The usual suspects

I’d wager that among those who pay attention to the goings-on in Mordor D.C., exactly nobody was surprised at the alleged Republicans who voted “sure… it’s Constitutional to hold trial on an impeachment of a president who’s no longer even in office.” But in case you missed it, here’s the rogues gallery:

• Sen. Susan Collins of Maine
• Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana
• Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
• Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah
• Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska
• Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania

Spineless, sniveling, craven sellouts, every one. Romney is perhaps the most self-justifying and sanctimonious of the bunch, but it should never be forgotten he asked Trump to support his political comeback in 2018… and then promptly did all he could in the Senate to spit in his face thereafter. As for Murkowski, in this photo she embodies how well the establishment GOP stands up to the Democrats like Dianne Feinstein.

Several State and county GOP entities have voted to “censure” their respective Congresscritter for this vote. I’m sure they’re all crying their eyes out at the ignominy of it all. (That was sarcasm, in case it wasn’t obvious.) Those gestures mean nothing unless the GOP apparatus follows through with not supporting their next re-election campaign. Collins, Cassidy and Sasse just won re-election in 2020, so those three have a full six years to grease palms and have people forget their outrage before their next challenge (see how this works?).

This is where We the People come in. We simply have to have long memories and a willingness to get these swamp creatures out of their comfy perches in Congress. The anger we feel right now over the election fraud and subsequent unconstitutional “impeachment?” While we can’t dwell on it every day between now and the next election, we need to find a way to remind ourselves in 2, 4 and 6 years, that these people have to go.

This has always been necessary. We’ve just forgotten to maintain such vigilance, and that’s why we’re where we are. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” Evil never sleeps.

What propagandists look like

They’ll cover the Hunter Biden saga now that the election is over. That way, nobody can accuse them of ignoring it or covering it up… now that the election is over.

All or nothing

The Democrats insist on dragging out the impeachment circus as long as possible by calling for witnesses that should have been heard by the House if they were so important to the case.  Naturally, the RINOs* (Sen. Romney, Sen. Collins, and Sen. Murkowski) are only too happy to help the “stupid party” prove once again it rarely knows how to use majority status to effect its goals:

GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine claimed credit Wednesday morning for shaping the initial impeachment procedures resolution to require a vote adding witnesses and additional evidence. A Senate vote on whether to consider calling witnesses and allowing other new evidence is expected as early as Friday.

“I am pleased that I along with Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and others worked very hard to get into the resolution a guaranteed vote on whether or not to call witnesses at this point in the trial,” Collins said Wednesday.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell needs to ensure that if witnesses are called, it’s not a selective assortment designed solely to try to make the president look bad.  No, if we’re going to call witnesses, let’s hear from those whose activity the president was concerned about in the first place:

Even Mitt Romney, the first link to break, has said that he thinks calling witnesses should be reciprocal. That means Joe and Hunter Biden, at minimum. But calling the Bidens in exchange for calling John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney has been rejected by Democrats.

So McConnell’s way out it to force Democrats to reject a witness deal. That way, Democrats are the ones responsible for no new witnesses. It provides cover to people like Susan Collins who may be concerned how voting against witnesses my impact their reelection chances.

McConnell needs to go nuclear. Mutually Assured Destruction nuclear on witnesses — the Bidens or bust.

The GOP has become more politically assertive and aggressive with Trump in the White House, and that’s been a pleasure to see.  I’ve said before that if he does nothing else, Trump’s at least showing the Right how to fight.  That said, there are still plenty of “Republicans” who’d be happy to see the president fail.  McConnell must insure that if the investigation is going to be rehashed in the Senate, that it’s done in full, so that all the truth comes out.

Otherwise, there will be a lot of people like me who will wonder what point there is in handing the Republicans political power at all.  If they fail here, they should expect alternative political organizations to challenge for their place.  And they’ll deserve their irrelevance.

* RINO = “Republicans in Name Only,” for those unaware.  And no, it’s not a compliment.

Showdown

Tomorrow (Wednesday), the House of Representatives will attempt to legitimize their “impeachment inquiry” by holding televised hearings.  Make no mistake, though: this is as much a sham as every other bucket of mud they’ve thrown at the President over the last three years.  It is nothing less than sedition:

Exhibit A: “Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent towards, or resistance against established authority.” (Wikipedia, emphasis added)

Exhibit B: tweets in 2017 by Mark Zaid, the lawyer for the shadowy “whistleblower” upon whose anonymous, second-hand statement this whole debacle of a proceeding depends:

Consider that not long before these tweets, Peter Stzrok and his FBI lover, Lisa Page, were texting about putting into place an “insurance” policy in the case of a Trump win.

And we’re told there’s no such thing as the Deep State.  Right…

These people like to claim they’re acting on some “higher authority,” but what that really means is that they refuse to recognize the authority of the American people, who put Trump into office.  For three years they’ve been trying to overturn an election, and even with the 2020 election less than a year away, their efforts continue.

It continues to be my hope that Trump, Attorney General Barr, DOJ Inspector General Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Huber have carefully uncovered and documented the trail of sedition that has consumed this nation since 2016, and are ready to present their case to the public — complete with multiple indictments, prosecutions, convictions and punishments.  If the source “Q” is to be believed, we’re just about there:

The current controversies, and next year’s election, are a defining moment for the U.S.  To quote Victor Davis Hanson again:

Like it or not, 2020 is going to be a plebiscite on an American version of Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four. One side advocates a complete transformation not just of the American present but of the past as well. The Left is quite eager to change our very vocabulary and monitor our private behavior to ensure we are not just guilty of incorrect behavior but thought as well.

The other side believes America is far better than the alternative, that it never had to be perfect to be good, and that, all and all, its flawed past is a story of a moral nation’s constant struggle for moral improvement.

One side will say, “Just give us more power and we will create heaven on earth.” The other says “Why would anyone wish to take their road to an Orwellian nightmare?” The 2020 election is that simple.

And so is the Congressional circus that will begin playing out on television beginning tomorrow.

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Note to readers: yes, it’s been quite a while since I posted.  All I can say is that it’s a challenge just keeping up with the depths of deception and misdirection being thrown around these days, much less trying to synthesize it into commentary.  Thanks to those who’ve inquired about the extended absence.  Several times I’ve started to post, then thought better of it.  I can’t promise this post marks a return to regular writing.  It was born of a sense we may be reaching a crescendo in the near future.  Pray and speak out accordingly.

How do we honor our dead?

Today – Memorial Day – is supposed to be a remembrance of all those who perished while serving in uniform, defending this nation.  It’s fitting that we have such a day.

But do we really honor our fallen?  This picture captures well the fact that today’s peace is underpinned by yesterday’s carnage:

Would you be incensed if the young man in jeans was wearing a swastika armband?  I’d venture most Americans would.  It would show an appalling lack of appreciation how many of the dead represented in the image died to destroy Hitler’s regime.  But what if the young lady were wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt?  Or if the child were dressed in the uniform of the Soviet-era Young Pioneers, complete with a badge picturing Lenin?

That which can’t continue, doesn’t

The fiscal day of reckoning may be close at hand for the United States:

According to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Debt Management, the U.S. government is just five years away from the point where every new dollar it borrows from the public will go toward funding interest payments on the national debt.

That is the main takeaway from the Debt Management Office’s Fiscal Year 2019 Q1 Report, which featured the Office of Management and Budget’s latest projection of the U.S. government’s borrowing from the public…

Net interest on the national debt has become one of the fastest growing segments of federal spending. When the national debt reaches the point where all newly borrowed dollars must be used to pay this mandatory expenditure, the U.S. government will have passed the event horizon that marks the boundary of the national debt death spiral.

Cities and territories in the United States that have crossed that crisis point have either gone through bankruptcy proceedings or their equivalent, or they have implemented major fiscal reforms that reversed their fiscal deterioration, wherein the best-case scenarios, they acted to restrain the growth of their previously out-of-control spending to restore their fiscal health.

Interest on the national debt is going up quickly for two reasons.  Obviously, the government continues to spend waaaaaaaaay more than they squeeze out of the economy (us) through taxation, adding to the total amount it owes.  More importantly, however, the many record deficits recorded over the past 10 years were done so at historically low interest rates (engineered by the Federal Reserve, which in the process robbed productive citizens of some of the proceeds they would normally have earned through their savings).  Inevitably, those rates have begun to climb again.  It may seem incremental on a chart, but keep in mind that just one percent of $22 trillion is $220 billion.

The Enemy doesn’t get to define us

One thing about the Trump era: it’s caused a lot of people to confront the misplaced notion that Christians are supposed to be all about inoffensive sweetness and niceness, and only support politicians of that variety:

There are innumerable examples of people who are wonderful but unaccomplished just as there are many notable examples of people with serious personal failings who nonetheless have excelled in other parts of their lives: artists, scientists, parents, and even politicians.

And yes, I’m not so subtly making a point about President Trump. His private failings have been made very public prompting some Christian pundits to say that not only do those failings disqualify Trump from office, but they are so egregious as to make supporting him sinful for Christians.

It should be obvious that support for a political candidate does not mean a blanket endorsement of every aspect that candidate’s life. It is merely an endorsement of that person’s policies and an assessment of his ability to perform in office. What’s more, it’s often not even a blanket endorsement of that, it’s a practical decision that Candidate A, while imperfect, is preferable to Candidate B…

The question is, by what standard should a Christian judge a candidate or an officeholder? Part of the answer is that the Christian and non-Christian ought to judge in the same way: what can the candidate do to protect the peace and prosperity of the nation and its citizens? Christians would add that they require political leaders that will protect the right of the Church to worship freely and its members to practice their faith in peace.

If personal sin were disqualifying, who could lead? Christians in particular, for whom recognition of indwelling sin is both a predicate and a sustainer of faith, should know this. I suspect what the Frenches really want is a prophet, a priest, and a king to rule in this secular age, a political leader in which they can invest their highest hopes. But in doing so, they are placing upon liberal politics a weight it cannot hope to carry and are headed for disappointment.  The good news is, if they want a prophet, a priest, and a king, they already have one . . . in Christ.

As a presidential candidate in 2012, [Mitt Romney] was weak and ineffectual, letting Barack Obama walk all over him and run away with the race. But vote for him because he’s polite and he doesn’t curse!  Voters, many of them Christians, decided that the time for beautiful losers is over.

Exactly.  As I watch my country overrun by uninvited invaders, beset by hostile ideologies growing within and enemies gathering without, I am really not concerned with parlor games and political pleasantries anymore.  It’s no exaggeration to say our birthright freedoms are in a fight for their very survival.  In such a situation I’ll take a committed patriot with the manners of Genghis Khan over a manicured globalist who’s a disciple of Ann Landers; a Patton, not a Pope.

And as for Christianity requiring a milquetoast demeanor… our adversaries would have us forget that Our Lord’s example includes such pleasantries as flipping tables, driving people with whips, calling deceivers ‘vipers‘ and children of Satan, and calling down woe on feckless leaders more interested in themselves than in those they were called to lead.  Christ isn’t just the Lamb… He’s also the Lion of Judah.  “Not a tame lion,” either, as C.S. Lewis once pointed out.

So despite his many past moral failings, maybe… just maybe… Trump’s on to something here.  I’ll certainly never confuse him with Christ.  But Twitter aside, regarding the manner in which he is governing I’ll say he is more Christ-like than many of the false-faced Wormtongues who surround him in Mordor.  It’s amusing: the Left always screeches that Christian faith should never influence public policy.  But faced with Trump, who has committed the unpardonable sin of actually trying to govern as he campaigned, the Left — which recognizes no restraints of civility on its own quest for power — is more than willing to use a watered-down, denatured vision of the Christian walk to try to shame people out of supporting him.

I mean it literally when I say “to hell with that.”

The Name they will not say

Can you spot the difference?

I don’t know anyone who worships Easter.  Do you?  Apparently a lot of Democrats do:

Former President Barack Obama, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and several other leading Democrats denounced terror attacks on what they called “Easter worshippers” — not Christians — Sunday in Sri Lanka.

Suicide bombers murdered nearly 300 people and wounded 500 more in attacks on three churches, three hotels, and a housing complex. Many were killed as they attended Mass for Easter Sunday. The government reportedly suspects that the bombers, all Sri Lankans, were members of “a domestic Islamist terror group named National Thowfeek Jamaath.”

Yet Obama, Clinton, and other Democrats — including 2020 presidential contender Julián Castro — could not bring themselves to identify the victims of the attacks as “Christians,” calling them “Easter worshippers” instead in eerily similar responses.

Of course they’re similar.  Satan is called “the Father of Lies,” so it stands to reason he’s pretty good at message discipline in his deception.  In his playbook, Christians can only be mentioned if they’re tarred with nefarious accusations, deserved or not.  Can’t have people sympathizing with them — that’s reserved for minorities and the “Religion of Pieces.”

At the same time, anyone who recognizes the prevalence of jihad and Christian persecution is just some angry right-wing extremist:

As Glenn Reynolds points out:

They don’t want you to be angry, even though they know you have things to be angry about. They want you to be ashamed, all the time, for disagreeing with them about, well, anything. Meanwhile they want to keep their own base angry and inflamed 24/7. News spin revolves around this to a huge degree.

I refuse to be ashamed for disagreeing with people who can’t seem to figure out there are only two genders.  As for anger… Christians are never told in scripture not to be angry — only to be careful that in our anger, we do not sin.  Given how much we’ve had to become angry about since 9/11, that’s increasingly difficult.  At least for me.  I take some solace in this, though:  if this prayer was good enough for David, it’s good enough for me:

The righteous will be glad when they see sinners punished;
they will wade through the blood of the wicked.
People will say, “The righteous are indeed rewarded;
there is indeed a God who judges the world.”

Those who refuse to say Christ’s name today will one day bow at the sound of it.  May that day come soon, both here and abroad.  My waders are ready and waiting.

When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne.  They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”  Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.

Revelation 6:9-11

Boo-frickin’-hoo

Democrats, who profess such love for illegal immigrants, are now upset that Trump wants to give them more of what they love:

“Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only,” the president wrote in a post on Twitter.

“….The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy – so this should make them very happy!” the president wrote in a second tweet.

It appears not:

“This reflects how much policymakers at the highest level of a government don’t understand what they’re dealing with,” [Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.)] said before Trump’s tweet. “When they say they’re going to punish sanctuary states, don’t they understand these workers are needed in this economy?”

If they’re so necessary, then what’s the problem, Congressman Correa?  Why would any Democrat have a problem with the administration placing illegal immigrants in their precious sanctuaries?

We’ve been told for years by these people that illegal immigrants are a net positive. They supposedly commit less crime (they don’t), do the jobs Americans won’t do, and provide valued diversity. The Democratic party believes that so much that they refuse to do anything to stem the tide. The media believes it so much that they run cover 24 hours a day for lax immigration efforts. CNN’s Jim Acosta once quoted the poem on the statue of liberty asserting that it was our duty to allow illegal immigration.

Given that, how is it consistent to now complain that the President wanted to send them exactly what they claim they want? I also think it’s silly for The Washington Post to describe this as “targeting foes,” as Democrats constantly proclaim illegal immigration is a general good. If I give you a something you say is good, no one would say I’m “targeting” you.

Something is off here.

No, we’re on to something here.  It’s the ultimate “NIMBY” (Not In My Backyard): Democrats virtue-signal about bringing in a limitless number of “tired, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free” — so long as they don’t have to deal with them.  That’s for all the rubes in flyover country.

If they were consistent, they’d be begging the President to send buses of illegals to their sanctuary cities. That’s what they exist for right? Why have sanctuary cities at all if not? They aren’t supportive of the President doing that though because they don’t actually want to help these people. They just want to use them as political pawns.

Trump needs to press this issue hard.  Democrats are proving they don’t believe their own bull about the value of illegal immigration invasion.  Time to tear them up about it.

I love having a President who’s capable of hoisting the Left on their own petard!  For all his faults, I look at Trump the way Abraham Lincoln looked at recovering alcoholic Ulysses S. Grant: “I can’t spare this man; he fights!”

Speaking of the Civil War, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note today is the anniversary of the firing on Ft. Sumter.  I frequently wonder these days when and where the next spark will ignite.  The powder is awfully dry.

Hoaxes and hatred

Too many people who want to portray America as an unrepentant hotbed of hatred and racism are willing to fake evidence to try to prove their point:

There is very little brutally violent racism in the modern USA. There are less than 7,000 real hate crimes reported in a typical year. Inter-racial crime is quite rare; 84% of white murder victims and 93% of Black murder victims are killed by criminals of their own race, and the person most likely to kill you is your ex-wife or husband. When violent inter-racial crimes do occur, whites are at least as likely to be the targets as are minorities. Simply put, Klansmen armed with nooses are not lurking on Chicago street corners.

But ironically, as real incidents of racial hatred have greatly diminished compared to the past, staged crimes have been on the upswing:

When the home of Nikki Joly burned down in 2017, killing five pets, the FBI investigated it as a hate crime.

After all, the transgender man and gay rights activist had received threats after having a banner year in this conservative town.

In the prior six months, he helped open the city’s first gay community center, organized the first gay festival and, after 18 years of failed attempts, helped lead a bruising battle for an ordinance that prohibits discrimination against gays.

For his efforts, a local paper named him the Citizen of the Year.

Authorities later determined the fire was intentionally set, but the person they arrested came as a shock to both supporters and opponents of the gay rights movement. It was the citizen of the year — Nikki Joly.

This trend has really gotten out of hand.  The Daily Caller recently compiled a list of 21 well-publicized but faked incidents just in the two years Trump has been in office.  This is slander on a societal scale.  America 2019 is most definitely NOT America 1865 or 1915.  It’s not a perfect country, but I defy anyone to point to one that is.  That we have an invasion of people on our southern border, trying to get in illegally, should underscore that the U.S. is not some KKK-run dystopia of liberals’ fevered nightmares.

Sadly, though, the actions of these liars are threatening to undo decades of progress in racial reconciliation.  Each faked ‘crime’ convinces somebody America is out to get them.  At the same time, it convinces those accused of such actions — usually the so-called “straight white male Christian” — that the press and leaders of minority groups are all too willing to believe the worst about them on the flimsiest of evidence.  Nothing good comes of either result.

There needs to be serious repercussions for those who do this, just as there needs to be for those who make false accusations of sexual assault (funny how little we hear of Justice Kavanaugh’s accusers these days, isn’t it?).  In both cases, hoax perpetrators literally staging an unprovoked attack on their targets.  The penalty for doing so should be at least as severe as it would be for the target if the charges were true.  One could easily argue they should be more severe, if it’s proven someone tried to frame an innocent individual — or group of people.  Only such a deterrent stands a chance of reducing the appeal of “do it yourself victimhood.”  That would require a renewed emphasis on accountability.  Given our track record in that area for, oh, a couple decades now, I’m not holding my breath.

Make no mistake.  The real danger today comes from those who hate what made America the most materially successful nation in history: Christianity, limited government, free markets, unbiased education with free inquiry, and personal virtues.  All of these are under assault today.

How much “hate” does someone have to harbor to want to destroy a society that has learned from its mistakes and in the process offered so much to so many?