The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Trump Unites Republicans

Posted on | December 19, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

In Wednesday night’s “historic” impeachment vote — the cable news people keep repeating that word, for some reason — not a single Republican member of the House voted “yea,” whereas there were three “nay” votes in Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic caucus: Minnesota Rep. Collin C. Peterson and New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew voted against both articles of impeachment, while Maine Rep. Jared Golden voted for the “abuse of power” charge, but voted against charging President Trump with “obstruction of Congress.” Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who is running for president as a Democrat, voted “present” on both articles.

What does this mean? It means Bill Kristol is once again proven wrong. Last month, the #NeverTrump ex-Fox News pundit claimed, on the basis of “private conversations,” that some Republicans in the House would vote in favor of impeaching the president. Oops.

 

What is the “evidence” about which Republicans “refuse to care”? Like Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters and CNN’s audience, Kristol apparently still believes Donald Trump is a Russian agent who “stole” the election, and where is the “evidence” to support that paranoid conspiracy theory? If Bill Kristol is ever right about something, let me know. He’s got a Harvard education and zero common sense, but I digress . . .

If Kristol was wrong about the House vote, certainly he must be dismayed by the prospects in the Senate, where it would take a two-thirds majority (at least 67 senators) to convict and remove the President from office. That’s in the Constitution, and in yesterday’s phony “debate” in the House, Democrats repeatedly claimed that impeaching the president was about defending the Constitution, which is an obvious lie. Democrats are against the Constitution — they are against freedom of speech, against freedom of religion, against the “right to keep and bear arms,” against the Electoral College, etc. Basically the entire Constitution is wrong, according to Democrats but . . . ORANGE MAN BAD!

 

Contrary to lectures by, inter alia, noted constitutional scholar Maxine Waters, the President’s authority to conduct diplomacy is practically unlimited and, whatever your opinion about U.S. policy toward Ukraine, there was nothing unconstitutional about Trump’s July request that the newly-elected Ukrainian president “do us a favor” by investigating the corrupt activities of Hunter Biden and Alexandra Chalupa. No Democrat ever wants to talk about what Chalupa was doing in 2016, just like they never want to talk about whether President Obama authorized the FBI’s illegal surveillance of Trump’s campaign. To those who have bought into the “Russian collusion” conspiracy theory, any discussion of these subjects is — you guessed it — Russian propaganda, so that Democrats (and Bill Kristol, but I repeat myself) are living inside an echo chamber where all “evidence” points to Moscow, including the evidence that points in the opposite direction. But once again, I digress . . .

Impeachment has united Republicans in support of Trump, and nowhere is this unity more solid than in the Senate, where Mitch McConnell seems determined that the Democrats’ bogus ginned-up charges against the president will get a fair (but brief) hearing before being dismissed with the contemptuous ridicule it so richly deserves. As might be expected, Nancy Pelosi is not happy about this:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Democrats may wait to send their articles of impeachment against President Trump to the GOP-controlled Senate, for fear that they are incapable of holding a fair trial.
Pelosi held a press conference on Wednesday following the House impeachment vote and was asked what would qualify as a “fair trial.”
“We’ll make a decision as a group, as we always have, as we go along,” she replied.
Pelosi was then asked about possibly withholding the articles of impeachment from the Senate until they get certain reassurances, and the Speaker refused to give a direct answer.
“Again, we’ll decide what that dynamic is, but we hope that the resolution of that process will be soon in the Senate,” she said.
Pelosi proceeded to read a statement from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., about impeachment procedure and used it as an example of what she considers to be an unfair process.
“Let me tell you what I don’t consider a fair trial,” she told the crowd of reporters. “This is what I don’t consider a fair trial — that Leader McConnell has stated that he’s not an impartial juror, that he’s going to take his cues, in quotes, from the White House, and he is working in total coordination with the White House counsel’s office.”

Folks, you couldn’t make this up. According to Nancy Pelosi, it is wrong for Republican senators to support a Republican president. This fits neatly into the general pattern of Pelosi’s San Francisco-based belief system, where it is simply wrong for anyone to vote Republican. Her district is 100% urban and the median income is $111,717; Hillary got 77% of the 2016 presidential vote in Pelosi’s district. By contrast, Mitch McConnell represents the Commonwealth of Kentucky with a rural population of 1.8 million (23%) and a median income of $48,375, where Trump got about 63% of the vote. There are more Democrat voters in McConnell’s state than there are Republican voters in Pelosi’s district, so that she can (and does) completely disregard Republican opinions. In her part of California, “Antifa” thugs routinely perpetrate political terrorism against Trump supporters, and Nancy Pelosi refuses to condemn this violent suppression of opposing voices. Pelosi does not recognize the legitimacy of Trump’s election because she considers all Republican voters to be evil. The 1.2 million Kentucky citizens who voted for Trump are wrong, and their votes should count for nothing compared to the 275,000 Californians who voted to elect Nancy Pelosi — such is the cult mentality behind this impeachment. Meanwhile, in Michigan:

President Donald Trump reacted live to the results of the impeachment vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, during an epic long two-hour rally with supporters in Michigan.
“They don’t even have any crime, this is the first impeachment where there’s no crime!” Trump said to the crowd of supporters at his campaign rally in Battle Creek, Michigan after learning that House Democrats had voted to impeach him.
Trump referred to the “very dark era” of history when President Richard Nixon was impeached and said it was remarkable that the feeling this time around was much different.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m having a good time, it’s crazy,” Trump said as the crowd of supporters cheered. . . .
Trump ridiculed Democrats for the partisan vote, even losing support from Americans despite their best efforts to make their case in a series of House hearings.
“I’m not worried. I’m not worried. Because it’s always good when you don’t do anything wrong, you get impeached,” Trump said. “That might be a record that will last forever.” . . .
“I know one thing, Americans will show up by the tens of millions next year to vote Nancy Pelosi the hell out of office,” Trump said as the crowd cheered wildly.
Trump spoke for two hours at the rally, highlighting the work he was doing to help rebuild states like Michigan with more jobs, stock market records, and better trade deals. He also spoke about reviving the auto industry, praising companies like Ford who recently announced a $1.45 billion investment in the state.

Oh, and here’s a little love-tap for the #NeverTrump gang:

Notably, the Trump rally was held inside the congressional district of U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, a former libertarian Republican who left the party over his opposition to Trump and was the only non-Democratic vote on the articles of impeachment.

Yeah, f–k you, Justin. Enjoy your upcoming retirement from office.



 

Category: Constitution, Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Ukraine

In The Mailbox: 12.18.19

Posted on | December 18, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.18.19

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #838
Bacon Time: Huge Win For The Deep State
357 Magnum: The Voices Of Women In Metal
EBL: Aw Crap, This Is Going To Be Bad
Twitchy: BEAST MODE – Louie Gohmert Goes Off After Nadler Accuses Him Of Spouting “Russian Propaganda”
Louder With Crowder: Schiff Speech Interrupted By Chorus Of Boos

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Single Mothers Are The Untouchables Of Western Society, also, A Former Liar Takes Down Greta’s Lies
American Conservative: Rand Paul – Why I Voted Against The Latest Defense Budget
American Greatness: After The British Elections – Making The Anglosphere Great Again, also, #NeverTrumpers Started The Carter Page Smear Campaign
American Power: These Obama/Trump Voters Are Just Trump Voters Now
American Thinker: Is Our Russia Collusion Nightmare All Hillary’s Fault?, also, After Trump & Boris’ Wins – Rectification of Names
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Venezuela’s Maduro To Fold Civilian Militia, Death Squads Into Military
BattleSwarm: The Battle of The Bulge, 75th Anniversary
Cafe Hayek: Behold The Protectionist
Camp of the Saints:  #OUTLAW – On Trump’s Impeachment
CDR Salamander: The Smartest People In The Room Have A Thing For Those Who Aren’t
Da Tech Guy: Report From Louisiana, also, My Vox Problem
Don Surber: What Trump Learned From Watergate
First Street Journal: Saira Sameera Rao Disappears From Twitter
The Geller Report: Police Constable One Of 16 Muslims Arrested For UK Child Gang-Rape/Sex Trafficking Dating Back To 2006, also Antisemitic Boycott Of Trader Joe’s Flops As Israeli Cheese Sells Out
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Crazy People Are Dangerous
Hollywood In Toto: Carolla Dubs Press “Cheerleaders”, Calls Woke Critics “Racist”
JustOneMinute: Moving Quickly Now
Legal Insurrection: Murder Turtle Tells Chuck U. Schumer To Get Stuffed, also, CNN’s Toobin Doubts CNN Poll Showing Double Digit Drop In Impeachment Support
Michelle Malkin: Illegal Alien Drivers – Out Of The Shadows & Into The Voting Booth?
The PanAm Post: How Government Regulation Hurts Streaming In Brazil, also, Drugs, Money Laundering Fuel Venezuela’s Dollarization
Power Line: Voters Want Lawbreaking FBI Brass Jailed, also, Schumer’s Impeachment Moan Throws House Democrats Under The Bus
Shark Tank: FL Democrats Distance Themselves From Medicare For All
Shot In The Dark: You’ve Been Progsplained!
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Bad Visualizations & Bad Taxes
The Political Hat: Twelve Posts Of Christmas, Day 6
This Ain’t Hell: As Virginia Democrats Threaten Gun Bans…, also, A Couple Of Quick Updates
Victory Girls: Not-So-Grassroots “Need To Impeach” PAC Thinks We’re All Stupid
Volokh Conspiracy: Judge Willett’s Change Of Heart
Weasel Zippers: Maxine Waters Continues To Peddle Russian Collusion, also, Pelosi Can’t Explain Why Bribery Left Out Of Articles Of Impeachment
Megan McArdle: The Parallels Between The UK & US Are Inexact, But The Similarities Are Undeniable
Mark Steyn: Great Moments In Post-Christianity, also, On Track For Christmas

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Category: Linkagery

A Christian ‘Cult’ Sex Scandal

Posted on | December 18, 2019 | Comments Off on A Christian ‘Cult’ Sex Scandal

 

How bored are you with impeachment? Well, I put up a post about it this morning and, as of 1 p.m. ET, there were zero comments. On my office TV, members of the House have spent all day “debating” the articles of impeachment, but this is a pointless exercise, because Democrats have already made up their mind to vote “yea,” and indeed, this was all preordained as soon as Nancy Pelosi got her hands on the Speaker’s gavel. Everyone is thoroughly bored by this Ebenezer Scrooge let’s-ruin-Christmas drama, so instead let’s talk about Jesus.

Three years ago, I encountered a blog by a “Christian feminist” (oxymoron alert) who was part of the “progressive” (i.e., partisan Democrat) movement that included the late Rachel Held Evans. This “Christian feminist” blogger had grown up in a Pentecostal denomination, and had experienced an abusive relationship with a “Godly man” to whom she became engaged while attending a conservative Bible college in Florida. Researching her background, in one of my deep-dive expeditions, I encountered some references to various scandals in the conservative evangelical Christian subculture, including Bill Gothard and his Advanced Training Institute (ATI).

The name Bill Gothard was vaguely familiar to me, because my wife and I had homeschooled our children for several years beginning in 1996. Our curriculum was what you’d call “eclectic,” meaning that we put together an improvised hodgepodge from different sources over the years. We are Christian conservatives in a general sense of that phrase, but we were never doctrinaire followers of any particular system of Christian homeschooling, instead just picking and choosing whatever seemed best to us. However, if you’re part of the Christian homeschooling community, you become aware that there are distinct systems, of which Bill Gothard’s approach was one of the more influential. I must confess, however, that I had no idea just how influential Gothard was in the direction of the evangelical movement from the 1970s onward.

Gothard had a particular vision of the Christian patriarchal family (husband/father “headship,” etc.) that he developed into a popular seminar called Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts (IBYC) that later changes its name to Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), within which the Advanced Training Institute subsequently was formed. Gothard’s seminar was basically a slide-show lecture about principles of Christian family life that would, he asserted, prevent children from drifting into the “sex, drugs and rock-and-roll” youth rebellion. Given all the craziness that was going on in the late 1960s and ’70s — the Manson family, LSD freakouts, heroin overdoses, legalized abortion, Jonestown, the Symbionese Liberation Army, etc. — there was a remarkable demand for Gothard’s lectures. Christian parents were scared to death that their sweet church-going kids would turn into teenage homosexual Communists or whatever, and Gothard offered what seemed to be a guarantee of safety against such outcomes. However . . .

“Gothard has never married.”

That one line in his Wikipedia page tells a lot about the scandal that subsequently destroyed Gothard’s ministry and thereby left a permanent stain on conservative evangelical Christianity. There is no evidence that Gothard is homosexual — quite the contrary, as various women allege — but the matter of his lifelong bachelorhood should still raise questions. Indeed, this question was raised even when he was a young evangelist in the 1960s. Gothard defended himself against suspicion by insisting that his devotion to the ministry made it practically impossible for him to take a wife, and there is abundant testimony that Gothard was a workaholic whose every waking hour was devoted to his ministry. Still, common sense would suggest a skeptical attitude toward a man who claimed to know everything about how a Christian family should function, when he himself never had a wife or children of his own.

My guess — and this is just speculation — is that Gothard had some kind of insecurity or inhibition in regard to sex, and this personal psychological problem of his (a) prevented him from ever marrying, and (b) informed his legalistic follow-the-rules prescription for creating the ideal Christian family. Whatever the case may be, the “life principles” Gothard taught were not objectionable in themselves, and I would not hesitate to recommend studying those principles, but in terms of the practical application of those principles to daily life, Gothard’s system seems to have become a rigid and unforgiving legalism. The much bigger problem, however, was corruption and hypocrisy.

Almost by accident, the other night I stumbled onto a YouTube video of a documentary about the Gothard scandal, The Cult Next Door. To explain how that accident happened: I’ve been watching YouTube videos as a substitute for bedtime reading lately, and I’ve always been interested in cults (Jonestown, Waco, Mormons, etc.) and this documentary about the Gothard “cult” popped up as a YouTube recommendation.

 

Let me say this: I dislike the attitude expressed in this documentary. There are satanic forces in the world seeking to destroy Christianity, and one of the methods by which these forces operate is to publicize scandals within the church as a way of discrediting Christianity altogether. One will notice that these satanic forces often claim to be devoutly Christian, even while they ally themselves with enemies of Christianity, and so as bad as the Gothard scandal was — and trust me, it was very, very bad — I am not enthusiastic about those who are dancing amid the ruins of Gothard’s ministry. Nor do I like the characterization of his ministry as a “cult,” because whatever personal failings and abusive practices were involved in IBYC/IBLP/ATI, the essence of Gothard’s teaching was a sincere (if in some way misguided) effort to apply biblical principles to family life. Gothard was arrogant, guilty of sinful pride among his many other failings, but it wasn’t like Marshall Applewhite and Heaven’s Gate or David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. There were no mass suicides at the “compound,” no armed standoff with AK-47s, nothing like that.

What went wrong with Gothard’s ministry was that warning signs were ignored, and previous scandals got hushed up. In the Internet Age, we take it for granted that a major sex scandal will be so clearly documented that, if a Christian ministry had such a problem, everybody would know about it, and so the ministry would be permanently discredited. But there was no Internet in 1980, which is probably why the first big sex scandal involving Gothard’s ministry was somehow forgotten.

Go read “The GOTHARD Files: The Early Years, 1965–79,” which is the first in a series of articles (Part II and Part III) about scandals that should have rendered the Gothard ministry permanently radioactive. Essentially, Bill’s younger brother Steve was using the ministry’s staff the way that Hugh Hefner used Playboy bunnies, sexually exploiting a harem of vulnerable young Christian women. While there was also some misconduct by Bill Gothard in the 1970s, it was Steve who played the central role in that early scandal and yet, despite the Gothard ministry’s emphasis on “accountability” as a principle, that whole mess somehow got buried, so that the ministry continued as if nothing serious had happened. When the homeschooled children of Gothard’s admirers were subsequently recruited to serve as “apprentices” at ATI headquarters, they arrived with no forewarning about what had happened back in the late 1970s and — surprise, surprise! — the pattern of abuse was repeated.

Anyway, I don’t know if you’ll find that interesting, but it’s got to be better than impeachment. Mister Chairman, I yield back my time.



 

Category: Religion, Scandal

Impeachment Day Arrives

Posted on | December 18, 2019 | Comments Off on Impeachment Day Arrives

Today the Democrats will vote to impeach President Trump for . . .

Uh, whatever. Ever since Trump was elected, Democrats promised they would impeach him if Nancy Pelosi ever got the Speaker’s gavel, and today they will keep that promise. The pretext for this was a “whistleblower” — a Democrat holdover on the National Security Council staff — who went running to Adam Schiff with a wild tale about Trump’s July phone call to the newly elected president of Ukraine. All questions about that phone call were answered by Trump through the simple expedient of releasing the transcript. But having worked themselves into an impeachment frenzy over this, Democrats refused to acknowledge that Trump had beat them, and continued stumbling onward.

Yesterday, Trump gave them the back of his hand:

President Trump, in a blistering, no-holds-barred six-page letter Tuesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., lambasted the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry as an “open war on American Democracy,” writing that she has violated her oath of office and “cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!”
“Everyone, you included, knows what is really happening,” Trump said, just a day before House Democrats were expected to vote to impeach him. “Your chosen candidate lost the election in 2016, in an Electoral College landslide (306-227), and you and your party have never recovered from this defeat. So you have spent three straight years attempting to overturn the will of the American people and nullify their votes. You view democracy as your enemy!”
He went on: “You are the ones interfering in America’s elections. You are the ones subverting America’s Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain.”

Did you know that, in its origins in English law, an official who was impeached was usually punished by execution, then drawn and quartered? Impeachment was intended by our Founders to be a remedy of last resort, and by requiring a two-thirds majority to convict in the Senate, the Constitution discourages any such proceeding on trivial grounds or disputed charges. People who think the 1998 impeachment of President Clinton was “just about sex” have not studied the case adequately. President Clinton perjured himself while giving testimony in a federal civil-rights lawsuit brought by Paula Jones, and furthermore obstructed justice by his efforts to prevent Jones’s lawyers from learning the truth about Monica Lewinsky (which was relevant as evidence to Jones’s suit). You may believe, as I do, that the legal precedents in regard to “sexual harassment” long ago went too far, but nevertheless, the law is the law, and Bill Clinton could have settled that lawsuit out of court, but refused. Paula Jones had a right to truthful testimony in her lawsuit, and Clinton illegally deprived her of that right. When the Drudge Report first broke the story of Monica Lewinsky, everyone — and I mean everyone, Democrats included — said that if the story was true, Clinton would have to resign. Instead, as both Dick Morris and Sidney Blumenthal have said, Bill and Hillary Clinton’s response was: “We’ll just have to win.”

So anyone invoking the 1998 impeachment to justify what Democrats are doing now must ignore the obvious objections: If Clinton had settled that lawsuit — and who now doubts Paula Jones was telling the truth? — there would have been no impeachment. If, when the Lewinsky scandal broke, Clinton had resigned, there would have been no impeachment. The reason there was an impeachment was because there was clear and unrefuted evidence (DNA on Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress) that Clinton had perjured himself, and substantial evidence to show obstruction of justice in a federal civil-rights lawsuit. But I digress . . .

What is the substance of Democrats’ case against Trump now? It is simply a dispute over his exercise of diplomacy with Ukraine — a matter of foreign policy, related to corruption that occurred during Obama’s presidency, which is in turn related to the “Russian collusion” hoax that Trump’s enemies perpetrated against him for two years. Now, you may dislike the methods by which Trump endeavored to get the results he wanted in Ukraine, but the idea that this was “a threat to our democracy” (as Democrats keep saying) is ludicrous. They cannot claim Trump obstructed justice, because there was no underlying crime to conceal, besides which Trump released the phone transcript as soon as Schiff and the Democrats tried to make a “scandal” of that July phone call. How is that “obstructing” anything? Because there is no actual crime involved, Democrats have instead made “abuse of power” the central claim of their impeachment, as if the actual “abuse” (i.e., Joe Biden demanding the termination of a Ukrainian investigator who was looking into Hunter Biden’s shady Burisma deal) did not occur on Obama’s watch.

In essence, Democrats are proving the truth of what Trump says in his letter: They never accepted the legitimacy of his victory in 2016, so they “have spent three straight years attempting to overturn the will of the American people and nullify their votes.” This is self-evident, and there is a reason why polls show that support for impeachment has been declined even among Democrat voters, over the past two months.

Democrats have chosen poorly, and we can hope they will soon regret it.



 

Category: Democrats, Donald Trump

In The Mailbox: 12.17.19

Posted on | December 17, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #831
Ammo.com: Operation Fast & Furious – The Forgotten History Of The ATF’s Notorious Gunwalking Scandal
357 Magnum: The Collapse Of The Silver Bridge
EBL: RIP Danny Aiello
Twitchy: NYT Reporter Explains How Reporters Like Her Fell Got “Moves Like Bloomberg” Parody Video
Louder With Crowder: King County, WA Hires Transgender Stripper For Homeless Conference

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Nobody Uses The Missionary Position Any More, also, Podcast #129 – The More Dolphin Kill Tuna Episode
American Conservative: At The Vanguard Of The Anti-Globalism Revolution, also, Thomas Aquinas Was No Citizen Of The World
American Greatness: ICE Director Confirms 13,000 Criminal Illegals Roam Free Because of “Sanctuaries”
American Power: Realignment – A Tectonic Demographic Shift Is Underway
American Thinker: The Ground Zero Mosque Project Is Back
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: The History Of Socialism – GULAG Camps In The Soviet Union (1928-1953)
Baldilocks: California Transformed Part II – The Left Pushes Out The Middle Class
BattleSwarm: Tory Landslide, Corbyn’s Failure, & The American Left, also, Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update
Cafe Hayek: The Environmental Creed
CDR Salamander: Going Sideways In Afghanistan & Iraq
Da Tech Guy: Northam Can Order The VA Guard Around, also, Trump Impeachment Leads The List Of Legendary Flops
Don Surber: Discovery Would Make Impeachment Hurt
First Street Journal: Matriculating At Harvard Doesn’t Mean You’re Smart
The Geller Report: At Least Six Killed In India As Muslims Riot Against New Immigration Law, also, PM Zoolander Wants “Significant Penalties” For Social Media “Hate Speech”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Deb Frisch – Again
Hollywood In Toto: Why Rude, Crude Bad Santa Nails That Christmas Spirit, also, Everyone Hates Uber Woke, Empowering Black Christmas
JustOneMinute: On The Warpath
Legal Insurrection: Occasional Cortex Complains She Has Too Many Health Plans To Choose From, also, Anti-Impeachment Protesters Disrupt Schiff’s Appearance At Armenian Genocide Event
The PanAm Post: Trump Rejects Alleged Venezuela Power-Sharing Agreement, also, Alberto Fernandez Has No Plan For Argentina’s Economy
Power Line: We Now Know – Full Of Schiff, also, Nature Magazine Jumps The Shark
Shark Tank: Democrats Claim DeSantis Is “Suppressing Minority Voices”
Shot In The Dark:  Chanting Points Memo – Let’s Make A List, 2020 Edition
STUMP: Mortality With Meep – Top Causes Of Death (Raw Numbers)
The Political Hat: Twelve Posts Of Christmas (Day 2) (Day 3) (Day 4) (Day 5), also, Happy Bill of Rights Day!
This Ain’t Hell: Schiff & What He Did, also, Chicoms Booted After Breaching US Military Base
Victory Girls: James Comey’s Awkward Tapdance During Chris Wallace Interview
Volokh Conspiracy: Lindsey Graham, Elizabeth Warren, & The Impeachment Trial Oath
Weasel Zippers: Protesters Erupt At Dem Rep’s Town Hall Over Impeachment Sham, also, Netflix Under Fire For Gay Jesus In Christmas Movie
Megan McArdle: The Problematic Implication Of The Peloton Ad That Nobody Is Talking About
Mark Steyn: Cleo From 5 To 7, also, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | December 17, 2019 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous

 

In October 2018, a Colorado judge sentenced cyberstalker Deborah Frisch to four years in prison, but she was released in May on a “hardship parole,” under terms that forbade her to use the Internet for the type of activity that had led to her imprisonment. Alas, Dr. Frisch has recently returned to her familiar habits, spamming out deranged emails, which prompted my friend John Hoge to send this message:

To: __________
Subject: Deborah Frisch
From: W J J Hoge

Dear Ms. __________:
My name is William John Joseph Hoge (usually known by first middle name John Hoge). I operate a blog called Hogewash! (www.hogewash.com) While I have previously written a few blog post commenting on news related Deborah Frisch as part of my coverage of online harassment, I have never initiated any contact with her. Neither has my son William IV or did my late wife Connie.
I note from several of the 72 emails that I have received from Ms. Frisch since Friday, 13 December, 2019, that you are her probation manager. I gather from an email from you which she forwarded to me that one of the conditions of her parole is that she shall refrain from using the Internet to stalk or harass people. I have attached a pdf of a log of the emails I have received from Ms. Frisch over the past four days. . . .
Please direct Ms. Frisch to refrain from any further contact with me.
If it should become necessary, I am willing to provide further evidence or testimony, including personally appearing in Colorado.
W J J Hoge

Did I ever mention that John builds space robots for NASA? My point is that (a) he’s not stupid, and (b) he can afford a ticket to Colorado.



 

Category: Crime

Impeachment Circus Update

Posted on | December 17, 2019 | Comments Off on Impeachment Circus Update

 

How is it “news” that Democrats are impeaching President Trump, when this outcome was determined in advance? Recall that California Rep. Maxine Waters has been leading chants of “Impeach 45!” since 2017. As soon as Democrats won a majority in Congress, impeachment was foreordained. This is what Democrats voted for, and Nancy Pelosi had no choice but to deliver it; anyone who opposes impeachment is racist.

 

Consider this: When the House Democrats announced their articles of impeachment last week, the members making the announcement included three representatives from California (Pelosi, Waters and Adam Schiff), three from New York (Eliot Engel, Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney) and one from Massachusetts, Richard Neal. The Democratic Party leadership, in other words, represents the coastal fringe of the country, and they are attempting to undo the results of a presidential election in which Republicans won the country’s heartland.

Everything else about this story is mere details, and it seems that the American people are as bored with the details as I am:

Support for impeaching Trump and removing him from office stands at 45% in the new poll, down from 50% in a poll conducted in mid-November just after the conclusion of the House Intelligence Committee’s public hearings. Opposition to impeachment and removal stands at 47% in the new poll, up from 43% in November. Support for impeachment and removal among Democrats has dipped from 90% in November to 77% now.

You see that (quite predictably) the actual process of impeachment has proven less popular than simply shouting the slogan, “Impeach 45!”

The media, acting as propagandists and publicity agents of the Democratic Party, are attempting to rescue their pet project from failure. The media represent the same New York/California/Massachusetts interests, but seek to conceal this by manufacturing a semblance of bipartisan “mainstream” support for the impeachment circus.

McSally ‘hasn’t been convinced’
Trump should be impeached

What is this story about? The Associated Press is acting as partisan organization to pressure a Republican Senator on impeachment:

Republican Sen. Martha McSally has not been convinced that President Donald Trump should be removed from office, her campaign manager said Monday after a recording surfaced of her suggesting to GOP activists that the president hadn’t abused his power.
“Senator McSally takes her role as a juror seriously but hasn’t heard anything so far that would lead her to believe impeachment of the president is warranted, let alone removing him from office,” campaign manager Dylan Lefler said in a statement to The Associated Press.
Lefler released the statement after the AP obtained a recording of the Arizona senator telling GOP activists over the weekend that she doesn’t believe Trump abused his power, ending months of silence from McSally about whether she was troubled by the president’s actions.
McSally, who’s one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the U.S. Senate, has repeatedly avoided saying whether she thinks it was wrong for Trump to ask Ukraine’s government to investigate his political rival.
But she was much more candid when speaking to a supportive audience in Tucson on Saturday, saying only the Democrats have abused their power.
She said Republicans want to “make sure that we continue to highlight the abuse of power” that Democrats have committed, “which is the only abuse of power that we’ve seen going on here,” apparently referring to the impeachment inquiry.

What does it mean to say McSally is “vulnerable”?

She was appointed to the late John McCain’s seat after she lost the 2018 election for Arizona’s other Senate seat to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. With an abundance of suburbs, where Trump has lost support among women, Arizona is becoming increasingly competitive for Democrats.

In other words, McSally is up for re-election next November, and the AP’s “journalists” are trying to help Democrats defeat her. You see that this media pressure campaign takes the form of demanding that McSally address the details of the phony “UkraineGate” scandal. Democrats have been unable to locate any actual “high crimes or misdemeanors” in President Trump’s actions — the Constitution grants the president nearly unlimited authority to conduct diplomacy, an area of activity that certainly includes his July phone call with Ukraine’s president — so instead they will endlessly rehearse their “abuse of power” claims.

According to the Democrat/media narrative, the only reason Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate corruption (e.g., Hunter Biden’s lucrative appointment to the board of Burisma) was in order to “steal” the 2020 election by damaging his rival, Joe Biden. While it is far from certain (and was doubtful at the time of the July phone call) that Biden will be the Democratic nominee in 2020, how could it be wrong — let alone “high crimes and misdemeanors” — to wish to obtain the facts? What Democrats seem to be arguing is that any effort to learn the truth about Hunter Biden and Burisma (or about Alexandra Chalupa’s Ukrainian influence operation in the 2016 campaign) is an impeachable offense.

There are questions we aren’t allowed to ask, and answers we aren’t allowed to know — this is the essence of the Democrats’ case against Trump. Everything else is mere details, and as the reality of this impeachment circus becomes apparent to anyone with the intelligence necessary to discern what’s really happening, only the most delirious victims of Trump Derangment Syndrome can take it seriously.



 

Category: Democrats, Donald Trump

‘We Should Have Just Let Him Die’

Posted on | December 16, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘We Should Have Just Let Him Die’

 

According to police in Pittsburgh, after Terrelle Pryor was stabbed by his girlfriend Shalaya Briston on Nov. 30, one of her friends said Briston was acting in self-defense, and added, “We should have just let him die.”

A 6-foot-4, 230-pound wide receiver, Pryor played quarterback in college, twice leading the Ohio State Buckeyes to Big Ten titles before joining the NFL in 2011, when he was drafted by the Oakland Raiders. Pryor subsequently played for the Cleveland Browns, the Washington Redskins and the New York Jets before becoming a free agent after he was released by the Jacksonville Jaguars in September. According to TMZ:

Pryor and Briston have been dating for about a year — and a witness told police their relationship has been “volatile at times” and that Pryor is “always putting his hands on Ms. Briston.”

Does a “volatile” relationship justify attempted murder?

The girlfriend of former New York Jets wide receiver Terrelle Pryor has been ordered held without bail after allegedly stabbing him in their Pittsburgh apartment, according to reports.
Shalaya Briston, Pryor’s 24-year-old girlfriend of roughly one year, was ordered held by a judge on attempted homicide and aggravated assault charges after Pryor was stabbed in the chest [Nov. 30], the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
Briston’s attorney, Lee Rothman, had argued that she was entitled to post bail because of her lack of a criminal record, ties to the community and current employment. . . .
Briston’s attorney cited an affidavit in which a witness to the early morning dispute said she was “acting in self-defense,” the newspaper reports.
“When a man puts his hands on a woman, and she is in fear, she has a right to defend herself,” Rothman said. “We are entitled to bond. This is not a person who is a danger to the community.”
Deputy District Attorney Steve Stadtmiller, meanwhile, countered that the stabbing was “very close” to being a homicide.
“He almost bled to death,” Stadtmiller said. “They were able to bring him back.”
Pryor’s attorney, Stephen Colafella, said his client lost three and a half liters of blood after the stabbing. He remained hospitalized [Dec. 4] for stab wounds after being arraigned on a charge of simple assault, the Post-Gazette reports.
Colafella disputed Briston’s characterization that Pryor was the aggressor during the dispute. Police have said Briston and Pryor were “mutual combatants” during the incident.
“This young lady was not acting out of self-defense or any fear of injury,” Colafella told reporters during a news conference late Wednesday. “This was a situation that occurred as a result of the violent behavior and the attitudes of the women who came to his home Saturday morning.”
Witnesses told police that Pryor was stabbed at the couple’s apartment after an argument late Friday. Pryor went home, while Briston went out with two female friends to a club.
When the three women returned, Pryor grabbed Briston and starting arguing with her. The unidentified women were trying to break up the fight when Briston stabbed Pryor, police said.

Simple question: Who was paying the rent at that apartment?

See, they were living together and, after they argued, Briston went out clubbing with her girlfriends while Pryor went home. Then Briston comes home and brings her girlfriends with her, and so I have to ask: Who was paying the rent? Was it her apartment, or his? Because if Pryor was paying the rent — in a complex where apartments range from $1,405 to $2,660 a month — and then his girlfriend comes strolling in past midnight with a couple of her trashy let’s-go-clubbing girlfriends, I can understand him being angry about that situation. My advice to young women, especially if you happen to be dating a 6-foot-4, 230-pound professional athlete, is that you should try to avoid unnecessarily provoking your boyfriend to anger. If you have a “volatile” relationship, and your boyfriend wants you to stay home Friday night, what do you think is going to happen if you go out clubbing with your girlfriends and then invite them all back to the apartment afterwards?

Far be it from me to defend or justify violence against women, but sometimes violence is predictable, and that which is predictable is also usually avoidable. Like, honey, maybe you should have gone and stayed at your Mama’s house that night and let Terrelle cool his temper. Because it seems like to me, just based on the simple account of what happened here, that you were looking for trouble that night. You brought your two trashy girlfriends with you so it would be 3-on-1 for the showdown with Terrell you had planned, and when that plan went sideways, you grabbed a knife. That’s what we call a felony, ma’am.

Former NFL player Terrelle Pryor is being held in jail after appearing in a Pittsburgh court earlier this week.
It was the first time he’s been seen in public since he was allegedly stabbed by his girlfriend last month.
On Thursday, the Allegheny County district attorney postponed the court hearings for Pryor and Shalaya Briston, Pryor’s girlfriend.
The DA’s office said they need at least another week to gather information on the case. . . .
Briston remains behind bars after her bail was denied last week.

You’re both spending the week in jail. Oh, and a new development:

TMZ Sports has obtained a court document filed by Heinz Lofts in Pittsburgh — noting Pryor and Shalaya Briston “violated rules and regulations” of their rent agreement.
The document doesn’t say exactly what Pryor and Briston did wrong but it seems pretty obvious since they haven’t been back to the apartment since the Nov. 30 incident. … you know, when Pryor as stabbed. . . .
In the court filing, Heinz Lofts is also demanding more than $2,200 in unpaid rent and attorney’s fees.
In other words, the document reads as “Pay us and get out.”
Of course, Pryor can fight the attempted eviction — but he might just want to move on with his life.
He’s reportedly made more than $14 mil in his NFL career … so he can probably find another pad pretty easily.

Fourteen million dollars he’s made since joining the NFL in 2011, but his girlfriend thinks she’s going to show him up by going out clubbing and then bringing her trashy girlfriends back to his place? Reckon this “volatile” relationship is over. Attempted murder isn’t very romantic.



 

Category: Football, Racism, Sports, Violence Against Women
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