“Every once in awhile, being a resident of California offers an extreme test of my resolve to stay for family and work commitments.
This week, one Bay Area city council decided to offer its opinion on Israel’s response to the dreadful butchering of its citizens in a most shameful way.
A California city has become the first in the US to pass a resolution condemning Israel — accusing the Jewish nation of committing “ethnic cleansing and collective punishment.”
The resolution passed by the Richmond City Council around 1 a.m. Wednesday states, in part, that Palestinians in Gaza “are currently facing a campaign of ethnic cleansing and collective punishment by the state of Israel.”
That “is considered a war crime under international law,” the resolution states.
It also calls for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the safe passage of substantial humanitarian aid to Gaza,” as well as an “end to Israeli apartheid and the occupation and blockade of Palestinian land by Israeli military forces.”
“The city of Richmond opposes all existing and future military aid to Israel,” it concludes, while attempting to express support for Jewish members of its community.
The mayor of this entity asserts the proclamation promotes peace.
Mayor Eduardo Martinez, a Democrat, claims that he voted for the resolution because he believes American taxpayers are on the hook for what he referred to as an ‘apartheid state.’
…Despite his inflammatory rhetoric, Mayor Martinez claims the shocking resolution promotes peace.
‘This proclamation chooses human lives over politics,’ said Martinez.
He also claimed that referring to Israel as an ethnic cleanser and an apartheid state was not anti-Semitism.
Of course, when it comes to the Ukraine . . .well, this city council has an entirely different view of how much support this nation should give.
Wind waved the Ukrainian flag on the flagpole outside Richmond City Hall on Monday, hung to show support for the Ukrainian people.
The blue-and-yellow-striped banner, made by Richmond resident Claudia Citroen, joined the California, Richmond and Pan-African flags. Mayor Tom Butt and Richmond residents gathered for the Ukrainian flag raising to support the country, which is under attack from neighboring Russia.
“I hope somebody in Ukraine reads that the people of Richmond are rooting for them,” Butt said.
Of course, there may be reasons the leaders of Richmond are sympathetic to criminals and terrorists:
The 2020 crime rate in Richmond, CA is 462 (City-Data.com crime index), which is 1.8 times higher than the U.S. average. It was higher than in 95.9% U.S. cities. The 2020 Richmond crime rate fell by 1% compared to 2019. The number of homicides stood at 20 – an increase of 4 compared to 2019.
The city council’s actions are drawing a considerable amount of justified criticism.”
These people hate us. They feel empowered to be openly anti-Semitic. I hope Jewish Democrats are waking up to how a growing base of the Democrat party views Jews and Israel.
Richmond, CA council passes resolution blaming Israel after Hamas attackhttps://t.co/RrO7QhOAMv
“Human beings are instinctively tribal, and when we think in terms of “us” vs. “them” the temptation to dehumanize the other is hard to resist when the stakes are high.
You see this most often in war, but even in smaller things, the tendency pops up. I know plenty of people who instinctively cringe when they hear a certain accent, and of course, plenty of people assume evil of people on no basis other than skin color.
Having grown up in the 60s and 70s I was taught to look beyond tribal ties and view others as individuals; most of us have been as well. None of us is perfect at doing so, but most of us have internalized the belief that we should view others as individuals, not simply as members of a tribe. It is a key tenet of modern Liberalism.
Every year it gets more difficult to keep doing this, as identity politics is all about emphasizing tribal identity over individual character. It’s nearly impossible to treat people based on their individual characteristics if they don’t do so themselves. If one’s tribal identity is who one is rather than being one aspect of one’s identity, it is almost insane for others to pretend otherwise.
I have been struggling in recent weeks to gin up empathy for Palestinians, despite the fact that so many of them are suffering horribly in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
I am horrified, in the abstract, at what is happening in Gaza. While many or most of the people being injured or killed are supporters of Hamas or actually Hamas fighters, some certainly are not and are victims of circumstance. They deserve our empathy and we should be sad about their suffering and wish it weren’t happening, just as with any other victim of conflict.
But I can’t get past the pure hatred being directed at Israel and Jews around the world. So many people are indifferent to the suffering of Jews, the sheer evil of Hamas, and have celebrated the brutality of terrorists that I have a hard time extending my circle of empathy. I only have so much to give.
On top of the outpourings of hate directed at Jews, so much of the pain in Gaza is the direct result of Hamas’ own actions.
Hamas uses its own citizens as human shields, basing their military and political power in schools and hospitals. It spends its resources on expanding its military power and then complains that its citizens are poor and suffering. It digs up its infrastructure and blames Israel for not providing more. It traps its citizens in a war zone and blames Israel for civilian casualties. It complains of fuel shortages while decrying the shortages that threaten electricity in hospitals.”
The supply situation speaks to the relative sophistication of Hamas as a fighting force — an axiom among military professionals is that while amateurs talk about tactics, professionals talk about logistics. Yet with Gazans facing a humanitarian catastrophe, Hamas’s stockpiles raise questions about what responsibility, if any, it has to the civilian population.
Hamas is the governing body of Gaza. It hoards supplies needed for its citizens. And people question whether it has a responsibility to help its own citizens.
How am I supposed to gin up any outrage against Israel when Gaza’s governing body cannot? Hamas prepared for this war for years, stockpiled supplies for itself, and used the suffering of its citizens as a propaganda point. And that propaganda is working. Millions of people express outrage at Israel for the damage done by Hamas.
John Kirby–I can’t believe I am saying this–spoke for me when he was asked about the administration’s own lack of empathy for Hamas and its supporters.”
OMG I can't believe I'm saying this, but….go John Kirby?
TV Globo’s @RKrahenbuhl: “So, besides saying that he doesn't have confidence in these numbers, the President went further to say that innocents will die and that this is the price of the war. You also said that.”
“My failure to feel sufficient empathy for the civilians of Hamas strikes me as similar to the feeling I would have getting outraged by the destruction of Germany in World War II. Many Germans weren’t Nazis and the Allies’ insistence on unconditional surrender led to wiping entire German cities off the map. Yet we call it the “good war,” because annihilation of the Nazis was necessary.
The Nazis, if they cared about their citizens, should have surrendered. The war was clearly lost in 1944, and every death after the Battle of the Bulge was on them 100%. There was zero chance of victory, yet they persisted in order to kill Jews. It was pure evil, and the evil needed to be eradicated.
The same is true of Hamas today. Gazans deserve a better government, but it isn’t Israel’s responsibility to sacrifice its citizens to protect those of Hamas in Gaza.”
—–
Reality is Hamas is who the people of Gaza chose to represent them. They know who and what Hamas is. They bear responsibility here too, and aren’t simply victims caught in the middle. Even their children chant “Death to the Jews” from their school yards. They’re not simply innocent victims. Civilian deaths should always be avoided when possible, but when Hamas hides in hospitals and schools, some are bound to suffer as a result.
Students at UCLA, some of them perhaps on foreign-student visas and others on some sort of taxpayer-funded support, are now marching with a new controversial and disputed chant: “Israel, Israel you cannot hide, we charge you with genocide”.
“Students at UCLA, some of them perhaps on foreign-student visas and others on some sort of taxpayer-funded support, are now marching with a new controversial and disputed chant: “Israel, Israel you cannot hide, we charge you with genocide”.
But how strange that the same crowd that charges Israel with “genocide”, for replying to the mass murdering of its citizens on October 7, has a signature English-rhyming chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. That jingle is tailor-made for Western-residents eager to parrot the Hamas charter.
Despite the usual denials, that mantra is a euphemism for destroying the state of Israel and those within it. They are then to be replaced by a nation of Palestinian Arabs from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean—in other words, requiring a genocide, or what happened on October 7 expanded to encompass all of Israel.
When professors faced little in the way of consequences for calling for Jews to be separated from their classmates, or advocating that the children of “Zionist propagandists” should be singled out, or claiming Israelis were “pigs” and “excrement,” what do we expect would follow?
Something like what just happened at the Cooper Union campus in New York?
There, some 50 Jews were locked in the library to protect them from raving pro-Hamas protestors pounding on the windows, zombie-like in their hatred, as if they were hired extras for The Walking Dead.
Why was Biden press-secretary Karine Jean-Pierre matter-of-factly denying the anti-Semitism was a problem (50% of hate crimes victims are Jews [2% of the population]), and why appoint Robert Malley to anything—unless the hatred of Israel is deeply engrained among the Left?
It is, after all, the effective goal of the new DEI/Middle East/Jacobin nexus to demand the mass killing of Jews and the extinction of Israel.
That agenda is randomly evident in the BLM glider posters, or the “river to the sea’ chants, or the August 1988 charter of the now idolized Hamas— ″Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam invalidates it, just as it invalidated others before it″ / “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
Is the current war in Gaza City, thus, the “Jihad” that Hamas had always promised—or did they mean just the one-sided surprise murdering of unarmed women, children, infants, and the elderly?
We are reversing the Nazi sequence of the 1930s. Then cadres of thugs physically attacked Jews in gruesome efforts to shock all Germans into supporting their anti-Semitic agendas.
In today’s America, leftist intellectuals and their useful idiots on campuses are at the forefront as shock troops.
They are seeking to acculturate the nation to widespread, commonplace hatred of Jews in hopes of birthing brownshirt street violence of the sort we are already beginning to see at Cooper Union and elsewhere.
We have not yet reached depths of tabloid Jew-hatred of the Der Stürmer sort. But the New York Times and The Washington Post, along with other major news outlets, as tensions rose, ran with the incendiary Big Lie that the IDF had intentionally bombed a hospital “killing 500 Palestinians”.
That lie was compounded when our addled President weirdly seemed to lament that Islamic Jihad could not shoot straight: “It’s that old thing: Gotta learn how to shoot straight.”
The logical subtext to Biden’s remonstrations is that if Islamic Jihad had just hit their target—civilian Jews in Tel-Aviv—then the ensuring global fury and protests, and his cancelled meetings with Arab leaders (all recipients of massive US aid) would not have occurred.
I suppose as well Biden would not have sent $100 million in fungible money to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip—had the terrorists just learned “how to shoot straight” and not hit their own hospital parking lot.
The war in the Middle East will not end soon.
It is not easy to root out the Hamas death squads from their subterranean tunnels and cities and their human-shielded mosques, hospitals, and schools. It will be tricky to deter Iran and Hezbollah from entering the fray.
Meanwhile each day expect the campuses and streets to get a little bolder, a little closer to reifying their “river to the sea” chanting—as all the more Hamas erodes.
After all, there are no consequences to death chants. Even when the protestors incite violence, they correctly understand no college president will call them out.
Even when Rep. Tlaib incites mobs at the Capitol by shouting the lie that IDF leveled a Gazan hospital, she knows she is a protected “victim”—and her lies mere competing narratives.
When will they stop?
Not until the Democratic hierarchy disowns the growing Hamas wing of its own party.
Not until universities become more afraid of the donor class than they are of the DEI/pro-Hamas bunch and their protected hatred.
And not until a sane administration stops inviting to America those who despise their generous host.
None of that will happen soon—if ever.
So for now we Americans are like Diogenes the Cynic, stumbling around in broad daylight with a torch looking for just one honest college president, one truthful US president—all in vain.”
But they knew. The police, the feds, the military, they all knew.
Police were sent to the Maine gunman's home six weeks before his rampage over concerns he was "going to snap and commit a mass shooting." https://t.co/JA9gQUOGZB
Another day, another completely grotesque lie. Robert Card was involuntarily committed to a military psychiatric hospital months ago precisely because everyone around realized he was increasingly a danger to himself and others. He literally threatened to shoot up a base. https://t.co/v5R168h2Fo
For years, Jewish liberals demanded that the Christian West import Muslims, and when conservatives warned that Soros and his ilk were trying to destabilize Europe, the conservatives were smeared as "antisemites" for criticizing Soros by Jewish orgs like ADL. https://t.co/ZFGLERVn2V
two private planes just collided on takeoff at a major international airport in Houston (hobby). not a "near miss," an actual collision.
pilot claims catastrophic ATC error. we are heading towards a major disaster. in positive news, FTC just announced plan to 'diversify' ATC pic.twitter.com/khyafe46hb
"The FAA is working to create a robust pipeline of skilled and diverse professionals coming into the aviation workforce,” an FAA spokesperson told the DCNF."
In other words, the pipeline does not exist today so the FAA is compromising its standards. https://t.co/MTIM1dzCqC
When I’m in a plane, I couldn’t care less about the race, gender or political affiliation of the ATC in the tower; I just want someone qualified, capable, calm and experienced. This crazy administration is going to destroy America. 😡😡😡
The governing authorities that exist in this world—in Russia, or China, or Iran, or for that matter in the United States—have not been established by God.
“To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Speaker Mike Johnson: “I believe that scripture, the Bible is very clear, that God is the one who raises up those in authority.” pic.twitter.com/OhEGElU3cK
“If you want an indicator of how lost Western civilization has become, go to your kids’ school and check their rules on fighting. Most likely, you’ll find out if two kids get into a fight, both get suspended, regardless of whether one was a punk bully who started it and the other was simply defending himself or some little kid. This is a moral disaster, of course – violence in the defense of what is right is a moral obligation and a symbol of a greater rot within society. This is the kind of rule created by middle-aged, divorced cat women who can neither find nor satisfy a man and live in a tranquil bubble of affluent, frivolous safety and security created by their harder, worthier forbearers who understood the world’s true nature.
The true nature of the world is savagery.
The world’s true nature is that good is forever pitted against evil.
That has never changed. What happened over the last 70 years or so was an interregnum of peace in the West, created by violence against barbarians and facilitated by people willfully looking away from the butchery still continuing at the fringes of the map. The West managed to build a civilization that was – for the first time in history since perhaps the Pax Romana – generally internally peaceful. And the West convinced itself that this was normal.
But it was not normal. It was an anomaly, a glorious one, but an anomaly nonetheless. The world is not a peaceful place, and it never was, and it never will be. Despite the best efforts of the arrogant left, human nature has not changed. Human nature is vicious and cruel. Rousseau’s noble savage nonsense, which we are still dealing with today in the form of eager sophomores in Che t-shirts slobbering over Hamas psychopaths – is a giant fraud. Savages are not distinguished by their nobility. Their savagery distinguishes them. And we need to find the moral strength to do what is necessary to defeat them.
We must learn again to kill. We must learn again to destroy. We must learn again to be ruthless in defeating our enemies. The big lie that Western civilization tells itself is that there are no real enemies, that there are no bad people – except the people of the West themselves, who bear some sort of original sin for not being corrupt and inept Third World barbarians.
We do have enemies, as we have seen. We do have enemies, as they tell us. When they talk about decolonization, they are talking about de-you-ization. When they talk about killing settlers, you need to understand that you are a settler, and they mean killing you. They mean raping your daughter in front of you. They mean chopping your baby’s head off. They mean slaughtering your wife or husband, sons and daughters, and even your dog. And they mean enjoying it, reveling in the ecstatic glee of mass murder, and being so proud of it that they call home to their daddies and brag about it, or put up their body cam videos on TikTok.
The world was always a savage place. What happened on October 7 was not an anomaly. It was normality. What do you think happened to sacked cities in the past, which is what these Gaza-adjacent towns in Southern Israel essentially were? The attackers captured their objective, burned and razed the buildings, stole everything they could carry, raped anyone without a penis and some with, and piled corpses in the streets. We’re stunned simply because we forgot what a sack is, but for most of human history, people lived in terror of it happening to them, hoping for the chance to inflict one upon their neighbors.
We in the West, of which Israel is a part and thereby is hated, forgot about this. Worse, we have forgotten our strength and our courage. We have forgotten that we survive not through gentle hugging but through sword-swinging. For example, we have forgotten how to conduct a siege. The idea that Israel should somehow give these Hamas barbarians food, water, and electrical power even if it surrounds Gaza and prepares to attack is mind-boggling insanity. The moral illiteracy of expecting Israel to care more about the Palestinian people than other Palestinians do is simply bizarre”
—-
“The hard truth is that the world contains bad people who must be crushed through ruthless violence, which shocks and horrifies modern sensibilities. But it is reality nonetheless. When people want to kill you, you are at a decision point. You can either let them kill you or stop them. But stopping them often involves aesthetically displeasing actions, such as blowing them into little bits with bombs or shoving a bayonet into their guts and watching them die in agony. And it necessarily means inflicting death and damage on the noncombatant camp followers around them. That’s why they say war is hell. And that’s why starting one is probably not a good idea. But when someone else starts one, you have to choose them or you. Someone’s going to die badly, and you know, I propose it is those other guys.
The West didn’t start this fight, but it damn well better finish it, or they will finish us. Time to stop being soft. It’s time to stop lying to ourselves. It’s time to stop pretending that human nature took a 180° change a few decades ago and that we are not the same animals we used to be because now we have cars, airplanes, and Instagram.
We are the same brutal, cruel, and warlike creatures we have always been. Every headline, every act of hideous violence, and every pro-genocide cheer by the grad school sociopaths who fetishize Third-World savages, proves it. What we have to do is lift the scales from our eyes, understand the situation we are in, and accept it.
For the last couple of generations, we in the West have told ourselves that we have changed. We told ourselves that we are beyond violence. And we told ourselves that everyone else was too. But that was a lie.
Police in Maine were alerted last month to “veiled threats” by the man who would go on to carry out the state’s deadliest mass shooting. https://t.co/TcxlG7xIHe
About the Maine mass shooter: "..a statewide awareness alert was sent in mid-September to be on the lookout for Robert Card after the firearms instructor made threats against his base and fellow soldiers." But after stepped up patrols and a visit to his home police "moved on" https://t.co/uKWTKxXO9m
“Card’s case stands as a glaring example of missed red flags, with many unanswered questions about what the military, police, mental health professionals and relatives could have done to prevent the massacre.” https://t.co/7RMTMG64MJ
Government trained him. Government knew of his threats 2 shoot up an army base. Government knew he had a metal malfunction. Government never tried 2 put him on the yellow flag law list. But yet, government wants 2 use his actions as justification 2 restrict law abiding citizens?
It strikes me as odd that anyone in CA would put down Jews because where would CA be without their many works in Hollywood? A true disconnect from reality.
I am sorry for all the innocent people caught in the mess of evilness. I can be sorry for them while still realizing the need to go after and destroy the truly evil.
Kathaleena, agree with that distinction, there are many innocents being caught in all of this.
God raises up kings and deposes them. And yes, that includes the Hitlers of this world who bring destruction and death. For what purpose God does what He does, ultimately, we may not be able to discern on this side of eternity. -dj
Another good piece on Pence, this time in World Magazine:
*****************
A good man exits the arena
Mike Pence leaves the presidential race
~ In the late 1970s, the vice president of the United States was campaigning in Indiana for re-election. His motorcade happened to pass by a filling station where a young man was working a summer job. The boy’s wave was met by a brief glance and wave back from Walter Mondale. Within one generation that young man, Mike Pence, would occupy the same constitutional office.
On Oct. 28, former Vice President, former Indiana Gov., former Congressman, Mike Pence, announced his withdrawal from the 2024 race for the Republican nomination for president. In a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, he said, “The Bible tells us there’s a time for every purpose under heaven. … I came here to say it’s becoming clear to me, this is not my time. So after much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today.”
Born the son of a Korean war veteran and small business owner, Pence had a long and distinguished career in public life that began with three failed runs for Congress in the 1980s. He then began hosting a political talk show that he labeled “Rush Limbaugh on decaf.” In his memoir, So Help Me God, he admits that he thought his political career was over. But it was just beginning. …
… In 2016, an embattled Donald Trump, facing criticism for his personal and moral character and a deficit of trust to his commitment to socially conservative issues, chose Pence as his running mate, helping to solidify the evangelical vote. Pence proved to be a wise choice, serving as a powerful vice president and often appearing as a stabilizing force in an oft-chaotic administration. At times, he was criticized for his loyalty to Trump, though in his memoir he admits to many private disagreements. As Trump’s presidency wore down, this alliance fractured, as the vice president consistently refused Trump’s appeals to overturn the election, reaffirming his commitment to the constitutional process of the transfer of power. For this, a man who was already derided for his Christian faith by the left was rewarded with disdain by many on the right.
Americans should appreciate the public service of Mike Pence. A man of deep and genuine faith in Christ, he was often mocked by the late-night hosts and media establishment for his piety. Even some Christians scoffed at his following of a modified “Billy Graham rule” for meeting with women alone. But in an era where both parties feature men and women of duplicitous moral character, perhaps we should not so easily dismiss a leader who unapologetically protects his marriage. When the nation needed him most, his integrity mattered. He valued his fealty to the Constitution over his loyalty to the president he served. This likely cost him his political future, which is its own sad indictment on our culture.
As he exits this stage, we should recognize Mike Pence’s public service, his public faith, his integrity, and his unswerving commitment to the sanctity of life. And we should welcome, not discourage, those who are unafraid to be unapologetically Christian, even when such devotion is mocked by the satirists or feared by the secularists. Americans in 2024 will choose someone not named Mike Pence as their next commander-in-chief, but his influence is not over.
The young man who 50 years ago waived at a vice president passing through town is now waving goodbye to this chapter in public life. But let’s hope that Vice President Pence continues to have a voice of moral authority in America. We still need that, and so we’ll still need him—regardless of the office he holds or the office he is pursuing. ~
From Beth Moore on what’s up with Twitter-turned to “X”:
~ On keeping our sanity (and whatever is left of our relationships) here on X-Twitter or whatever the heck it is until we can’t take it anymore. (Which admittedly may be today.)
Yet another person I really enjoy following left this platform yesterday. This on the heels of one of the kindest, most gracious, gentle-hearted individuals I know being driven off here last week or so. What a shame. I’ll quickly interject here that we will be held accountable by God, whether we believe in him or not, for the way we treat people including people on social media.
So, a few thoughts on making the best of a place getting worse:
1. Avoid just coming here for a fight. If we hate the constant contentiousness on here, we have to ask ourselves how often we feed it. If we love the constant contentiousness on here, we probably need therapy.
2. Accept the fact that if we keep on saying the same thing, people quit listening. This is true even where positive things are concerned. Say for instance we daily post words to the effect of “love God & one another.” No greater commandments but after while, people’ll scroll by.
3. Be our real selves, not self promoters or constant promoters of a cause, side or identity group. One way we can tell how inauthentic or unwell people are on here is the astonishing lack of nuance. Our minds are more complex than that. Is literally everything black or white?
4. Seems to me it’s abnormal to never ever see anything differently than our identity group. When this is the case, we’re at best nothing more than puppets to weak, flawed, oft-mistaken human puppeteers. I mean, honestly, does the other side not have a single point worth hearing?
Even if we still disagree, could we not give them the common courtesy of being heard without being attacked?
5. Bring wider interests here. I grinning picturing the number of people I’ve come to like on here that I seriously did NOT like because we found a common interest. …
*****************
There was more, but she also says she is (for now) staying on X …
Why? “we know good and well we’ve had something here we haven’t been able to find anywhere else. Variety.
So for now, I do things like block, mute, ignore and get on here less often. And still get to be in your good company. Fact is, I just flatly love a lot of people on here.”
“… appeals to overturn the election.” It’s such a shame that not only leftist publications publish such disingenuous drivel. The appeals were to send the electors back in certain key states where there was evidence of election irregularities, inconsistencies, and suspicious activities. To examine the evidence and see if there were any shenanigans going on, not to “overturn the election.” That’s right up there with “election denier.”
Not only did VP Pence fail in his Constitutional role on Jan 6, but he also lied about having classified documents at his home in Indiana (which is never mentioned in such articles). Not quite the “man of integrity” he’s made out to be.
Gee, maybe he never felt welcome because he was always a cultist, and not one of us. But Obama made him the only option.
Biden has done the same for Trump.
“In McKay Coppins’ new biography, Romney: A Reckoning, the senator and former presidential candidate has a long list of grievances that often reveal more about him than about his critics.”
“Last month, Mitt Romney announced he will retire from the Senate after one term. Romney, who is 76, cited his age. That was undoubtedly a major consideration for a guy with a platoon of grandchildren.
It’s also true that Romney is unpopular with Utah voters and had no real chance of reelection after becoming the most prominent elected Republican antagonist of Donald Trump. With Romney’s 30-year political career ending with a whimper, there would naturally be a forceful attempt to shape his legacy as something other than a failure.
Fortunately, Romney already made plans for this. The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, also a practicing Mormon, was already beavering away on a Romney biography that was sure to be sympathetic. Sure enough, very soon after Romney’s retirement announcement, The Atlantic ran a juicy excerpt adapted from the prologue of the forthcoming book. While the excerpt was sympathetic to Romney, in some ways it defied expectations.”
—
“Believers of Convenience
Well, Romney: A Reckoning has finally arrived on bookstore shelves everywhere. On the surface, it’s a model political biography: a short recap of his early life, followed by a mostly chronological recap of his career. It’s a dream to read. The prose is concise and the story well-structured, and that is not a small compliment directed at Coppins.
On a deeper level, however, I’m still not sure to what extent Coppins is aware of the contradictions exposed and how they will be interpreted by anyone not already convinced Romney is a righteous crusader. The book is full of quotes and characterizations that, divorced from the calculating context, reveal Mitt to be haughty, weird, and willing to sell out even as he insists he hasn’t.
To have Mitt tell it, he’s always been dogged by irrational criticism: “Throughout my life there’s always been one person who just can’t stand me.” Here’s him trying to explain away why he’s off-putting to some people: “I was accused of being inauthentic. But in reality, that’s just who I am. … I’m the authentic person who seems inauthentic.” Here’s him summing up his opposition to estate taxes in his failed 2008 GOP primary bid: “It was one of those things you say because you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
None of this is especially damning for politicians, of course. People with ambition are often polarizing, normal well-adjusted people almost never run for office, and every politician finds himself uttering expedient rhetoric. What’s remarkable about Romney: A Reckoning is its exhaustive examination, and ultimate absolution, of Mitt’s behavior and motives while extending comparatively no grace to a cavalcade of politicians Romney singles out.
And it is an overly generous assumption that Romney deserves to be excused for a great many things. For instance, when Romney ran for president in 2008, he gave a defiant speech addressed to critics of his Mormon faith: “Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world.”
—-
“The Lone Righteous Republican
Elsewhere in the book, it does not spare any contempt for the evangelical leaders who often play a role in Republican politics. Romney tried to play nice with them and obviously never felt welcomed.”
Starting in a few days, the chair of the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum will be…Iran.
Honestly, what is the point of lending any legitimacy to the UN — let alone hosting it and disproportionately funding it, as we do? https://t.co/2YoDhpbMbJ
I asked the UN: “Why did you name the Islamic Republic of Iran as Chair of the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum, starting on Nov. 2nd? How can you elevate a regime that beats, blinds, tortures & rapes women who demand their rights? Where is the logic? Where is the morality?” pic.twitter.com/tWefa4qA50
“Closed-door testimony by former Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week is a chilling case study of how credible corruption allegations against President Biden and his family were covered up by the FBI and DOJ — before and after the 2020 election.
Brady’s testimony fits a pattern revealed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) last week, in which over 40 confidential human sources gave information to the FBI, over several years, about potential criminal activity involving the president, his brother James and son Hunter.
In a blistering letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday, Grassley alleged ongoing efforts “among certain Justice Department and FBI officials to improperly delay and stop full and complete investigative activity into the Biden family.”
Daniel 2:21 He changes times and seasons;
he removes kings and sets up kings;
he gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to those who have understanding;
Submission to the Authorities …
Romans 13:1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
Wandering Views 
Cali is ruled by fools, pervs, idiots, and anti-Semites.
“California: Bay Area City Passes Shameful Resolution Condemning Israel, Accusing it of Committing “Ethnic Cleansing”
Mayor Eduardo Martinez asserts the proclamation promotes peace.”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/10/california-bay-area-city-passes-shameful-resolution-condemning-israel-accusing-it-of-committing-ethnic-cleansing/
“Every once in awhile, being a resident of California offers an extreme test of my resolve to stay for family and work commitments.
This week, one Bay Area city council decided to offer its opinion on Israel’s response to the dreadful butchering of its citizens in a most shameful way.
A California city has become the first in the US to pass a resolution condemning Israel — accusing the Jewish nation of committing “ethnic cleansing and collective punishment.”
The resolution passed by the Richmond City Council around 1 a.m. Wednesday states, in part, that Palestinians in Gaza “are currently facing a campaign of ethnic cleansing and collective punishment by the state of Israel.”
That “is considered a war crime under international law,” the resolution states.
It also calls for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the safe passage of substantial humanitarian aid to Gaza,” as well as an “end to Israeli apartheid and the occupation and blockade of Palestinian land by Israeli military forces.”
“The city of Richmond opposes all existing and future military aid to Israel,” it concludes, while attempting to express support for Jewish members of its community.
The mayor of this entity asserts the proclamation promotes peace.
Mayor Eduardo Martinez, a Democrat, claims that he voted for the resolution because he believes American taxpayers are on the hook for what he referred to as an ‘apartheid state.’
…Despite his inflammatory rhetoric, Mayor Martinez claims the shocking resolution promotes peace.
‘This proclamation chooses human lives over politics,’ said Martinez.
He also claimed that referring to Israel as an ethnic cleanser and an apartheid state was not anti-Semitism.
Of course, when it comes to the Ukraine . . .well, this city council has an entirely different view of how much support this nation should give.
Wind waved the Ukrainian flag on the flagpole outside Richmond City Hall on Monday, hung to show support for the Ukrainian people.
The blue-and-yellow-striped banner, made by Richmond resident Claudia Citroen, joined the California, Richmond and Pan-African flags. Mayor Tom Butt and Richmond residents gathered for the Ukrainian flag raising to support the country, which is under attack from neighboring Russia.
“I hope somebody in Ukraine reads that the people of Richmond are rooting for them,” Butt said.
Of course, there may be reasons the leaders of Richmond are sympathetic to criminals and terrorists:
The 2020 crime rate in Richmond, CA is 462 (City-Data.com crime index), which is 1.8 times higher than the U.S. average. It was higher than in 95.9% U.S. cities. The 2020 Richmond crime rate fell by 1% compared to 2019. The number of homicides stood at 20 – an increase of 4 compared to 2019.
The city council’s actions are drawing a considerable amount of justified criticism.”
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Bingo.
“I’m Struggling to Find My Empathy”
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/10/30/im-struggling-to-find-my-empathy-n588565
“Human beings are instinctively tribal, and when we think in terms of “us” vs. “them” the temptation to dehumanize the other is hard to resist when the stakes are high.
You see this most often in war, but even in smaller things, the tendency pops up. I know plenty of people who instinctively cringe when they hear a certain accent, and of course, plenty of people assume evil of people on no basis other than skin color.
Having grown up in the 60s and 70s I was taught to look beyond tribal ties and view others as individuals; most of us have been as well. None of us is perfect at doing so, but most of us have internalized the belief that we should view others as individuals, not simply as members of a tribe. It is a key tenet of modern Liberalism.
Every year it gets more difficult to keep doing this, as identity politics is all about emphasizing tribal identity over individual character. It’s nearly impossible to treat people based on their individual characteristics if they don’t do so themselves. If one’s tribal identity is who one is rather than being one aspect of one’s identity, it is almost insane for others to pretend otherwise.
I have been struggling in recent weeks to gin up empathy for Palestinians, despite the fact that so many of them are suffering horribly in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
I am horrified, in the abstract, at what is happening in Gaza. While many or most of the people being injured or killed are supporters of Hamas or actually Hamas fighters, some certainly are not and are victims of circumstance. They deserve our empathy and we should be sad about their suffering and wish it weren’t happening, just as with any other victim of conflict.
But I can’t get past the pure hatred being directed at Israel and Jews around the world. So many people are indifferent to the suffering of Jews, the sheer evil of Hamas, and have celebrated the brutality of terrorists that I have a hard time extending my circle of empathy. I only have so much to give.
On top of the outpourings of hate directed at Jews, so much of the pain in Gaza is the direct result of Hamas’ own actions.
Hamas uses its own citizens as human shields, basing their military and political power in schools and hospitals. It spends its resources on expanding its military power and then complains that its citizens are poor and suffering. It digs up its infrastructure and blames Israel for not providing more. It traps its citizens in a war zone and blames Israel for civilian casualties. It complains of fuel shortages while decrying the shortages that threaten electricity in hospitals.”
The supply situation speaks to the relative sophistication of Hamas as a fighting force — an axiom among military professionals is that while amateurs talk about tactics, professionals talk about logistics. Yet with Gazans facing a humanitarian catastrophe, Hamas’s stockpiles raise questions about what responsibility, if any, it has to the civilian population.
Hamas is the governing body of Gaza. It hoards supplies needed for its citizens. And people question whether it has a responsibility to help its own citizens.
How am I supposed to gin up any outrage against Israel when Gaza’s governing body cannot? Hamas prepared for this war for years, stockpiled supplies for itself, and used the suffering of its citizens as a propaganda point. And that propaganda is working. Millions of people express outrage at Israel for the damage done by Hamas.
John Kirby–I can’t believe I am saying this–spoke for me when he was asked about the administration’s own lack of empathy for Hamas and its supporters.”
“My failure to feel sufficient empathy for the civilians of Hamas strikes me as similar to the feeling I would have getting outraged by the destruction of Germany in World War II. Many Germans weren’t Nazis and the Allies’ insistence on unconditional surrender led to wiping entire German cities off the map. Yet we call it the “good war,” because annihilation of the Nazis was necessary.
The Nazis, if they cared about their citizens, should have surrendered. The war was clearly lost in 1944, and every death after the Battle of the Bulge was on them 100%. There was zero chance of victory, yet they persisted in order to kill Jews. It was pure evil, and the evil needed to be eradicated.
The same is true of Hamas today. Gazans deserve a better government, but it isn’t Israel’s responsibility to sacrifice its citizens to protect those of Hamas in Gaza.”
—–
Reality is Hamas is who the people of Gaza chose to represent them. They know who and what Hamas is. They bear responsibility here too, and aren’t simply victims caught in the middle. Even their children chant “Death to the Jews” from their school yards. They’re not simply innocent victims. Civilian deaths should always be avoided when possible, but when Hamas hides in hospitals and schools, some are bound to suffer as a result.
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VDH nails it again.
“Our Immoral Monsters”
“Students at UCLA, some of them perhaps on foreign-student visas and others on some sort of taxpayer-funded support, are now marching with a new controversial and disputed chant: “Israel, Israel you cannot hide, we charge you with genocide”.
But how strange that the same crowd that charges Israel with “genocide”, for replying to the mass murdering of its citizens on October 7, has a signature English-rhyming chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. That jingle is tailor-made for Western-residents eager to parrot the Hamas charter.
Despite the usual denials, that mantra is a euphemism for destroying the state of Israel and those within it. They are then to be replaced by a nation of Palestinian Arabs from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean—in other words, requiring a genocide, or what happened on October 7 expanded to encompass all of Israel.
When professors faced little in the way of consequences for calling for Jews to be separated from their classmates, or advocating that the children of “Zionist propagandists” should be singled out, or claiming Israelis were “pigs” and “excrement,” what do we expect would follow?
Something like what just happened at the Cooper Union campus in New York?
There, some 50 Jews were locked in the library to protect them from raving pro-Hamas protestors pounding on the windows, zombie-like in their hatred, as if they were hired extras for The Walking Dead.
Why was Biden press-secretary Karine Jean-Pierre matter-of-factly denying the anti-Semitism was a problem (50% of hate crimes victims are Jews [2% of the population]), and why appoint Robert Malley to anything—unless the hatred of Israel is deeply engrained among the Left?
It is, after all, the effective goal of the new DEI/Middle East/Jacobin nexus to demand the mass killing of Jews and the extinction of Israel.
That agenda is randomly evident in the BLM glider posters, or the “river to the sea’ chants, or the August 1988 charter of the now idolized Hamas— ″Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam invalidates it, just as it invalidated others before it″ / “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
Is the current war in Gaza City, thus, the “Jihad” that Hamas had always promised—or did they mean just the one-sided surprise murdering of unarmed women, children, infants, and the elderly?
We are reversing the Nazi sequence of the 1930s. Then cadres of thugs physically attacked Jews in gruesome efforts to shock all Germans into supporting their anti-Semitic agendas.
In today’s America, leftist intellectuals and their useful idiots on campuses are at the forefront as shock troops.
They are seeking to acculturate the nation to widespread, commonplace hatred of Jews in hopes of birthing brownshirt street violence of the sort we are already beginning to see at Cooper Union and elsewhere.
We have not yet reached depths of tabloid Jew-hatred of the Der Stürmer sort. But the New York Times and The Washington Post, along with other major news outlets, as tensions rose, ran with the incendiary Big Lie that the IDF had intentionally bombed a hospital “killing 500 Palestinians”.
That lie was compounded when our addled President weirdly seemed to lament that Islamic Jihad could not shoot straight: “It’s that old thing: Gotta learn how to shoot straight.”
The logical subtext to Biden’s remonstrations is that if Islamic Jihad had just hit their target—civilian Jews in Tel-Aviv—then the ensuring global fury and protests, and his cancelled meetings with Arab leaders (all recipients of massive US aid) would not have occurred.
I suppose as well Biden would not have sent $100 million in fungible money to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip—had the terrorists just learned “how to shoot straight” and not hit their own hospital parking lot.
The war in the Middle East will not end soon.
It is not easy to root out the Hamas death squads from their subterranean tunnels and cities and their human-shielded mosques, hospitals, and schools. It will be tricky to deter Iran and Hezbollah from entering the fray.
Meanwhile each day expect the campuses and streets to get a little bolder, a little closer to reifying their “river to the sea” chanting—as all the more Hamas erodes.
After all, there are no consequences to death chants. Even when the protestors incite violence, they correctly understand no college president will call them out.
Even when Rep. Tlaib incites mobs at the Capitol by shouting the lie that IDF leveled a Gazan hospital, she knows she is a protected “victim”—and her lies mere competing narratives.
When will they stop?
Not until the Democratic hierarchy disowns the growing Hamas wing of its own party.
Not until universities become more afraid of the donor class than they are of the DEI/pro-Hamas bunch and their protected hatred.
And not until a sane administration stops inviting to America those who despise their generous host.
None of that will happen soon—if ever.
So for now we Americans are like Diogenes the Cynic, stumbling around in broad daylight with a torch looking for just one honest college president, one truthful US president—all in vain.”
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How could we have known they’ll say….
But they knew. The police, the feds, the military, they all knew.
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He’s always behind these type of things. Satan’s minions love chaos.
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Sure…
I mean, what could go wrong?
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Nothing to see here….
Just the clown formerly known as Bill Kristol saying he disagrees with scripture.
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Kurt never sugar coats it, and he ain’t wrong about most of it.
“Accept That Savagery Is the True Nature of the World – and Deal With It”
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2023/10/30/accept-that-savagery-is-the-true-nature-of-the-world-and-deal-with-it-n2630502
“If you want an indicator of how lost Western civilization has become, go to your kids’ school and check their rules on fighting. Most likely, you’ll find out if two kids get into a fight, both get suspended, regardless of whether one was a punk bully who started it and the other was simply defending himself or some little kid. This is a moral disaster, of course – violence in the defense of what is right is a moral obligation and a symbol of a greater rot within society. This is the kind of rule created by middle-aged, divorced cat women who can neither find nor satisfy a man and live in a tranquil bubble of affluent, frivolous safety and security created by their harder, worthier forbearers who understood the world’s true nature.
The true nature of the world is savagery.
The world’s true nature is that good is forever pitted against evil.
That has never changed. What happened over the last 70 years or so was an interregnum of peace in the West, created by violence against barbarians and facilitated by people willfully looking away from the butchery still continuing at the fringes of the map. The West managed to build a civilization that was – for the first time in history since perhaps the Pax Romana – generally internally peaceful. And the West convinced itself that this was normal.
But it was not normal. It was an anomaly, a glorious one, but an anomaly nonetheless. The world is not a peaceful place, and it never was, and it never will be. Despite the best efforts of the arrogant left, human nature has not changed. Human nature is vicious and cruel. Rousseau’s noble savage nonsense, which we are still dealing with today in the form of eager sophomores in Che t-shirts slobbering over Hamas psychopaths – is a giant fraud. Savages are not distinguished by their nobility. Their savagery distinguishes them. And we need to find the moral strength to do what is necessary to defeat them.
We must learn again to kill. We must learn again to destroy. We must learn again to be ruthless in defeating our enemies. The big lie that Western civilization tells itself is that there are no real enemies, that there are no bad people – except the people of the West themselves, who bear some sort of original sin for not being corrupt and inept Third World barbarians.
We do have enemies, as we have seen. We do have enemies, as they tell us. When they talk about decolonization, they are talking about de-you-ization. When they talk about killing settlers, you need to understand that you are a settler, and they mean killing you. They mean raping your daughter in front of you. They mean chopping your baby’s head off. They mean slaughtering your wife or husband, sons and daughters, and even your dog. And they mean enjoying it, reveling in the ecstatic glee of mass murder, and being so proud of it that they call home to their daddies and brag about it, or put up their body cam videos on TikTok.
The world was always a savage place. What happened on October 7 was not an anomaly. It was normality. What do you think happened to sacked cities in the past, which is what these Gaza-adjacent towns in Southern Israel essentially were? The attackers captured their objective, burned and razed the buildings, stole everything they could carry, raped anyone without a penis and some with, and piled corpses in the streets. We’re stunned simply because we forgot what a sack is, but for most of human history, people lived in terror of it happening to them, hoping for the chance to inflict one upon their neighbors.
We in the West, of which Israel is a part and thereby is hated, forgot about this. Worse, we have forgotten our strength and our courage. We have forgotten that we survive not through gentle hugging but through sword-swinging. For example, we have forgotten how to conduct a siege. The idea that Israel should somehow give these Hamas barbarians food, water, and electrical power even if it surrounds Gaza and prepares to attack is mind-boggling insanity. The moral illiteracy of expecting Israel to care more about the Palestinian people than other Palestinians do is simply bizarre”
—-
“The hard truth is that the world contains bad people who must be crushed through ruthless violence, which shocks and horrifies modern sensibilities. But it is reality nonetheless. When people want to kill you, you are at a decision point. You can either let them kill you or stop them. But stopping them often involves aesthetically displeasing actions, such as blowing them into little bits with bombs or shoving a bayonet into their guts and watching them die in agony. And it necessarily means inflicting death and damage on the noncombatant camp followers around them. That’s why they say war is hell. And that’s why starting one is probably not a good idea. But when someone else starts one, you have to choose them or you. Someone’s going to die badly, and you know, I propose it is those other guys.
The West didn’t start this fight, but it damn well better finish it, or they will finish us. Time to stop being soft. It’s time to stop lying to ourselves. It’s time to stop pretending that human nature took a 180° change a few decades ago and that we are not the same animals we used to be because now we have cars, airplanes, and Instagram.
We are the same brutal, cruel, and warlike creatures we have always been. Every headline, every act of hideous violence, and every pro-genocide cheer by the grad school sociopaths who fetishize Third-World savages, proves it. What we have to do is lift the scales from our eyes, understand the situation we are in, and accept it.
For the last couple of generations, we in the West have told ourselves that we have changed. We told ourselves that we are beyond violence. And we told ourselves that everyone else was too. But that was a lie.
We need to stop lying to ourselves.”
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More on the” But how could we know?” story above.
Once again the “lone wolf” was a known wolf.
Lather, rinse, repeat. This is exactly why we need a 2nd Amend. The authorities can’t, and won’t protect you.
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It strikes me as odd that anyone in CA would put down Jews because where would CA be without their many works in Hollywood? A true disconnect from reality.
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I am sorry for all the innocent people caught in the mess of evilness. I can be sorry for them while still realizing the need to go after and destroy the truly evil.
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Kathaleena, agree with that distinction, there are many innocents being caught in all of this.
God raises up kings and deposes them. And yes, that includes the Hitlers of this world who bring destruction and death. For what purpose God does what He does, ultimately, we may not be able to discern on this side of eternity. -dj
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Another good piece on Pence, this time in World Magazine:
*****************
A good man exits the arena
Mike Pence leaves the presidential race
~ In the late 1970s, the vice president of the United States was campaigning in Indiana for re-election. His motorcade happened to pass by a filling station where a young man was working a summer job. The boy’s wave was met by a brief glance and wave back from Walter Mondale. Within one generation that young man, Mike Pence, would occupy the same constitutional office.
On Oct. 28, former Vice President, former Indiana Gov., former Congressman, Mike Pence, announced his withdrawal from the 2024 race for the Republican nomination for president. In a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, he said, “The Bible tells us there’s a time for every purpose under heaven. … I came here to say it’s becoming clear to me, this is not my time. So after much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today.”
Born the son of a Korean war veteran and small business owner, Pence had a long and distinguished career in public life that began with three failed runs for Congress in the 1980s. He then began hosting a political talk show that he labeled “Rush Limbaugh on decaf.” In his memoir, So Help Me God, he admits that he thought his political career was over. But it was just beginning. …
… In 2016, an embattled Donald Trump, facing criticism for his personal and moral character and a deficit of trust to his commitment to socially conservative issues, chose Pence as his running mate, helping to solidify the evangelical vote. Pence proved to be a wise choice, serving as a powerful vice president and often appearing as a stabilizing force in an oft-chaotic administration. At times, he was criticized for his loyalty to Trump, though in his memoir he admits to many private disagreements. As Trump’s presidency wore down, this alliance fractured, as the vice president consistently refused Trump’s appeals to overturn the election, reaffirming his commitment to the constitutional process of the transfer of power. For this, a man who was already derided for his Christian faith by the left was rewarded with disdain by many on the right.
Americans should appreciate the public service of Mike Pence. A man of deep and genuine faith in Christ, he was often mocked by the late-night hosts and media establishment for his piety. Even some Christians scoffed at his following of a modified “Billy Graham rule” for meeting with women alone. But in an era where both parties feature men and women of duplicitous moral character, perhaps we should not so easily dismiss a leader who unapologetically protects his marriage. When the nation needed him most, his integrity mattered. He valued his fealty to the Constitution over his loyalty to the president he served. This likely cost him his political future, which is its own sad indictment on our culture.
As he exits this stage, we should recognize Mike Pence’s public service, his public faith, his integrity, and his unswerving commitment to the sanctity of life. And we should welcome, not discourage, those who are unafraid to be unapologetically Christian, even when such devotion is mocked by the satirists or feared by the secularists. Americans in 2024 will choose someone not named Mike Pence as their next commander-in-chief, but his influence is not over.
The young man who 50 years ago waived at a vice president passing through town is now waving goodbye to this chapter in public life. But let’s hope that Vice President Pence continues to have a voice of moral authority in America. We still need that, and so we’ll still need him—regardless of the office he holds or the office he is pursuing. ~
**************
-dj
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From Beth Moore on what’s up with Twitter-turned to “X”:
~ On keeping our sanity (and whatever is left of our relationships) here on X-Twitter or whatever the heck it is until we can’t take it anymore. (Which admittedly may be today.)
Yet another person I really enjoy following left this platform yesterday. This on the heels of one of the kindest, most gracious, gentle-hearted individuals I know being driven off here last week or so. What a shame. I’ll quickly interject here that we will be held accountable by God, whether we believe in him or not, for the way we treat people including people on social media.
So, a few thoughts on making the best of a place getting worse:
1. Avoid just coming here for a fight. If we hate the constant contentiousness on here, we have to ask ourselves how often we feed it. If we love the constant contentiousness on here, we probably need therapy.
2. Accept the fact that if we keep on saying the same thing, people quit listening. This is true even where positive things are concerned. Say for instance we daily post words to the effect of “love God & one another.” No greater commandments but after while, people’ll scroll by.
3. Be our real selves, not self promoters or constant promoters of a cause, side or identity group. One way we can tell how inauthentic or unwell people are on here is the astonishing lack of nuance. Our minds are more complex than that. Is literally everything black or white?
4. Seems to me it’s abnormal to never ever see anything differently than our identity group. When this is the case, we’re at best nothing more than puppets to weak, flawed, oft-mistaken human puppeteers. I mean, honestly, does the other side not have a single point worth hearing?
Even if we still disagree, could we not give them the common courtesy of being heard without being attacked?
5. Bring wider interests here. I grinning picturing the number of people I’ve come to like on here that I seriously did NOT like because we found a common interest. …
*****************
There was more, but she also says she is (for now) staying on X …
Why? “we know good and well we’ve had something here we haven’t been able to find anywhere else. Variety.
So for now, I do things like block, mute, ignore and get on here less often. And still get to be in your good company. Fact is, I just flatly love a lot of people on here.”
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“… appeals to overturn the election.” It’s such a shame that not only leftist publications publish such disingenuous drivel. The appeals were to send the electors back in certain key states where there was evidence of election irregularities, inconsistencies, and suspicious activities. To examine the evidence and see if there were any shenanigans going on, not to “overturn the election.” That’s right up there with “election denier.”
Not only did VP Pence fail in his Constitutional role on Jan 6, but he also lied about having classified documents at his home in Indiana (which is never mentioned in such articles). Not quite the “man of integrity” he’s made out to be.
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Dj,
That horse (Pence) is dead, but you keep kicking it. 🙂
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Gee, maybe he never felt welcome because he was always a cultist, and not one of us. But Obama made him the only option.
Biden has done the same for Trump.
“In McKay Coppins’ new biography, Romney: A Reckoning, the senator and former presidential candidate has a long list of grievances that often reveal more about him than about his critics.”
https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/30/mitt-romney-we-hardly-knew-ye/
“Last month, Mitt Romney announced he will retire from the Senate after one term. Romney, who is 76, cited his age. That was undoubtedly a major consideration for a guy with a platoon of grandchildren.
It’s also true that Romney is unpopular with Utah voters and had no real chance of reelection after becoming the most prominent elected Republican antagonist of Donald Trump. With Romney’s 30-year political career ending with a whimper, there would naturally be a forceful attempt to shape his legacy as something other than a failure.
Fortunately, Romney already made plans for this. The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, also a practicing Mormon, was already beavering away on a Romney biography that was sure to be sympathetic. Sure enough, very soon after Romney’s retirement announcement, The Atlantic ran a juicy excerpt adapted from the prologue of the forthcoming book. While the excerpt was sympathetic to Romney, in some ways it defied expectations.”
—
“Believers of Convenience
Well, Romney: A Reckoning has finally arrived on bookstore shelves everywhere. On the surface, it’s a model political biography: a short recap of his early life, followed by a mostly chronological recap of his career. It’s a dream to read. The prose is concise and the story well-structured, and that is not a small compliment directed at Coppins.
On a deeper level, however, I’m still not sure to what extent Coppins is aware of the contradictions exposed and how they will be interpreted by anyone not already convinced Romney is a righteous crusader. The book is full of quotes and characterizations that, divorced from the calculating context, reveal Mitt to be haughty, weird, and willing to sell out even as he insists he hasn’t.
To have Mitt tell it, he’s always been dogged by irrational criticism: “Throughout my life there’s always been one person who just can’t stand me.” Here’s him trying to explain away why he’s off-putting to some people: “I was accused of being inauthentic. But in reality, that’s just who I am. … I’m the authentic person who seems inauthentic.” Here’s him summing up his opposition to estate taxes in his failed 2008 GOP primary bid: “It was one of those things you say because you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
None of this is especially damning for politicians, of course. People with ambition are often polarizing, normal well-adjusted people almost never run for office, and every politician finds himself uttering expedient rhetoric. What’s remarkable about Romney: A Reckoning is its exhaustive examination, and ultimate absolution, of Mitt’s behavior and motives while extending comparatively no grace to a cavalcade of politicians Romney singles out.
And it is an overly generous assumption that Romney deserves to be excused for a great many things. For instance, when Romney ran for president in 2008, he gave a defiant speech addressed to critics of his Mormon faith: “Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world.”
—-
“The Lone Righteous Republican
Elsewhere in the book, it does not spare any contempt for the evangelical leaders who often play a role in Republican politics. Romney tried to play nice with them and obviously never felt welcomed.”
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Sure, let’s keep funding this crap show.
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:O
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Well, that was my attempt at a horrified emoji. O:
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Tychicus – Isn’t it possible that Pence was mistaken but not lying?
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I’ll just say wow. 🙂 No attempt to find a fitting emoji lol
-dj
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https://nypost.com/2023/10/29/opinion/anatomy-of-a-biden-family-coverup-executed-by-our-own-fbi-and-doj/
“Closed-door testimony by former Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week is a chilling case study of how credible corruption allegations against President Biden and his family were covered up by the FBI and DOJ — before and after the 2020 election.
Brady’s testimony fits a pattern revealed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) last week, in which over 40 confidential human sources gave information to the FBI, over several years, about potential criminal activity involving the president, his brother James and son Hunter.
In a blistering letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday, Grassley alleged ongoing efforts “among certain Justice Department and FBI officials to improperly delay and stop full and complete investigative activity into the Biden family.”
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Daniel 2:21 He changes times and seasons;
he removes kings and sets up kings;
he gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to those who have understanding;
Submission to the Authorities …
Romans 13:1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
-dj
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