GO BAMA!
Yesterday I went to my ENT and he told me, after I took a hearing test, I need hearing aids. I told him the story about W.C Fields who went to the doctor and the doctor told W.C he needed to stop drinking it was destroying his hearing. W.C replied the stuff he drank was better than what he heard. My doctor said I still needed hearing aids so we poured each other a drink.
And:
Yesterday I had a discussion with one of my daughters who castigated me because my comments were driving my family away. I told her I was sorry and that I understood what she was telling me and I would try to amend because I loved my family.
She replied she knew I oved my family and then asked why I was that way? I said 'I guess I believe my sarcasm protects me from the crap I have to bear for living in a world of liberal jerks."
Now she will not speak with me either. I can't win.
To all my family please know I love you, am proud of you and at expect my hearing aids will help me to hear what you are saying so I should stop nodding my head and smiling.
The only problem with hearing aids, I assume, is they do not improve your ability to look at pornography. In a few months I have an appointment with my eye doctor and I will ask him to prescribe news lens and maybe my hearing aids will help me to hear his reply.
+++++++
Is there a war on domestic terror?
Sent to me by a dear friend and fellow memo reader. It was written by: Vietnam era helicopter pilot who is well educated and a good thinker. You might find it over the top and extreme.
Your call.
He begins:
Remember “ We needed to burn down the village to save it” We are in for a very dangerous time . The technocrats want to kill free speech in a search for some type of Huxley Utopia where all dissent is criminalized and only the “ elite “ will have access to the channels of communication. And you my friends are directly in their cross hairs.
The long ... article below reports coming U.S. government suppression of all meaningful dissent against the American establishment – Big Business, Big Tech, Wall Street and the super wealthy and their allies in academia, non-profits, legacy media and the performing arts (i.e., Megan Thee Stallion). With his own foolish help, they have disposed of Trump who speaking to his supporters correctly said of the establishment, “They hate you, I’m just in the way”.
The New Domestic War on Terror is Coming
No speculation is needed. Those who wield power are demanding it. The only question is how much opposition they will encounter.
By Glenn Greenwald
The last two weeks have ushered in a wave of new domestic police powers and rhetoric in the name of fighting “terrorism” that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first War on Terror that began nearly twenty years ago. This trend shows no sign of receding as we move farther from the January 6 Capitol riot. The opposite is true: it is intensifying.
We have witnessed an orgy of censorship from Silicon Valley monopolies with calls for far more aggressive speech policing, a visibly militarized Washington, D.C. featuring a non-ironically named “Green Zone,” vows from the incoming president and his key allies for a new anti-domestic terrorism bill, and frequent accusations of “sedition,” “treason,” and “terrorism” against members of Congress and citizens. This is all driven by a radical expansion of the meaning of “incitement to violence.” It is accompanied by viral-on-social-media pleas that one work with the FBI to turn in one’s fellow citizens (See Something, Say Something!) and demands for a new system of domestic surveillance.
Underlying all of this are immediate insinuations that anyone questioning any of this must, by virtue of these doubts, harbor sympathy for the Terrorists and their neo-Nazi, white supremacist ideology. Liberals have spent so many years now in a tight alliance with neocons and the CIA that they are making the 2002 version of John Ashcroft look like the President of the (old-school) ACLU.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security website, touting a trademarked phrase licensed to it in 2010 by the City of New York, urging citizens to report “suspicious activity” to the FBI and other security state agencies
The more honest proponents of this new domestic War on Terror are explicitly admitting that they want to model it on the first one. A New York Times reporter noted on Monday that a “former intelligence official on PBS NewsHour” said “that the US should think about a ‘9/11 Commission’ for domestic extremism and consider applying some of the lessons from the fight against Al Qaeda here at home.” More amazingly, Gen. Stanley McChrystal — for years head of Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and the commander of the war in Afghanistan — explicitly compared that war to this new one, speaking to Yahoo News:
I did see a similar dynamic in the evolution of al-Qaida in Iraq, where a whole generation of angry Arab youth with very poor prospects followed a powerful leader who promised to take them back in time to a better place, and he led them to embrace an ideology that justified their violence. This is now happening in America….I think we’re much further along in this radicalization process, and facing a much deeper problem as a country, than most Americans realize.”
Anyone who, despite all this, still harbors lingering doubts that the Capitol riot is and will be the neoliberal 9/11, and that a new War on Terror is being implemented in its name, need only watch the two short video clips below, which will clear their doubts for good. It is like being catapulted by an unholy time machine back to Paul Wolfowitz’s 2002 messaging lab.
The first video, flagged by Tom Elliott, is from Monday morning’s Morning Joe program on MSNBC (the show that arguably did more to help Donald Trump become the GOP nominee than any other). It features Jeremy Bash — one of the seemingly countless employees of TV news networks who previously worked in Obama’s CIA and Pentagon — demanding that, in response to the Capitol riot, “we reset our entire intelligence approach,” including “look[ing] at greater surveillance of them,” adding: “the FBI is going to have to run confidential sources.” See if you detect any differences between what CIA operatives and neocons were saying in 2002 when demanding the Patriot Act and greater FBI and NSA surveillance and what this CIA-official-turned-NBC-News-
The second video features the amazing declaration from former Facebook security official Alex Stamos, talking to the very concerned CNN host Brian Stelter, about the need for social media companies to use the same tactics against U.S. citizens that they used to remove ISIS from the internet — “in collaboration with law enforcement” — and that those tactics should be directly aimed at what he calls extremist “conservative influencers.”
“Press freedoms are being abused by these actors,” the former Facebook executive proclaimed. Stamos noted how generous he and his comrades have been up until now: “We have given a lot of leeway — both in the traditional media and in social media — to people with a very broad range of views.” But no more. Now is the time to “get us all back in the same consensual reality.”
In a moment of unintended candor, Stamos noted the real problem: “there are people on YouTube, for example, that have a larger audience than people on daytime CNN” — and it’s time for CNN and other mainstream outlets to seize the monopoly on information dissemination to which they are divinely entitled by taking away the platforms of those whom people actually want to watch and listen to.
(If still not convinced, and if you can endure it, you can also watch MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski literally screaming that one needed remedy to the Capitol riot is that the Biden administration must “shutdown” Facebook. Shutdown Facebook).
Calls for a War on Terror sequel — a domestic version complete with surveillance and censorship — are not confined to ratings-deprived cable hosts and ghouls from the security state. The Wall Street Journal reports that “Mr. Biden has said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them.”
Meanwhile, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) — not just one of the most dishonest members of Congress but also one of the most militaristic and authoritarian — has had a bill proposed since 2019 to simply amend the existing foreign anti-terrorism bill to allow the U.S. Government to invoke exactly the same powers at home against “domestic terrorists.”
Why would such new terrorism laws be needed in a country that already imprisons more of its citizens than any other country in the world as the result of a very aggressive set of criminal laws? What acts should be criminalized by new “domestic terrorism” laws that are not already deemed criminal? They never say, almost certainly because — just as was true of the first set of new War on Terror laws — their real aim is to criminalize that which should not be criminalized: speech, association, protests, opposition to the new ruling coalition.
The answer to this question — what needs to be criminalized that is not already a crime? — scarcely seems to matter. Media and political elites have placed as many Americans as they can — and it is a lot — into full-blown fear and panic mode, and when that happens, people are willing to acquiesce to anything claimed necessary to stop that threat, as the first War on Terror, still going strong twenty years later, decisively proved.
An entire book could — and probably should — be written on why all of this is so concerning. For the moment, two points are vital to emphasize.
First, much of the alarmism and fear-mongering is being driven by a deliberate distortion of what it means for speech to “incite violence.” The bastardizing of this phrase was the basis for President Trump’s rushed impeachment last week. It is also what is driving calls for dozens of members of Congress to be expelled and even prosecuted on “sedition” charges for having objected to the Electoral College certification, and is also at the heart of the spate of censorship actions already undertaken and further repressive measures being urged.
This phrase — “inciting violence” — was also what drove many of the worst War on Terror abuses. I spent years reporting on how numerous young American Muslims were prosecuted under new, draconian anti-terrorism laws for uploading anti-U.S.-foreign-policy YouTube videos or giving rousing anti-American speeches deemed to “incite violence” and thus provide “material support” to terrorist groups — the exact theory which Rep. Schiff is seeking to import into the new domestic War on Terror.
It is vital to ask what it means for speech to constitute “incitement to violence” to the point that it can be banned or criminalized. The expression of any political viewpoint, especially one passionately expressed, has the potential to “incite” someone else to get so riled up that they engage in violence.
If you rail against the threats to free speech posed by Silicon Valley monopolies, someone hearing you may get so filled with rage that they decide to bomb an Amazon warehouse or a Facebook office. If you write a blistering screed accusing pro-life activists of endangering the lives of women by forcing them back into unsafe back-alley abortions, or if you argue that abortion is murder, you may very well inspire someone to engage in violence against a pro-life group or an abortion clinic. If you start a protest movement to object to the injustice of Wall Street bailouts — whether you call it “Occupy Wall Street” or the Tea Party — you may cause someone to go hunt down Goldman Sachs or Citibank executives who they believe are destroying the economic future of millions of people.
If you claim that George W. Bush stole the 2000 and/or 2004 elections — as many Democrats, including members of Congress, did — you may inspire civic unrest or violence against Bush and his supporters. The same is true if you claim the 2016 or 2020 elections were fraudulent or illegitimate. If you rage against the racist brutality of the police, people may go burn down buildings in protest — or murder randomly selected police officers whom they have become convinced are agents of a racist genocidal state.
The Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer and hard-core Democratic partisan, James Hodgkinson, who went to a softball field in June, 2017 to murder Republican Congress members — and almost succeeded in fatally shooting Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) — had spent months listening to radical Sanders supporters and participating in Facebook groups with names like “Terminate the Republican Party” and “Trump is a Traitor.”
Hodgkinson had heard over and over that Republicans were not merely misguided but were “traitors” and grave threats to the Republic. As CNN reported, “his favorite television shows were listed as ‘Real Time with Bill Maher;’ ‘The Rachel Maddow Show;’ ‘Democracy Now!’ and other left-leaning programs.” All of the political rhetoric to which he was exposed — from the pro-Sanders Facebook groups, MSNBC and left-leaning shows — undoubtedly played a major role in triggering his violent assault and decision to murder pro-Trump Republican Congress members.
Despite the potential of all of those views to motivate others to commit violence in their name — potential that has sometimes been realized — none of the people expressing those views, no matter how passionately, can be validly characterized as “inciting violence” either legally or ethically. That is because all of that speech is protected, legitimate speech. None of it advocates violence. None of it urges others to commit violence in its name. The fact that it may “inspire” or “motivate” some mentally unwell person or a genuine fanatic to commit violence does not make the person espousing those views and engaging in that non-violent speech guilty of “inciting violence” in any meaningful sense.
To illustrate this point, I have often cited the crucial and brilliantly reasoned Supreme Court free speech ruling in Claiborne v. NAACP. In the 1960s and 1970s, the State of Mississippi tried to hold local NAACP leaders liable on the ground that their fiery speeches urging a boycott of white-owned stores “incited” their followers to burn down stores and violently attack patrons who did not honor the protest. The state’s argument was that the NAACP leaders knew that they were metaphorically pouring gasoline on a fire with their inflammatory rhetoric to rile up and angry crowds.
But the Supreme Court rejected that argument, explaining that free speech will die if people are held responsible not for their own violent acts but for those committed by others who heard them speak and were motivated to commit crimes in the name of that cause (emphasis added):
Civil liability may not be imposed merely because an individual belonged to a group, some members of which committed acts of violence. . . .
[Any such theory fails for the simple reason that there is no evidence — apart from the speeches themselves -- that [the NAACP leader sued by the State] authorized, ratified, or directly threatened acts of violence. . . . . To impose liability without a finding that the NAACP authorized — either actually or apparently — or ratified unlawful conduct would impermissibly burden the rights of political association that are protected by the First Amendment. . . .
While the State legitimately may impose damages for the consequences of violent conduct, it may not award compensation for the consequences of nonviolent, protected activity. Only those losses proximately caused by unlawful conduct may be recovered.
The First Amendment similarly restricts the ability of the State to impose liability on an individual solely because of his association with another.
The Claiborne court relied upon the iconic First Amendment ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which overturned the criminal conviction of a KKK leader who had publicly advocated the possibility of violence against politicians. Even explicitly advocating the need or justifiability of violence for political ends is protected speech, ruled the court. They carved out a very narrow exception: “where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” — meaning someone is explicitly urging an already assembled mob to specific violence with the expectation that they will do so more or less immediately (such as standing outside someone’s home and telling the gathered mob: it’s time to burn it down).
It goes without saying that First Amendment jurisprudence on “incitement” governs what a state can do when punishing or restricting speech, not what a Congress can do in impeaching a president or expelling its own members, and certainly not social media companies seeking to ban people from their platforms.
But that does not make these principles of how to understand “incitement to violence” irrelevant when applied to other contexts. Indeed, the central reasoning of these cases is vital to preserve everywhere: that if speech is classified as “incitement to violence” despite not explicitly advocating violence, it will sweep up any political speech which those wielding this term wish it to encompass. No political speech will be safe from this term when interpreted and applied so broadly and carelessly.
And that is directly relevant to the second point. Continuing to process Washington debates of this sort primarily through the prism of “Democrat v. Republican” or even “left v. right” is a sure ticket to the destruction of core rights. There are times when powers of repression and censorship are aimed more at the left and times when they are aimed more at the right, but it is neither inherently a left-wing nor a right-wing tactic. It is a ruling class tactic, and it will be deployed against anyone perceived to be a dissident to ruling class interests and orthodoxies no matter where on the ideological spectrum they reside.
The last several months of politician-and-journalist-
If you identify as a conservative and continue to believe that your prime enemies are ordinary leftists, or you identify as a leftist and believe your prime enemies are Republican citizens, you will fall perfectly into the trap set for you. Namely, you will ignore your real enemies, the ones who actually wield power at your expense: ruling class elites, who really do not care about “right v. left” and most definitely do not care about “Republican v. Democrat” — as evidenced by the fact that they fund both parties — but instead care only about one thing: stability, or preservation of the prevailing neoliberal order.
Unlike so many ordinary citizens addicted to trivial partisan warfare, these ruling class elites know who their real enemies are: anyone who steps outside the limits and rules of the game they have crafted and who seeks to disrupt the system that preserves their prerogatives and status. The one who put this best was probably Barack Obama when he was president, when he observed — correctly — that the perceived warfare between establishment Democratic and Republican elites was mostly theater, and on the question of what they actually believe, they’re both “fighting inside the 40 yard line” together.
A standard Goldman Sachs banker or Silicon Valley executive has far more in common, and is far more comfortable, with Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan than they do with the ordinary American citizen. Except when it means a mildly disruptive presence — like Trump — they barely care whether Democrats or Republicans rule various organs of government, or whether people who call themselves “liberals” or “conservatives” ascend to power. Some left-wing members of Congress, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) have said they oppose a new domestic terrorism law, but Democrats will have no trouble forming a majority by partnering with their neocon GOP allies like Liz Cheney to get it done, as they did earlier this year to stop the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Germany.
Neoliberalism and imperialism do not care about the pseudo-fights between the two parties or the cable TV bickering of the day. They do not like the far left or the far right. They do not like extremism of any kind. They do not support Communism and they do not support neo-Nazism or some fascist revolution. They care only about one thing: disempowering and crushing anyone who dissents from and threatens their hegemony. They care about stopping dissidents. All the weapons they build and institutions they assemble — the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, oligarchical power — exist for that sole and exclusive purpose, to fortify their power by rewarding those who accede to their pieties and crushing those who do not.
No matter your views on the threat posed by international Islamic radicalism, huge excesses were committed in the name of stopping it — or, more accurately, the fears it generated were exploited to empower and entrench existing financial and political elites. The Authorization to Use Military Force — responsible for twenty-years-and-counting of war — was approved by the House three days after the 9/11 attack with just one dissenting vote. The Patriot Act — which radically expanded government surveillance powers — was enacted a mere six weeks after that attack, based on the promise that it would be temporary and “sunset” in four years. Like the wars spawned by 9/11, it is still in full force, virtually never debated any longer and predictably expanded far beyond how it was originally depicted.
The first War on Terror ended up being wielded primarily on foreign soil but it has increasingly been imported onto domestic soil against Americans. This New War on Terror — one that is domestic in name from the start and carries the explicit purpose of fighting “extremists” and “domestic terrorists” among American citizens on U.S. soil — presents the whole slew of historically familiar dangers when governments, exploiting media-generated fear and dangers, arm themselves with the power to control information, debate, opinion, activism and protests.
That a new War on Terror is coming is not a question of speculation and it is not in doubt. Those who now wield power are saying it explicitly. The only thing that is in doubt is how much opposition they will encounter from those who value basic civil rights more than the fears of one another being deliberately cultivated within us.
And:
Healing with hate:
Far-left Biden blasts ‘political extremism’ while calling for unity in inaugural address
The following story is brought to you courtesy of LifeSite News. Click the link to visit their page and see more stories.
After being sworn in today as the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden gave an inaugural speech in which he urged Americans to fight “political extremism, white supremacy, and domestic terrorism,”while hammering a call for unity.
Biden opened his speech celebrating the triumph of “democracy”: “This is Democracy’s day. We have learned again that democracy is precious, democracy is fragile, and at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed,” Biden said.
“So now on this hallowed ground where just a few days ago, violence sought to shake the Capitol’s very foundations, we come together as one nation under God, indivisible, to carry out the peaceful transfer of power as we have for more than two centuries.”
“And over the centuries we’ve come so far. But we still have far to go. We’ll press forward with speed and urgency for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibilities,” he continued.
Biden bemoaned “a once-in-a-century virus that silently stalks the country” that “has taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War II,” as well as “millions of jobs” lost and “hundreds of thousands of businesses closed.”
He went on to list the challenges that the country must meet, in his view: “A cry for racial justice, some four hundred years in the making, moves us.”
“A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear,” he continued. “And now, a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism, that we must confront and we will defeat.”
Biden labeled Trump supporters who gathered at the Capitol on January 6, the vast majority of whom were peaceful, as “domestic terrorists” in a tweet on January 7.
Later in his speech, Biden referred to the “riotous mob” who “thought they could use violence to silence the will of the people, to stop the work of our democracy, to drive us from this sacred ground.”
Biden listed other “foes we face: Anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness.”
“To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America requires so much more than words, requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy. Unity.”
“I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days. I know the forces that divide us are deep and they are real. But I also know they are not new,” Biden continued.
“Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh ugly reality of racism, nativism, fear, demonization, have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial. And victory is never assured.”
“We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors. We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature, for without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.”
“And so today, at this time, in this place, let’s start afresh, all of us. Let’s begin to listen to one another again. Hear one another. See one another. Show respect to one another. Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path.”
“Many centuries ago, St. Augustine – the saint of my church – wrote that a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love. What are the common objects we as Americans love, that define us as Americans? I think we know. Opportunity, security, liberty, dignity, respect, honor, and yes, the truth.”
While Biden frequently touts his supposed Catholic faith, as well as his friendship with Pope Francis, the new U.S. president has made the promotion of abortion, contraception and LGBT issues a crucial part of his agenda, just as it was in the Obama administration when Biden held the role of vice-president.
Biden continued by calling for a rejection of “the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.”
“Recent weeks and months have taught us a painful lesson. There is truth and there are lies. Lies told for power and for profit,” he said.
Biden continued, saying that our leaders are not just “pledged to honour our Constitution, to protect our nation,” but also “to defend the truth and defeat the lies.”
“My fellow Americans, in the work ahead of us we’re going to need each other. We need all our strength to persevere through this dark winter. We’re entering what may be the darkest and deadliest period of the virus,” he continued.
“We must set aside politics and finally face this pandemic as one nation, one nation. And I promise this, as the Bible says, ‘Weeping may endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning’. We will get through this together. Together,” Biden said.
Despite Biden’s celebration of what he has declared to be a triumph of Democracy in this Presidential election, many prominent conservatives have contested the legitimacy of the election.
The Chinese-American media group The Epoch Times recently released a documentary concluding that China helped steal the U.S. election.
China expert Steve Mosher has affirmed the conclusion that the election was illegitimate, saying, “Biden will be president for the next four years, but everyone in D.C. knows who really won the election.”
“On Election Night, the Democrats had to resort to massive fraud in a half-dozen key swing states. If you doubt this, you need to read Peter Navarro’s brilliant account in three volumes,” said Mosher.
“No one believes that, thanks to a massive infusion of votes arriving at 4 A.M., Biden received the most votes of any candidate in history. But, whether because of cowardice or death threats, the fraud has been allowed to stand.”
And:
Far-left Biden blasts ‘political extremism’ while calling for unity in inaugural address
The following story is brought to you courtesy of LifeSite News. Click the link to visit their page and see more stories.
After being sworn in today as the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden gave an inaugural speech in which he urged Americans to fight “political extremism, white supremacy, and domestic terrorism,”while hammering a call for unity.
Biden opened his speech celebrating the triumph of “democracy”: “This is Democracy’s day. We have learned again that democracy is precious, democracy is fragile, and at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed,” Biden said.
“So now on this hallowed ground where just a few days ago, violence sought to shake the Capitol’s very foundations, we come together as one nation under God, indivisible, to carry out the peaceful transfer of power as we have for more than two centuries.”
“And over the centuries we’ve come so far. But we still have far to go. We’ll press forward with speed and urgency for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibilities,” he continued.
Biden bemoaned “a once-in-a-century virus that silently stalks the country” that “has taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War II,” as well as “millions of jobs” lost and “hundreds of thousands of businesses closed.”
He went on to list the challenges that the country must meet, in his view: “A cry for racial justice, some four hundred years in the making, moves us.”
“A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear,” he continued. “And now, a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism, that we must confront and we will defeat.”
Biden labeled Trump supporters who gathered at the Capitol on January 6, the vast majority of whom were peaceful, as “domestic terrorists” in a tweet on January 7.
Later in his speech, Biden referred to the “riotous mob” who “thought they could use violence to silence the will of the people, to stop the work of our democracy, to drive us from this sacred ground.”
Biden listed other “foes we face: Anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness.”
“To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America requires so much more than words, requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy. Unity.”
“I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days. I know the forces that divide us are deep and they are real. But I also know they are not new,” Biden continued.
“Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh ugly reality of racism, nativism, fear, demonization, have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial. And victory is never assured.”
“We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors. We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature, for without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.”
“And so today, at this time, in this place, let’s start afresh, all of us. Let’s begin to listen to one another again. Hear one another. See one another. Show respect to one another. Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path.”
“Many centuries ago, St. Augustine – the saint of my church – wrote that a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love. What are the common objects we as Americans love, that define us as Americans? I think we know. Opportunity, security, liberty, dignity, respect, honor, and yes, the truth.”
While Biden frequently touts his supposed Catholic faith, as well as his friendship with Pope Francis, the new U.S. president has made the promotion of abortion, contraception and LGBT issues a crucial part of his agenda, just as it was in the Obama administration when Biden held the role of vice-president.
Biden continued by calling for a rejection of “the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.”
“Recent weeks and months have taught us a painful lesson. There is truth and there are lies. Lies told for power and for profit,” he said.
Biden continued, saying that our leaders are not just “pledged to honour our Constitution, to protect our nation,” but also “to defend the truth and defeat the lies.”
“My fellow Americans, in the work ahead of us we’re going to need each other. We need all our strength to persevere through this dark winter. We’re entering what may be the darkest and deadliest period of the virus,” he continued.
“We must set aside politics and finally face this pandemic as one nation, one nation. And I promise this, as the Bible says, ‘Weeping may endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning’. We will get through this together. Together,” Biden said.
Despite Biden’s celebration of what he has declared to be a triumph of Democracy in this Presidential election, many prominent conservatives have contested the legitimacy of the election.
The Chinese-American media group The Epoch Times recently released a documentary concluding that China helped steal the U.S. election.
China expert Steve Mosher has affirmed the conclusion that the election was illegitimate, saying, “Biden will be president for the next four years, but everyone in D.C. knows who really won the election.”
“On Election Night, the Democrats had to resort to massive fraud in a half-dozen key swing states. If you doubt this, you need to read Peter Navarro’s brilliant account in three volumes,” said Mosher.
“No one believes that, thanks to a massive infusion of votes arriving at 4 A.M., Biden received the most votes of any candidate in history. But, whether because of cowardice or death threats, the fraud has been allowed to stand.”
And:
https://www.washingtonpost.
++++
Rino's never learn or maybe are incapable of learning:
The RINOs Never Learn
|The squishes are almost childlike in their belief that if they only submit to the Establishment hard enough by offering gooey platitudes everything will work out fine for them, like a kid who keeps hoping that this time Santa’s really leaving a pony under the tree.
But some people on the right need to understand and accept
that there’s no kraken, and others on the right need to understand and accept
that there’s no pony.
The Jeb! Faction thinks it’s riding high now. Please clap as
you see the media elevate them, and why not? They do the Establishment’s
bidding. Liz Cheney gave what used to be her prestige over to Impeachment
II: Electoral Boogaloo and got a lot of praise from the libs for that,
followed by more hatred from the libs. That’s the thing about ostentatiously
showing off your alleged principles whenever they require you to shaft your own
side – the other side is never impressed by your moral purity. In fact, it’s
laughing at you. It’s happy to benefit from your petty treason, but it still
hates you and you’re still practically Hitler.
I know you want to give it the good old Ivy League college
try, Fredocons, but you can never suck up to them
enough.
But Ben Sasse is always down to give it a shot. The Lisa Simpson of conservatism is the guy who reminds Mrs. Worley on Friday afternoon that she forgot to assign the class any math homework. Maybe he can write the same book for the 12th time on his generic moral disappointment with us for not being up to constitutional snuff. In the meantime, when conservatives are actually being silenced by the government/tech axis, he’s writing in an enemy mag about how his own side is icky.
Well played, Nebraska. Here’s a fun test – name a
non-nagging-related legislative achievement of this tiresome bore. Just one.
I’ll wait. But hey, there’s no time for actual concrete results that make our
lives better – Trump tweeted something mean!
And the aforementioned Liz Cheney – what was the GOP
thinking. Besides needing to end this ridiculous dynasty thing, she was all in
with the Bushes, and the Bushes were all in with everyone but you. Where was W
in 2020? Sulking because Trump was mean to his tubby brother. Loyalty goes one
way for all these people – away from us and toward the Establishment swells
they see at the country club. Wyoming, dump her.
But they never learn. Their response to failure is to look
for ways to fail harder. You can already see the wheels turning in the heads of
the poobahs of Conservative, Inc., about how they will try to foist Nikki!
Haley on an unwilling GOP. With her finger to the wind, Nikki! can always be counted
on to try to thread that needle of never actually doing anything for normal
Americans while not seeming to be never actually doing anything for normal
Americans. What exactly qualifies her to be our nominee? She was an adequate UN
ambassador, no Jeane Kirkpatrick to be sure, but not a total failure. And she
was an undistinguished governor. But what’s she done? What’s the Nikki!
Initiative that’s going to improve your life, or keep the Democrats from
mauling you figuratively or literally? Well, she’s got a PAC now, and its name
is just as maudlin as you would expect. It’s the “Stand for America” Political
Action Committee, and its purpose is to “build on this momentum at a critical moment in our
nation’s story.” What serious person babbles this kind of insipid
dreck? And what, exactly, is this “momentum” her deadweight establishment pals
have going right now?
What this PAC does for her is clear – ka-ching!
– and what it does for you is equally clear. Nothing. She’s
done nothing, and she’ll continue to do nothing, except pose and utter insipid
goo about “our nation’s story” and the like. And her poses depend entirely on
who she is standing in front of at that moment. She’s soft in front of the
softs and hardish in front of the hards. And she’s always, always banal.
“Build on this momentum at a critical moment in our nation’s
story?” Who even talks like that? It sounds like Bushmush, the kind of thing followed
by a plea to “Please clap.” Learn from Trump and say what you mean. We’re sick
of this pablum.
But pablum’s on the menu with Establishment darling Nikki!, since her sole attribute is a total commitment to conventionality and conventional wisdom. She will never defy the Establishment; she’s all in for the status quo, because she wants a bigger job in it. That’s great for the ruling caste – a Republican who is not a threat to the ongoing scam. It’s pretty rotten for those of us who they expect to vote for her, so don’t.
The latest hack is new Congressdisappointment Nancy Mace who seems to be Nikki!’s mini-me, spewing the same kind of Establishment-friendly cliches we used to see all through the Bush years. Get this from last weekend when she was welcomed on Meet the Press, but not on an empty stomach:
"I want to be a new voice for the Republican Party,
someone who will help bring us back to our core values of promoting liberty and
empowering people to pursue their own happiness. That's the GOP that can help
bring our nation together. [Flag of the United States emoji]"
For me, the US flag emoji really pulls the whole thing
together, though it really should have been a white flag.
What drivel. Remember how vacuous Bush-era babble about “promoting liberty and empowering people” substituted for actually fighting for the conservative change we needed? If the neighbor on your right just buried a son killed in Wherethehellistan, and the one on the left just saw his job shipped off to Szechuan, and your kid just came home with a school survey asking whether his/her gender identity is “binary, nonbinary, asexual, pansexual, omnisexual, Bulwark staffer, genderfreak, genderbroke, two-spirit, three-spirit, or all of the above,” maybe we need pols who stand up instead of lie down. In the 2000s, this kind of empty rhetoric may have launched a thousand Weekly Standard cruises – Ahoy! – but it will not launch the conservative counterattack we want and need in 2021
And:
The mass media benefited financially from having Trump as their punching bag. Now he is gone so they must pursue him to his grave:
And:
For their interest:
Three Ways the Biden Administration Will Make Things Worse for Working Americans
Breaking: Joe Biden’s Next Crime Spree Revealed By Matt Gaetz
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