“Meanwhile the Christians in Bethlehem suffer.”

December 26, 2022

A Not-so-merry Christmas for Bethlehem’s Christian Residents

By Ethel C. Fenig at American Thinker:

Yesterday was Christmas for the many Christians who observe the holiday following the Gregorian calendar.  In Muslim-occupied Bethlehem, which Christians revere as the birthplace of Jesus, Christian tourists flocked to the town to celebrate, as the Times of Israel reports.  

Tourism is the economic lifeblood of this town in the West Bank, and for the past two years, the pandemic kept international visitors away.

This year, visitors are back, hotels are full and shopkeepers have reported a brisk business in the runup to the holiday. Although the numbers have not reached pre-pandemic levels, the return of tourists has palpably raised spirits in Bethlehem.

And enjoy themselves the tourists did, filling the Muslim owned hotels, visiting the Church of the Nativity and buying souvenirs from mostly Muslim shopkeepers, thus immediately improving the town’s economic fortune as tourism is the town’s sole industry.  However, for Bethlehem’s Christians, life is difficult.  While life for Christians in neighboring Israel is comfortable and their population increasing, in Bethlehem and surrounding Muslim-dominated areas, the situation is the opposite.  Life has become so difficult that according to the Christian mayor:

But behind the cheery Christmas lights, the demographics tell a different story.

Bethlehem’s Christian population is rapidly disappearing, as members of the community leave in droves for a better life abroad.

Bethlehem as well as nearby Beit Sahour and Beit Jala were 86% Christian in 1950. But by 2016, the Christian population dropped to just 12%, according Bethlehem mayor Vera Baboun, a Catholic who is the first woman to hold the post.

Oh.

Indeed, Raymond Ibrahim, a Coptic Christian born in America to Egyptian immigrant parents who studies and writes about the Middle East and Islam, has publicly declared much of the world is indifferently witnessing “The Death of Christianity in Bethlehem.”

• “There are incidents happening constantly… Most times, it is a case of the Muslim community overpowering the minority, which is the Christian community.” — Christian Arab, quoted on condition of anonymity, Israel365News, November 21, 2022.
• “[T]he leaders of the Christian community in the West Bank are reluctant to hold the Palestinian Authority and their Muslim neighbors responsible for the attacks. They are afraid of retribution and prefer to toe the official line of holding Israel solely responsible for the misery of the Christian minority.” — Khaled Abu Toameh, October 31, 2022.
• “The only thing that interests the PA is that events of this kind not be leaked to the media. Fatah regularly exerts heavy pressure on Christians not to report the acts of violence and vandalism from which they frequently suffer, as such publicity could damage the PA’s image as an actor capable of protecting the lives and property of the Christian minority under its rule. Even less does the PA want to be depicted as a radical entity that persecutes religious minorities. That image could have negative repercussions for the massive international, and particularly European, aid the PA receives.” — Dr Edy Cohen, “The Persecution of Christians in the Palestinian Authority,” BESA Center, May 27, 2019.
• “The fact that the Palestinian Authority continues to make sure that there is a Christian mayor in Bethlehem is only window dressing… It’s a show used to convince the world that Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christianity is still a Christian town. It is not Christian. It is Muslim in every regard.” — Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, director of the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation, November 21, 2022.

Why isn’t this dire situation reported on?  Discussed at the UN perhaps? Ah, Ibrahim’s report continues:

Why is the persecution of Christians in Bethlehem and other areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority so unreported or under-reported? Certainly, it is not because they experience less persecution than their coreligionists throughout the Muslim world, where the bulk of the world’s persecution of Christians occurs.

“The attacks by Muslims on Christians are often ignored by the international community and media, who seem to speak out only when they can find a way to blame Israel,” wrote the Muslim journalist Khaled Abu Toameh.

Of course!  If you can’t blame Israel, if you can’t blame the Jews then problems caused by Muslims are ignored.  As Ibrahim further explains:

The bread and butter of the PA and its supporters, particularly in the media, is to portray Palestinians in general as victims of unjust aggression and discrimination from Israel. This narrative would be jeopardized if the international community learned that it is Palestinian Muslims who are persecuting their fellow Palestinian Christians — solely on account of religion. It might be hard to muster sympathy or a professedly oppressed people when one realizes that they themselves are doing the oppressing of the minorities in their midst — and for no other reason than religious bigotry.

And so the members of the so called establishment media, who ignore their own prejudices and bigotry against believing Jews, against believing Christians, who falsely — and arrogantly — portray themselves to be the voice of the downtrodden, obediently gurgle what they’re told; what they want to believe.  Meanwhile the Christians in Bethlehem suffer.

As does the truth.  

TRUMP! ABUSED BY DEMS AND GOP!!!

December 26, 2022

There Certainly Was an Insurrection, But Not by Trump

By Brian C. Joondeph at American Thinker”

Beginning Jan. 6, 2021, the government-media deep state cabal sharply pivoted from accusing President Donald Trump of “colluding with the Russians to steal the 2016 presidential election” to “incitement of insurrection,” a charge for which he was impeached a second time and now the farcical January 6 committee is recommending criminal charges.

Britannica defines insurrection as,

An organized and usually violent act of revolt or rebellion against an established government or governing authority of a nation-state or other political entity by a group of its citizens or subjects.

As for Trump’s supposed role, in his January 6 speech, he promoted the First Amendment’s protections of “freedom of speech and assembly” and “the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Here are his exact words, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Trump went further tweeting, “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence!” How exactly was this a call for a violent overthrow of the government?

This was not a call for violence, revolt, or rebellion. In fact, President Trump authorized National Guard troops, but only Speaker Pelosi or D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser could order deployment. And neither did. The January 6 Commission ignored this.

Capitol Police welcomed protesters inside the U.S. Capitol building, and the only death was at the hands of a Capitol Police officer, fatally shooting an unarmed female military veteran.

As the FBI admitted to embedding informants in the January 6 protests, it begs the question of the FBI’s role in inciting this so-called “insurrection.” How did the FBI know to place informants there? It takes months to train and embed informants, suggesting that the FBI knew these protests would happen, well in advance, but did nothing to stop or prevent them. Or did they play a role in creating these protests through their informants? Did the FBI aid and abet this “insurrection”?

Questioning or challenging election results is hardly unusual. Just ask Al Gore who mounted all sorts of legal and media challenges in 2020. Or Democrats who contested Trump’s 2016 electoral college victory. Were these insurrections?

Was Trump behind the “insurrection” as Reps Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney insist? Or was the federal government fomenting insurrection? And was January 6 part of a long pattern of government insurrection going back decades?

Recent news suggests: “An organized and usually violent act of revolt or rebellion against an established government” began long before Trump entered the political sphere.

I speak of Tucker Carlson recently discussing possible CIA involvement in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. JFK’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr tweeted in response, “The most courageous newscast in 60 years. The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered.”

If the CIA was part of this “violent revolt against an established government,” which altered the course of America, this was a branch of the federal government carrying out an insurrection. This was six decades ago and possible government involvement in violently removing a president remains buried to this day. Even recent CIA director Mike Pompeo had a “no comment” response to queries.

Flash forward to 2016 when the FBI spied on Trump’s campaign, transition, and administration. Using a fabricated dossier, which the FBI knew was false, they swore the opposite to obtain FISA warrants to spy on Trump and his associates, from campaign to presidency. All to prevent or overthrow an established government, the definition of insurrection.

Is the FBI’s mission, “We protect the American people and uphold the U.S. Constitution”?

Or is it the private state police force of the Democrat party, “Friend to Biden Interests”? Does the U.S. Constitution have a clause encouraging government agencies to spy on a U.S. president?

The Republican Congress did nothing to thwart this effort, abetting Congressional investigations into nonsensical Trump-Russia collusion and a Special Counsel, both of which tried, fortunately without success, to remove a duly elected president from office.

Participating eagerly and willingly in this insurrection was the media – social, broadcast, print – knowingly repeating lies, using their broad platform to destroy the Trump presidency.

When the Hunter Biden laptop surfaced, containing bombshells which could have derailed Joe Biden’s presidential aspirations, the FBI, DOJ, DHS, and DOD worked with social media to suppress that news and control the narrative, knowingly and falsely claiming that this was “Russian disinformation,” as we learned from recent Twitter releases.

There was also the Seth Rich murder, blamed erroneously on “Russian hacking,” while the FBI was running interference for the Democrat party by burying two of Rich’s laptops. Rather than investigating and solving this murder, they were too busy raiding Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home or investigating NASCAR garage door pull handles. Anything to help Democrats and hurt Trump by pushing the Russians, and their supposed puppet Donald Trump, as the villains.

Over 50 former intelligence directors and officials, all receiving handsome government pensions, conspired to push a bogus story to alter the outcome of a presidential election, and they succeeded. Was this not a deep state government-media insurrection?

In Part 8 of the Twitter files, we learned that the Departments of Defense and State used Twitter as a propaganda platform, promoting accounts, including those they controlled, to spread their messages, while censoring those exercising free speech in challenging the government narrative.

This is what many three letter agencies were doing to suppress information unfavorable to Democrats, and promoting pro-Democrat propaganda, to influence elections, from 2016 to 2020 and 2022, and likely earlier elections as well.

The Daily Mail reported: “A large number of ex-officers from the FBI, CIA, NSC and State Department have taken positions at Facebook, Twitter and Google.” Why is that, other than to give the law enforcement and intel communities a platform to influence opinion and more?

Did the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird of CIA media control from the 1960s ever end after the Church Commission investigation? Or did it continue and expand to numerous other federal agencies?

Are we really “electing” presidents or is the deep state “selecting” them, giving Americans only the illusion of free and fair elections? Is social media the propaganda arm of the government, in defiance of the First Amendment?

There may be additional Twitter file dumps implicating the CDC, NIH, and FDA in colluding with Twitter to shape the COVID narrative to damage President Trump ahead of the 2020 election and to promote their self-serving command and control mandates, not to mention financial gain. How is that for insurrection?

Never mind releasing Trump’s taxes. How about Dr. Fauci’s and others’ tax returns, those who controlled the COVID narrative and Big Pharma, as well as vaccine mandates?

It’s not just the law enforcement, medical, intelligence, and military agencies, but also the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fabricating second quarter job numbers, off by more than a million jobs, falsely promoted for the benefit of Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections. How’s that for election interference? Is any government agency not an arm of the Democrat party? Putin could only dream of such influence on American elections.

What’s the common theme? Government agencies actively promoting one favored political party while damaging their political enemies, Soviet-style, to influence elections and disrupt Constitutionally based government. In other words, an insurrection.

YouTube screen grab

It seems we have a new fourth branch of government, coined “the deep state,” made up of most government agencies and corporate media, all organized and coordinated to run the government, picking electoral winners and losers, from a state and local level to Congress and the White House. Are elections even relevant today or just theater?

We know this through Twitter.

What about Google, Facebook and YouTube? How involved was the New York Times and Washington Post in forming the narrative? Did the FBI infiltrate numerous media outlets, controlling the news in a Stalinist way?

We know CNN was part of this insurrection as last year one of their staffers admitted to Project Veritas that CNN’s focus was “to get Trump out of office” and that its coverage was “propaganda.”

Rep. Jim Jordan is one of few Republicans who are taking any of this seriously and speaking out, while Sens. Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham believe America’s number one priority is to hand Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a blank check.

Jordan tweeted a question that Sens. Mitt Romney or Susan Collins would never ask: “At least 80 FBI agents collaborated with Twitter to help monitor the social media site. How many more were working with other Big Tech companies?” Jordan went further, “I have concerns about whether the government was running a misinformation operation on We the People.”

The leftist media, once skeptical of big government and intel agencies, proudly stood up to “The Man.” Now they defend of government fascism and have literally become “The Man.” Is anyone else outraged? Republicans? Bueller? Bueller?

The deep state is the real insurrectionist, using their immense power, influence, and money to control in Orwellian fashion what Americans hear, see, and think, and if that isn’t enough, to use their might to install a government of their choosing.

How Trump got elected in 2016 is a mystery, as it caught the deep state by surprise. But never again as subsequent elections demonstrated. Republican leaders are happy to go along with it all, possibly due to their lack of resolve, but more likely as they are a part of the deep state cabal, enjoying the perks of power and wealth in exchange for offering only a façade of resistance.

It’s Donald Trump and his 80 million supporters who are the last bulwark against the deep state embedding its tentacles so deep in government and society that the pretense of a Constitution and Abraham Lincoln’s government of, by, and for the people is relegated to the ash heap of history.

Instead, the focus is on Trump and his supporters, silencing them in a financial or judicial gulag via special counsels, indictments, raids, harassment, and censorship, making a mockery of the Constitution.

Who again are the real insurrectionists?

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. Follow me on Twitter @retinaldoctor, Truth Social @BrianJoondeph, and LinkedIn @Brian Joondeph.

Our Fascist FBI?!

DECEMBER 26, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, FBI, TWITTER

VDH: ON THE FBI’S DRIVEL

Victor Davis Hanson comments on the FBI statement responding to the Twitter Files last week:

The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant—ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech.

“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the bureau said in a statement. “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

Almost all of the FBI communique is untrue, except the phrase about the bureau’s “engagements which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries.”

Whole thing here.

I have not been able to find the FBI statement on its own site. I have found it only as quoted by news organizations such as in the linked New York Post story above and the FOX News video clip below.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1605655653187432448&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F12%2Fvdh-on-the-fbis-drivel.php&sessionId=89e840947d1e656c8b6169d266dd7b5027386060&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=a3525f077c700%3A1667415560940&width=550px

JOHN adds: I wrote about the FBI’s statement here.

A Game Of A Century!

GREG JOSEPH 61-YARD FIELD GOAL FOR THE WIN! @VIKINGS #NYGvsMIN pic.twitter.com/a7JwsbirRX

— NFL (@NFL) December 24, 2022

That Fascist Dem World Of Twitter Litter!

December 25, 2022

How the FBI Used Twitter to Lie to You

By Trish Randall at American Thinker:

The FBI we know is a creation of Hollywood. From the beginning, J. Edgar Hoover sought to insert the bureau into movies and TV shows, to portray the agency as grounded in American values, and special agents as righteous competence personified. Even on the far-out “X-Files,” with its hinting at nefarious government activities, Agent Mulder’s one flaw was idealism bordering on naivete. For over a century, Hollywood has upheld the belief that a federal law enforcement/internal quasi-spy agency is necessary for the safety of a free society and its citizens.

This image of the FBI fails to highlight an important fact. The FBI is allowed to lie to you. They can lie to acquire information or encourage a confession. Unlike entertainment, agents don’t need a story to fill a certain screen time, or number of theater seats. They just need to convince a very small audience just dumb enough to reveal something incriminating to their new friends.

The Bureau had Hunter Biden’s laptop by December 2019, before Joe Biden was the Democrat candidate. Although Biden was such a ghost candidate that all his campaign events combined wouldn’t have filled a stadium washroom, trained, experienced FBI employees were desperate for the opposing candidate to lose, just as they’d opposed Candidate Trump in 2016.

The targets for the FBI’s 2020 fabrication were Twitter staffers with titles like “Trust and Safety,” “Site Integrity,” “Product Trust,” or “Legal Policy and Trust.” They mostly worked to prevent 280-character tweets causing distress to potential readers with marginalized identities. There were many ex-FBI staff at Twitter, including attorney James Baker. Twitter staffers were primed to expect nefarious Russian efforts to influence the 2020 presidential election, including fake information, a laptop that didn’t belong to Hunter Biden or was hacked, salacious contents that were false and would be leaked. Being asked to help the FBI and given temporary Top Secret Clearance were ego-feeding perks. Twitter executive Yoel Roth apparently enjoyed running out of boring names for meetings with the FBI.

Twitter staff was groomed to squash a story from Russian agents, with no evidence of Russians targeting the 2020 election. After spending $100,000 on ads in 2016 with no effect, the Russians had apparently given up.

Some people working at Twitter couldn’t see how Twitter rules against hacked materials or misinformation were applicable to the Hunter laptop story published by the NY Post in October 2020. Yet they blocked the laptop story, including the link to the original story from being shared on Twitter — or even via private messages (or DMs) between Twitter users.

The operation hid the truth just long enough that the laptop documenting crimes by the family of the next president stayed mostly unknown until after the election. By March 2022, people who had voted for the man elected in Nov. 2020 were saying they would have voted differently if they’d heard about the laptop sooner.

It would seem awfully risky to use this flimsy story to convince a social media company to keep a secret that could be revealed by other means. Why not hold an official FBI press conference to claim that Russians loaded a laptop with fabricated evidence of Biden family crimes — perhaps adding some patently ridiculous material? The Russians would announce, “That wasn’t our work.” The FBI would reply, “Of course the Russians would say that.” The controversy would probably still be going back and forth.

Now consider how phone and internet scammers work. Someone claiming to be an IRS agent contacts the victim out of the blue regarding (nonexistent) overdue taxes. She’s scheduled to be arrested, and a SWAT team is on the way. But all this trouble can be avoided by immediately purchasing $2000 worth of retail gift cards and reading the card numbers and PINs to the scammer over the phone.

Scammers’ demands are intentionally illogical as a way to identify the most gullible targets, who won’t figure it out before the cash is gone. There’s an urgent deadline, so victims have no time to think. Threats, yelling, and insults make clear thinking even harder. Flattery can work, too, with statements like, “You remind me of my granny.” Getting the cash doesn’t end the scam. The victim’s name goes on a list of easy marks for future scams, including an offer of getting the cash returned, for a price.

FBI operatives used Twitter staffs’ irrational hatred of Trump, a story stupid enough to confirm gullibility, the short timeframe before the election, and the flattery of having been deputized by the FBI to press action by Twitter. Maybe there was even earlier gullibility testing, using claims about hate speech and COVID.

Apart from grooming staff to conceal news of Hunter’s laptop, the FBI paid Twitter over $3 million for “processing requests.” At the FBI, 80 staffers were assigned to fight right-wing nationalism via  censorship of small accounts sharing obvious jokes. The FBI National Election Command Post  pressured social media companies to censor conservative posts as misinformation. The San Francisco NECP office gave Twitter 25 items for action on 11/6/20.

Since 1908, government and entertainment have sold Americans the FBI as a super-effective law enforcement agency. The FBI’s website has a Famous Cases & Criminals section featuring 100+ crimes/criminal enterprises and 1000+ criminals. Among the cases the FBI chose to highlight, a huge percent were solved not by agents’ efforts, but someone contacting the FBI with information. An illegal immigrant angling for a green card revealed Dillinger’s location. The Unabomber’s brother called after seeing familiar ideas and phrases in the published manifesto. The profile the FBI had developed was a married, disgruntled airline mechanic who took meticulous care of his car, living near Chicago.

But the most remarkable thing about the agency is that Theodore Roosevelt created the FBI via executive order after Congress refused his request to create a national police agency. Now that agency, born in defiance of congressmen who saw no constitutional place for a national police force, is staffed by people who think it’s their right to use any means they can find or develop, to override the constitutional procedure for choosing our president.

AMERICA’S TOP TRILLIONAIRE THIEVES!

Democrats and Republicans agree… on wasting taxpayer dollars

The $1.7 trillion omnibus bill is a pork-laden Christmas miracle

at SPECTATOR….December 22, 2022

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell talks to reporters as he arrives at the US Capitol (Getty)

Written by:

Grace Curley at Spectator:

Who says Democrats and Republicans can’t find common ground?

According to the Senate’s recent approval of the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill, bipartisanship is still possible after all. There’s just something about dumping debt on the American people that brings both sides of the Swamp together. Chalk it up to holiday magic.

The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 68-29 and was met with a round of applause from antsy lawmakers determined to get out of DC before the incoming storm.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer heaped praise on soon-to-be retiring Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont for his work on the bill.

“What a capstone to a brilliant career,” he gushed.

Leahy worked closely on the bill with another senator who is heading out the door — Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama.

Coincidentally both of these men are mentioned in their swansong legislation. An FBI building in Alabama will be renamed after Shelby, whereas the Lake Champlain Basin Program and an existing school lunch program will be renamed after Leahy.

Rest assured though: renaming a few buildings or lunch programs is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this 4,000+ page pork-filled monstrosity.

So what other programs and earmarks brought about this rare camaraderie between the left and right?

Well, it would appear that sending $44 billion to Ukraine (which would bring America’s Ukraine aid to $100 billion) was not a point of contention for the lawmakers.

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell informed reporters that, “Providing assistance for Ukrainians to defeat the Russians is the number one priority for the United States right now according to most Republicans.”

I am well aware that McConnell probably doesn’t mingle with any non-Swamp humans at this point in his almost forty-year senatorial career. Even so, does he also not read exit polls? Inflation, not Ukraine, was top of mind for “most Republicans” in the midterms.

McConnell also gave himself a pat on the back over the bill, telling reporters, “I’m pretty proud of the fact that with a Democratic president, a Democratic House and Democratic Senate, we were able to achieve, through this omnibus spending bill, essentially all of our priorities.”

If this bill includes “essentially all of the GOP’s priorities,” then we most certainly have some serious reprioritizing to do.

One priority that Republican voters feel passionately about is securing the southern border. The omnibus bill allocates $1.56 billion to Customs and Border Protection, but specifies that none of the funds be used to “acquire, maintain or extend border security technology and capabilities, except for technology and capabilities to improve Border Patrol processing.”

In essence, no money can be spent on securing a border that keeps people out, but money can be spent on processing that gets people in (faster!).

Meanwhile, the bill also allocates $410 million to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Oman for “enhanced border security.”

I wonder if the $410 million given to border patrol officials in the Middle and Near East will also be tied up with harebrained restrictions? Or is that an obstacle we only like to throw at the men and women trying to protect our border?

Other priorities Mitch can brag about over Christmas in Kentucky include $65 million for the Pacific coastal salmon recovery, $3 million for bee-friendly highways and $3.6 million for the Michelle Obama Trail in Georgia.

Oh and how could I forget one of the greatest accomplishments of all?

“Funds appropriated to the Internal Revenue Service in this Act may be used to provide passenger carrier transportation and protection between the commissioner of Internal Revenue’s residence and place of employment.”

Translation? A chauffeur for the IRS commissioner! That one must be a real point of pride for the Senate Republicans. They are always looking out for the little guy.

The only thing that McConnell is doing well as the Senate Minority Leader is making Representative Kevin McCarthy look less awful in comparison. To be fair, that is no small feat.

McCarthy, who is desperately trying to save face with the Republican base, is slamming Republican senators and the bill at every opportunity. In the end, this boondoggle might bode well for McCarthy’s speakership aspirations. After all, sometimes you don’t need to impress the boss in order to stay off the chopping block. You just need one person in the office to suck at their job more than you. For Kevin McCarthy, that saving grace might just be Cocaine Mitch.

But McConnell is doing conservative voters a favor too. He is reminding Americans that politicians can reach across the aisle if the situation calls for it. That’s if the situation involves wasting trillions of our tax dollars and putting America last, then the grandstanders in DC can suddenly all play nice.

Maybe they can all gather around the 4,000 page pork barrel, join hands and sing “fahoo fores dahoo dores!” After all, this kind of compromise is a Christmas miracle.

(Grace Curley is a Spectator contributing writer, host of The Grace Curley Show and executive producer of The Howie Carr Show on WRKO. She is based in Boston, Massachusetts.)

Christmas USA Today?

December 23, 2022

Leftist: Christmas would be nice if it weren’t for all the icky Christian stuff

By Andrea Widburg at American Thinker:

I’m not Christian, but I’ve always been grateful to live in a country where people so generously share the season’s beauty with me. However, I’ve never lost sight of the fact that “the reason for the season” is the birth of the man that super-Catholic Joe Biden describes as “a child Christians believe to be the son of God.” In other words, Jesus Christ. No Christ means no Christmas. However, for one British woman, what really spoils the otherwise lovely Christmas season is all that icky Christian stuff.

Polly Toynbee, a regular columnist at The Guardian, Britain’s left-leaning newspaper, wrote a column entitled (for real), “Christmas comes with good cheer. The tragedy is the religious baggage.” Yeah, it’s a real shame about the reason for the season.

Toynbee opens her article by celebrating that Christianity is dying in Britain. “This is the first Christmas since time immemorial [note: actually, since the seventh century] that most people in this country are not Christians.” She might be less enthused about this decline if she contemplated the fact that, as Christians vanish, the number of Muslims swells. Using data from Wikipedia, I compiled a little chart about Islam’s growth in Britain:

That’s a pretty impressive growth curve. Toynbee will be surprised to learn that, when Islam is the majority religion, you don’t get to write cute little columns saying, “That Eid al-Fitr party was great but why all that stupid religious fasting before it?”

From that inauspicious start, Toynbee’s column goes straight downhill. She admits to enjoying the traditions and good feelings, especially that bit in It’s a Wonderful Life. You know the one:  “[I]ts belief in collective good at Christmas overcoming the ogres of Pottersville capitalism—never mind Clarence the angel.”

She concedes, too, that a bit of fun in the middle of the winter is good, even necessary. But the carols? Blech.

The dense theology of carols inculcating bizarre concepts skates past most singers – “veiled in flesh the godhead see, hail the incarnate deity” and the sheer impudence of “lo he abhors not the virgin’s womb”

It’s apparent that, given the choice, Toynbee would infinitely prefer this woke carol that one British church sang:

“One of these days, New Yorkers will conclude that Minnesota is a dangerous place to visit.”

DECEMBER 24, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

A CHRISTMAS MURDER AT THE MALL

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Nordstrom store at the Mall of America, which is not far from where I live, to buy my wife a Christmas present. A few hours later, there was a murder in that store:

A shooting inside the Nordstrom department store at the Mall of America on Friday night left a 19-year-old man dead, according to Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges.

Hodges said during a late-night news conference that the shooting involved an altercation between two groups of young men…

Presumably the “groups of young men” were rival gangs.

…and that the individuals involved fled the scene immediately after the shooting, which occurred about 7:50 p.m. on the eve of Christmas weekend.

The chief finds the situation inexplicable:

“We had 16 officers working today in the mall. Sixteen cops,” Hodges said. “And they still decide to do this. I’m at a loss.”

I will hazard a wild guess: all of the youths who were involved in the gang altercation already have considerable experience with Minnesota’s criminal justice system, mostly as juveniles. They took away a lesson from those experiences: in Minnesota, crime is not punished severely, and often, as with the George Floyd riots, it seems to be condoned.

This particular crime will be punished, in part because of its commercial ramifications:

An innocent bystander’s coat sleeve was grazed by a stray bullet, but the person was uninjured, Hodges said.

It is one thing if gangbangers shoot one another–it has happened before at the Mall–but if they start hitting random shoppers, there will be serious consequences.

Yesterday’s shooting got some national attention, in part because some New York Giant football players, in town to play the Vikings, were at the Mall during the incident:

Giants radio play-by-play announcer Bob Papa and some Giants players escaped a Mall of America shooting on Friday night in Bloomington, Minn. No players were believed to be in the vicinity of the shooting.
***
A 19-year-old man was killed during the shooting, according to police, and the mall was locked down for more than an hour. The Giants are staying in a hotel adjacent to the massive mall complex.

When the incident occurred, Jerry Meade, the Giants’ vice president of security, and the team’s security group sent out an alert to let people know there was an incident in the mall and to stay in the hotel or shelter in place. For those already in the mall, they were asked to text Meade their location so those individuals could be found and retrieved by Giants security personnel, with assistance from the Bloomington Police Department, once it was safe to do so.

One of these days, New Yorkers will conclude that Minnesota is a dangerous place to visit.