[PJ] Familiarity, it is said, breeds contempt. It also breeds indifference. For almost three years now, the intelligence services and police apparatus of the deep state have worked tirelessly to undermine Donald Trump. Beginning sometime in the late winter of 2016, when Trump’s presidential campaign was showing unexpected signs of strength, John Brennan‐the Communist-voting apparatchik turned media mouthpiece whom it pleased Barack Obama to appoint as director of the CIA‐began ringing alarm bells about Trump’s possible relations with the Kremlin. His concern was based on two things. One was a report, spurious as it turned out, about "contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians." The other was that brittle sense of entitlement, fired by paranoia, that membership in the higher echelons of the deep state’s nomenklatura breeds.
Brennan convened a "working group" at CIA headquarters that included Peter Strzok, the disgraced FBI agent who was head of counter-intelligence, and James Clapper, then director of national intelligence (now, like Brennan, another mouthpiece for the left-wing media), in order to stymie Trump’s campaign. It was Brennan, too, who first alerted James Comey, the disgraced former director of the F.B.I., to the fantasy of possible "collusion" between the Trump Campaign and "the Russians."
Then came the infamous "Steele Dossier," the agglomeration of malicious gossip about Trump that was surreptitiously commissioned by and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC. This fantastical piece of "opposition research" was essentially the sole warrant for opening secret FISA investigations against Carter Page, a low-level Trump campaign advisor, and others.
All this provided sensational pabulum for the anti-Trump press, who spent countless hours peeling back the complex, hypertrophied onion that the CIA, the FBI, and various figures within the Obama administration had built up to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump without quite seeming to target Trump himself.
[The Federalist] Over the weekend there was a massive march in Washington and other cities to demand new laws, ostensibly on behalf of innocent lives being endangered. That sounds like another giant protest march that takes place once a year in Washington, except this one is being reported coast-to-coast, buoyed by celebrity endorsements, and hailed as the dawn of a revolution, rather than being studiously ignored or downplayed.
It should be obvious that I’m speaking of the March for Our Lives and the March for Life, two ostensibly similar marches advocating ostensibly similar views. Yet comparing the two positions reveals illuminating fundamental differences.
Ownership Versus Action
Of course the most obvious distinction is in the subject matter: one favors limiting or ending gun owners, the other limiting or ending abortion. Let’s consider the two subjects, for here the crux of the matter rests.
Gun rights deal with a person’s right to own a particular tool for a particular purpose. Put briefly, a gun is a weapon; weapons are used in fighting. People want to own guns so if they ever need to fight to defend themselves, their families, or their rights, they can do so effectively. There are obvious and legitimate reasons why they would want this, ranging from violent attackers to civil unrest.
But, although they have legitimate uses, guns by nature are open to abuse. They allow a person with evil intent to inflict more damage than he would otherwise. Gun-control advocates argue the potential for abuse is greater than the legitimate need for private firearms, at least with regards to certain weapons. In other words, gun control advocates wish to limit access to guns in order to limit their potential for abuse.
Abortion rights deal with a person’s right to do or have done a particular procedure. This procedure, by definition, destroys a human life: specifically the human life the people in question created by having intercourse, whether consensually or violently. They desire this because, to one degree or another, the life to be destroyed is unwanted or inconvenient and was not intended to be created.
[AmericanGrit] Gotta love these scientific studies sometimes. The study is important don't get our sarcasm wrong here, it just went on to prove what many of us already knew. It was one of those studies that smack you repeatedly in the face with a "duh doy" kind of attitude. The Department of Justice conducted the study and we bet it pains them greatly to publish the study which proves what gun rights advocates have been saying for decades.
Criminals don't get their guns legally. Duh. No shit. Of course. Well, obviously. Thank you, Captain Obvious. We could go on but for the sake of filling you guys in, we'll move on.
Forty-three percent of criminals acquired their guns through the "black market". Hmmm you mean someone who wants a gun will find a way to get one legally or illegally? Craaaazy. The study went on to say that only six percent acquired their guns from theft, meaning guns are secure in the hands of law-abiding citizens and often their guns don't get stolen.
Not really seeing where law-abiding gun owners are the problem here.
Ten percent were able to acquire the guns from a retail store and that's to be expected when you have someone with no record who is intent on committing their first crime. Hard to stop them, however, only .8 percent were able to purchase their guns at a gun show.
So much for that gun show loophole folks are always talking about.
43% Black Market/Illegal source (Obviously Illegal)
15% Got from family or friends (Illegal)
12% Guns were brought to the crime scene by someone else. (Illegal)
11% Someone bought the gun for them (Illegal)
10% Retail Source (Legal)
6% Theft (Illegal)
.8% Gun Shows (Legal)
If anything. This study shows that it isn't law abiding citizens, rather it's people who choose to acquire the firearm through a number of illicit means, like stealing or through enablers who provide the gun to the criminal.
The world is not perfect, that is certain, however, it is made safer by law-abiding citizens with their guns. Given that most guns used in crimes are acquired through less than legal means, it gives us a solid reason to continue to fight for our rights to carry weapons for self-defense and well you know…that other tyrannical reason. It is never about safety. It is always about control. If they can take most guns, they can control how you respond to tyranny.
[The Federalist] Roe v. Wade turns 46 this year, an age that may seem daunting to a vast generation of young pro-life advocates like myself. After all, we are the first few generations who have only known legalized abortion.
Those who understand and respect the science regarding the preborn have had to live our entire lives with the knowledge that abortion has eliminated the equivalent of 18 percent of the current U.S. population. We’ve had to deal with a sort of "survivor’s guilt," wondering why we are here while others are not.
But as the battle for life wages on, pro-life activists and missionaries can draw inspiration from the generations of civil rights heroes who came before us and made sure that the only thing needed to grant us human rights is our humanity.
The issue of abortion is not over, even as abortion advocates seem to increasingly rely on pushing the idea that pro-lifers should just "get over it" because legislation and Supreme Court rulings are apparently set in stone (unless the issue in question is something of interest to them). For a prime example, look no further than an op-ed from Frank Boehm, an OB-GYN professor at Vanderbilt University: "While many pundits have opined that Roe vs. Wade is sure to be overturned, I believe it will survive and remain the law of the land... Roe vs. Wade has been around a long time..."
It’s convenient, hollow rhetoric that only shows its ugly face when the legislation in question is something the rhetoric-pusher supports. If the social justice and civil rights advocates of decades (and centuries) past subscribed to that mentality, our world would be a frightening place.
#2
NN2N - I suspect this is the graphic you attempted to post in #1. If not, please advise. We pray for our families here, and you are now family. Thank you for your comment.
#3
I remember an old black and white movie that had several children gathered about to be born. I will be a lawyer. I will be a diplomat. I will a mother. I will be an athlete. One deponent child said I will be killed. I could have been somebody but I will never have that chance. It was a great movie. The memory of a child's death lingers on for a lifetime for the man or woman. Then to the grave.
#4
Well, some states entered the union already 'Free'. There was no 224 years. That was the big stumbling block for the slave states till an ugly compromise was reached. Same with the abortion issue, its something that should have been in the 10th Amendment category, but SCOTUS decided to accumulate and expand its power.
[Breitbart] The latest tracking poll from IBD/TIPP finds that "public disdain for Russia probe intensifies [as] Trump approval climbs." Some might say, he was one of the founding fathers of satirical irony, the late Gahan Wilson.
This nationwide survey of 903 adults finds that despite a government shutdown for which the anti-Trump media is blaming President Trump, the president’s job approval rating jumped two points above last month, from 40 percent to 42 percent, with 54 percent saying they disapprove.
Though 54 percent of the public disapproves of how Trump is doing his job, 51 percent agree that "the president’s opponents are using the ongoing special counsel investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion as a way to delegitimize the 2016 election."
#3
Trump has proved:
...that money doesn't actually win elections
...the left can't control the narrative and public opinion no matter how much time and money they throw at the effort
#4
How hard will the Democratic Party try to manufacture a "perjury trap" for Trump and his associates? Probably very, very hard. I would expect the crescendo to reach its peak next spring at the start of the 2-year election cycle.
Here's an interesting perspective from a once powerful European media baron, that is no less interesting because he is a Canadian* ...and if you know nothing about the EU, his one-two paragraph apothegm is ALL you need to know about it.
[National Post] Almost indiscernible in the endless tumult about President Donald Trump is the objective return of American might, right on our doorstep. A casual sampler of the Canadian, and even the American, media, might think that the United States was so far along in its decline that the entire process of government and normal public discourse had broken down in that country, and that the much-discussed process of national decline was accelerating in a climate of virtual chaos.
In fact, the economy of the United States is astoundingly strong: full employment, an expanding work force, negligible inflation and about three per cent economic growth. And it is a broad economic recovery, not based on service industries as in the United Kingdom (where London handles most of Europe’s financial industry, while most of British industry has fled), and not based largely on the fluctuating resources markets as has often been Canada’s experience. In the eight years of president Obama, the United States lost 219,000 manufacturing jobs; in the two years of Trump, the country has added 477,000 manufacturing jobs. This was not supposed to be possible, and this time, unlike in the great Reagan boom, it cannot be dismissed by the left (and it was false in the eighties) as a profusion of "hamburger flippers, dry cleaners and people delivering pizza," (all necessary occupations).
It is clear that China is feeling the heat of American tariffs. Their magnificent hypocrisy of gamboling in a $360-billion trade surplus with the United States while extorting technology from American companies and reducing American high-tech giants like Apple and Google to snivelling on China’s behalf when their sales in that country are reduced, and all the while leading G-77 in cupped-hands requests for relief from the economically most advanced countries for their pollution of the world environment (although China is the world’s greatest polluter), all of it is ending. The United States will not be the world’s premier chump anymore. The most enthusiastic support the United States is receiving in its trade stance with China is from China’s neighbours, from India to Japan. Of course China is the world’s second-greatest power and must be treated with respect, but that does not mean the shameless grovelling of Trump’s predecessors, paying court to Beijing like lackeys kowtowing to the emperors of the Middle Kingdom.
[WSJ] An aide to President Obama boasted to the New York Times about lying and manipulating the media to sell the administration’s Iran policy. Mr. Obama himself proselytized for his health-care plan by saying that, despite mandatory requirements that outlawed millions of individual health plans, you’d be able to keep your existing plan. Nor is there the slightest ambiguity now: His administration deliberately lied to the American people about the origins of the 2012 terrorist attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya.
We could go on. Candidate Obama, in a formal address, explained that Detroit’s financial troubles were due to its large, gas-guzzling cars. This was ridiculous. Businesses fail because of products that don’t make money, not the ones that do. But smart pols know which fibs the media will applaud.
Lying is the other mother’s milk of politics. Political leaders are always making less-than-optimal decisions. They act within political constraints. They are often less concerned with the thing itself than how it might affect the next election or progress on some unrelated priority.
Continued on Page 49
[Ynet] The leader of Iranian-backed Hezbollah hasn't been seen for over two months, prompting many to speculate about his health, which some say has been swiftly deteriorating.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah hasn't been seen in public for over two months, and has been surprisingly quiet about Israel's mission to destroy his attack tunnels, leading many in the Middle East to wonder if something has actually happened to the terror group’s leader.
During his last public speech on November 10, Nasrallah warned Israel that Hezbollah would attack the Jewish state "with all its might" if the IDF were to attack the Iran-backed organization, yet hasn’t said a word since the Israeli military launched Operation Northern Shield, meant to locate and neutralize the terror tunnels constructed along the Israel-Leb border, over a month a half ago.
The 59-year-old Nasrallah also didn’t comment on the Israeli strikes on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria over the recent weeks, nor did he express his opinion on the planned withdrawal of US troops from the war-battered country.
Even amid an unrest on the domestic front, Nasrallah has remained silent. Hezbollah is currently locked in a political battle with Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri, who has been struggling to form a new government for over six months due to the Shi’ite organization’s insistence for one of its politicians to get a cabinet position.
Over the weekend, Sweden-based Lebanese journalist Jerry Maher said that Nasrallah, who reportedly underwent cancer treatment back in 2013, was hospitalized in Beirut after allegedly suffering a heart attack. Maher, a long-time Hezbollah critic, is known for having close ties to Western intelligence agencies.
In the meantime, Iran's al-Kalima news website, affiliated with the Iranian opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh‐who has been under house arrest for the past 10 years‐reported that Nasrallah has secretly flown to the Islamic Theocratic Republic due to the flare-up of his alleged cancer. The news site added that following his spell in the hospital, "Nasrallah held diplomatic meetings with the top security and political ranks in Tehran." The site had to delete the report hours later, without providing a reason.
It is not clear whether Nasrallah is indeed ill, but if he was healthy, he would most certainly have come out publicly to mock all those spreading malicious rumors about him. So far, however, there hasn’t been a single sighting of the 59-year-old and not a word about his condition on the Lebanese media, which only raises even more questions.
Posted by: Chris ||
01/15/2019 6:48 Comments ||
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#2
a dead Nasrallah would result in a succession conflict probably ending in a month or so
a terminally sick Nasrallah, as his condition becomes more known, would be degrade moral over time in the Hezbollah military
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/15/2019 13:16 Comments ||
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#3
Oh well. He'll be forgotten soon. After all...what's there to remember? Just another bewhiskered and carefully manicured dinosaur in the age of mammals who spent a significant portion of his forgettable existence in front of the mirror daily before press conferences.
Posted by: Roger Smith ||
01/15/2019 14:03 Comments ||
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Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/15/2019 5:00 Comments ||
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#2
"A large part of the trans community in the U.S. is being forced to choose between our life-affirming transitions and our Palestinian siblings’ demand for freedom."
Mental illness
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2019 7:05 Comments ||
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#3
Put me in mind of "Life is Beautiful," for some reason...
He sashays his way down the ramp
And stamps through a landscape of camp,
Amused, as the smoke
Of his Jews is a joke
To this libertine vamp with no lamp.
[Guardian] As attitudes towards cannabis shift, the fastest-growing group of users is over 50 ‐ and marijuana’s popularity among seniors is beginning to change the American experience of old age.
Why are more seniors getting high? It might make more sense to ask: "Why not?" As adults reach retirement, they age out of drug tests and have far more time on their hands. Some feel liberated to abandon long-held proprieties.
Elegant vape pens and other attractive, discreet products have helped de stigmatize the drug among older Americans. "Legalization seems to make non-users seem a little less scared of it, and perhaps less judgmental," says Jo, a 56-year-old cannabis user who preferred not to use her real name.
The seniors using cannabis today aren’t your parents’ grandparents. The generation that camped out at Woodstock is now in its seventies. They’ve been around grass long enough to realize it’s not going to kill them, and are more open to the possibility it will come with health benefits. (By contrast, in a survey of one, my 100-year-old grandmother recently said she had no interest in medical marijuana.)
Seniors’ affinity for weed is beginning to ripple across the US healthcare system. A 2016 study found that in states with access to medical marijuana, those using Medicare part D ‐ a benefit primarily for seniors ‐ received fewer prescriptions for other drugs to treat depression, anxiety, pain, and other chronic issues.
#2
At this point, why not?
It's like the ship's doctor in Martin Cruz Smith's "Polar Star", who thought that you should save drunkeness and smoking for maturity, because when the bad symptoms show up, it's too late anyway.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/15/2019 7:17 Comments ||
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#3
There are no 'do-overs' in life, only lists of things we'd rather not have seen by our grandchildren.
#5
I was given to understand it was CBD oil, which does not contain high-inducing THC, that has most of the medical properties. And that CBD is best used as a tincture or pill, not smoked.
#9
@ #5 IIUC, Oral CBD needs to be taken at a higher dose because it's filtered by (and in turn toxic to) the liver. Vaping bypasses the liver and so it can be taken at a much lower dose to achieve the same blood level. That's the extent of what seems to be known.
That being said, IDK if I buy all the CBD_as_cure-all hype. I dearly wish that it was true, but I'll rely on my skepticism and Stoicism for now.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[The Federalist] Over the weekend there was a massive march in Washington and other cities to demand new laws, ostensibly on behalf of innocent lives being endangered. That sounds like another giant protest march that takes place once a year in Washington, except this one is being reported coast-to-coast, buoyed by celebrity endorsements, and hailed as the dawn of a revolution, rather than being studiously ignored or downplayed.
[AmericanGrit] Gotta love these scientific studies sometimes. The study is important don't get our sarcasm wrong here, it just went on to prove what many of us already knew. It was one of those studies that smack you repeatedly in the face with a "duh doy" kind of attitude. The Department of Justice conducted the study and we bet it pains them greatly to publish the study which proves what gun rights advocates have been saying for decades.
NN2N - I suspect this is the graphic you attempted to post in #1. If not, please advise. We pray for our families here, and you are now family. Thank you for your comment. 
[WSJ] An aide to President Obama boasted to the New York Times about lying and manipulating the media to sell the administration’s Iran policy. Mr. Obama himself proselytized for his health-care plan by saying that, despite mandatory requirements that outlawed millions of individual health plans, you’d be able to keep your existing plan. Nor is there the slightest ambiguity now: His administration deliberately lied to the American people about the origins of the 2012 terrorist attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya.
[Guardian] As attitudes towards cannabis shift, the fastest-growing group of users is over 50 ‐ and marijuana’s popularity among seniors is beginning to change the American experience of old age.
