It has been years since Handel’s Overture, “The Messiah” has been performed in most of the nation’s larger cities…..those over 100,000 population. I was around seven years old when I first heard its most magnificent chorus of Christ’s “RESURRECTION”.
The Messiah in its complete performance lasts about two and a half hours or a bit more. Listening only to the magnificent melody is in itself a drug for most folks who bother to listen to the story’s melody created from the meaning of Christianity’s Jesus Christ.
Here in the Twin Cities Sunday’s were sacred until Greed arrived shortly after World War II. Nevertheless, “The Messiah” became a measure of beauty for Easter with the Resurrection of Jesus with the Church dream that America would awaken to its God!
Greed and animal became married, or became “merry” around the late 1960s…..and the world had decayed in its “victory”!
I was born in 1934 when it was easy for families to be family and civil. We craved beauty and its music. Motherhood was sacred and not the Dem butch animal it has become today…..Glenn H. Ray…..”WARNING! Following into the music and meaning above CAN BECOME INDOCTRINATING! Glenn H. Ray of Minnesota!
The left hates Christmas because it hates all expressions of faith in our society. On a deeper level, however, the War on Christmas is a war on America.
In many ways, Christmas is as much an American holiday as a Christian holiday. (No trees or tinsel in Bethlehem.) Today, only 63% of Americans call themselves Christians, while 93% celebrate Christmas. In other words, almost a third of those who celebrate Christmas are non-Christians.
More than Thanksgiving, Memorial Day or the Fourth of July, Christmas unites us as a people.
Anything that brings Americans together, the left fears — like the flag, the national anthem and statues of our heroes.
This is reflected in the push to get Christmas trees out of public parks and libraries (which have no problem celebrating Pride Month and having “drag queen story hour”) and the holy war against holiday decorations in schools and other public places. Sales staff risk life and limb by wishing customers a “merry Christmas.”
The mainstream media tries to gaslight us by telling us the War on Christmas was invented by conservative groups to raise money and mobilize the base.
You really can’t make this stuff up.
The King County, Washington, Human Rights Commission has banned Christmas and Hanukkah decorations from the workplaces of county employees — including virtual workplaces. Even holiday-themed clothing is verboten.
“Some employees may not share your religion, practice any religion, or share your enthusiasm for holiday decorations,” a memo from the commission explains. This exquisite sensitivity applies only to religious holidays. Everyone must take part in Pride Month and do homage to Black Lives Matter.
On the other side of the continent, the War on Christmas has taken a nasty turn.
The Needham, Massachusetts, Public Library decided it would break 28 years of tradition by not displaying a Christmas tree this year, because unnamed people said that last year, the evergreen made them “feel uncomfortable.” What, they thought the Tannenbaum would assault them, or try to convert them to Christianity?
After a public outcry, the library relented. The reversal, in turn, set off a member of the town’s Human Rights Commission (HRCs are general headquarters for secularist witch hunts), who went full Grinch, calling the lady who championed the tree’s return a “selfish f—-ing b——” and “disgusting trash” who had somehow endangered the lives of municipal workers because “that’s what your magic sky daddy wants.” The billet-doux closed with the author wishing “great suffering” on the tree’s proponents. She has since resigned from her position.
If the right invented the War on Christmas, why are there so many enemies of Yuletide cheer, who range from the mildly obnoxious to the downright hysterical?
In part, it’s a sense of entitlement. Liberals believe they have a right not to be confronted with signs of a holiday they don’t celebrate. But it goes far beyond that to a matter of national identity.
The left is for everything that divides us — multiculturalism, critical race theory, sexual indoctrination in the schools and unisex bathrooms — and against everything that unites us. Nothing brings Americans together like Christmas — and I say that as a non-Christian.
For most Americans, Christmas brings back happy childhood memories — fluffy snowflakes, colored lights, tinsel, mounds of presents, festively decorated trees and stories about flying sleighs and a jolly old gent who resembles your favorite uncle.
Christmas seems to be a uniquely American holiday — Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Miracle on 34th Street,” “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus,” and memories of a time before homeless encampments, illegal aliens streaming across the border, fentanyl and men in ballgowns demanding their inalienable right to invade ladies’ shower and changing rooms. Christmas reminds us of a time when America was sane — the normalcy for which many long.
“Merry Christmas” is an expression of goodwill and hope for the future. Optimism is another American virtue.
The War on Christmas isn’t just another dimension of the culture war, but psych warfare against Americanism. The left isn’t just gunning for Christmas trees, glad tidings and a Jolly Old Elf with a sack full of presents, but the American ideal, which we must fight to preserve.
Like Natalie Wood’s character in “Miracle on 34th Street,” we must believe and keep right on believing — that there’s a mystical connection between Christmas and America.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
Sun Tzu’s maxim was certainly true for the 2020 election. I don’t need to go into detail because Mollie Hemingway has already shown that the election was rigged.
Republicans should have learned that once the votes are cast, it is nearly impossible to litigate fairness. They did not. It’s fair to say that in spite of all the talk after the 2020 election about fixing election integrity, very little was done that actually improved things. I must have heard Jenna Ellis bloviating a hundred times about how her Election Integrity Alliance was going to make sure everyone working on integrity was moving forward, getting it done. Fail. It’s even worse, as the left is now refining its tactics and focusing on taking over the election process for good. Leftists even enlisted the federal government in registering voters who are unlikely to cast a ballot so they can cast one for them. Democrats have a long history of fiddling with elections.
Fast-forward to 2022, and we find ourselves with a disappointing outcome, particularly in same five states as in 2020: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin. The radio pundit class and others all had opinions on why we were disappointed. NeverTrumps said, “It’s Trump’s fault!” Others like the feckless Arizona GOP leader Kelli Ward cried about lack of funding in key races. (True.) Others complained about candidate quality.
It seemed as though we were ready for it, but it is clear that the same shenanigans, refined with practice, occurred, primarily against conservatives. In 2020, all the toss-ups went to the GOP. Not so in 2022; they all went to the Democrats. In Virginia, the Democrat Ballot-Harvesting Manual instructs workers to go after dead people and bad addresses. In Nevada, GOP Senate candidate Adam Laxalt received a defeat from the jaws of victory when his opponent pulled out an impossible victory. In Arizona, vote totals show a flip of votes from the congressional races to the conservative statewide races of over 250,000 votes. In fact, for the top four statewide races, there were 150,000 additional votes over the congressional vote. Hmmm. The only statewide GOP wins were treasurer and superintendent of public instruction, both of whom are RINOs. Matt Gaetz accurately called it a McFailure.
Ideas have been proposed to win future elections, including improving vote integrity. Just get rid of absentee ballots, get rid of electronic voting, count the votes that day. Easy-peasy. Nonsense. Atlanta lost the All Star game because of passing modest reforms. The Republican-led Legislature in Arizona passed a law with no teeth. Although the Michigan Legislature passed some vote integrity bills, they were vetoed by Gretchen von Whitmer. The only real improvements were made in safe Republican states. None of these new laws came close to the kind of reforms needed, in the states needed, to level the playing field. We cannot count on any election integrity improvements where they are needed.
Other ideas include focusing on ballots, not votes. Most can agree on this. But this is just an idea that has been espoused by many in the conservative media following the election. There is no follow-up. No action. Telling people not to vote on Election Day and to vote early similarly will yield no results. We will end up in 2024 in the same place we are right now: disappointed. And more pissed off.
As our favorite climate kid Greta Thunberg once said: “Blah! Blah! Blah!“
So what is to be done? We need to win the battle before it is fought. What does that mean? Does it mean talking about it? Does it mean agreeing with some points and hoping it happens? I don’t’ think so. We need a strategy. What’s a strategy? A strategy answers the following questions: What are we going to do? When are we going to do it? Who is going to do it? How much will it cost? Where will we get the money?
If we do not have a strategy, then we will not win.
Here is a three-pronged strategy that should be executed only in the troubled states where we can win: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin. If we do not win the majority of these states, we cannot win the presidency, nor, likely, the Senate.
Strategy 1: Clean the voter roll
This is a simple strategy that is not glamorous, which is why nobody talks about it. It was executed in Wisconsin and probably saved Ron Johnson’s Senate seat. The goal is to deprive Democrats of the free ballots they can use to change an election outcome. From the article: “They went to scores of county registrars and challenged thousands of phantoms — proof in hand. Quietly, below the radar, they showed registrars, whose job it is to deal with this sort of thing, that Bill Jones was not a real person. They helped clean up addresses that were wrong — either typos or fake.” Each of the five state GOP leaders needs to set up a team immediately. The funding for the Wisconsin team and software was provided by Mike Lindell. This is a no-brainer.
Strategy 2: Have an actual ground game
Republicans gained seats in liberal California and New York in part because they beat Dems at their own game. It did not hurt that there was favorable redistricting in New York. In addition, they had an actual message. Further, GOP election teams monitored the returns and contacted registered Republicans to make sure they voted. In California, Republicans learned from their 2018 debacle when ballot-harvesting was legalized. The ground game in these states was excellent. If California and New York can deliver the House for the GOP, our five states can do the same. To execute this strategy, each of the five state GOP leaders would put together a ballot strategy based on the state laws. Assume that 1,000 volunteers for each congressional district will be needed in the run-up to and on Election Day. These people need to be recruited and trained starting immediately. As a rough calculation, at $10 per ballot and 200 ballots per volunteer, we will need $2 million per C.D. At 43 total congressional districts, the total comes to $86 million. Obviously, certain districts do not need any help, and resources should be applied at the point of greatest impact. I think there is a certain real estate billionaire who wants to win again. He needs to put his money where his mouth is.
Strategy 3: Lawfare
Marc Elias did more to undermine election integrity (and the Constitution) than any person alive. He used COVID and other excuses to rewrite election laws in several states prior to the 2020 election. Then he did it again for 2022. Texas was able to overcome the interference in its voting laws. Again, that one really does not matter since it is solidly red. The GOP needs to challenge any changes from the legislated baseline in each of the five states. The lawyers need to use the same tactics as the Democrats: shop judges, and use any and all poorly written federal and state laws to twist them for their own use. This will be an expensive endeavor. It will require at least $5 million for each state. Peter Thiel, do you want your candidate to win next time? Pony up. It’s worth it.
We have to win this battle now or lose this nation.
It’s no secret, among political junkies anyway, that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and much of the Republican elite have been casting around for a way to derail Donald Trump’s bid to be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee. It’s a delicate operation, to be certain. Trump’s allure to the GOP primary voting base isn’t just that he triggers the liberals, but that he ruffles the feathers of the Republican establishment. It makes the deplorables feel powerful, watching people like McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy bow and scrape to the ludicrous reality TV host foisted on them by their own voters. So the strategy is always about trying to find some way to undermine Trump without provoking him to unload personal invective on Truth Social in retaliation.
Some of the maneuvering is behind the scenes. As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post documented this week, Senate Republicans helped slip an electoral count reform bill into a larger spending bill. The covert move isn’t just about circumventing Trump’s plan to steal the 2024 election, but to do so in a quiet and highly technical manner that will likely avoid his attention.
The tax returns show that President Drink Bleach is about as good at business as he is at medical science.
Calling Trump a criminal and a fascist may be accurate, but both tend to be assets for Trump in the eyes of his base. But, the theory goes, if Trump can be branded a loser, it would finally break the spell he has over his credulous base. The only problem is getting that message through their fact-repelling skulls that have been hardened through years of Fox News propaganda.
That Trump is a uniquely terrible businessman was known long before this. In 2020, the New York Times successfully obtained years of tax records, mostly from his pre-presidential life. Even those who had long been skeptical that a guy who hawked ringtones was really a “billionaire” were astonished at how very, very bad he is business. Over his lifetime, Trump was handed nearly a billion dollars by benefactors, first his father, then “Apprentice” producer Mark Burnett. Trump promptly flushed it all down the toilet. He didn’t just fritter away at least $834 million in cash — the reporting showed he was at least $421 million in debt. That’s over $1.2 billion lost over the years, and that’s not even counting the many losses he’s been able to use creative accounting to conceal.
Still, even his biggest detractors tended to feel his fortunes would change in the White House. Surely even a moron like Trump could handle the task of sitting on his tush watching bribes flow in from foreign benefactors, right? He did not even bother to hide that “taking bribes” was a central feature of his presidency. He would speak publicly about the opportunities for memberships at Mar-a-Lago or stays at various Trump hotels, unsubtle reminders that these businesses were excellent ways for those with cash to seek favor with the White House.
But while taking bribes and robbing taxpayers is the easiest work imaginable, Trump was still hilariously bad at it. He had a “negative income” for four out of the six years that were released to the public. Overall, he saw a net loss of $60 million. As the New York Times reports, “the entirety of his core businesses — mostly real estate, golf courses and hotels — continued to report losses every year.” The one year he actually made a decent chunk of money, $24.3 million in 2018, it was only because he sold off a bunch of property that he inherited from his father. Not only is it just another example of money being given to him, but it is a pittance compared to the hundreds of millions he owed going into the presidency, and is dwarfed by his overall losses while president.
All of which is to say that Trump had an elaborate structure of real estate and hospitality holdings that were perfect for laundering bribes. But he is so bad at business, he was losing more than he was taking in. The man’s only real skill is setting money on fire.
These returns were released mere days after Trump’s “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” that turned out to be an NFT peddling scheme, a naked grift less suited to a former president than to the has-been reality TV star that he is at heart. Even funnier, he’s not even selling the cards himself but merely licensed his image to a shady company that sells NFTs, so that he only got a cut of the $4.5 million that was made. That’s a lot of money for ordinary people, but for a real billionaire, it wouldn’t be worth getting out of bed. It certainly isn’t enough to start paying down his immense debt. None of this looks like the behavior of a successful businessman but instead looks like the grubby cash grab of someone who is probably broke.
Trump’s voters forgive him for being a liar, a criminal, a whiner and a narcissist, but only because they think he’s a “winner” who owns the liberals. The GOP elite is betting the base can be dissuaded from backing Trump if he’s stripped of that “winner” image, so voters can see the insecure loser underneath all the bluster. The NFTs portray Trump as a big, tough guy, but they are just cheesy and worthless crap. In this, they are the perfect symbol of who he is. The only question is whether Republican voters are ready to accept the Trump everyone else sees, the world-class loser whose “winning” exists only in the realm of lies and delusions.
I haven’t paid much attention to the January 6, 2021, demonstration in Washington because it was not one of the 50 worst U.S. riots in the 12 months that bracketed it. It wasn’t even the most destructive riot, or the second most destructive, in Washington during that time.
If you want to see a destructive riot, come to Minneapolis. But none of the Minneapolis rioters were arrested, held in solitary confinement for a year or more, and ultimately tried and sentenced for…not actually being violent. Because their riot was approved by the Democratic Party.
What was really notable about the January 6 event was not that a few hundred partisans (plus an unknown number of FBI agents) were sufficiently exercised about the election to besiege the Capitol. What was notable was the astonishing failure of security that let them in. At one entrance, Capitol guards opened the doors and apparently welcomed a large number of protesters, who entered the building, staying between the velvet rope lines, taking selfies. I think that is how most of the protesters who entered the Capitol got there. At least one criminal defendant has been acquitted on the ground that he had every reason to believe he was being invited into the building as a tourist.
None of the protesters was armed, so in the end, the only person who was killed–lies of the New York Times and Joe Biden notwithstanding–was Ashli Babbitt.
Now, House Republicans have issued a report on the real scandal of January 6: the inexplicable absence of Capitol security. I haven’t had time to read the report; those who have should weigh in via comments. The Daily Wire has a summary and comments on the report:
[F]ailures include Pelosi and Democrat leadership being closely involved in security decisions, which excluded Republican lawmakers from key meetings and conversations related to House security. The report further noted that Democratic leadership showed widespread concern about “optics” over the early deployment of protecting the grounds with the U.S. National Guard.
It has long been reported that President Trump pleaded with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to beef up security in advance of the January 6 demonstration, but Bowser refused to do so. Bowser was in charge of D.C. law enforcement, Pelosi in charge of Capitol security.
Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned after the riot, told The Washington Post that the House speaker’s authorities turned down requests for preemptive deployment of the National Guard six times before January 6.
Sund also reportedly testified that then-House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving said “optics” were the reason for not sending in the National Guard.
On February 9, 2022, Pelosi reportedly said she has “no power over the Capitol Police.”
“This is false,” the report reads. “Documents provided by the House Sergeant at Arms show how [Irving] carried out his duties in clear deference to the Speaker, her staff, and other Democratic staff.
More at the link. Was the January 6 photo op–there was almost no actual violence, other than the shooting of Ashli Babbitt–caused by incompetence on the part of the Democratic officials who were responsible for Capitol security? Or did they foresee the political advantage that could be gained by characterizing the protest as an “insurrection”? We likely will never know.
MN Prager Discussion Group 
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