Over 75 million Americans are fed up with the D.C. swamp creatures.
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The Creepy Normalization of Bulverism
The standard trope of leftist identity politics is the weaponization of victimhood. Thus, if you belong to a class of people recognized as historically oppressed—such as women, people of color, or homosexuals–then you are assumed to have a claim on people who do not belong to such a class—especially white Christian men.
Republished with permission from Intellectual Takeout
The Creepy Normalization of Bulverism
At some point you’ve probably heard an opinion of yours about morality, religion, or politics summarily dismissed with a reaction like: “You only say that because you’re a _____!” or “That’s just an excuse for _______.”
Frustrating, isn’t it? If you’ve supplied reasons for your position, they don’t tackle those reasons. They just assume you’re wrong and purport to explain, usually in terms unflattering to you, why you make your error.
What many might not realize, however, is that this action is a fallacy known as Bulverism. The name was coined by C.S. Lewis in an essay included in his widely read collection God in the Dock. In essence, Bulverism is a toxic hybrid of two better-known fallacies: petitio principii (begging the question) and ad hominem (impugning one’s opponent’s character without addressing his argument).
For reasons that should alarm critical thinkers, Bulverism has become so common – especially in politics – as to approach the status of a rhetorical norm. I shall explain that shortly, but first a caveat.
Not every criticism that sounds like Bulverism is a fallacy. For instance, if somebody denies a basic principle of logic, such as that of non-contradiction, it’s usually pointless to address her argument because she’s already abandoned an indispensable “first principle” of argument. It makes sense in that case to seek an explanation for her position other than the one she gives, if she bothers giving one. Or if somebody denies a well-established fact, e.g. that the shape of the Earth is roughly spherical, it’s often useless to address his argument and probably more useful to seek to understand his psychology.
But Bulverizing people about their positions on controversial matters has become all too common these days. You know the sort of thing I mean:
“Conservatives only want to rein in ‘entitlements’ because they hate the poor and the sick!”
“Liberals only talk about women’s ‘reproductive health’ because they think killing a baby in the womb is like breaking an egg to make an omelet!”
“You only believe in God because you can’t face life without an imaginary Big Daddy to turn to!”
“You only disbelieve in God because you want to get away with doing whatever you like!”
In essence, what’s always been an occasional rhetorical trope now seems to dominate public discourse.
That, I submit, is ultimately because Bulverism has become philosophically respectable. The permission real thinkers have given themselves to Bulverize has trickled down to the masses.
This trend seems to have started with Karl Marx. He defined religion and morality in general, and especially political positions other than his own, as “mystifications,” or rationalizations of the self-interest of whatever the economically dominant “ruling class” happens to be.
A few generations later, Sigmund Freud purported to explain nearly all human behavior as expressions or distortions of two “drives”: the sex drive and the death drive.
More recently, this kind of thinking is represented in the thought of Jacques Lacan, whose work is widely studied in humanities departments. The Frankfurt School that arose toward the end of Freud’s life produced a powerful tool, “critical theory,” that proposed to examine all human phenomena in terms of power relations. Its default tendency was to ask: “Who has the power here, and how do they benefit?”
In the late 20th century, such thinkers as Jacques Derrida (and, more broadly, those called “post-modernists”) extended that tendency of critical theory to consideration of the very structure of language itself.
Today we confront the phenomenon of “cultural Marxism.” Often defined too broadly, it simply means the extension of Marx’s critique of false consciousness from economics alone to race, gender, and even sexual orientation.
Cultural Marxism finds its characteristic expression in leftist “identity politics.” (There’s a sense in which all politics is identity politics, but I made the necessary distinction here.) The standard trope of leftist identity politics is the weaponization of victimhood. Thus, if you belong to a class of people recognized as historically oppressed—such as women, people of color, or homosexuals–then you are assumed to have a claim on people who do not belong to such a class—especially white Christian men. The motives of the “oppressed” are assumed to be good; the motives of the non-oppressed are assumed to be bad. People of even moderately conservative views are thus seen as fair game to be Bulverized. And they are, regularly. Thus: “You only say that because you’re (white) (Christian) (a man) (cis)!”
The only solution to widespread Bulverism is widespread rejection of the sort of philosophizing that makes it respectable. We might have to wait a long time for that. In the meantime, I heartily recommend a read of Lewis’ essay.
This post The Creepy Normalization of Bulverism was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Michael Liccione.
“A Republic, if you can keep it” “A Wake of Vultures”
Coming soon
Follow me on Twitter @OzarksAuthor This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties. (c) 2018 Uriel Press
Was the Entire Blasey Ford Episode a Sham?
There are recent indications that Ford and her lawyers know what’s coming. Almost immediately after Kavanaugh was sworn-in to the Supreme Court, Ford’s attorneys announced they were ending all matters pertaining to his confirmation. Subsequent to this announcement, both Ford and her attorneys have been out of the public eye.
By Terry Ray
If you’ve gone home-shopping, I’m sure you have had the experience of leaving a house thinking it was wonderful but the next morning, after your brain had distilled the memory, you realized it actually wasn’t that great.
I had the same experience with Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Right after she had finished, I thought she was very credible and deserving of my sympathy.
By the next day, however, I began having “buyer’s remorse” on Ford’s story. The whole thing began to feel, just not right, and the more I thought about it the more I began to feel it was fabricated.
I started looking at her story in the entire context of the hearing – and it just didn’t add-up.
Just when all seemed lost for the liberal senators on the committee – their staged interruptions of the confirmation committee hearings having not worked as planned – they had to go to a Plan B. It had to be something that wouldn’t just disrupt the hearing – it needed to completely blow up the whole process.
It had to be just right for the moment or it would fail, like their interruption ploy. And it was just right — and it came within a whisker of succeeding.
It you break down what they needed to accomplish in Plan B, you will understand what they had to do.
The “Me Too” movement was in full force during the hearings. Many very powerful men were being brought down, one after another, by the sheer force of a bald accusation of sexual harassment.
The movement had become so powerful that no denial by the accused man was strong enough to overcome the assumption that the woman was right.
“MeToo” had become a type of social hysteria, like Arthur Miller portrayed in his play (and movie) “The Crucible.” Hysterical young women were accusing village members of practicing witchcraft and these bare accusations were enough to get them burned at the stake.
With the “Me Too” hysteria pervading every aspect of American society all the liberal senators had to come up with was a sexual assault claim. It didn’t need to be provable, it just had to be made and made well. With this objective in mind, they set out to create Plan B.
To make the claim powerful and emotional they decided to use an accusation from a 15-year-old girl. To preclude any possible way of disproving it, they decided to use the timeframe of Kavanaugh’s high school years. Who could disprove a story that happened over 30 years ago?
They settled on using a story of a teenage high school girl claiming the teenage Kavanaugh tried to rape her – to the extent she feared for her life.
Their first task was locating the right woman for the part. They put together a list of all the girls who were in high school at the same time as Kavanaugh and that could have been in the same social group as Kavanaugh’s all-boys’ high school.
The list then had to be pared-down to women who were left-wing zealots and willing to commit perjury in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The woman had to be well educated, articulate and hold a very respectable position in society.
By the end of the screening process, they had settled on Christine Blasey Ford – a Ph.D. psychologist and university professor. She was a perfect fit.
Their goal with Ford was to create a character who was brave but frightened, and who would induce believability, credibility, and sympathy for herself, and disgust and hatred toward her attacker. They constructed a process to do just that and we watched it play out before our very eyes.
It worked-out just as planned – with an Academy Award-worthy performance by Ford. The liberal conspirators were almost giddy with what they had just pulled off, but were forced to maintain their alternating poses of sympathy and anger for the need of victim justice.
After the Ford performance had played so well, no Republican senator — all men — would dare question this fragile, brave, sympathetic, credible victim. Doing so could run the risk of ending their careers. Given their predicament, they were forced to hire a female sex-crime prosecutor who proved to be a disaster.
Plan B was working perfectly.
Ford’s performance was nearly perfect. Her testimony had been rehearsed to the point that she delivered it with compelling conviction and authority. She had rehearsed the answer to every question the liberal senators were going to ask her – including the “100% certain,” answer.
Ford was also totally prepared for the inept proxy questioner. In response to each question she asked, Ford read, verbatim, the canned response her attorneys had written for her.
For any question that might be problematic, her two attorneys would advise her not to answer under their exceedingly wide definition of the attorney-client privilege.
The most remarkable part of Ford’s performance was her voice. She was somehow able to affect the high-pitched voice of a frightened little girl and was even able to mimic the rising tone at the end of her sentences.
When I first heard this voice coming from a seasoned, middle-aged woman, I was speechless. I couldn’t believe that tiny voice with a juvenile cadence was emerging from her mouth. It was incongruous to the point of classic irony, and I was astounded that her handlers had the audacity to try to pull this off – but they did. And they did it successfully.
I finally realized why they had her do this. She was telling a story about being sexually assaulted when she was a child, so to support this illusion, they had her deliver the story in the voice of a child, as though she were that abused child on the witness stand. It was another stroke of theater genius – outrageous but brilliant. And everyone bought it.
But as I wrote earlier in this article … Ford was almost perfect in her testimony because she made some fatal mistakes. These mistakes will very likely lead her to a long, all-expense-paid stay in a federal penitentiary.
Ford’s liberal handlers had prepared her well – but not quite well enough.
Ford’s entire story was, of course, pure fiction and thus perjury, but it was so carefully constructed that no prosecutor could possibly convict her of perjury.
But there were other lies for which she could very likely be prosecuted and convicted.
1) The lie detector testimony.
Ford was directly asked if she had ever been instructed on how to pass a lie detector test or had instructed anyone else on how to do it. She unequivocally answered, “No.”
Apparently her handlers didn’t know about a former boyfriend of Ford’s who could prove she was lying. A man who Ford had dated and lived with for several years as an adult, submitted a detailed sworn statement after the hearing that Ford had instructed a friend of hers, who was seeking a federal job, on how to pass a lie detector test. That is perjury.
2) The testimony on her fear of flying and small enclosures.
The same man who submitted the sworn statement on the lie detector issue also detailed that Ford flew on airplanes frequently and had no fear, whatsoever, of flying. He also detailed that she had no fear of small enclosures and had, in fact, lived in a very tiny apartment for a long period of time. He also added that Ford had never once mentioned anything about ever being sexually assaulted and certainly never mentioned Brett Kavanaugh.
Ford testified under oath that she was reluctant to fly to Washington to be questioned because of her profound fear of flying. She also testified that she had argued with her husband about her wanting two front doors on their house because of her profound fear of being enclosed.
Both these statements are lies and constitute perjury.
3) The testimony that her attorneys did not tell her that the Senate committee investigators were willing to fly to her to conduct an interview.
This is an outrageous statement and cannot possibly be true. No attorney would ever do this – even the cretins who represented her. She was lying and prosecutors could easily ferret out the real story. It’s perjury.
4) Ford’s testimony that she had a therapy session in 2012 where she “recovered” the memory of Kavanaugh’s assault.
Ford steadfastly refused to turn over the therapist’s notes on the alleged “recovery” session to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The only logical reason she would do this would be if the notes contradict her testimony — or perhaps there never was a therapy session in the first place and, thus, no notes.
There are recent indications that Ford and her lawyers know what’s coming. Almost immediately after Kavanaugh was sworn-in to the Supreme Court, Ford’s attorneys announced they were ending all matters pertaining to his confirmation. Subsequent to this announcement, both Ford and her attorneys have been out of the public eye.
Although Ford’s story was like a page out of Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible,” the end of her story will very likely resemble Dostoyevsky’s novel, “Crime and Punishment.”
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website.
“A Republic, if you can keep it” “A Wake of Vultures
Coming Soon
Follow me on Twitter @OzarksAuthor
This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties.
(c) 2018 Uriel Press
Not all journalists are created equal
Search for Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi-Turkish Islamist activist who hated Jews and backed Hamas, and the results are legion.
Search for Jerry Wolkowitz, an American Jewish journalist, at the Washington Post and you get zero results.
Search for Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi-Turkish Islamist activist who hated Jews and backed Hamas, and the results are legion.
Search for Jerry Wolkowitz, an American Jewish journalist, at the Washington Post and you get zero results.
While the Washington Post weeps and wails over Khashoggi, an anti-Semitic foreign Islamist, it has no interest in the murder of a Jewish journalist in the United States.
Jerry Wolkowitz, a longtime EMT, photojournalist and son of Jewish Holocaust survivors who was the victim of a vicious racially-motivated attack, has died at age 56 after nearly six months on life support.
On May 1, 2018, 25-year-old Jamil Hubbard allegedly approached Wolkowitz from behind and punched him in the head and face. He then allegedly pulled Wolkowitz’s body into the parking lot of his Freehold, New Jersey apartment building and ran him over with his car, leaving him for dead.
Wolkowitz was a freelance journalist and photographer for numerous publications including the Asbury Park Press. He was also an EMT and ambulance driver and volunteer with the Freehold First Aid and Rescue Squad.
There are more details and they’re horrifying.
Jerry Wolkowitz, a longtime EMT and journalist, has died nearly six months after a brutal, allegedly racially motivated beating left him on life support. He was 56.
Wolkowitz, described as an “innocent soul” by younger medics he took under his wing, was walking near his Harding Road apartment on the morning of May 1 when authorities believe 26-year-old Jamil S. Hubbard of Sayreville beat him and dragged him into a parking lot
Wolkowitz was hospitalized for weeks before being taken to a long-term care facility, where he stayed until his kidneys failed, friends said. Family members took turns to visit him each week until he died.
In the months that followed the assault, Wolkowitz’s loved ones remained by his side through infections and organ failures.
Hubbard “explained that he chose him because he was a white man,” Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor Keri-Leigh Schaefer said in a September court hearing. Although Hubbard had never met Wolkowitz, he wanted to kill him because of his race, she said.
But the Washington Post can’t be bothered to care about a murdered American journalist. Just about anti-Semitic Islamists.
“A Republic, if you can keep it” “A Wake of Vultures”
Coming Soon
Follow me on Twitter @OzarksAuthor
This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties.
(c) 2018 Uriel Press
Tinker, Tailor, Journalist, Spy
What is to be assured is that Khashoggi was a man deeply embedded in the global apparatus currently known as the Deep State. His death may be a carnie call to the stay-behinds still actively undermining US policy.
Reposted from Americanpartisan.org
Tinker, Tailor, Journalist, Spy: Jamal Khashoggi and the Story Not Being Told
On 2 OCT 2018, Washington Post journalist and middle eastern political activist Jamal Khashoggi went missing after entering the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Some in the course of the last news cycle has alleged this to be a much deeper incident than it appears on the surface; a vanished journalist, murder, international intrigue, a Saudi administration in conflict with Turkey; both jockeying for power in a region bound for widespread war in the coming years. Over a year post-living in exile after being banned from the Kingdom of al Saud, Khashoggi returned to the assumed security of the nation of his familial ancestry while continuing a career of revolutionary praxis through media in the mideast region. Needing a legal certificate of divorce from the Saudi government, Khashoggi felt safe approaching the embassy- in and out, no harm, no foul.
How wrong he was.
Embassies and consulates are nerve centers for declared spooks of a nation. Formal intelligence officers working in a nation must be declared. Journalists, on the other hand, can get placed into positions of unique access and are often conduits for sensitive information. In any country where intelligence operations are being run (and that’s all of them) a nation’s embassy serves as the hot spot for intelligence and in turn, counterintelligence. With Khashoggi, we find an example of split loyalty divided between revolutionary Marxism and a convenient ally found in the politics of revolutionary Islam. Possibly best examining this juxtaposition is his quote from a WaPo piece in late August:
The United States’ aversion to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is more apparent in the current Trump administration, is the root of a predicament across the entire Arab world. The eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing less than an abolition of democracy and a guarantee that Arabs will continue living under authoritarian and corrupt regimes. In turn, this will mean the continuation of the causes behind revolution, extremism and refugees — all of which have affected the security of Europe and the rest of the world. Terrorism and the refugee crisis have changed the political mood in the West and brought the extreme right to prominence there.
He goes on:
There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it. A significant number of citizens in any given Arab country will give their vote to Islamic political parties if some form of democracy is allowed. It seems clear then that the only way to prevent political Islam from playing a role in Arab politics is to abolish democracy, which essentially deprives citizens of their basic right to choose their political representatives.
…There are efforts here in Washington, encouraged by some Arab states that do not support freedom and democracy, to persuade Congress to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. If they succeed, the designation will weaken the fragile steps toward democracy and political reform that have already been curbed in the Arab world.
The point made by that last paragraph is critical. “Freedom and Democracy” is a common phrase touted by Marxian-inspired revolutionaries. And Islamist revolutionaries are exactly that. Thriving in the swamp of Washington DC, Khashoggi no doubt not only found himself among willing peers but cheerleaders among the Deep State apparatchik, with those ties neither recent nor random. His tale is one of deep alliances with what we now know of as the Deep State, made of the Marxist-inspired and academia-groomed bureaucracies of the Washington elite. The Muslim Brotherhood to which he refers is the revolutionary party of Egypt, spearheading the so-called “Arab Spring” which plunged the stable nation into chaos and directly endangered the control of the Suez Canal, keeping fuel prices affordable, in the hands of Islamists. Mohammed Morsi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, found a quite inviting home in the White House and among the leftist administration of Barack Hussein Obama. Wasting no time eliminating political rivals and religious minorities, most notably Coptic Christians, the Egyptian Army stepped in to remove the leftist cancer that had been installed as a proxy of the Obama administration.
Tracing the roots of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization gets its guiding philosophy from Sayyid Qutb, a Western-educated Islamic cleric who came to seek strict reformation and removal of Western influence from the Islamic world. It is from Qutb that many early Islamic movements sprang and later ones would thrive; al Qaeda being most notable. And Khashoggi would find himself comfy bedfellows with al Qaeda’s revolutionary leader and fellow Saudi, Osama bin Laden. Traveling to Afghanistan to support bin Laden in the 80s, the New York Times notes:
…the war’s failure to put Afghanistan on sound footing haunted Mr. Khashoggi, as did Bin Laden’s later turn to terrorism.
“He was disappointed that after all that struggle, the Afghans never got together,” said a Saudi friend of Mr. Khashoggi’s who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Mr. Khashoggi’s trips to Afghanistan and his relationship with Prince Turki al-Faisal, who headed Saudi intelligence, made some of Mr. Khashoggi’s friends suspect he was also spying for the Saudi government.
His connections with not only the Saudi intelligence apparatus but the larger revolutionary movements of the region becomes clear when examined further:
The friendship endured with Jamal Khashoggi following Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan. Khashoggi credited Adel Batterjee, listed at one time as one of “the world’s foremost terrorist financiers” by the Treasury Department, with bringing him to Afghanistan to report on the fighting.
The media calls Khashoggi a journalist, but his writings from 80s Afghanistan read as Jihadist propaganda with titles like, “Arab Mujahadeen in Afghanistan II: Exemplifies the Unity of Islamic Ummah”.
And when Osama bin Laden set up Al Qaeda, he called Khashoggi with the details.
After Afghanistan, Jamal Khashoggi went to work as a media adviser for former Saudi intel boss, Prince Turki bin Faisal, alleged to have links to Al Qaeda. Those allegations came from, among others, Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged twentieth hijacker.
When the other 19 hijackers perpetrated the attacks of September 11, Khashoggi wrote that the Saudis would not “give in” to American “demands” for “unconditional condemnation” and “total cooperation”.
“Saudis tend to link the ugliness of what happened in New York and Washington with what has happened and continues to happen in Palestine. It is time that the United States comes to understand the effect of its foreign policy and the consequences of that policy,” he declared.
“A Muslim cannot be happy with the suffering of others. Even if this suffering is that of Americans who neglected the suffering of Palestinians for half a century.”
The suspicion of him being a spy was likely true. The espionage of Khashoggi would be one of convenience and serving multiple masters however; living and working for that same revolutionary praxis, diverging only where he saw fit all the while running afoul of the established order of his nationsake. For Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman, his activities had not only grown counterproductive but a direct threat to the Kingdom- once there was a changing of the guard in Washington. As recently as 2016, Khashoggi was criticized for his close ties to both the Saudi intelligence apparatus and that of the Turkish government, with Bahraini media commenting on the issues in Cyprus noting,
Khashoggi seizes every opportunity to confirm his complete support for the Turkish role in the region. He is one of the public opinion makers having close ties with the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, who vigorously worked, through the media, on narrowing the Saudi-Turkish difference following the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt, as well as promoting a partnership between the two countries based on leading the Sunni Muslims and supporting “Islamist Jihadists” in Syria. He is almost a frequent visitor of Turkey and his personal Twitter account is full of news about his meetings with Turkish Justice and Development Party officials and statements praising them and their policies in the region.
Post Saudi anti-corruption purge of 2018, Khashoggi likely had too many friends running counter to the intent of the Kingdom and thus became persona non grata. His troubles however surfaced early in the newly-minted regime of bin Salman’s father. After directly criticizing then President-elect Trump, Khashoggi was effectively muzzled before departing the nation in 2017, all the while not diverting from his revolutionary path and defaulting to his Deep State allies in the West and in Turkey. Suspected of being an agent for the failed Saudi ‘Arab Spring’, such a destabilization could not be tolerated.
This begs the question of just who would benefit from chaos in Saudi Arabia. Iran would for one, exploiting the blood feud between Shia and Sunni Islam while simultaneously uniting under one banner of Sharia; a prerequisite goal satisfying Tawhid, or unity under Allah before the Islamic Day of Return. Khashoggi did not share common ancestry nor ideology with the Persians however; he was at home with the restorationist Ottomans of Erdogan and the Turkish government. Vowing he is “he is personally “chasing” the investigation”, Turkish President Erdogan has taken personal issue with a matter among Saudi nationals. Turkey, seeking to expand their sphere of influence away from the Whabbism of the House of al Saud, would benefit most from destabilization of the Saudi Kingdom and thus explains their complicit support of many elements of Barrack Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan and John Kerry’s failures in regime change.
What is to be assured is that Khashoggi was a man deeply embedded in the global apparatus currently known as the Deep State. His death may be a carnie call to the stay-behinds still actively undermining US policy. Leftist in both origin and ideology, Khashoggi’s role was change in the middle east assured by the hubris of aligned media outlets; a common home for burned spies with too much baggage. He was not protected as he so thought, he was not untouchable, and his story should not be the October surprise that drives a wedge between Trump and an otherwise strong economy through a rise in gas prices. Rogue operation or not, Khashoggi was an agent of the worst actors of the West and perished by the idiotic game he played. He should neither be mourned nor exalted as a martyr- he was nothing more than a pawn to those playing in the affairs of other nations. What is likely however may be a different issue altogether, signaling a larger power struggle throughout the Middle East. Erdogan is on the rise and seeking to expand his influence not only in the middle east but in Europe; he will no doubt use this to his advantage as the Turkish government already has done. Taking into account his strategic point into Europe and the Middle East, uneasy times are following.
My thoughts:
The media and uninformed politicians are beating the “punishment drum” regarding Saudi Arabia and the death of Jamal Khashoggi.
He is being portrayed as a “journalist”, a rather disingenuous description of the man.
There’s no justification for his murder. But don’t whitewash what he believed – his commitment to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, his long-standing association with Osama bin Laden and continuing connection to Islamic extremists.
In August, Jamal #Khashoggi wrote about the Muslim Brotherhood and the need to accept political Islam. The U.S. is wrong to ignore the Muslim Brotherhood — and the Arab world is suffering for it. Muslim Brotherhood! The same group led by Qaradawi who is advocating suicide bombers. Yeah sure, that is exactly what we need in the world and exactly why #Khashoggi is being be canonized by his fellow “Deep State” actors.
Khashoggi was a journalist like Jeffrey Dahmer was a chef.
There is more to this story.
Why grab him inside the embassy, when you could grab him on the street? Or in his hotel. Why dismember him inside your embassy, when you could do it inside a thousand different abandoned buildings?
Why would you fly the hit squad into Turkey on a business jet?
Either this is the most poorly planned hit of all time…or there is more to the story.
I smell a rat, or at least a very sinister mouse. But probably not the CIA rodents.
Brennan in particular would never push anything like – he’s a Muslim Brotherhood BFF. Nor Hillary. Her agenda was also pro-M.B., because that’s where the money was from her POV. Arms deals, from what I remember reading about the time of Benghazi.
Most of the info in our MSM is coming through Turkish news processors, which are very much pro-Brotherhood and anti the new Saudi regime. How much is true?
Could the Saudis be that crude about an assassination? I don’t want to think so, but the latest meme I’m seeing is that it was not authorized by the Prince. Apparently some underling is taking the fall for it, and it might actually be true that somebody went off the reservation.
Right or wrong, at this time the Saudis and the Egyptian military are the only sane Islamic actors in the M.E., so far as relations with the USA and Israel are concerned. Trump will have to make some noise to satisfy the jackals in our media corps, but nothing substantial will change, nor should it.
Listen to Brennans comments on the issue. “US govt fabricating story”. If no action by Saudi, US will have to act. MSM fed by CIA, FBI, all the rest.
Key words: Trump-“who ever” is behind this (Saudi not mentioned) will suffer severe consequences.
Most likely he knows who/what is. Hopefully he is just biding his time.
“A Republic, if you can keep it” “A Wake of Vultures”
Follow me on Twitter @OzarksAuthor
This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties.
(c) 2018 Uriel Press
Money Talks (especially to politicians)
Government programs replaced deprivation with idleness, stifling human flourishing. It happened just as President Franklin Roosevelt said it would: “The lessons of history,” he said in 1935, “show conclusively that continued dependency upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.”
“the poor you have with you always…”
–John 12:8
Fifty-four years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared “unconditional war” on poverty.
“The War on Poverty is not a struggle simply to support people,” declared President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. “It is an effort to allow them to develop and use their capacities.” During the 20 years before the War on Poverty was funded, the portion of the nation living in poverty had dropped to 14.7% from 32.1%. Since 1966, the first year with a significant increase in antipoverty spending, the poverty rate reported by the Census Bureau has been virtually unchanged.
40 million Americans live in “squalor and deprivation. Welfare and the criminal justice system is effectively a system for keeping the poor in poverty according to “Progressive” think-tanks.
The Census Bureau counts as poor all people in families with incomes lower than the established income thresholds for their respective family size and composition.
The thresholds, first set in 1963, are based on a multiple of the cost of a budget for adequately nutritious food, adjusted for inflation.
While the Census Bureau reports that in 2016 some 12.7% of Americans lived in poverty, it is impossible to reconcile this poverty rate, which has remained virtually unchanged over the last 50 years, with the fact that total inflation-adjusted government-transfer payments to low-income families have risen steadily.
Transfers targeted to low-income families increased in real dollars from an average of $3,070 per person in 1965 to $34,093 in 2016.
The measured poverty rate has remained virtually unchanged only because the Census Bureau doesn’t count most of the transfer payments created since the declaration of the War on Poverty.
The bureau measures poverty using what it calls “money income,” which includes earned income and some transfer payments such as Social Security and unemployment insurance. But it excludes food stamps, Medicaid, the portion of Medicare going to low-income families, Children’s Health Insurance, the refundable portion of the earned-income tax credit, at least 87 other means-tested federal payments to individuals, and most means-tested state payments.
If government counted these missing $1.5 trillion in annual transfer payments, the poverty rate would be less than 3%.
The stated goal of the War on Poverty was not just to raise living standards, but also to make America’s poor more self-sufficient and to bring them into the mainstream of the economy.
In that effort the war has been an abject failure, increasing dependency and largely severing the bottom fifth of earners from the rewards and responsibilities of work.
The War on Poverty has increased dependency and failed in its primary effort to bring poor people into the mainstream of America’s economy and communal life.
There are three other factors:
1. A severe decline in the number of jobs that can be done by an unskilled or uneducated person, along with technologies that make it increasingly difficult for people on the margins to even apply for them.
2. The much greater gap between how far one income goes in terms of spending power and what it costs to actually live.
3. Badly handled programs that instead of encouraging part-time work and self-employment (the way most people who actually get out of poverty manage to do it) punish it; both by harsh regulations that discourage any sort of part-time work for fear of losing what benefits a person/family has and/or insane amounts of regulations and fees to set up any sort of small business or be “certified” for traditional jobs like hairdresser, home sewer, cookie baking or even taxi driver.
The idea of “Universal Basic Income” was supposed to “solve” this last problem but so far hasn’t worked very well (the idea is there are no penalties for making more money).
Government programs replaced deprivation with idleness, stifling human flourishing. It happened just as President Franklin Roosevelt said it would: “The lessons of history,” he said in 1935, “show conclusively that continued dependency upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.”
There is an economic truism; “You can’t get rid of something by subsidizing it.”
After fifty-four years of intense combat and the expenditure of almost uncountable wealth it would be accurate to say, the war is over. Poverty won.
“A Republic, if you can keep it” “A Wake of Vultures”
Available soon
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This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties.
(c) 2018 Uriel Press
“Progressive” HUBRIS
For the millions upon millions of Americans of all ages and all races contemporary “Progressive” callout culture merely looks like an excuse to mock the values or perceived ignorance of others.
According to an article in the October 10th Atlantic magazine Americans strongly dislike PC, (Politically Correct) culture.
In a report written by More in Common, an organization of globalists founded in 2018, they argue that while over 80% of Americans are uncomfortable or dislike political correctness, the numbers do not reflect an accurate picture.
The authors argue, seven distinct clusters emerge: progressive activists, traditional liberals, passive liberals, the politically disengaged, moderates, traditional conservatives, and devoted conservatives.
According to the report, 25 percent of Americans are traditional or devoted conservatives, and their views are far outside the American mainstream.
Some 8 percent of Americans are progressive activists, described as “woke”, and their views are even less typical.
By contrast, the two-thirds of Americans who don’t belong to either extreme constitute an “exhausted majority.” Their members “share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national conversation.”
Most members of the “exhausted majority,” and then some, dislike political correctness. Among the general population, a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Even young people are uncomfortable with it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24.
On this particular issue, the woke are in a clear minority across all ages.
Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness—and it turns out race isn’t, either.
Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment.
Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness. As one 40-year-old American Indian in Oklahoma said in his focus group, according to the report:
“It seems like everyday you wake up something has changed … Do you say Jew? Or Jewish? Is it a black guy? African-American? … You are on your toes because you never know what to say. So political correctness in that sense is scary.”
Progressive activists are the only group that strongly backs political correctness: Only 30 percent see it as a problem. (NOTE: that’s 30% of 8% or 2.4% of the population).
So what does this group look like? Compared with the rest of the (nationally representative) polling sample, progressive activists are much more likely to be rich, highly educated—and white.
They are nearly twice as likely as the average to make more than $100,000 a year. They are nearly three times as likely to have a postgraduate degree. And while 12 percent of the overall sample in the study is African American, only 3 percent of progressive activists are.
With the exception of the small tribe of devoted conservatives, progressive activists are the most racially homogeneous group in the country.
The author of the article then goes on to say;
“Obviously, my followers are not a representative sample of America. But as their largely supportive feelings about political correctness indicate, they are probably a decent approximation for a particular intellectual milieu to which I also belong: politically engaged, highly educated, left-leaning Americans—the kinds of people, in other words, who are in charge of universities, edit the nation’s most important newspapers and magazines, and advise Democratic political candidates on their campaigns.”
A clear majority of all Americans holds a nuanced point of view: They abhor racism. But they don’t think that the way we now practice political correctness represents a promising way to overcome racial, (or any other type of), injustice.
What the vast majority of Americans seem to see is not so much genuine concern for social justice by “Progressives” as the preening display of virtue signalling and self-perceived cultural superiority.
For the millions upon millions of Americans of all ages and all races contemporary “Progressive” callout culture merely looks like an excuse to mock the values or perceived ignorance of others.
The gap between the progressive perception and the reality of public views on this issue should do damage to the institutions that the progressive elite collectively run, (leftist politics, Hollywood, Big Media and academia), AND IT’S ABOUT DAMN TIME.
“A Republic, if you can keep it” “A Wake of Vultures”
COMING SOON
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This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties.
(c) 2018 Uriel Press
Battered Justice?
Should we replace her with the court of public opinion? The court of the talking head panel of experts? Should we place additional weights on the scales to compensate for past wrongs of “privilege” or “prejudice?
For all the recent talk about facts versus “fake news,” telling the truth, and recapturing the public’s trust in the era of President Trump, some of our most important media blew it when it mattered most. Worse still, some demonstrated an immediate willingness to trade this industry’s already badly battered reputation for a political victory.
We are now at the unsuccessful conclusion of a four-week-long effort by certain media organizations to prove Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is a violent sexual predator and a lying alcoholic. The reckless and grossly irresponsible scramble by the New Yorker, NBC News, the New York Times, and others to make Kavanaugh into a monster produced some of the worst journalism of the Trump era to date – and that’s a pretty high bar.
Journalists make mistakes, of course. But had all of the sloppy and often unethical reporting on Kavanaugh been the product of mere negligence or human error, the law of averages suggests that some of the errors would have been in his favor. None of them were. From great to small, they all tried to prove Kavanaugh unfit to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. It would be hard to blame a viewer or reader who concluded that these newsrooms acted not as the gatekeepers of truth, but as willing agents in the Democratic Party’s 11th-hour effort to destroy the judge’s good name, along with his chances of becoming the swing vote on the Supreme Court.
In this matter, the Rule of Law has been our dispassionate arbiter of justice.
She is depicted as blindfolded, with a sword in one hand and scales in another. She is blindfolded to accept parties who come before her with impartiality and without bias. We are equal before her.
The sword represents her authority and the force of government at her side. The scales represent the deliberative process that weighs the solid, verifiable evidence brought before her of the guilt of the accused of wrong doing. The scales must tip further to one side or another to establish guilt in a civil matter between parties. It evidence must show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in establishing a crime.
This is America’s icon of justice. To the degree we accept her as the arbiter of disputes and the decisions she reaches, we are in civil society together.
When large portions of society no longer agree to abide with her outcomes, and “resist” her system, we are simply no longer in civil society together with them.
When our Supreme Court Justices are no longer pillars that support her, we crumble.
Sure, she has flaws – she may be peeking or allowing a thumb to be placed on the scales or the sword to be brandished too heavily. We must always work together to correct that.
Should we replace her with the court of public opinion? The court of the talking head panel of experts? Should we place additional weights on the scales to compensate for past wrongs of “privilege” or “prejudice? Should we give extra credence to the weight of alleged survived victimhood?
As a person who believes that blind justice is “the best we got,” I will not agree to appease her resistors or to substitute Sharia or other international forms of justice in her stead. It is fundamentally not acceptable to me.
“A Republic, if you can keep it” “A Wake of Vultures“
Follow me on Twitter @OzarksAuthor
This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties.
(c) 2018 Uriel Press
A blue wave?
Senate Democrats,manipulating parliamentary procedure and making spectacular and unsubstantiated charges for political gain, with the active and avid cooperation of many of their friends and fans in the press
One of the longstanding rules of life is that nothing is free in politics; there is some question when you pay the price.
The Democrats are now paying the price of their shameless promotion of lies and cynical and unprincipled changes in the rules for short-term gain.
The question still remains, whether voters will also make the party pay. Until recently, the intensity of the Democratic voter base was measurably greater than that of the Republicans heading toward the midterm elections. Now the gap has closed.
“ I can’t think of a more embarrassing scandal for the United States Senate since the McCarthy hearings,” said Texas Republican John Cornyn as Judge Brett Kavanaugh testified before the Judiciary Committee on the afternoon of Sept. 27, “when the question was, ‘Have you no sense of decency?'”
Senate Democrats,manipulating parliamentary procedure and making spectacular and unsubstantiated charges for political gain, with the active and avid cooperation of many of their friends and fans in the press, have been doing this throughout the confirmation process for the Supreme Court nomination of Kavanaugh. They have, in truth, been doing it for decades now. Character assassination has become their weapon of choice.
Conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh warned Republicans that voters would destroy them if they failed to confirm Kavanaugh. It’s an issue that has stoked political passions. If Democrats don’t get the blue wave election they have been hoping for and believing in, they will know at least one reason why.
“A Republic, if you can keep it” “A Wake of Vultures”
Follow me on Twitter @OzarksAuthor
This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties.
(c) 2018 Uriel Press
Maxine Waters ethics complaint
Her call for mobs of leftists to harass and protest members of a Republican administration in public have been taken by many as an incitement toward violence, given the heated rhetoric and intense nature of the current political divide.
Judicial Watch filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Maxine Waters for “inciting violence and assaults on the Trump Cabinet.
The group sent a hand-delivered letter to the chairman and co-chairman of the House Office of Congressional Ethics calling for an investigation into whether the California Democrat violated House ethics rules by encouraging violence against Trump Cabinet members.
Ms. Waters made her remarks during a rally in Los Angeles, during which she entreated participants to “push back” on Trump staffers in public places such as restaurants or gas stations.
“In encouraging individuals to create ‘crowds’ who will ‘push back’ on President Trump’s Cabinet members at private business establishments and in seemingly trying to prevent these Cabinet officials from obtaining basic necessities without fear of assault and violence, Rep. Waters seems to be violation of House rules.
The complaint specifically cited House Rule 23, clause which requires lawmakers and others within the House to behave ‘in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.
Pretty much everyone has heard the audio or seen the video of Democrat California Rep. Maxine Waters not-so-subtly encouraging potentially violent mob action against members of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Her call for mobs of leftists to harass and protest members of a Republican administration in public have been taken by many as an incitement toward violence, given the heated rhetoric and intense nature of the current political divide.
“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them! And you tell them that they are not welcome, anymore, anywhere,” Waters had yelled with great vitriol to a crowd of boisterous supporters.
Ethics committee? Ethics investigation??
Congress and Ethics have become mutually exclusive terms. Congress has no ethics (as shown during the last several weeks), has no decency, no shame, no morals, and certainly no ethics.
They are ALL whores who stand on the corner with their hands out, pimps who sell our constituents down the river daily, and liars who have lost all concept of the truth.
Follow me on Twitter @OzarksAuthor
This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties.
(c) 2018 Uriel Press