The Plot
"A second whistleblower is now considering filing a complaint about President Donald Trump’s conduct regarding Ukraine, the New York Times reported Friday.
This whistleblower has “more direct information about the events than the first whistle-blower,” according to the Times. It’s a claim that, if true, could bolster the credibility of the initial complaint that triggered the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into whether Trump solicited election interference from Ukraine.
The first whistleblower’s complaint, which was released in redacted form to the public in late September, alleged that on a July 25 phone call Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to push for investigations into potential 2020 rival Joe Biden." Vox
————
The lawyer representing this person states that he has "multiple whistleblowers" as clients. Ah! How clever! Are all these public spirited citizens career employees of the CIA? Little birds still twittering in the trees in my back garden tell me they are. This sounds like a CIA conspiracy designed to force Trump from office. The WH and NSC staffs are peopled by some political appointees and a horde of career people detailed from various departments of the Executive Branch; CIA, Defense, State, Justice , Treasury, etc. The lending agency selects the people who are lent. The opportunity for someone like Brennan who still has a lot of faithful followers at CIA to plant a group of informants and operatives in Trump's WH has been evident and remains so.
My instincts and the application of Occam's Razor lead me to the conclusion that there is an "operations room" somewhere that is coordinating the efforts to remove Trump from office in what does amount to a "soft coup d'etat." A fair minded person looking back over Trump's term will see that the attempts to undermine and bring him down began the day after his inauguration and have continued ever since in wave after wave of accusations and press induced frenzies. This cannot be accidental and it will continue through his second term if he has one. Trump is leader of a counter-revolution of the Deplorables. From the point of view of the Globalist Left Trump must be removed and prevented from doing things like packing the federal judiciary with pro-Deplorable judges. Stay tuned. PL
https://www.vox.com/2019/10/5/20900088/trump-ukraine-impeachment-second-whistleblower
********
Married Priests
The Vatican conference supposedly focused on the ecology of the Amazon River basin opens this week. The shortage of priests in that region has led the conference to raise the subject of ordaining married men as priests. The "old guard" of ancients who supposedly spent their lives in celibacy and chastity (doubtful in many cases) are in an uproar about it. The Catholic Church in spite of being an absolute monarchy in structure in fact functions most of the time on the basis of consensus among the "good old boys" at the top of the pile of black, purple and red robed old men. If Francis wishes to make a change that big he will have to act like the successor of Peter in fact, as well as in title. pl
The Wealth Tax Proposals
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have the same two outside advisers to thank for shaping their wealth tax proposals: University of California, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.
Each Democratic presidential candidate wants to tackle wealth inequality by raising trillions of dollars in revenue from taxing the wealth — in addition to the income — of millionaires and billionaires, an idea that is backed up by research from Saez and Zucman.
There are competing explanations for the rise in inequality. Those on one side argue that wealth concentration is natural as a result of globalization, technology gains, and economic growth, which give enormous rewards to the smartest, innovative, and most hardworking people. Drastically increasing tax rates, they say, would discourage innovation and hurt the economy.
The other camp sees rising inequality as unfair, immoral, and a threat to society.
—————
Say what? A couple of imported lefty French professors are the gurus on which Sanders and Warren base their insistence that one's possessions be confiscated as well as one's income? One of them is 35 years old. Well, pilgrims, this may be thought of as a grand idea in Europe but it will not sell well in the US. Americans like the idea of BECOMING rich. Most people want that rather than re-distribution of other peoples' money. A smart Trump would want to run against the Confiscators rather than against Biden, someone who IMO wants to be really rich. If that is what Trump wants he is quite perceptive of the realities of the 2020 election. pl
I have no connections with the CIA and I considered Trump to be incompetent ever since he came down that escalator and continued downhill. I would think that many in the government would agree with me and would have more firsthand knowledge of his misdeeds. So, it is probably more of a consensus than conspiracy at hand.
Many see the income inequality as a big problem and unsustainable. We don’t want the historical remedies, which were the French and Russian revolutions. The good news is that there are important discussions about it.
The Catholic Church, like all major Christian religions are losing members and I have yet to see any real effort to reverse that.
Lars
Unlike you I know a great deal about CIA. I have two medals from them for assistig their overseas ops in specific cases. The fact that you are sympathetic to their campaign to eject Trump from office means little. You have always hated Trump.
A wealth tax is a heavy handed approach, but I think one wants to be careful to not mistake wealth inequality for income mobility. There is lots of wealth inequality in Guatemala but not much income mobility.
From “Why the American dream is easier to achieve in Canada” we see that Denmark and Norway rank highest in income mobility in a peer group, while the US ranks pretty much lowest:
“According to the Conference Board of Canada, Canada is ranked fourth out of 13 peer countries when it comes to income mobility between generations. “If there were no intergenerational mobility at all, all poor children would become poor adults and all rich children would become rich adults” the study says. Denmark and Norway rank highest while the U.S. ranks much lower down at 11th.”
https://www.moneysense.ca/earn/american-dream-canada/
JamesT
We have a more or less permanent Black underclass in the US, although Black wealth and emp;loyment are improving under Trump. I suspect that Norway and Denmark will find that there position worsens in this regard with the massive influx of 3rd World migrants.
I am sure you earned your medals, but the question for you and others who come up with excuses for Trump is: Where is the line that you will draw? Or is there not one? A sizable segment of the population considers him corrupt on many levels and now he will be held accountable, as will his defenders.
Lars
Ah, you threaten me for defending the president. Have you joined antifa yet? In my opinion trump did nothing wrong in his call to Zelensky. As chief law enforcement officer of the US he had the power to suggest an investigation of probable corruption. His WH lawn call for Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens was most unwise and may be a violation of law.
Lars,
“Where is the line that you will draw?”
When you are done siezing what must be siezed “for the people”, like everyone’s 401K and IRA accounts, since that’s where the easy money is, more than a trillion $ worth, where will you draw the line? Besides across my rhetorical throat should I voice protest by voting for someone like Trump?
James T,
Open borders immigration will cure Guatemala’s ills. Just look what it has done for poor black Americans in the democratic cities of the Republic. Or maybe they could go full democratic socialist like Venezuala.
The more fungible one’s wealth is, the easier it is to move away from the thieves. For those who remember OWS (Occupy Wall Street), that little coup fell apart when they started naming the 1%. Too many cosmopolitans too few wasps. Lots of easily moveable wealth. Really frustrating to discover that you have exposed the wrong victimizers.
The most immobile of wealth ( farms, mines, factories ) are easy to expropriate (all it takes are guns and thugs) but difficult to operate … too much like work for the financializing class to wish to be responsible for.
Women by virtue of the Creator’s sense of humour end up with all the wealth anyhow and without having to create any.
Multi millionaire socialists like Bernie and Liz have been with us since the first human parasite gang (first government) claimed an unearned share of Og’s freshly killed moose in return for not killing him.
if you want to eliminate wealth disparity do 2 things and livi9ng standards will dramatically improve BUT of course the political elites will NEVER do this as it cuts into their ability to DISPENSE favors
1. eliminate the federal income tax, it is not needed and never was. all it does is ensure income inequality by allowing tax favors dispensed to those with money already. as a side bar it would dramtically shrink the size of government
2. ENFORCE this long passed law and the cost of american health care would plunge to the earth at the speed of light. it would also gut the medical oligarchs that dominate the health business.
The Robinson–Patman Act of 1936 (or Anti-Price Discrimination Act, Pub. L. No. 74-692, 49 Stat. 1526 (codified at 15 U.S.C. § 13)) is a United States federal law that prohibits anti-competitive practices by producers, specifically price discrimination.
i can go on with specifics but this is enough to get the ball started
oh, and LARS if hillary had won we’d be in a serious war already likely with russia as she tries to advance a no fly zone in syria. hillary is among the most corrupt, incompetent and medacious politicans to come to washington in a long time and to make it all farcical she is not too bright despite the media constantly fellating her to us serfs as the most capable candidate to ever run for office.
i suppose she must look good to those with 2 digit IQ’s that seldom ever read books but, for the rest of us higher to the right on the bell curve it was SHE… that was in fact…. deplorable!
Y’know, Biden isn’t really “the candidate” at present, but simply an aspirant. So why is it a big deal if in a phone call Trump suggests some sort of Douchebaggery on Biden’s part was in play with the deal involving the sinecure for his cokehead son? And furthermore, it seems to me that Trump would relish having Biden, the eternal weak sister, as his opponent in next year’s election. So, the idea that this is a campaign tactic by Trump, to me just doesn’t pencil out. As for the WH lawn thing? Injudicious maybe, but I’d like to hear a cogent explanation of why it’s a violation of law.
How is asking for what behavior you will accept from Trump a threat? I am just curious. As you know I have not changed my opinion of him, since I considered him unfit for office before he took the oath that he has violated. It may be an uncomfortable question, but it is valid.
The Catholic Church and other mainstream Christian churches are indeed losing members, but to the growing Evangelical movement, often homegrown, across the world, in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. While some immigrants to the US, like Koreans, may well have adopted this faith before arriving, many others, especially from Latin America, were attracted to this new faith in their early days in the US, when these groups ministered to them, and with clerics who spoke their languages. The Catholic church oligarchy is busy doing what? The story of the corrupt Archbishop in West Virginia living the good life with church money while closing parochial schools is more their style. Francis would do well to reach beyond them to the younger Catholics who seek change. Not only do we need married priests, but more empowerment of lay parishioners at the local level and focus on the well-being of their neighbors.
I’m probably stating the obvious, but it seems to me that the impeachment inquiry is suspiciously timed to preempt the release of the inspector general’s report of Obama administration FISA warrant abuse.
And while IG Michael Horowitz appears to be a democratic party contributor and supporter, it will be very difficult for him to hide the fact that the FBI obtained warrants to spy on members of the Trump campaign illegally. In other words, the Obama team and their allies in the Intel and law enforcement agencies were meddling in the 2016 with the obvious intent of tipping the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton.
The media seems oddly uninterested in Obama’s role in sabotaging the election and, afterwards, derailing Trump’s political agenda.
For the record, I was a liberal, before they lost their minds.
What I hear, “the walls closing in, the beginning of the end” sounds like an echo.
I find it disturbing that anyone should find it a good idea that the security services should choose the President. How about Congress and the Senate? How about the dog catcher? Soon the security services will be appointing the politicians that will be choosing who heads the security services.
Well good luck with that.
Larry, Colonel, Patrick,
I’d be interested in your take on Retired CIA Chief of Russian Operations Steven Hall who is now an analyst for Ruskie-gate promoter, and constant Trump bashing network called CNN.
Since the Catholic Church already has numerous married priests in the Eastern Catholic Church, it is a bit difficult to see what the problem is. Marriage was permitted in the early church and it seems that the main objection was that marriage might reduce the church’s accumulation of wealth. That did not occur in the Orthodox Church.
All,
Nancy has the majority in the House. 235 members in her caucus. All she needs is 218 votes to send the Bill of Impeachment to the Senate for a trial. This charade they are playing by not having a full House vote to begin an impeachment inquiry is to prevent the minority from having any voice in the proceedings. This is NOT about high crimes. This is an attempt at political decapitation. As Democrat Rep. Al Green said – we need to impeach him or else he’ll be re-elected. Nancy and her posse don’t want the American electorate from making their choice if Trump should have a second term.
The big question is if 20 Republican senators will join all the Democrats in convicting Trump? We know guys like Romney will, who else will join him from the GOP side?
Look at how unhinged NBCs Chuck Todd is here:
https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1179889352693952513?s=20
An attack on democracy he claims. Yet he was one of the chief advocates of the Russia Collusion hysteria wherein the Obama administration used both domestic & foreign intelligence to ACTUALLY INTERFERE in an election. That was an attack on the very foundation of our Republic.
Lars
Do you wish to hold Deplorables accountable for Trump, in what way?
I can excuse Trump a great deal of his unconventional style and behavior for exactly one reason; he was legitimately elected, according to the Constitution, to the office he presently holds. This, together with the huge turnouts at his rallies, is evidence that a sizeable segment of the population does not consider him corrupt and in fact still ardently believe that he has their best interests at heart. Who am I to disagree?
If the Dems can produce real evidence of corruption then impeachment will be appropriate. But what we are seeing right now is a plot to use impeachment as the continuation of democracy by other means – heck Rep. Al Green even said so out loud. The Deep State wants rid of Trump, but last time I looked, in the absence of High Crimes, it is still the People who get to make this decision.
A while back our host came up with a brilliant alternative motto for the CIA; “L’état, c’est nous”. It seems clear that elements in the CIA now want to accomplish regime change domestically. I hope that Trump accomplishes what JFK could not and scatters them to the winds.
Sir,
Can you kindly tell me what specific crimes were perpetrated by Pres Trump say in comparison to Pres Bush (starting an illegal war on trumped up charges in Iraq and many others including use of torture) or by Pres Obama (overlooking the banksters fraud on the American people or starting the illegal Libya operation). So you are willing to give the above two saints a pass, and hold Trump for a higher standards, I am wondering what is this higher standard?
Do you send your Social Security check back to the government every month? Do you refuse Medicare payments for health care? Do you drive on the right-hand side of the road? Do you care for the roads you drive on, repairing pot-holes, painting lines, collecting statistics about dangerous intersections, and enforcing the speed limit and drunk driving laws yourself ad hoc? Do you have a driver’s license? Where do Libertarians draw the line?
Sir
The data shows rising wealth inequality over the past 50+ years. The inflection point being the 80s and a steeper slope since the 2000s.
There are three other trends that mirror the increasing concentration of wealth in fewer hands. One is growth in financialization of the economy, the second is concentration in market power across market segments and third is the growth in the scale and scope of government at every level. Unless we deal with these three issues we can’t solve the wealth inequality problem, the problem of regulatory capture by the oligopolies and the problems of stagnating productivity and loss of competitiveness.
Right now we don’t have the political will to address deep rooted problems as those that benefit currently control the political system.
Former CIA director John O. Brennan, whose security clearance was revoked by president Trump, was given six minutes to talk on today’s Meet the Press program on the NBC television network–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_5Gmulwacc
“….the attempts to undermine and bring him down began the day after his inauguration and have continued ever since in wave after wave of accusations and press induced frenzies.”
Sir
Other than tweet furiously, my perception is that Trump has not fought back. Considering the persistence of the putschists, I would have expected him to have been far more ruthless, aggressive and pointed in taking the battle to the Deep State.
I don’t understand what happened to the CIA. It has morphed from “a university gone to war” to some kind of bizarro globalist socialist anti-American ideals HQ with a neocon twist. Did that happen under Obama?
By all means, impeach him for high crimes. I don’t know what those would be, and neither do you. The Borg wants him gone because he is a disrupter to the established corrupt status quo of both parties. I didn’t vote for him in ’16, but plan to in ’20. Tulsi Gabbard is the only Dem I would consider voting for.
I think this comes down to his motivation. He is not running against Biden’s son, so Hunter should be fair game. Knowing the partisanship which has overtaken the courts, I would be more careful if I was Trump. It would probably also help if this wasn’t the only case of corruption he had asked a foreign leader to help with. If it wasn’t, he should release those records.
Does anyone know when the Dems started investigating Trump? Was it during the campaign? Or the day after the election? Did they receive help from a British
intel operator? Silly me I’ve just assumed all of the lead contenders investigate
the competition.
If you raise the bar for impeachment, you lower the bar for acceptable behavior
According to us deplorables, the economy under Trump has improved in a remarkable way, especially in comparison to the stagnation we felt in the economy under the deplorable Obama administration.
I have been a Christian since I was first introduced to Sunday School when I was five. I was confirmed in my family church, an Evangelical Congregational church, at the age of fourteen. I still attend that church and our numbers have not decreased really.
As for income inequality, I have no envy in my heart over the money of the super rich. I do not lust after their lifestyles or their money. (I do remember a Bible story about the possibility of a camel going through the eye of a needle.) And I have found that I always had good jobs–though I am now comfortably retired–doing work that made me feel competent, capable, and proud. I attended college in my home town on a full ride scholarship since I graduated from that college’s laboratory high school as valedictorian. I graduated with honors and then went on later for my MA and graduated with the Dean’s citation for excellence. I had no debt when I came out of those programs. And I had an actual academic education–not one in which I had to spout Marxist, Feminist, or other sociological blather in order to graduate.
I have been pleased with my two sons’ abilities to grow up, graduate, and get good jobs and then to be able to purchase homes with their wives in which to raise my grandchildren.
The many, many mis-educated younger people nowadays do not have it so good BECAUSE of the leftist ideologies that have ruined our educational systems and brainwashed younger generations into thinking socialist/Marxist blather is brilliant, despite the fact that Marx and Nietzsche are both indeed dead, while the Father,Son, and Holy Ghost still live in the hearts and are felt in the lives of many, many, many people. The only people who seem to have “taken the last train to the coast” (Simon and Garfunkel) are the homeless and the drug addicts who prefer the policies of the leftist, clueless politicians who allow them to exist in trash-filled, rat infested encampments on the West Coast and in many Leftist-run cities.
As for married Catholic priests, I leave that idea to the Catholics to decide. I do know that Eastern (Greek?) Orthodox priests are allowed to have wives. I won’t take a stand on that issue, other than to say that as far as my belief is in regard to that issue it is simply that I hope a person who decides to take that position in any sort of a Christian denomination should take it with the full intent to follow the doctrine of his denomination, as the doctrine is what the congregants are taught is the righteous way to live.
The lefties like to feel they are judging from some higher wisdom, but mostly I feel the only wisdom they think is high is what comes out of their individual beliefs in their own individual ideas of superior knowledge. (I think that would be called “hubris,” especially by the ancient Greeks.}
Colonel
You once made essentially the same point to me about Costa Rica (when you said that they are more ethnically/culturally homogeneous than the surrounding countries). I must admit these are very valid points.
Is it losing or loosening.Cia is fully behind trump in removing zelensky from power,which what this bs ukrainegate disinfo campaign is about.
Stephen Cohen told John Batchelor that Trump’s mistake was surrendering the transcripts. He should have insisted on keeping conversations with foreign leaders private, as is the right of the sitting President.
https://www.unz.com/scohen/unasked-questions-about-us-ukrainian-relations/
Eric Newhill
It was never a “university gone to war.” The first generation were OSS men from the elites. The next generation of leaders were former military intelligence enlisted operatives whom the elites recruited from the services as people who would do the hard work for them. Want me to name them? The present generation are antifa types who have infiltrated the system. They are Brennan and Clapper’s natural allies. You do remember that Brennan voted for Gus Hall?
Lars
There is no “line” in this case. Trmp is not a threat to the constitution. He has done nothing to threaten the constitution. You leftists are simply attempting to eject him from office qlong with your allies in the Deep State and the media, some of them in Fox News.
Re Wealth Tax:
The US had a substantial wealth tax imposed at the death of family farmers, engineers who organized profitable businesses, families who had managed major downtown stores, lumberyards, city newspapers and so on.
The effect of death taxes was the purchase of these family businesses by large investment funds — at fire-sale prices. The purchasers, who had no background in such operations, in turn sold the factories, stores, newspapers etc. to consolidating corporations, which destroyed competition. More often than not, these consolidating corporations then off-shored operations and fired American labor.
What is so extraordinary is that Great Britain indulged in a comparable social experiment from 1890 on. The nation that led the world in manufacturing creativity, became in short order second-tier and could not even manufacture ball-bearings for their defense in WWI and WWII. To purchase these ball bearings and other stuff, Britain nationalized foreign assets of private citizens and sold them in order to buy war materiel.
@Stephen W: “Marriage was permitted in the early church and it seems that the main objection was that marriage might reduce the church’s accumulation of wealth.”
Not so. The idea of forbidding priests to marry was to avoid the passing down of Church positions to offspring – to keep the Church from becoming a family business.
Incidentally, although priests have been forbidden to marry and expected to be celibate since the 11th century papacy of Gregory VII, it is common for priests to live with “housekeepers”, at least to my knowledge of how it works in Quebec. I have it on good authority that in the home for retired priests and nuns at the Seminary are also housed and kept the retired “housekeepers”, which seems just and right to me.
Isn’t it better for priests to have healthy sexual outlets with adult women? Consider the disgraceful alternative which has bankrupted many parishes…..
Lars,
It’s a war of Globalists Vs Nationalism/Populism. And Trump is in the way of the Globalists who wants their Totalitarian Iron Fist Rule over all humanity.
Trump and Putin both advocate Nationalism Vs Globalist Tyranny.
I’m a ‘deplorable’ and damn proud of it!
Nice summary of the Ukrainegate wobbly
https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-allies-said-to-have-eyed-takeover-of-ukraine-gas-firm-for-lucrative-deals/
Regarding Biden
I keep hearing the talking point ‘that everyone, the EU, IMF (and of course God Almighty), wanted Shokin removed because he was corrupt, that this was not Biden’s idea’. Have any of these elite stepped up and publicly said, ‘I wanted Shokin dismissed’? I wish someone in the MSM would ask Biden how he got the idea to pressure for Shokin’s removal, who else did he discuss this with.
Regarding the Deep State
By that I mean the permanent bureaucracy in our Intelligence Community that believes they have a right/duty to enforce orthodoxy on neer-do-well elected officials; not a hidden govt. (IMO they are incapable of governing, they can only destroy).
Their main weapon is, surprise, information warfare, selectively leaking partly true info to a compliant MSM. This is extremely effective. How would a President combat this?
Why doesn’t the President use his power of declassification to either release the full context of the leak or to declassify past operations that the IC would find embarrassing. I would never, under any circumstances, favor releasing info that would harm the security of the U.S., especially for political reasons. My belief is that many things are classified for the benefit of the IC Community. The guy from Judicial Watch said as much.
OT: Sultan Erdogan tells Trump that they are ready to invade NE Syria, Trump says “You’re on your own”.
https://publicpool.kinja.com/subject-statement-from-the-press-secretary-1838832808
Colonel
Ça va brasser dans le Nord de la Syrie!
The sultan is “invading” the NE .
https://apnews.com/456d16ba55284c0f8ab73b0467e02e53
Colonel Lang, This question probably does not belong to this posting, but I was unsure of where to post it, so here goes:
=============================
Colonel Lang,
Does this morning’s announcement of the withdrawal of US support for the Syrian Kurds mean that Pompeo
still maintains an influential position with Trump, and if so, is that good or bad.
I claim no special knowledge of the CIA, but Ukraine is a place that I know well.
Everyone in the Ukrainian government is corrupt, from the postman and the fire department all the way up to the president. Everything there is for sale, everything, everywhere, all the time.
Of course Shokin, the fired prosecutor, was corrupt. Everyone knows it.
In fact, I would not be at all surprised if Shokin were investigating Burisma Holdings simply to shake down the owners. That’s just business in Ukraine. Things have only gotten worse since the 2014 coup.
That said, there is no reason to hire a cokehead failson like Hunter Biden for a $600K a year no-show job, except for the political cover he provides.
And when Shokin was fired – his replacement was just as corrupt, but the replacement left Burisma Holdings alone. The Ukrainians got the message. And as soon as that happened, Joe Biden suddenly stopped caring about corruption in Ukraine. In other words, the political cover (the “krysha” as they call it there) worked exactly the way it was supposed to work.
For that matter, Trump doesn’t care about corruption in Ukraine, either. Anyone who thinks otherwise should not buy bridges. The only thing Trump cared about was getting the Ukrainians to provide him with a stick to beat his political opponents with.
The consideration for Ukrainian assistance was more weapons to use to sell surreptitiously or to butcher the civilians on Donbass with. And Zelensky sounded like he was auditioning to be Trump’s prison bride.
As far as I am concerned, none of the parties come out of this looking good at all.
I think the act of throwing the Kurds under the bus is a prime example of not trusting Trump on anything. It should send a powerful signal to anyone allied with him.
But I don’t think Trump will be around too much longer. He is a real fight now and he has always been a coward, as evident early with his effervescent bone spurs. Being impeached will be like having “loser” tattooed on his forehead.
The difference in my mind is that in ‘Russiagate’ the evidence was a frame up to get Trump impeached. The ‘evidence’ in this particular case seems more in what I assume almost every political entity from the local school board on up in trying to dig up dirt on the opposition. He does not appear to be asking anyone to ‘fix’ the evidence.
The ‘whistleblower’ feels to tale be more in the ‘tattletale’ category than someone at real risk for their job and safety.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/whistleblower-ukraine-trump-impeach-cia-spying-895529/
I live and attend mass outside of Boston. The neighborhood surrounding the parish I and my wife belong to has been repopulated with yuppie heathen couples. Most of the pews are empty and about 50% of attendees at mass are Filipino or African. This past weekend I was out at The Great Pacific Airshow in Huntington Beach, CA and went to mass out there. Wow. The church— huge modern-style— has two Saturday vigil masses and six Sunday masses. The pews were completely filled. Approximately 80% of the parishioners were Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean, Chinese, and Hispanic. The priest’s homily focused on the culture of life and how we must fight against the culture of death that pervades our society. He cited the CCC and St. Pope JPII. As my wife pointed out, you never hear this stuff in the Northeast parishes we’ve attended.
While Christianity— and civilization— is waning in the West it is burgeoning in the East. From Africa to Korea. It reminds me of a somewhat cryptic statement in a talk by Fulton Sheen a half-century ago, where he lamented about the coming decline of the Church in the West and how we must look to the East for the future of the Church.
Does this mean the Empire has abandoned the Kurds again as they did in Saddam’s day? In favor of the enemies of Christendom, the Turks? Also supporting the Turkish expansion at the expense of the Greek Cypriots?
This dog in the manger foreign policy in the Mideast is disgraceful.
Lars,
Darn, Trump won’t get into yet another war in the midEast? How’s that vote in the Senate going to go? McConnell is going to go full Adam Schiff and hold secret hearings with selected leaks curtesy of the CIA sedition ring and complicit allies in the media?
“”taken the last train to the coast” (Simon and Garfunkel)” —
Pretty sure that line was by Don McLean in Bye Bye Miss American Pie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yHTpGog0IY
thanks! was going to post this link myself. taibbi is on the money: the msm’s insistence on referring to this individual as a ‘whistleblower’ is a grievous insult to every genuine whistleblower there’s ever been…
”Where do Libertarians draw the line?”
I find the libertarians extremely simple minded.
They proclaim they want “Liberty” which mean total liberty’ and total ‘moral liberty and the poor things think this no government or hardly any government interference in their ‘individual choices ‘ would result in spontaneous ‘forms of order’ that frees them from being slaves of a government.
Too bad there isn’t a time machine that can send them back to the Wild Wild West.
Fred
Do you have any idea what Operation PBSUCCESS was and how its “so called success” is responsible for a large percentage of the illegals currently flooding into the US?
“…none of the parties come out of this looking good at all.”
Corruption in high office has become endemic in many parts of the world including here in the US. It seems most politicians and top government officials threw honor and pride by the wayside some decades back and have focused on power, massive personal wealth and celebrity. The Clintons and Obamas are excellent examples of those who spent their careers in political office and then became centi-millionaires in an amazingly short period of time with influence peddling. The revolving door of top officials and general officers with lucrative contracts with companies generating big bucks from government contracts.
This corruption can be seen all the way from municipal government to the federal government and both parties are equally corrupt.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/07/house-speaker-nancy-pelosi-rules-for-impeachment-116th-congress-full-pdf/#more-173125
coincidence i think not meme..
James,
That was 70 years ago and Guatemala does not account for the majority of immigrants to the US. Nice try though. If only people in Latin America had agency to create a society worth living in. Maybe they should fight for their own country’s freedom and we should shut down the human trafficking NGOs that undermine all those societies.
@Jack
Indeed, those are all ramifications of deficit spending.
Perpetual deficit spending requires the issuance of debt.
Paying interest on debt, means that the trend is exponential (i.e. not linear).
Thus, deficit spending begets debt which begets more deficit spending.
As the above dynamic develops, the state must increase fiscal income.
Fiscal policy is brought to bear through legislation.
Hence, deficit spending begets more legislation which results in an increase in the size of government.
As increasing fiscal pressure is brought to bear upon the economy, the cost of living and the cost of doing business increase.
Somewhere along the line, the state begins to pick champions that are the beneficiaries of free money and special status.
Hence off shoring, hence stifling new company creation thereby reducing disposable income whilst increasing the debt burden of individuals.
g
Fred
I wrote “large percentage” not “majority”. I just think it is worth looking at the blowback from these regime change operations/wars, as Tulsi relentlessly advocates for. Iran and the US could be best friends today if it wasn’t for Operation Ajax. Instead, we are allied with the untrustworthy and incompetent MBS against the highly competent (and by the standards of the region) trustworthy Hassan Nasrallah. Terrific.
Total credit market debt grew $3 trillion in the past 12 months. Federal government debt grew a trillion. So it’s a third of the debt growth. Corporate debt grew from $4.9 trillion in 2017 to $9.1 trillion halfway through 2018. Much of it for financial engineering like stock buybacks. Federal government deficits and debt financing are all part and parcel of the financialization of the economy and not the cause. Note that systemic leverage has grown all over the world with China, Japan and EU pushing the envelope. Now none of these debt numbers take into account the unfunded liabilities of pensions and government entitlement programs. GE just froze the pensions of 20,000 former workers. The tip of the iceberg.
I did not vote for Trump, or for Hillary, but I firmly agree with analysis of Bacevich here:
> Honest people may differ on whether to attribute the Iraq War to outright lies or monumental hubris. When it comes to tallying up the consequences, however, the intentions of those who sold the war don’t particularly matter. The results include thousands of Americans killed; tens of thousands wounded, many grievously, or left to struggle with the effects of PTSD; hundreds of thousands of non-Americans killed or injured; millions displaced; trillions of dollars expended; radical groups like ISIS empowered (and in its case even formed inside a US prison in Iraq); and the Persian Gulf region plunged into turmoil from which it has yet to recover. How do Trump’s crimes stack up against these?
> The Great Recession stemmed directly from economic policies implemented during the administration of President Bill Clinton and continued by his successor. Deregulating the banking sector was projected to produce a bonanza in which all would share. Yet, as a direct result of the ensuing chicanery, nearly 9 million Americans lost their jobs, while overall unemployment shot up to 10 percent. Roughly 4 million Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. The stock market cratered and millions saw their life savings evaporate. Again, the question must be asked: How do these results compare to Trump’s dubious dealings with Ukraine?
https://outline.com/x8vgFL