America may be on the verge of a “horrible civil war” because President Donald Trump criticized a crime-ridden major city that has exclusively been run by Democratic mayors for decades, according to a guest on “Morning Joe,” reports Fox News. . . .
Speaking on “Morning Joe,” chief public affairs officer for MoveOn.org, Karine Jean-Pierre, said that Elijah Cummings “is everything Trump is not” and suggested the president attacked him out of fear. . . .
“He is not a president for black people. He’s not a president for women. He’s not a president for brown people. He’s not a president for the LGBTQ community. He chooses to just double down and triple down on bigotry and racism.”
According to Jean-Pierre, Trump’s rhetoric regarding Baltimore will continue until the 2020 election — which she believes could lead to a civil war.
“I don’t know where Donald Trump wants to take this, but wherever it is, it’s going to be dangerous,” she said. “It could lead to some sort of horrible civil war. He is testing us. He’s testing the democracy. He’s shredding the Constitution. And so, Republicans, the leadership in the Republican Party, need to stand up. You have to speak up. Because if you don’t, you are encouraging this. You are picking Donald Trump, loyalty to Donald Trump, instead of to the country.”
Speaking of “loyalty to the country,” Ms. Jean-Pierre’s parents immigrated to the United States from Haiti, which is even worse than Baltimore. And speaking of a “horrible civil war,” Haiti had one that led to the murder of every white person in the former French colony. More than 3,000 white people were murdered in the 1804 massacre, and Haiti has forever since been a nation based upon hatred of the white man. Not only is Haiti worse than Baltimore, it’s even worse than Detroit!
But I suppose it’s “racist” to mention any of this.
Karl ‘Evie’ Amati in 2015, after sex-change surgery in Thailand.
Karl Booth Amati grew up in privileged circumstances, the son of two senior labor-union representatives, and graduated from prestigious Shenton College in the suburbs of Perth, Australia, with top grades in 2009. Amati moved across the country to Sydney where, through family connections, he obtained a job at the headquarters of CPSU, the government employees union in Australia. Two years later, in June 2012, Karl posted on Facebook that he had “wanted to be a girl for a while now and wants to act more publicly feminine.” Shortly thereafter, Karl began taking hormones, calling himself “Evie,” and eventually traveled to Thailand for sex-change surgery. There were post-surgical complications, and Karl/“Evie” began suffering “excruciating pain,” his/“her” attorney later explained in court, saying Amati “began to experience visions, hallucinations and suicidal and homicidal ideation.” In January 2016, Amati had a date with a woman he/“she” had met via Tinder, but that went badly, with Karl/“Evie” feeling that his/“her” date found him/“her” “unattractive … on the basis she was transgender.” Amati had been drinking vodka and taking drugs, including marijuana and the hallucinogen MDA, and on Facebook in the wee hours of the morning declared: “Humans are only able to destroy to hate so that is what I shall do.” About 20 minutes later, Amati walked into a convenience store, carrying an ax and with a long knife in his/“her” back pocket. Amati used the ax to attack two customers in the store, inflicting severe injuries, then left the store, later attacking a homeless man on the street.
At trial, Amati’s attorney argued that he/“she” should be acquitted on the basis of his/“her” mental illness, but the jury rejected that defense and convicted the ax-wielding tranny of felony offenses that carried a minimum prison sentence of 20 years. However, the judge sentenced Amati to a term that could set the attempted murderer back on the streets in less than five years. Amati has not been a model prisoner:
Convicted axe attacker Evie Amati, who was jailed over an axe attack at a 7-Eleven, has been involved in a prison fight because other inmates want her moved to a male jail.
Amati’s involvement in a prison fight emerged during an appeal against her “manifestly inadequate” sentence for attempting to murder three people with an axe in January 2017.
The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal heard that Amati’s maximum nine-year and minimum four-and-a-half year sentence was “so manifestly inadequate that it is an affront to the administration of justice”.
Crown barrister Maria Cinque told the CCA that nine years was inappropriate for just one of the three attacks, on victim Ben Rimmer whose face Amati split, fracturing his nasal bone, eye socket and cheekbones.
News.com.au has learned that Amati, who underwent gender reassignment surgery in Thailand in 2014, had been involved in fights at the all-female Mary Wade Women’s Correctional Centre since her 2018 trial.
During the appeal against Amati’s short sentence, it emerged that she and a female inmate became involved in a fight after the inmate told Amati she should be in a male prison. . . .
Before the late-night attack, Amati had been on a failed Tinder date and ingested a cocktail of drugs with alcohol.
She’d bought the axe months before and tested it on a couch, and on the night of the attacks heard a voice telling her to “kill and maim … and start the rise of hell on Earth”.
Sentenced in January this year, Amati faced a maximum 75 years in prison with a minimum term of 20 years. . . .
Maria Cinque for the Crown told the CCA last week Amati’s sentence showed “a disconnection”.
“The non-parole period [four-and-a-half years] is only six months more than the indicative (minimum) sentence for the first offence,” she said.
Amati’s barrister, Peter Lange, told the court the sentencing judge had taken into account several unusual features, including the interplay of gender dysphoria, a depressive illness and drug-taking.
Translation: “Your honor, my client is a violent lunatic, and therefore you can’t impose the same sentence you would on a sane criminal.”
During the Civil War, the Lincoln administration suppressed civil liberties in Maryland, where anti-war “Copperhead” Democrats were a majority. Both freedom of the press and the right of habeas corpus were denied to Lincoln’s opponents in Maryland and in April 1861, less than a week after the surrender of Fort Sumter, there was a riot in the streets of Baltimore. Hundreds of anti-war Democrats confronted the 6th Massachusetts regiment, which marched through the city to transfer between railroad lines on their way to Washington, D.C. Attacked by the mob — throwing bricks and firing pistols — the troops opened fire.
Four soldiers and 12 civilians were killed. Among the wounded was a recent Georgetown graduate, Francis X. Ward, whose friend and former classmate James Ryder Randall, a Baltimore native, was inspired to write a poem urging Marylanders to resist the “despot” Lincoln:
The despot’s heel is on thy shore, Maryland! His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland! Avenge the patriotic gore That flecked the streets of Baltimore, And be the battle queen of yore, Maryland! My Maryland!
Well, a Republican president has some thoughts about Baltimore:
Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States. No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!
Elijah Cummings spends all of his time trying to hurt innocent people through “Oversight.” He does NOTHING for his very poor, very dangerous and very badly run district! Take a look…. #BlacksForTrump2020https://t.co/seNVESZUht
More trash. More concerned residents. People live in the home with the silver van. This is @RepCummings district. This has nothing to do with race. Let us all pray the city removes the trash & install cameras to catch the individuals dumping on the property. #WestBaltimorepic.twitter.com/CCaRH5c0aO
….a look, the facts speak far louder than words! The Democrats always play the Race Card, when in fact they have done so little for our Nation’s great African American people. Now, lowest unemployment in U.S. history, and only getting better. Elijah Cummings has failed badly!
Noting that Rep. Elijah Cummings, a top House Democrat and leader of the impeachment caucus, represents the crime-ridden mess that is Baltimore, President Trump launched an attack that is being called “racist” by Democrats, but which is the first time in my memory a top Republican has called attention to how Democrat-run cities are a nightmare. The war of words over Baltimore is not one that Trump can lose, simply because the facts are indisputable.
Normally, I ignore church scandals, but the apostasy of Josh Harris hurts at a personal level. My wife and I began homeschooling our children in 1996, and so we were — indirectly, but in a real way — part of the same Christian community that produced Josh. When we lived in Gaithersburg, my wife and daughter attended a weekend women’s conference at Covenant Life Church, where he was youth minister before becoming senior pastor, replacing C.J. Mahaney. Some commentary about Josh’s apostasy suggests that it was somehow a predictable sequel of the child-abuse scandal that hit Mahaney’s Sovereign Grace Ministries in 2011. However, I was more reminded of the downfall of Doug Phillips, an eminent figure in Christian homeschooling who was destroyed by a 2014 sex scandal. Christian leaders who make themselves national spokesmen for an ethos of sexual purity are, necessarily, forfeiting their privacy and exposing themselves to destruction if they stray from the narrow path. Paula Bolyard summarizes feelings I share:
Many Christians (homeschoolers, in particular) are familiar with the Harris family — Josh’s mother and father, Gregg and Sono Harris, were pioneers in the Christian homeschooling movement of the ’80s and ’90s and Josh’s book advocating the view that dating should be avoided in favor of a courtship model sold more than a million copies . . . Many of us were understandably shocked and disappointed by Harris’ apostasy (the Greek word means simply a defection or revolt). An individual whom many of us admired and learned from has chosen to forsake Christ and embrace the world — he’s denounced the faith of his childhood, one that he has embraced very publicly over the last two decades. . . .
Besides being a warning about dangers of Evangelicalism Inc.’s celebrity culture, these incidents also serve as a warning about how Satan prowls about like a roaring lion “seeking whom he may devour.” Make no mistake: The prince of this world revels over each and every one of these stories.
Indeed. This son of eminent church leaders, a bestselling author whose message made his name familiar to millions of young Christians, must surely have been a target of Satan’s most fiendish demons, who now dance in delight at his downfall. We have been warned that the kingdom of God shall not come “except there come a falling away first,” and that we “be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled” by such apostasies.
What happened to Josh Harris? Honestly, I don’t know. He quit the pulpit in 2015, and by 2017 was promoting himself as a consultant offering businesses “branding and content strategy.” He announced his separation from his wife in sensitive blue-pill language (they “will continue our life together as friends . . . to create a generous and supportive future for each other and for our three amazing children”). We don’t know what we don’t know, but we may speculate that his wife — who had fallen in love with him when he was a evangelical superstar — lost interest in her husband once he ceased to be a celebrity. The Mahaney scandal must have inflicted collateral damage on Josh’s reputation and status as a leader, and what is the church to such a Christian celebrity except a source of status, an adoring audience for his performances? Necessarily, the celebrity pastor’s wife becomes part of the performance, playing the role of Perfect Christian Wife, and what happens when the show is over? What happens when the pastor leaves the pulpit and there is no longer an audience for this performance?
Maybe Josh Harris could learn something from Rollo Tomassi, but as I say, we don’t know what we don’t know. In his Instagram apostasy announcement, Josh Harris went out of his way to apologize to “the LGBTQ+ community.” My hunch is that this was not a coincidence, but I’ll avoid sharing my other hunches about the significance of this.
There are probably many lessons to be learned here, but I’ll skip the didactic approach and simply mourn Josh Harris’s apostasy.
It’s Canadian Teen Drama Starlet Week here at Rule 5 Sunday, which is why we’re wishing Victoria Baldessara of The Next Step happy birthday. She’s been a regular on the show for six seasons, playing a member of a competition school dance troupe, with all the drama that entails. Baldessara has also participated in the show’s concert tours. I guess it’s pretty popular; Wikipee claims it’s been renewed for 78 more seasons, but that’s probably a typo. Here she is, looking very mature in a white bikini.
