“The U.S. economy continues to show signs that it is in a recession and that recovery is going to take a long, long time.
The housing market is serving as the canary in the coal mine.
Per CNBC, “total mortgage application volume fell 14.2%” in the last week of September, compared with the previous week. Refinancing volume dropped 18 percent for the week and “was 86% lower than the same week one year ago.” Mortgage applications to purchase a home fell 13 percent and are down 37 percent from last year.
In addition, housing prices are declining, showing the “most significant monthly declines since the 2009 housing crash,” per Black Knight Data & Analytics. Median home prices were down almost 1 percent in August, following a 1.05 percent drop in July. Median home prices are down 2 percent since their June peak.
Mortgage rates have more than doubled to more than 6 percent, and are likely to climb even higher, with some forecasters predicting rates as high as 7 percent.
Unfortunately, the problems are not only in the housing market.
Food insecurity is on the rise in the richest nation in the world. A recent study showed that more than 1.2 million people in the Washington D.C. region “struggled to put food on the table” in 2021. That is one third of the population in that area, per NPR. According to the USDA, more than 33 million people, including five million children, are food insecure. Interestingly, the perceived rate of food inflation grew to 22.8 percent, according to the dunnhumby Consumer Trends Tracker. The same report showed that 55 percent of consumers report they are not getting enough “of the food they want to eat, and 18% are not getting enough to eat.” Almost one in three households “skipped or reduced the size of their meals in the last 12 months because there wasn’t enough food.”
—
“Sadly, inflation affects the poorest Americans the most, and disproportionately impacts people of color. “Typically, food and gasoline and housing are a bigger share of total spending for lower-income households than for higher-income households,” economist Dan Sichel told NPR. “Those with lower incomes tend to pay higher prices, even for similar items,” NPR reports. “They may be less able to travel to cheaper stores, take advantage of seasonal discounts, or ‘get the giant package of toilet paper to stash in the basement when it is on sale.'”
A Harvard University poll found that Black Americans are “substantially more likely than whites to report they are currently having serious financial issues problems (55% to 38%).” Black respondents to the poll also reported higher levels of food insecurity and were less likely to have enough emergency savings for at least one month of expenses.
The same study showed that Latinos are “substantially more likely than whites to report they are currently having serious financial problems,” to not have sufficient emergency savings, and to have difficulty affording food or rent.”
“The warning about fentanyl from the 55-year-old magazine was stark:
“The super-potent drug has been the leading killer of the opioid epidemic — now it’s finding its way into illegal stimulants, and the death toll is rising. …The combination is killing people: In New York City, for example, 37 percent of cocaine-related overdose deaths reported in 2016 involved fentanyl.”
That was Rolling Stone magazine responsibly sounding the alarm about a new opioid called fentanyl emerging on the U.S. illegal drug market in 2018. As the piece, titled “How Fentanyl Is Contaminating America’s Cocaine Supply,” noted, the synthetic opioid is up to 50 times more potent than heroin.
Fast forward to October 2022. Here’s what Rolling Stone has to say about fentanyl after several Republican lawmakers sounded their own alarm on opioid overdoses driven by fentanyl, the biggest killer of adults aged 18-49.
“No Treats, Only Tricks: Republicans Try to Ruin Halloween With Fake Rainbow Fentanyl Threat.”
The piece reads, in part:
“Halloween this year falls exactly 8 days before the November midterms, and what better way is there to drive home your tough-on-crime, war on drugs-electoral messaging than to convince parents that the cartels are in the house down the block and are handing out synthetic opioids to your kid?”
Rolling Stone’s snark and mockery was prompted by a public service announcement featuring several Republican senators warning parents of fentanyl disguised as candy being found in communities across the country.
In New York City, for example, one person was arrested and approximately 15,000 fentanyl pills were seized, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The seizure was the largest to date.
“Rainbow fentanyl – fentanyl pills and powder that come in a variety of bright colors, shapes, and sizes – is a deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. To that end, the DEA recently announced that it had seized 36 million lethal doses nationally during a DEA operation spanning just 15 weeks.
Rolling Stone is dismissing all this as hype. One must wonder whether this kind of tone would be applied if the president or members of the Democratic Party had aired similar warnings.
“The PSA ended by instructing parents to implement (surprise!) the measures most parents already take when planning trick-or-treating excursions: getting candy from trusted neighbors, family, and friends, setting a curfew, trick-or-treating in groups, and checking your kid’s candy when they come home, usually just to steal the best pieces for themselves. Regardless, the only thing kids should expect in their Halloween haul is a well-deserved sugar high,” the piece concludes.
It’s interesting that Rolling Stone doesn’t bother to mention bipartisan legislation recently introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called the Stop Pills That Kill Act. The bill ensures “that existing penalties for possessing paraphernalia used to manufacture methamphetamine would also apply to possessing paraphernalia used to make counterfeit pills that contain methamphetamine, fentanyl and fentanyl analogues,” according to a statement released by one of the bill’s supporters, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.).
For its part, the Biden administration has been almost completely silent on the fentanyl crisis. And it is a crisis, because when an average of 300 Americans are dying every day of opioid overdoses driven by fentanyl, that deserves ample attention from leaders and the media alike.
The White House has earmarked $11 billion for national drug programs and agencies in its 2022 budget, which looks good on paper before considering that the overall budget is $5.8 trillion, making that $11 billion investment just 0.0018 percent of the total money spent.
The president has painted MAGA-Republicans as the biggest threat to this country. But the biggest threat to this country is fentanyl. Not just because so many people are dying from it, but because families and communities are being torn apart by the demons of addiction.
But given that fentanyl is manufactured in China and sent to Mexico before crossing over the U.S. southern border and into communities across the country, don’t expect Biden to rush down to the border to do a primetime speech (or any speech) to address something this urgent.
Rolling Stone was once a highly respected publication full of outstanding journalism. In recently years, it has become not only extremely partisan, but also plagued by scandal.”
““Americans across the country have to know,” Captain Jaeson Jones declared in the new docu-series Border Battle, “that the failure of the United States government to adjust to these cartels is what has driven the worst overdose death crisis in American history.” The retired Texas DPS intelligence and counter-terrorism official warns, “This will get worse before it gets better, but this issue is absolutely fixable.”
To fix the issue and end the crisis, however, Americans have to understand the scope of it. Border Battle, from Turning Point USA, is now airing on the Salem Now platform. (Full disclosure: Salem Now is a subsidiary of Salem Media Group, which also owns Townhall Media and Hot Air.) The six-part series brings us closer to the border than ever, and relies on experts in law enforcement, intelligence, victims’ families, and more to reveal the dangers of the militarized cartels and their poisonous reach into America through human trafficking and fentanyl trafficking in particular.
To delve more deeply into both the series and the crisis, I spoke with Bryce Eddy in the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast, one of the experts featured in Border Battle as well as the host of Salem Podcast Network’s Liberty Station. As part of the effort, Bryce and his team spent considerable time on the border working with US agents and seeing the problem up close. And the biggest problem, Bryce tells me, is that the agencies that could help fix the issue are “being held back by our current administration.”
“These guys want to do the work,” Bryce says, but the lack of support has created a situation where we have lost control of the border. “Those cartels run things down there,” Bryce tells me, and that’s a real threat to national security. “They are a military organization. It’s phenomenal to see,” Bryce adds, in all the wrong ways.
In fact, the cartels operate tactically on both sides of the border, Bryce reveals. “The cartels have forward operating bases on our side of the border, on US soil,” he says. “We’re talking guys with rifles,” he explains, “AK-47s, AR-15s, fully kitted out with body armor and everything that a military operation would need.”
That’s not the worst of it on either side of the border, either. In the first episode, Bryce describes rape trees, related to the cartel’s massive human trafficking. “There are stations along the route,” Bryce explains, “where they will shackle women who are unwilling against trees, and they hang their underwear as trophies in the trees. “I don’t want to be too graphic,” he adds, “but condoms and and little girls’ underwear and everything littered at the base of these trees.”
“It’s sickening. It makes you want to throw up,” I replied, “and it makes you realize that there needs to be such a sense of urgency with this issue right now.” That’s the message of Border Battle as well.
Bryce and I discuss much more about the docu-series, the border crisis, and his own podcast, so be sure to watch it all. Today’s show also features my morning run-down of the news, plus more! And finally, I also have the trailer for Border Battle embedded below. Some images are NSFW and disturbing for some viewers.”
Trump Derangement Syndrome has now mutated into a new strain.
I give you DeSantis Derangement Syndrome, care of the usual idiots.
Jen, you’re up!
the man who holds various degrees from harvard, john hopkins, and yale isn’t up for the “intellectual rigor” of the job. i am very smart. https://t.co/ydNMi6Nd3R
— kaitlin, by definition, a woman (@thefactualprep) October 12, 2022
In 2016, @JRubinBlogger wrote an op-ed titled "10 reasons Ben Sasse should jump into the race".
Her very first praise, right at the top: "He has been a university president […]".
I don’t like Sasse, he’s another NT whiner like Jen, but he’s certainly qualified, and since he knows he can’t win reelection he’s looking for other work, also a smart move.
“This story began as a napalm raid but has now been reduced to a fire used to toast marshmallows for smores. That’s due to this FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago being boiled down to lawyer’s work, which is dull and torturously slow. We’ve reached the end of the road here regarding the lawfare, as the Trump team asked the Supreme Court to intervene. The Justice Department is asking the high court to avoid this case since they need to keep it alive in the hopes that they can find something to weaponize against the former president. The Trump team is arguing that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled on the most recent DOJ appeal about their August raid, didn’t have the jurisdiction to rule on the special master ruling (via The Hill):
The Justice Department on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to reject former President Trump’s plea to intervene in his legal battle and allow the special master to review the classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s request to the high court comes after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Justice Department, siphoning off some 100 classified records from the third-party special master review of the documents seized from his Florida home.
The motion from Trump largely hinged on procedural grounds, arguing the appeals court erred by granting a stay of a challenge to a Florida judge’s ruling appointing the special master that barred the Department of Justice (DOJ) from accessing the classified records for its investigation.
But the Justice Department on Tuesday swiped back at Trump, arguing his legal team had done little to justify the need for the court’s intervention, as he failed to show he would be harmed without its action.
Trump’s filing last week doesn’t seek to block the DOJ from investigating the classified records and instead would allow the ongoing special master review to include those 100 documents — a move that would offer limited benefit to the former president.
To recap this fight, legal challenges were a forgone conclusion regarding this arguably unconstitutional raid on the home of former President Donald Trump. It was executed by a Democrat-run Department of Justice that went heavy in enforcing a statute—the Presidential Records Act—that isn’t even a criminal one. What ever happened to the tall tale about Trump having nuclear secrets strewn about the property as if they were there as a form of ornamentation on the coffee table?
The first couple weeks were fraught with leaks and developments that ranged from untrue to laughably false regarding the allegation that Trump had mishandled classified materials. Even if he did, they were declassified, he has a staff with security clearances who handle the papers, and the Secret Service protects the home.
As the debate about declassification raged, no smoking gun was found in the seized documents, which Trump demanded to be reviewed by a special master, which was granted. An injunction was also issued by Judge Aileen Cannon, which the Justice Department successfully appealed. It barred them from accessing the documents in their investigation. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals granted the DOJ’s motion to restore access and exclude some 100 documents from being reviewed by the special master. Sidebar: finding an acceptable candidate both sides could stomach was another little legal duel.”
“Democrats and their media allies are sounding the alarm that the Supreme Court is “dismantling” the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Washington Post warns that this term, the court will likely strip Black voters of their right to elect someone “who represent[s] them.”
Don’t believe it. Truth is, the Democratic Party has converted the Voting Rights Act into a scam.
Twenty-two congressional districts in the United States are engineered to guarantee that Black voters are in the majority.
These rigged districts elect Democrats every time, without fail, though not always a Black Democrat. (Democrat Rashida Tlaib was elected from Michigan’s Black-majority 5th Congressional District.)
Not one of these racially gerrymandered districts elects a Republican. Ever.
Twenty-two rigged districts — that’s nearly three times the size of the Democrats’ majority in the House.
This racial gerrymandering is being done in compliance with the Voting Rights Act, a law that was urgently needed but has outlived its usefulness. Now it’s being used cynically as a tool to lock in Democratic Party dominance.
America doesn’t need a rigged election map to ensure Black candidates are elected. Most Black members of Congress, including 35 out of 53 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, are elected from districts without Black majorities.
In Merrill v. Milligan, the Biden Justice Department is joining forces with the NAACP to keep the scam going. They are challenging the state of Alabama’s election map, explicitly demanding that at least two of the seven congressional districts have guaranteed Black voting majorities. Alabama currently has one.
Last week, the Supreme Court heard two hours of impassioned oral argument over whether it should compel Alabama to maximize the number of minority-controlled voting districts.
Alabama argues that it’s time to end “racial” gerrymandering. Creating a second Black-majority district would require splitting up the state’s coastal region, on the premise that race is more important than the commercial and environmental concerns that seacoast residents, Black and white alike, want represented in Congress.
President Joe Biden’s solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, told the justices that eliminating racial gerrymandering would “leave Black voters” with “no ability to elect their preferred representatives.” That argument is laughable.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was scheduled to last only five years. Congress has renewed it four times for long stretches, despite the huge progress the nation has made toward a fair, multiracial democracy.
In 1965, there was nearly a 50% gap between white and Black voter turnout in Alabama. By 2012, Black voters in Alabama were turning out at higher rates than whites.
Black candidates compete effectively in white-majority areas. Georgia has a Black U.S. senator, and his GOP challenger is also Black.
The John Roberts-led court has long deemed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 an anachronism. In 2013, the court struck down portions of it after Shelby County, Alabama had challenged the act in 2010 and argued that “Congress’s failure to modernize the law in light of the enormous improvements in minority electoral opportunities” leaves no other option.
Now, the Court should strike down the rest of this obsolete statute. All Americans, including Blacks, deserve a fair chance to participate in our democracy. But racial gerrymandering is no longer necessary.
Segregating voters by race presumes, odiously, that only a Black can represent Blacks, and by implication, only a white can represent whites. Americans know better. They elected a Black man to be their president twice.”
—-
Keep them on the modern day plantations (Dem run cities) and voting Dem.
“The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.4% in September from August. The all items index rose 8.2% over the last 12 months.
The all items without energy and food went up 6.6% in the past 12 months, 0.4% from August to September.
How will President Joe Biden explain the September CPI?
I guess the administration will overlook the 12-month numbers because everything went up. Biden will likely concentrate on the energy numbers, which continued to decrease in September from August:
Energy overall: -2.1%
Energy commodities overall: -4.7%
Gasoline: -4.9%
Fuel oil: -2.7%
Everything else is bad news for America and Biden. I’m not going to use sob stories or analysis from experts. I’m going to give you the numbers because they speak for themselves. It’s something all of us feel every day.
The food at home index from August to September increased by 0.7%. Over the past 12 months? 13%!
Cereal and bakery products: 16.2%
Meats, poultry, fish, and eggs: 9%
Dairy and related products: 15.9%
Fruits and veggies: 10.4%
How about another breakdown? The holidays are coming up! Let’s look at some of the essentials we need as we start the baking season.
Flour and prepared flour mixes: 24.2%
Eggs: 30.5%
Milk: 15.2%
Other uncooked poultry including turkey: 17%
Potatoes: 17.5%
Sugar and sugar substitutes: 17.1%
Butter: 26.6%
Margarine: 44%
Spices, seasonings, condiments, sauces: 13.8%
While the energy prices went down from August to September, it increased over the past 12 months:
Energy overall: 19.8%
Energy commodities: 19.7%
Fuel oil and other fuels: 39.9%
Fuel oil: 58.1%
Propane, kerosene, and firewood: 12.8%
Motor fuel: 18.8%
Gasoline (all types): 18.2%
Gasoline, unleaded regular: 18%
Gasoline, unleaded midgrade: 18.3%
Gasoline, unleaded premium: 19.4%
Other motor fuels: 49%
Energy services: 19.8%
Electricity: 15.5%
Utility (piped) gas service: 33.1%
Services less energy services went up 6.7%. This includes housing costs:
Shelter: 6.6%
Rent of shelter: 6.7%
Rent of primary residence: 7.2%
Lodging away from home: 2.9%
Housing at school, excluding board: 2.6%
Other lodging away from home including hotels and motels: 3.1%
Owners’ equivalent rent of residences: 6.7%
Numbers in other sectors that stuck out to me:
Health insurance: 28.2%
Public transportation: 27.1%
Airline fares: 42.9%
Delivery services: 16.4%”
——
But let’s all keep pretending that it doesn’t matter if you sit out an election or waste your vote on a 3rd party candidate with 0% chance of winning.
Elections have consequences, so does not voting or wasting your vote.
But if that soothes your conscience, continue to enjoy the suck you helped create.
Romney is a cultist traitor, so let’s all stop pretending otherwise.
Senator Mike Lee appears on Tucker to discuss Mitt Romney's latest subversive efforts within the GOP: "I don't think Mitt Romney wants Chuck Schumer to continue to be the Majority Leader. If I'm right on that, then get on board. Because that's exactly what this will lead to." pic.twitter.com/7jeb4xU70H
The housing market is finally correcting itself. Unfortunately, rent is still increasing. Housing prices are falling everywhere in the OECD. It’s the free market at work, housing prices went too high and thus the number of buyers dropped and thus housing prices dropped. Can’t blame the gov’t (in any country) It’s how the free market works.
Interest rates are part of the problem, of course. Raising interest rates to combat inflation is a neo-con or classical liberal solution. Based on the idea that inflation is a result of increased money supply, the idea is to tighten the money supply by increased interest rates. This limits debt and new money in the economy. It’s a solution which hurts the poor more than anyone – in fact it protects the elite’s wealth. However, this solution is based on the assumption that our current inflation is based on increased money supply. It’s not. Central banks are acting on ideological belief not reality. Currently inflation is caused by a supply shock and increased transportation/distribution cost and is being maintained by corporate greed. The solution is an excess profit tax – make greed expensive. This will take money out of the economy, encourage price decline, and not hurt the poor. Of course, neither the Republican nor Democrats will do this; they both follow neo-liberal economic policies and protect the wealth. As I said yesterday, the parties are identical in policy. The difference in social issues is what drives mass participation and votes. And social issues divert the masses from the reality of their economic policies.
I always find it ironic that the party that believes the gov’t that governs the least is the best gov’t somehow thinks it can govern better and gov’ts can beat inflation.
The first article claims food insecurity is on the rise yet does not offer any year by year comparison. Now depending on how you measure food insecurity you will see various rates. However, the USDA, in comparing 2020 to 2021 found food insecurity relatively unchanged. In fact, food insecurity has relatively the same numbers from 2000 with an exception for 2009 where it spiked and then went down gradually back to the norm in the US. Internationally, Canada ranks 7th and the US ranks 13th in Food Security. A fairly good rating for both countries.
Food insecurity has always affected marginalized groups more no matter which party is in charge. It’s a structural issue not a government issue. Race and economics are so ingrained in the North American consciousness that white is considered equivalent to the middle class. My students complain the current admin is too white. I will jokingly suggest since I’m the pale one, it’s me who is too white. My students will reply that I know what they mean and they don’t consider me white. They view working class whites as “not white”
Of course, Rolling Stone was upset when fentayl affected the purity of cocaine. That’s their demographic. However, they are correctly mocking the DEA and the Republican party for their rainbow fentayl alert. The idea drug dealers will give away free drugs to children they will never see again is ludicrous. Furthermore, no parent in their right mind ever lets their children eat random unpackaged no-name candy. Its a strategy of fear over common sense.
The article promoting the Salem Media documentary is a prime example of “yellow” and exploitative journalism. Yes, human smuggling is a problem but this advertisement disguised as an article deliberately gives the most lurid details to appeal to people’s basest motivation. And as I said before, around 90% of all fentayl crosses at legal border crossings.
I agree racial gerrymandering is not appropriate and divides rather than unites. Gerrymandering in general is bad for democracy. However, which party is racial gerrymandering? It’s probably both. Ohio was last redistricted by the Republican party. Look at the 3rd and 11th districts, along with the 9th. They packed all the Democrats and especially African Americans. The 11th somehow includes part of Cleveland and then goes down to Akron to pick up another neighborhood. Or look at Texas and the districts that have African American representatives.
*There needs to be an official end to ALL affirmative action policies. Period. They should be deemed unconstitutional at this point. I’m hoping the SCOTUS will take the issue up soon.
*Assuming HRW is correct, it’s possible that 10% of all fentanyl deaths are caused by illegals, and 90% caused by American citizens of various races. Most of the illegal fentanyl is made in China and Mexico. The US needs to sew up the border for illegal traffic, slow down the flow of legal traffic, and get this stuff before it hits the streets.
*Although I think he’s more than qualified for the position he’s taking, I was disappointed to learn that Ben Sasse is moving to Florida for any reason at all. Florida is in a positive spotlight because of Desantis. Sasse will manage to detract from that, one way or another. I doubt he’s out of politics yet.
I have been thinking about what DJ said a few days ago that “human nature is just as flawed across the political spectrum.” I think she’s right. But it’s also why I know and am conscious that I overlook a lot of things. If I’m not willing to do that, I think I would be very immature. If I insist that my leaders come up to my highest ideal be before I support them I encourage them to always APPEAR to come up to my highest ideals. By doing that I would be participating in my own delusion. Actually, it’s not hypothetical, I think I have done that before.
But I have certainly not done that with Trump. He never approached my highest ideal. He has been very close in terms of policy, but he has also been the most honest: he has tried to do what he actually said he was going to do. That in itself is impressive—which is probably a commentary on how far we have fallen and how low the expectations really are.
When I say Trump is not corrupt, I’m merely saying he’s 1) not a warmonger 2) he’s not abusing public trust for personal /family monetary gain and 3)his mind is not so twisted that he needs a biologist to figure out what a woman is. It’s a pretty low bar actually. I’d be happy to hear about more intelligent Democrats who fit that description, because right now most of them are wearing their Ukrainian pins and counting their millions of dollars created by their lifetime of “public service” alongside many of their Republican counterparts.
So those who believe elections cannot be “corrupt”….keep on believing that 😳 (and yeh she’s going to make a “correction” telling them only those “eligible” can register! Hello….they are NON CITIZENS…THEY cannot register…none of them…but don’t let that little detail faze ya!!)
Griswold makes a mess trying to fix 30,000 voter registration mailers to nonresidents
Oct 10, 2022
We have little faith in Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s plan to clean up her office’s mistake in telling 30,000 Colorado residents who are not U.S. citizens to register to vote.
Office spokesflaks say the error occurred because they belong to a non-government organization that demands they send postcards to unregistered voters.
So, Griswold’s office used lists from local DMVs, which happens to contain those 30,000 residents who have non-citizen Colorado driver’s licenses.
Duh.
It’s an amateur mistake to use lists that contain tens of thousands of ineligible voters.
But wait, there’s more treachery stupidity.
Griswold’s office plans to make up for the mistake by mailing yet another 30,000 postcards telling recipients only those who are eligible to vote can register.
So now Griswold, who is up for reelection, gets two mailers to constituents right before election voting commences on the taxpayers’ dime.
AJ – (re: your comment at the end of your 9:27 post)
See DJ’s comment at 12:20 on the daily thread.
And here is part of what I wrote on the daily thread:
“There is a verse that says that what is not from faith is sin. For those of us who truly feel we cannot vote for either candidate, to make ourselves vote against our consciences would be sin for us. Whether we vote or not, we leave the results in God’s hands and trust that His will will be done.”
The “suck” you refer to may just be part of God’s will for us at this particular time.
I have seen a lot of contempt expressed on social media. It should not be so from a believer.
““One of my biggest tasks as a pastor right now is to challenge my people and keep them from contempt.”
That’s what a pastor told me earlier this year, a man serving his church faithfully in the Deep South. He loves Jesus and he loves his congregation, and that’s why he’s on guard these days against something he called the “silent spiritual killer”—a sin that hinders Christian witness and destroys Christian love.
It’s the sin of contempt, of looking at the person across the aisle from you and thinking, The world would be better without you in it. It’s more than disagreement; it’s disgust, rooted in the inability to see the image of God in your opponent. It’s the attitude Jesus warned about in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:21–22).
Power of Contempt
Why is contempt a big deal right now? Because it’s lucrative. It works.
In politics, being united by disdain and contempt for the other side is what mobilizes your own. An inspiring vision is one way of rallying a base, yes, but a much faster and easier approach is to unite around a common despising of the other side. And culturally these days, with tribal forces at work, going public with contemptuous words toward the opposition is how you prove your purity and loyalty. . . .
But contempt is the silent killer of Christian charity. It has no place in the heart of a follower of Jesus. It kills the passion of seeing others converted and replaces evangelistic zeal with the quest for zero-sum victories, smackdowns, and “destroying”—such that the zealousness to win over someone becomes the zealousness to win.
A. W. Tozer wrote,
“Contempt for a human being is an affront to God almost as grave as idolatry, for while idolatry is disrespect for God Himself, contempt is disrespect for the being He made in His own image. Contempt says of a man, ‘Raca! This fellow is of no worth. I attach to his person no value whatsoever.’ The man guilty of thus appraising a human being is thoroughly bad.” . . .
Perhaps the test of faithfulness in a day of moral degradation will be our love for people across chasms of difference. Faithfulness isn’t in showy displays that we hate all the right people. Faithfulness isn’t in adopting a contemptuous posture toward the current president or the former one. The way of the cross rejects the path of sneers and jeers, whether in the form of elite condescension or populist passion.
We must not call a noisy gong “boldness” or a clanging cymbal “courage.” Instead, we must stand out from such worldliness and cultivate the church as an oasis of quiet kindness, a respite from the sin Jesus says will lead us to hell.’
And yes, Christ is sovereign — even over the so-called “suck.” I’m referring to countless scriptural passages, from Job to Habakkuk (God actually uses people more evil to punish his straying people) to Jesus’ death on the cross at the hands of evil-doers.
Our challenge and question when faced with these circumstances always should be, “How, then, shall we live?”
The Jan. 6 panel plans to subpoena Donald Trump for testimony about his actions ahead of the Capitol riot, its most aggressive move so far.
I wanted to catch the local weather forecast and sadly witnessed a display of the most sanctimonious high minded human spew. Illegally holding citizens in jail for over a year yet so many seem not to give a twit about it 🙁
NancyJill, there is no doubt that American Christians are beginning to be more openly persecuted for practicing their faith openly. In that number I include Christians of Jan 6 who are being unjustly targeted and also those targeted and arrested because of abortion protests. And I will always remember those who were targeted, fined, harassed and arrested for going to church, gathering to pray and sing hymns in 2020 – 2021. Some continue to be persecuted with the loss of jobs.
Debra – US customs needs to stop its own affirmative action i.e. searching brown and black more often than white. Thinking like a criminal, the best smugglers are middle aged white people, who are almost always ignored at borders (this is true in other countries also)
Trump is probably one of the most corrupt US presidents. There are various websites detailing his corruption. Here’s the first one that popped up on my google search https://rantt.com/100-trump-corrupt-acts
Curious; do you view the actions of Jan 6 as Christian or as actions committed by people who happen to be Christian? Were all those arrested for illegal actions on Jan 6 Christian? Did the DOJ or FBI ignore the non-Christians who participated in Jan 6?
Sure it’s meaningless, carries no weight, and isn’t a real court, and is un-enforcable, but it plays well to their idiot base who doesn’t understand how our govt works.
Trump will do as Obama, Bush, Truman, Reagan, Clinton and he himself already has along with numerous others, and just ignore it.
Oh wow, you mean Democrats are doing another boring hearing on why it's bad to overturn elections being led by two people who voted to overturn the 2004 and 2016 elections 27 days before a midterm election on the same day we learned that inflation is getting even worse????
HRW, some of the Jan 6 crowd were there because they thought it was a Christian thing to do. Certainly not all. And there is no doubt that Christians are being targeted in the abortion arrests and the covid arrests and firings.
Debra
HRW, I went to the site you linked about Trump’s corruption and stopped reading after a minute because, well because life’s just too short. It’s a joke. Really. He stays in his own property and what? doesn’t comp the security detail? Or, my personal favorite, he doesn’t approve a brand new FBI building outside DC? He deserves a medal for that one as I think the FBI should be downsized to fit in one of the spare WH bathrooms .
If there were real corruption I would be interested but I have none for petty fictions that purport to be serious and weighty matters of substance. His accusers will have to do better. :–)
Wandering Views 
Enjoy.
After all, this is what they voted for.
“The Economy is Struggling, And Democratic Constituents Are Suffering Most ”
https://www.newsweek.com/economy-struggling-democratic-constituents-are-suffering-most-opinion-1750815
“The U.S. economy continues to show signs that it is in a recession and that recovery is going to take a long, long time.
The housing market is serving as the canary in the coal mine.
Per CNBC, “total mortgage application volume fell 14.2%” in the last week of September, compared with the previous week. Refinancing volume dropped 18 percent for the week and “was 86% lower than the same week one year ago.” Mortgage applications to purchase a home fell 13 percent and are down 37 percent from last year.
In addition, housing prices are declining, showing the “most significant monthly declines since the 2009 housing crash,” per Black Knight Data & Analytics. Median home prices were down almost 1 percent in August, following a 1.05 percent drop in July. Median home prices are down 2 percent since their June peak.
Mortgage rates have more than doubled to more than 6 percent, and are likely to climb even higher, with some forecasters predicting rates as high as 7 percent.
Unfortunately, the problems are not only in the housing market.
Food insecurity is on the rise in the richest nation in the world. A recent study showed that more than 1.2 million people in the Washington D.C. region “struggled to put food on the table” in 2021. That is one third of the population in that area, per NPR. According to the USDA, more than 33 million people, including five million children, are food insecure. Interestingly, the perceived rate of food inflation grew to 22.8 percent, according to the dunnhumby Consumer Trends Tracker. The same report showed that 55 percent of consumers report they are not getting enough “of the food they want to eat, and 18% are not getting enough to eat.” Almost one in three households “skipped or reduced the size of their meals in the last 12 months because there wasn’t enough food.”
—
“Sadly, inflation affects the poorest Americans the most, and disproportionately impacts people of color. “Typically, food and gasoline and housing are a bigger share of total spending for lower-income households than for higher-income households,” economist Dan Sichel told NPR. “Those with lower incomes tend to pay higher prices, even for similar items,” NPR reports. “They may be less able to travel to cheaper stores, take advantage of seasonal discounts, or ‘get the giant package of toilet paper to stash in the basement when it is on sale.'”
A Harvard University poll found that Black Americans are “substantially more likely than whites to report they are currently having serious financial issues problems (55% to 38%).” Black respondents to the poll also reported higher levels of food insecurity and were less likely to have enough emergency savings for at least one month of expenses.
The same study showed that Latinos are “substantially more likely than whites to report they are currently having serious financial problems,” to not have sufficient emergency savings, and to have difficulty affording food or rent.”
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Providing cover for Dems is all they do.
“Media malfeasance: Rolling Stone laughs off fentanyl crisis it once feared”
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/3682850-media-malfeasance-rolling-stone-laughs-off-fentanyl-crisis-it-once-feared/
“The warning about fentanyl from the 55-year-old magazine was stark:
“The super-potent drug has been the leading killer of the opioid epidemic — now it’s finding its way into illegal stimulants, and the death toll is rising. …The combination is killing people: In New York City, for example, 37 percent of cocaine-related overdose deaths reported in 2016 involved fentanyl.”
That was Rolling Stone magazine responsibly sounding the alarm about a new opioid called fentanyl emerging on the U.S. illegal drug market in 2018. As the piece, titled “How Fentanyl Is Contaminating America’s Cocaine Supply,” noted, the synthetic opioid is up to 50 times more potent than heroin.
Fast forward to October 2022. Here’s what Rolling Stone has to say about fentanyl after several Republican lawmakers sounded their own alarm on opioid overdoses driven by fentanyl, the biggest killer of adults aged 18-49.
“No Treats, Only Tricks: Republicans Try to Ruin Halloween With Fake Rainbow Fentanyl Threat.”
The piece reads, in part:
“Halloween this year falls exactly 8 days before the November midterms, and what better way is there to drive home your tough-on-crime, war on drugs-electoral messaging than to convince parents that the cartels are in the house down the block and are handing out synthetic opioids to your kid?”
Rolling Stone’s snark and mockery was prompted by a public service announcement featuring several Republican senators warning parents of fentanyl disguised as candy being found in communities across the country.
In New York City, for example, one person was arrested and approximately 15,000 fentanyl pills were seized, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The seizure was the largest to date.
“Rainbow fentanyl – fentanyl pills and powder that come in a variety of bright colors, shapes, and sizes – is a deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. To that end, the DEA recently announced that it had seized 36 million lethal doses nationally during a DEA operation spanning just 15 weeks.
Rolling Stone is dismissing all this as hype. One must wonder whether this kind of tone would be applied if the president or members of the Democratic Party had aired similar warnings.
“The PSA ended by instructing parents to implement (surprise!) the measures most parents already take when planning trick-or-treating excursions: getting candy from trusted neighbors, family, and friends, setting a curfew, trick-or-treating in groups, and checking your kid’s candy when they come home, usually just to steal the best pieces for themselves. Regardless, the only thing kids should expect in their Halloween haul is a well-deserved sugar high,” the piece concludes.
It’s interesting that Rolling Stone doesn’t bother to mention bipartisan legislation recently introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called the Stop Pills That Kill Act. The bill ensures “that existing penalties for possessing paraphernalia used to manufacture methamphetamine would also apply to possessing paraphernalia used to make counterfeit pills that contain methamphetamine, fentanyl and fentanyl analogues,” according to a statement released by one of the bill’s supporters, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.).
For its part, the Biden administration has been almost completely silent on the fentanyl crisis. And it is a crisis, because when an average of 300 Americans are dying every day of opioid overdoses driven by fentanyl, that deserves ample attention from leaders and the media alike.
The White House has earmarked $11 billion for national drug programs and agencies in its 2022 budget, which looks good on paper before considering that the overall budget is $5.8 trillion, making that $11 billion investment just 0.0018 percent of the total money spent.
The president has painted MAGA-Republicans as the biggest threat to this country. But the biggest threat to this country is fentanyl. Not just because so many people are dying from it, but because families and communities are being torn apart by the demons of addiction.
But given that fentanyl is manufactured in China and sent to Mexico before crossing over the U.S. southern border and into communities across the country, don’t expect Biden to rush down to the border to do a primetime speech (or any speech) to address something this urgent.
Rolling Stone was once a highly respected publication full of outstanding journalism. In recently years, it has become not only extremely partisan, but also plagued by scandal.”
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“Border Battle: The crisis is far worse than you know”
Because the media won’t tell you, to protect Joe.
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2022/10/12/border-battle-the-crisis-is-far-worse-than-you-know-n502841
““Americans across the country have to know,” Captain Jaeson Jones declared in the new docu-series Border Battle, “that the failure of the United States government to adjust to these cartels is what has driven the worst overdose death crisis in American history.” The retired Texas DPS intelligence and counter-terrorism official warns, “This will get worse before it gets better, but this issue is absolutely fixable.”
To fix the issue and end the crisis, however, Americans have to understand the scope of it. Border Battle, from Turning Point USA, is now airing on the Salem Now platform. (Full disclosure: Salem Now is a subsidiary of Salem Media Group, which also owns Townhall Media and Hot Air.) The six-part series brings us closer to the border than ever, and relies on experts in law enforcement, intelligence, victims’ families, and more to reveal the dangers of the militarized cartels and their poisonous reach into America through human trafficking and fentanyl trafficking in particular.
To delve more deeply into both the series and the crisis, I spoke with Bryce Eddy in the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast, one of the experts featured in Border Battle as well as the host of Salem Podcast Network’s Liberty Station. As part of the effort, Bryce and his team spent considerable time on the border working with US agents and seeing the problem up close. And the biggest problem, Bryce tells me, is that the agencies that could help fix the issue are “being held back by our current administration.”
“These guys want to do the work,” Bryce says, but the lack of support has created a situation where we have lost control of the border. “Those cartels run things down there,” Bryce tells me, and that’s a real threat to national security. “They are a military organization. It’s phenomenal to see,” Bryce adds, in all the wrong ways.
In fact, the cartels operate tactically on both sides of the border, Bryce reveals. “The cartels have forward operating bases on our side of the border, on US soil,” he says. “We’re talking guys with rifles,” he explains, “AK-47s, AR-15s, fully kitted out with body armor and everything that a military operation would need.”
That’s not the worst of it on either side of the border, either. In the first episode, Bryce describes rape trees, related to the cartel’s massive human trafficking. “There are stations along the route,” Bryce explains, “where they will shackle women who are unwilling against trees, and they hang their underwear as trophies in the trees. “I don’t want to be too graphic,” he adds, “but condoms and and little girls’ underwear and everything littered at the base of these trees.”
“It’s sickening. It makes you want to throw up,” I replied, “and it makes you realize that there needs to be such a sense of urgency with this issue right now.” That’s the message of Border Battle as well.
Bryce and I discuss much more about the docu-series, the border crisis, and his own podcast, so be sure to watch it all. Today’s show also features my morning run-down of the news, plus more! And finally, I also have the trailer for Border Battle embedded below. Some images are NSFW and disturbing for some viewers.”
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Trump Derangement Syndrome has now mutated into a new strain.
I give you DeSantis Derangement Syndrome, care of the usual idiots.
Jen, you’re up!
She’s hacktastic.
I don’t like Sasse, he’s another NT whiner like Jen, but he’s certainly qualified, and since he knows he can’t win reelection he’s looking for other work, also a smart move.
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Please don’t look too closely at our corruption and abuse of the courts.
“DOJ to Supreme Court: Don’t Intervene in the Case Involving Our Ransacking of Mar-a-Lago”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/10/12/doj-to-supreme-court-dont-intervene-in-the-case-involving-our-ransacking-of-mar-a-lago-n2614393
“This story began as a napalm raid but has now been reduced to a fire used to toast marshmallows for smores. That’s due to this FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago being boiled down to lawyer’s work, which is dull and torturously slow. We’ve reached the end of the road here regarding the lawfare, as the Trump team asked the Supreme Court to intervene. The Justice Department is asking the high court to avoid this case since they need to keep it alive in the hopes that they can find something to weaponize against the former president. The Trump team is arguing that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled on the most recent DOJ appeal about their August raid, didn’t have the jurisdiction to rule on the special master ruling (via The Hill):
The Justice Department on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to reject former President Trump’s plea to intervene in his legal battle and allow the special master to review the classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s request to the high court comes after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Justice Department, siphoning off some 100 classified records from the third-party special master review of the documents seized from his Florida home.
The motion from Trump largely hinged on procedural grounds, arguing the appeals court erred by granting a stay of a challenge to a Florida judge’s ruling appointing the special master that barred the Department of Justice (DOJ) from accessing the classified records for its investigation.
But the Justice Department on Tuesday swiped back at Trump, arguing his legal team had done little to justify the need for the court’s intervention, as he failed to show he would be harmed without its action.
Trump’s filing last week doesn’t seek to block the DOJ from investigating the classified records and instead would allow the ongoing special master review to include those 100 documents — a move that would offer limited benefit to the former president.
To recap this fight, legal challenges were a forgone conclusion regarding this arguably unconstitutional raid on the home of former President Donald Trump. It was executed by a Democrat-run Department of Justice that went heavy in enforcing a statute—the Presidential Records Act—that isn’t even a criminal one. What ever happened to the tall tale about Trump having nuclear secrets strewn about the property as if they were there as a form of ornamentation on the coffee table?
The first couple weeks were fraught with leaks and developments that ranged from untrue to laughably false regarding the allegation that Trump had mishandled classified materials. Even if he did, they were declassified, he has a staff with security clearances who handle the papers, and the Secret Service protects the home.
As the debate about declassification raged, no smoking gun was found in the seized documents, which Trump demanded to be reviewed by a special master, which was granted. An injunction was also issued by Judge Aileen Cannon, which the Justice Department successfully appealed. It barred them from accessing the documents in their investigation. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals granted the DOJ’s motion to restore access and exclude some 100 documents from being reviewed by the special master. Sidebar: finding an acceptable candidate both sides could stomach was another little legal duel.”
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“Dems’ Voting Rights Scam”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/10/12/dems_voting_rights_scam_148308.html
“Democrats and their media allies are sounding the alarm that the Supreme Court is “dismantling” the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Washington Post warns that this term, the court will likely strip Black voters of their right to elect someone “who represent[s] them.”
Don’t believe it. Truth is, the Democratic Party has converted the Voting Rights Act into a scam.
Twenty-two congressional districts in the United States are engineered to guarantee that Black voters are in the majority.
These rigged districts elect Democrats every time, without fail, though not always a Black Democrat. (Democrat Rashida Tlaib was elected from Michigan’s Black-majority 5th Congressional District.)
Not one of these racially gerrymandered districts elects a Republican. Ever.
Twenty-two rigged districts — that’s nearly three times the size of the Democrats’ majority in the House.
This racial gerrymandering is being done in compliance with the Voting Rights Act, a law that was urgently needed but has outlived its usefulness. Now it’s being used cynically as a tool to lock in Democratic Party dominance.
America doesn’t need a rigged election map to ensure Black candidates are elected. Most Black members of Congress, including 35 out of 53 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, are elected from districts without Black majorities.
In Merrill v. Milligan, the Biden Justice Department is joining forces with the NAACP to keep the scam going. They are challenging the state of Alabama’s election map, explicitly demanding that at least two of the seven congressional districts have guaranteed Black voting majorities. Alabama currently has one.
Last week, the Supreme Court heard two hours of impassioned oral argument over whether it should compel Alabama to maximize the number of minority-controlled voting districts.
Alabama argues that it’s time to end “racial” gerrymandering. Creating a second Black-majority district would require splitting up the state’s coastal region, on the premise that race is more important than the commercial and environmental concerns that seacoast residents, Black and white alike, want represented in Congress.
President Joe Biden’s solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, told the justices that eliminating racial gerrymandering would “leave Black voters” with “no ability to elect their preferred representatives.” That argument is laughable.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was scheduled to last only five years. Congress has renewed it four times for long stretches, despite the huge progress the nation has made toward a fair, multiracial democracy.
In 1965, there was nearly a 50% gap between white and Black voter turnout in Alabama. By 2012, Black voters in Alabama were turning out at higher rates than whites.
Black candidates compete effectively in white-majority areas. Georgia has a Black U.S. senator, and his GOP challenger is also Black.
The John Roberts-led court has long deemed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 an anachronism. In 2013, the court struck down portions of it after Shelby County, Alabama had challenged the act in 2010 and argued that “Congress’s failure to modernize the law in light of the enormous improvements in minority electoral opportunities” leaves no other option.
Now, the Court should strike down the rest of this obsolete statute. All Americans, including Blacks, deserve a fair chance to participate in our democracy. But racial gerrymandering is no longer necessary.
Segregating voters by race presumes, odiously, that only a Black can represent Blacks, and by implication, only a white can represent whites. Americans know better. They elected a Black man to be their president twice.”
—-
Keep them on the modern day plantations (Dem run cities) and voting Dem.
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Oh goody.
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Enjoy suckers.
“Inflation: All Items Index Increased 8.2% Over the Last 12 Months
Inflation is scorching hot.”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/10/inflation-all-items-index-increased-8-2-over-the-last-12-months/
“The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.4% in September from August. The all items index rose 8.2% over the last 12 months.
The all items without energy and food went up 6.6% in the past 12 months, 0.4% from August to September.
How will President Joe Biden explain the September CPI?
I guess the administration will overlook the 12-month numbers because everything went up. Biden will likely concentrate on the energy numbers, which continued to decrease in September from August:
Energy overall: -2.1%
Energy commodities overall: -4.7%
Gasoline: -4.9%
Fuel oil: -2.7%
Everything else is bad news for America and Biden. I’m not going to use sob stories or analysis from experts. I’m going to give you the numbers because they speak for themselves. It’s something all of us feel every day.
The food at home index from August to September increased by 0.7%. Over the past 12 months? 13%!
Cereal and bakery products: 16.2%
Meats, poultry, fish, and eggs: 9%
Dairy and related products: 15.9%
Fruits and veggies: 10.4%
How about another breakdown? The holidays are coming up! Let’s look at some of the essentials we need as we start the baking season.
Flour and prepared flour mixes: 24.2%
Eggs: 30.5%
Milk: 15.2%
Other uncooked poultry including turkey: 17%
Potatoes: 17.5%
Sugar and sugar substitutes: 17.1%
Butter: 26.6%
Margarine: 44%
Spices, seasonings, condiments, sauces: 13.8%
While the energy prices went down from August to September, it increased over the past 12 months:
Energy overall: 19.8%
Energy commodities: 19.7%
Fuel oil and other fuels: 39.9%
Fuel oil: 58.1%
Propane, kerosene, and firewood: 12.8%
Motor fuel: 18.8%
Gasoline (all types): 18.2%
Gasoline, unleaded regular: 18%
Gasoline, unleaded midgrade: 18.3%
Gasoline, unleaded premium: 19.4%
Other motor fuels: 49%
Energy services: 19.8%
Electricity: 15.5%
Utility (piped) gas service: 33.1%
Services less energy services went up 6.7%. This includes housing costs:
Shelter: 6.6%
Rent of shelter: 6.7%
Rent of primary residence: 7.2%
Lodging away from home: 2.9%
Housing at school, excluding board: 2.6%
Other lodging away from home including hotels and motels: 3.1%
Owners’ equivalent rent of residences: 6.7%
Numbers in other sectors that stuck out to me:
Health insurance: 28.2%
Public transportation: 27.1%
Airline fares: 42.9%
Delivery services: 16.4%”
——
But let’s all keep pretending that it doesn’t matter if you sit out an election or waste your vote on a 3rd party candidate with 0% chance of winning.
Elections have consequences, so does not voting or wasting your vote.
But if that soothes your conscience, continue to enjoy the suck you helped create.
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Romney is a cultist traitor, so let’s all stop pretending otherwise.
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The housing market is finally correcting itself. Unfortunately, rent is still increasing. Housing prices are falling everywhere in the OECD. It’s the free market at work, housing prices went too high and thus the number of buyers dropped and thus housing prices dropped. Can’t blame the gov’t (in any country) It’s how the free market works.
Interest rates are part of the problem, of course. Raising interest rates to combat inflation is a neo-con or classical liberal solution. Based on the idea that inflation is a result of increased money supply, the idea is to tighten the money supply by increased interest rates. This limits debt and new money in the economy. It’s a solution which hurts the poor more than anyone – in fact it protects the elite’s wealth. However, this solution is based on the assumption that our current inflation is based on increased money supply. It’s not. Central banks are acting on ideological belief not reality. Currently inflation is caused by a supply shock and increased transportation/distribution cost and is being maintained by corporate greed. The solution is an excess profit tax – make greed expensive. This will take money out of the economy, encourage price decline, and not hurt the poor. Of course, neither the Republican nor Democrats will do this; they both follow neo-liberal economic policies and protect the wealth. As I said yesterday, the parties are identical in policy. The difference in social issues is what drives mass participation and votes. And social issues divert the masses from the reality of their economic policies.
I always find it ironic that the party that believes the gov’t that governs the least is the best gov’t somehow thinks it can govern better and gov’ts can beat inflation.
The first article claims food insecurity is on the rise yet does not offer any year by year comparison. Now depending on how you measure food insecurity you will see various rates. However, the USDA, in comparing 2020 to 2021 found food insecurity relatively unchanged. In fact, food insecurity has relatively the same numbers from 2000 with an exception for 2009 where it spiked and then went down gradually back to the norm in the US. Internationally, Canada ranks 7th and the US ranks 13th in Food Security. A fairly good rating for both countries.
Food insecurity has always affected marginalized groups more no matter which party is in charge. It’s a structural issue not a government issue. Race and economics are so ingrained in the North American consciousness that white is considered equivalent to the middle class. My students complain the current admin is too white. I will jokingly suggest since I’m the pale one, it’s me who is too white. My students will reply that I know what they mean and they don’t consider me white. They view working class whites as “not white”
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Of course, Rolling Stone was upset when fentayl affected the purity of cocaine. That’s their demographic. However, they are correctly mocking the DEA and the Republican party for their rainbow fentayl alert. The idea drug dealers will give away free drugs to children they will never see again is ludicrous. Furthermore, no parent in their right mind ever lets their children eat random unpackaged no-name candy. Its a strategy of fear over common sense.
The article promoting the Salem Media documentary is a prime example of “yellow” and exploitative journalism. Yes, human smuggling is a problem but this advertisement disguised as an article deliberately gives the most lurid details to appeal to people’s basest motivation. And as I said before, around 90% of all fentayl crosses at legal border crossings.
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I agree racial gerrymandering is not appropriate and divides rather than unites. Gerrymandering in general is bad for democracy. However, which party is racial gerrymandering? It’s probably both. Ohio was last redistricted by the Republican party. Look at the 3rd and 11th districts, along with the 9th. They packed all the Democrats and especially African Americans. The 11th somehow includes part of Cleveland and then goes down to Akron to pick up another neighborhood. Or look at Texas and the districts that have African American representatives.
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*There needs to be an official end to ALL affirmative action policies. Period. They should be deemed unconstitutional at this point. I’m hoping the SCOTUS will take the issue up soon.
*Assuming HRW is correct, it’s possible that 10% of all fentanyl deaths are caused by illegals, and 90% caused by American citizens of various races. Most of the illegal fentanyl is made in China and Mexico. The US needs to sew up the border for illegal traffic, slow down the flow of legal traffic, and get this stuff before it hits the streets.
*Although I think he’s more than qualified for the position he’s taking, I was disappointed to learn that Ben Sasse is moving to Florida for any reason at all. Florida is in a positive spotlight because of Desantis. Sasse will manage to detract from that, one way or another. I doubt he’s out of politics yet.
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I have been thinking about what DJ said a few days ago that “human nature is just as flawed across the political spectrum.” I think she’s right. But it’s also why I know and am conscious that I overlook a lot of things. If I’m not willing to do that, I think I would be very immature. If I insist that my leaders come up to my highest ideal be before I support them I encourage them to always APPEAR to come up to my highest ideals. By doing that I would be participating in my own delusion. Actually, it’s not hypothetical, I think I have done that before.
But I have certainly not done that with Trump. He never approached my highest ideal. He has been very close in terms of policy, but he has also been the most honest: he has tried to do what he actually said he was going to do. That in itself is impressive—which is probably a commentary on how far we have fallen and how low the expectations really are.
When I say Trump is not corrupt, I’m merely saying he’s 1) not a warmonger 2) he’s not abusing public trust for personal /family monetary gain and 3)his mind is not so twisted that he needs a biologist to figure out what a woman is. It’s a pretty low bar actually. I’d be happy to hear about more intelligent Democrats who fit that description, because right now most of them are wearing their Ukrainian pins and counting their millions of dollars created by their lifetime of “public service” alongside many of their Republican counterparts.
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So those who believe elections cannot be “corrupt”….keep on believing that 😳 (and yeh she’s going to make a “correction” telling them only those “eligible” can register! Hello….they are NON CITIZENS…THEY cannot register…none of them…but don’t let that little detail faze ya!!)
Griswold makes a mess trying to fix 30,000 voter registration mailers to nonresidents
Oct 10, 2022
We have little faith in Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s plan to clean up her office’s mistake in telling 30,000 Colorado residents who are not U.S. citizens to register to vote.
Office spokesflaks say the error occurred because they belong to a non-government organization that demands they send postcards to unregistered voters.
So, Griswold’s office used lists from local DMVs, which happens to contain those 30,000 residents who have non-citizen Colorado driver’s licenses.
Duh.
It’s an amateur mistake to use lists that contain tens of thousands of ineligible voters.
But wait, there’s more treachery stupidity.
Griswold’s office plans to make up for the mistake by mailing yet another 30,000 postcards telling recipients only those who are eligible to vote can register.
So now Griswold, who is up for reelection, gets two mailers to constituents right before election voting commences on the taxpayers’ dime.
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AJ – (re: your comment at the end of your 9:27 post)
See DJ’s comment at 12:20 on the daily thread.
And here is part of what I wrote on the daily thread:
“There is a verse that says that what is not from faith is sin. For those of us who truly feel we cannot vote for either candidate, to make ourselves vote against our consciences would be sin for us. Whether we vote or not, we leave the results in God’s hands and trust that His will will be done.”
The “suck” you refer to may just be part of God’s will for us at this particular time.
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I have seen a lot of contempt expressed on social media. It should not be so from a believer.
““One of my biggest tasks as a pastor right now is to challenge my people and keep them from contempt.”
That’s what a pastor told me earlier this year, a man serving his church faithfully in the Deep South. He loves Jesus and he loves his congregation, and that’s why he’s on guard these days against something he called the “silent spiritual killer”—a sin that hinders Christian witness and destroys Christian love.
It’s the sin of contempt, of looking at the person across the aisle from you and thinking, The world would be better without you in it. It’s more than disagreement; it’s disgust, rooted in the inability to see the image of God in your opponent. It’s the attitude Jesus warned about in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:21–22).
Power of Contempt
Why is contempt a big deal right now? Because it’s lucrative. It works.
In politics, being united by disdain and contempt for the other side is what mobilizes your own. An inspiring vision is one way of rallying a base, yes, but a much faster and easier approach is to unite around a common despising of the other side. And culturally these days, with tribal forces at work, going public with contemptuous words toward the opposition is how you prove your purity and loyalty. . . .
But contempt is the silent killer of Christian charity. It has no place in the heart of a follower of Jesus. It kills the passion of seeing others converted and replaces evangelistic zeal with the quest for zero-sum victories, smackdowns, and “destroying”—such that the zealousness to win over someone becomes the zealousness to win.
A. W. Tozer wrote,
“Contempt for a human being is an affront to God almost as grave as idolatry, for while idolatry is disrespect for God Himself, contempt is disrespect for the being He made in His own image. Contempt says of a man, ‘Raca! This fellow is of no worth. I attach to his person no value whatsoever.’ The man guilty of thus appraising a human being is thoroughly bad.” . . .
Perhaps the test of faithfulness in a day of moral degradation will be our love for people across chasms of difference. Faithfulness isn’t in showy displays that we hate all the right people. Faithfulness isn’t in adopting a contemptuous posture toward the current president or the former one. The way of the cross rejects the path of sneers and jeers, whether in the form of elite condescension or populist passion.
We must not call a noisy gong “boldness” or a clanging cymbal “courage.” Instead, we must stand out from such worldliness and cultivate the church as an oasis of quiet kindness, a respite from the sin Jesus says will lead us to hell.’
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/silent-sin-kills-love/
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And yes, Christ is sovereign — even over the so-called “suck.” I’m referring to countless scriptural passages, from Job to Habakkuk (God actually uses people more evil to punish his straying people) to Jesus’ death on the cross at the hands of evil-doers.
Our challenge and question when faced with these circumstances always should be, “How, then, shall we live?”
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The Jan. 6 panel plans to subpoena Donald Trump for testimony about his actions ahead of the Capitol riot, its most aggressive move so far.
I wanted to catch the local weather forecast and sadly witnessed a display of the most sanctimonious high minded human spew. Illegally holding citizens in jail for over a year yet so many seem not to give a twit about it 🙁
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NancyJill, there is no doubt that American Christians are beginning to be more openly persecuted for practicing their faith openly. In that number I include Christians of Jan 6 who are being unjustly targeted and also those targeted and arrested because of abortion protests. And I will always remember those who were targeted, fined, harassed and arrested for going to church, gathering to pray and sing hymns in 2020 – 2021. Some continue to be persecuted with the loss of jobs.
Debra
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Debra – US customs needs to stop its own affirmative action i.e. searching brown and black more often than white. Thinking like a criminal, the best smugglers are middle aged white people, who are almost always ignored at borders (this is true in other countries also)
Trump is probably one of the most corrupt US presidents. There are various websites detailing his corruption. Here’s the first one that popped up on my google search
https://rantt.com/100-trump-corrupt-acts
Curious; do you view the actions of Jan 6 as Christian or as actions committed by people who happen to be Christian? Were all those arrested for illegal actions on Jan 6 Christian? Did the DOJ or FBI ignore the non-Christians who participated in Jan 6?
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NancyJill,
Of course they did.
Clowns gonna clown.
We have officially entered 3rd world status now.
Sure it’s meaningless, carries no weight, and isn’t a real court, and is un-enforcable, but it plays well to their idiot base who doesn’t understand how our govt works.
Trump will do as Obama, Bush, Truman, Reagan, Clinton and he himself already has along with numerous others, and just ignore it.
And they can do nothing about it but rage. 🙂
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As an example…..
“9 Times The Obama Administration Fought Subpoenas or Blocked Officials from Testifying Before Congress”
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2019/06/05/9-times-the-obama-administration-fought-subpoenas-or-blocked-officials-from-testifying-before-congress-n66285
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They have nothing else. 🙂
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HRW, some of the Jan 6 crowd were there because they thought it was a Christian thing to do. Certainly not all. And there is no doubt that Christians are being targeted in the abortion arrests and the covid arrests and firings.
Debra
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HRW, I went to the site you linked about Trump’s corruption and stopped reading after a minute because, well because life’s just too short. It’s a joke. Really. He stays in his own property and what? doesn’t comp the security detail? Or, my personal favorite, he doesn’t approve a brand new FBI building outside DC? He deserves a medal for that one as I think the FBI should be downsized to fit in one of the spare WH bathrooms .
If there were real corruption I would be interested but I have none for petty fictions that purport to be serious and weighty matters of substance. His accusers will have to do better. :–)
Debra
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