brainlessness by suggesting Trump was faking his illness so he could skip the final two debates. Joy Reid of MSNBC reported many of her audience felt that way, but Reid’s publicizing their paranoia suggests she shares it.”
“Reason published an interview yesterday with Erin Smith, a trans woman who is also a Trump supporter who worked in Republican politics. After encountering Antifa in at a 2016 protest in San Francisco, Smith became interested in the group and spent time going to rallies and livestreaming them. She spoke with many people at these events and got used to talking with them. Then last weekend she decided to dress in black and show up at a black bloc event in Portland, essentially going undercover in the midst of a group of people who hate her.
I’ve studied them for a bit, watching videos and stuff. I wrote a piece on antifa tactics for a monograph that’s coming out next month, for the Center for Security Policy. And I have an advantage, having gone to the rallies. But they know who I am. When antifa hates you and know who you are, the best way to hide is right in the middle of their black bloc. That’s the last place they think to look. It’s one of the advantages of dressing in black and wearing your mask.
Reason reporter Nancy Rommelmann knew in advance what Smith was doing and was there to observe. On the night that they showed up, Antifa arranged a meeting spot and then marched to the Portland Police Associate building and set it on fire. Smith describes the strategy behind that action:
Strategically what they’re doing is, they’re forcing a dilemma action. A dilemma action is when you put your opponent in a no-win situation. Your enemy has to react. If they don’t react, they look weak; if they do react, they have to react in a certain way where it looks like it’s an overreaction.
When the feds were in Portland, they were presented as overreacting, a presentation helped by innumerable people with PRESS written across their clothing flooding the internet with images that presented protesters wholly as victims of an authoritarian regime.
That’s their [antifa’s] objective. It’s not a tactical thing. That’s why all the “press” is there, the sympathetic press. They’re trying to create propaganda. They know how the police are going to react, so they carefully calibrate what they do to try to provoke the police into reacting and then filming it. They want to try to push public opinion in favor of removing the police. The police aren’t perfect, but what a police force is, it’s putting force under an objective third party, under government control. Antifa wants to separate the police from the populace.
This is basically guerilla warfare. They’re trying to undermine legitimacy of the state. The police right now, I think some of them are catching up. There’s a playbook for how police respond to riots and they’re not actually doing it; it’s not an actual riot. I mean, it is a riot, but at the same time, it’s a specific type of riot that’s trying to make the police respond in a certain way.
Smith expanded on the riot/not a riot idea. Antifa’s goal is to maintain a constant, low-level of violence, i.e. violent enough to be intimidating and to silence people who fear being subject to it, but not violent enough to leave a body count. Smith compared to it to a constant, irritating push.
If you just go in public and pick someone and start pushing them, if you keep pushing them, they’re going to slug you; it’s just how it’s going to work, at the individual level but also at the group level too. I’m also speaking metaphorically, in a sense. Of course if you hit them, they’re going to fall down and go, “Oh, God, you’re violent. You’re a Nazi!””
“On Thursday, Jim Geraghty had a characteristically insightful Corner post discussing FBI director Christopher Wray’s recent characterization of Antifa on Capitol Hill. Jim observes that the director’s testimony will be (indeed, is being) distorted in the debate halls, congressional chambers, and media commentary because, well, that’s what we do.
The rap on Wray is that he resists framing Antifa as an “organization,” thinking it more accurate to depict it as a “movement” or an “ideology.” The problem is not just that he is being maligned for what was a more nuanced and accurate description than the commentary indicates. Beyond that, the commentary is missing entirely that his assessment marks a dramatic improvement in the FBI’s position on ideologically driven violence, which has been the most immediate threat faced by the United States for a generation. If the government is applying to international terrorism — i.e., jihadist terrorism — the same thinking that Wray described as the bureau’s approach to Antifa’s domestic terrorism, that is a significant security enhancement.
Wray is not denying that Antifa is infecting and driving violent anti-American anarchists. Those anarchists, he indicated, include collections that range from ad hoc groups of individuals who self-identify as Antifa to more regimented “nodes” that are “coalescing regionally.”
Does that sound familiar? It should. On a global stage, it mirrors in many ways the Muslim Brotherhood. Not a precise reflection, but it is similar (and bear in mind that these movements are in very different stages of their historical development).
I wrote a book about Brotherhood ideology, called The Grand Jihad, in 2010, and another one a couple of years later, Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, about the turbulent influence of that ideology during the short-lived uprisings known as “the Arab Spring.” Over the years, I’ve consulted with sundry lawmakers on legislative initiatives to designate the Brotherhood formally as a foreign terrorist organization.”
“Final Jobs Report Before Election: Unemployment Below 8%, Job Growth Below Expectations
Every sector saw job growth except for government.”
“The September jobs report, the last one before the election, revealed the economy only added 661,000 jobs.
However, the unemployment rate sits at 7.9%. The economy has also recovered 12 million jobs since the COVID-19 outbreak in mid-March, which saw around 22 million layoffs.
Economists estimated 850,000 new jobs in September. The labor participation rate sunk to 61.4%, a decrease of 0.3%.
The employment-population ratio is at 56.6%.
The unemployment rate fell by 0.5% to 7.9%. The unemployed persons number declined by 1 million to 12.6 million.
Both of those measures fell for five consecutive months.”
Temporary layoffs went down by 1.5 million to 4.6 million, well below the 18.1 million in April.
Unemployment rates dipped in four of the major groups: adult men, adult women, whites, and Asians.
Teenagers, blacks, and Hispanics saw little change in unemployment rates.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many businesses to shut down. This could explain why permanent job losses increased by 345,000 to 3.8 million in September. Also, unemployed job leavers (people who quit or volunteer to leave and look for new employment) went up by 212,000 to 801,000.”
Answer to #1. Are there any evangelicals to choose from?
Answer to #2 This is all they have. And “white supremacy” is a “catch phrase” that no one understands, but knows that you shouldn’t have it.
i.e What does “white supremacy” mean these days? Everyone knows it’s expression is fatal.
I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!
Interesting to see Iranians praying for the President. Though the sanctions are tough, they view Trump’s hard stance as their only help to get their government redirected.
Wandering Views 
Good question….
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/03/supreme-court-evangelicals-catholics-social-conservatives-coney-barrett-421932
“Why Aren’t Any Evangelicals on the Supreme Court?
Soon, the court will likely have six conservatives with Catholic roots. And that wouldn’t be possible without the rise of white evangelical politics.”
“President Donald Trump’s repeated pursuit of conservative Christians for Supreme Court seats follows a simple political logic: White evangelical voters have been Trump’s most loyal supporters, and they care deeply about appointing conservative judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade and ban abortion. Hence Trump’s appointment of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
What might seem remarkable about these picks, however, is that while white evangelicals have been Trump’s most loyal supporters, and routinely cite the selection of judges who will overturn Roe as their top priority, when it comes time to make court appointments, it’s conservative Catholics, not evangelicals, who end up getting the nod.
In fact, of the current Supreme Court’s conservative majority, it is only Justice Gorsuch whose Catholic identity is somewhat unclear—he was raised Catholic but has attended Episcopalian churches since marrying his wife, a Brit, and those close to him consider his Catholic and Episcopalian identities as fluid.
It’s fair to ask why the huge evangelical influence on politics hasn’t resulted in any evangelical justices on the nation’s highest court. With the exception of Harriet Miers, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was withdrawn by President George W. Bush less than a month after its announcement, the recent history of judicial nominees is devoid of evangelical Christians. In fact, while Miers’ nomination was scuttled for questions about her qualifications, her religious affiliation itself became controversial when the administration attempted to use it to respond to conservatives’ concerns over her record.
Outside of the ill-fated Miers nomination, there are two reasons for the evangelical absence: Supply and demand. The pool of properly credentialed conservative evangelical lawyers and judges is far shallower than the deep conservative Catholic reservoir. As evangelical Americans have deliberately separated themselves from mainstream culture, setting up alternative schools and colleges, they’ve largely removed themselves from the elite institutions that produce America’s top-level judges and lawyers. There are a handful of evangelical law schools, but no equivalent of Harvard or Yale—or of the elite Catholic institutions like Notre Dame or Georgetown.
At the same time, a powerful strain of socially conservative jurisprudence has emerged, much of it driven by the creation and rise of the Federalist Society, producing lawyers and judges who hold conservative beliefs in addition to graduating from and teaching at the country’s top law schools and serving in its most elite firms.”
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The problem isn’t that he didn’t say it, because he clearly did. The problem is they don’t believe him, and never will no matter how many times he says it.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/10/02/trump-and-white-supremacy-he-did-condemn-and-has-repeatedly-column/5883336002/
“Trump did condemn white supremacists, too bad so many people won’t listen
Did you know Joe Biden said, “many fine people … continue to display the Confederate flag.””
“Can we once and for all kill off the distortion that Donald Trump called white supremacists “very fine people?” In the very same comments people are always quoting, Trump said “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the White nationalists.”
The discredited issue rose like a zombie when presidential debate moderator Chris Wallace asked Democratic candidate Joe Biden to address “President Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville three years ago, when he talked about ‘very fine people’ on both sides.” The former Vice President then gave an emotional account of the events, and repeated the “very fine people” comment, adding that “no president has ever said anything like that.”
Yes, Trump did, and has repeatedly, denounced white supremacists
Wallace’s question and Biden’s answer were based on a false premise. Yet it was amplified when Wallace asked President Trump if he was willing to denounce “white supremacists and militia groups,” and Trump answered “sure, I’m willing to do that,” before moving the discussion to left-wing violence. Somehow “sure” was not translated into a yes answer by some observers, and the president was left on the defensive again. Some prominent Republicans are urging the president to unequivocally denounce white supremacy, as he previously has time and time again.
A simpler and more direct answer would have been that yes President Trump denounces white supremacists and militia groups, has always denounced them, and always will. Because that is the truth.
Democrats persistently quote President Trump’s comment out of context, twisting his words to mean the opposite of that he plainly meant, namely denouncing extremism. The president made the “fine people” statement at an August 15, 2017 press availability, during a spirited discussion with journalists. Here is what he said in context:
“You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. … I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name. … So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the White nationalists, because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and White nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people. But you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group.””
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It’s always an accusation.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/02/when-the-media-ask-trump-to-denounce-white-supremacy-theyre-accusing-him-of-it/
“When The Media Ask Trump To Denounce White Supremacy, They’re Accusing Him Of It
No matter how many times Trump condemns white supremacy it will never be enough for the media because their motive is to smear Trump as racist.”
“When the mainstream media ask President Trump or Trump administration officials to denounce white supremacy, it’s not a question — it’s an accusation. That’s why they won’t accept Trump’s clear, unequivocal, numerous denunciations of white supremacy and racism. The point isn’t to get a clear answer, it’s to smear Trump as a racist.
Trump no doubt knows this, which is why he seems to resent being asked the question at this point. And who wouldn’t? No matter how many times he condemns white supremacy, the questions keep coming.
Hence one of the major media narratives spun out of the presidential debate earlier this week is that Trump “refused to condemn white supremacy.” Never mind that any honest person watching on Tuesday night, or who went back and read the transcript, knows that he did just that — although maybe not in the exact terms Chris Wallace and Joe Biden and the mainstream media demanded.
Nevertheless, the press latched onto this line and won’t let it go. John Roberts of Fox News harangued White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany about it Thursday morning, asking for a “definitive and declarative statement” on whether Trump denounces white supremacy.
McEnany replied, correctly, that the question had been answered by the president himself the day before, and on the debate stage Tuesday night, and many times over the past three-and-a-half years, directly quoting Trump’s denunciations of white supremacy from August 2019 and August 2017, and noting that just last week Trump said he’d like the Ku Klux Klan to be designated a terrorist organization. “He has condemned white supremacy more than any other president in modern history.”
But in a show of abject bias and buffoonery, Roberts and other White House reporters wouldn’t accept McEnany’s answer. “
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What? You just now noticed? 🙄
https://nypost.com/2020/10/03/the-lefts-sickening-lack-of-decency-on-ailing-trump-goodwin/
“Perhaps they are channeling a line from an Oscar Wilde play: “I can resist everything except temptation.” But leftists should have resisted the urge to be nasty. Decency demanded it.
The president of the United States tests positive for the coronavirus, is soon moved to a hospital and given a cocktail of drugs to fortify his body for the fight ahead. Whereupon truly awful people erupt in joy, revealing themselves to be self-hating Americans.
Some take to Twitter to exhibit their soullessness, enough so that the site, which too often blocks routine conservative viewpoints, vows it will suspend users who wish for the president’s death. It is shameful that such a statement is even necessary.
Others try to veil their pleasure, yet their satisfaction is unmistakable in their self-righteous scolds of “We told you so” and “He had it coming.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi displayed her heart of stone by saying the president had issued a “brazen invitation” to the deadly virus by meeting with people and holding rallies.
She impeached him over next to nothing, tried to have him removed from office and still calls him a Russian agent. Now she resents that he continued to do the routine things a president should and must do. If he had stayed hidden in the White House bunker for his own safety, then she would have had real reason to complain.
The depravity doesn’t end there. Consider this quiz: Which of the following two comments came from a Chinese government-affiliated newspaper and which came from The New York Times?
No. 1: “Now There’s No Spinning Away Pandemic’s Toll”
No. 2: “President Trump and the first lady have paid the price for his gamble to play down the COVID-19.”
The answer is that No. 1 is a Times headline and No. 2 is a tweet from the editor of the Global Times, but forgive yourself if you guessed wrong because, in fact, the sentiments are nearly identical.
There’s more. The editor of the Global Times went on to say that the president’s illness “may also negatively affect his re-election,” which echoes The New York Times’ first-day claim that the president’s positive test “could prove devastating to his political fortunes.”
By Friday, even before the president entered the hospital, the Gray Lady had advanced her argument into the fever zone by speculating — or was it a hope? — that Trump’s illness “could raise questions about whether he should remain on the ballot at all.”
Right, and the world could end tomorrow, but it probably won’t.
Still others revealed their brainlessness by suggesting Trump was faking his illness so he could skip the final two debates. Joy Reid of MSNBC reported many of her audience felt that way, but Reid’s publicizing their paranoia suggests she shares it.”
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Nope. No organization here….
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/10/03/conservative-went-undercover-black-bloc-portland-theyre-trying-create-propaganda/
“Reason published an interview yesterday with Erin Smith, a trans woman who is also a Trump supporter who worked in Republican politics. After encountering Antifa in at a 2016 protest in San Francisco, Smith became interested in the group and spent time going to rallies and livestreaming them. She spoke with many people at these events and got used to talking with them. Then last weekend she decided to dress in black and show up at a black bloc event in Portland, essentially going undercover in the midst of a group of people who hate her.
I’ve studied them for a bit, watching videos and stuff. I wrote a piece on antifa tactics for a monograph that’s coming out next month, for the Center for Security Policy. And I have an advantage, having gone to the rallies. But they know who I am. When antifa hates you and know who you are, the best way to hide is right in the middle of their black bloc. That’s the last place they think to look. It’s one of the advantages of dressing in black and wearing your mask.
Reason reporter Nancy Rommelmann knew in advance what Smith was doing and was there to observe. On the night that they showed up, Antifa arranged a meeting spot and then marched to the Portland Police Associate building and set it on fire. Smith describes the strategy behind that action:
Strategically what they’re doing is, they’re forcing a dilemma action. A dilemma action is when you put your opponent in a no-win situation. Your enemy has to react. If they don’t react, they look weak; if they do react, they have to react in a certain way where it looks like it’s an overreaction.
When the feds were in Portland, they were presented as overreacting, a presentation helped by innumerable people with PRESS written across their clothing flooding the internet with images that presented protesters wholly as victims of an authoritarian regime.
That’s their [antifa’s] objective. It’s not a tactical thing. That’s why all the “press” is there, the sympathetic press. They’re trying to create propaganda. They know how the police are going to react, so they carefully calibrate what they do to try to provoke the police into reacting and then filming it. They want to try to push public opinion in favor of removing the police. The police aren’t perfect, but what a police force is, it’s putting force under an objective third party, under government control. Antifa wants to separate the police from the populace.
This is basically guerilla warfare. They’re trying to undermine legitimacy of the state. The police right now, I think some of them are catching up. There’s a playbook for how police respond to riots and they’re not actually doing it; it’s not an actual riot. I mean, it is a riot, but at the same time, it’s a specific type of riot that’s trying to make the police respond in a certain way.
Smith expanded on the riot/not a riot idea. Antifa’s goal is to maintain a constant, low-level of violence, i.e. violent enough to be intimidating and to silence people who fear being subject to it, but not violent enough to leave a body count. Smith compared to it to a constant, irritating push.
If you just go in public and pick someone and start pushing them, if you keep pushing them, they’re going to slug you; it’s just how it’s going to work, at the individual level but also at the group level too. I’m also speaking metaphorically, in a sense. Of course if you hit them, they’re going to fall down and go, “Oh, God, you’re violent. You’re a Nazi!””
———-
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/antifa-ideological-threat-to-united-states/
“On Thursday, Jim Geraghty had a characteristically insightful Corner post discussing FBI director Christopher Wray’s recent characterization of Antifa on Capitol Hill. Jim observes that the director’s testimony will be (indeed, is being) distorted in the debate halls, congressional chambers, and media commentary because, well, that’s what we do.
The rap on Wray is that he resists framing Antifa as an “organization,” thinking it more accurate to depict it as a “movement” or an “ideology.” The problem is not just that he is being maligned for what was a more nuanced and accurate description than the commentary indicates. Beyond that, the commentary is missing entirely that his assessment marks a dramatic improvement in the FBI’s position on ideologically driven violence, which has been the most immediate threat faced by the United States for a generation. If the government is applying to international terrorism — i.e., jihadist terrorism — the same thinking that Wray described as the bureau’s approach to Antifa’s domestic terrorism, that is a significant security enhancement.
Wray is not denying that Antifa is infecting and driving violent anti-American anarchists. Those anarchists, he indicated, include collections that range from ad hoc groups of individuals who self-identify as Antifa to more regimented “nodes” that are “coalescing regionally.”
Does that sound familiar? It should. On a global stage, it mirrors in many ways the Muslim Brotherhood. Not a precise reflection, but it is similar (and bear in mind that these movements are in very different stages of their historical development).
I wrote a book about Brotherhood ideology, called The Grand Jihad, in 2010, and another one a couple of years later, Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, about the turbulent influence of that ideology during the short-lived uprisings known as “the Arab Spring.” Over the years, I’ve consulted with sundry lawmakers on legislative initiatives to designate the Brotherhood formally as a foreign terrorist organization.”
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The final jobs report before the election is in.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/10/final-jobs-report-before-election-unemployment-below-8-job-growth-below-expectations/
“Final Jobs Report Before Election: Unemployment Below 8%, Job Growth Below Expectations
Every sector saw job growth except for government.”
“The September jobs report, the last one before the election, revealed the economy only added 661,000 jobs.
However, the unemployment rate sits at 7.9%. The economy has also recovered 12 million jobs since the COVID-19 outbreak in mid-March, which saw around 22 million layoffs.
Economists estimated 850,000 new jobs in September. The labor participation rate sunk to 61.4%, a decrease of 0.3%.
The employment-population ratio is at 56.6%.
The unemployment rate fell by 0.5% to 7.9%. The unemployed persons number declined by 1 million to 12.6 million.
Both of those measures fell for five consecutive months.”
Temporary layoffs went down by 1.5 million to 4.6 million, well below the 18.1 million in April.
Unemployment rates dipped in four of the major groups: adult men, adult women, whites, and Asians.
Teenagers, blacks, and Hispanics saw little change in unemployment rates.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many businesses to shut down. This could explain why permanent job losses increased by 345,000 to 3.8 million in September. Also, unemployed job leavers (people who quit or volunteer to leave and look for new employment) went up by 212,000 to 801,000.”
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Just another business bombed…..
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Answer to #1. Are there any evangelicals to choose from?
Answer to #2 This is all they have. And “white supremacy” is a “catch phrase” that no one understands, but knows that you shouldn’t have it.
i.e What does “white supremacy” mean these days? Everyone knows it’s expression is fatal.
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When Karens attack……
🙂
CONTENT WARNING!!! for language.
https://twitter.com/Doranimated/status/1312951514370052096
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That is too funny. In a sad sort of way. What an embarrassment to herself and she will never recognize that.
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The mask slips….
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/10/reporter-on-hot-mic-after-docs-say-trump-is-improving-this-wasnt-as-fun-as-yesterday/
“Reporter on Hot Mic After Docs Say Trump is Improving: ‘This Wasn’t as Fun as Yesterday’
Always assume all microphones are hot!”
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Branco nails it again.
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Good news! 🙂
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Interesting to see Iranians praying for the President. Though the sanctions are tough, they view Trump’s hard stance as their only help to get their government redirected.
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