November 2023 – Page 2

How Manchin Retiring affects Sleepy Joe

Note: This blog is a direct reflection on William pointing out Senator Joe Manchin retired after I sent my blog to him yesterday.

Kind of a weird retirement announcement yesterday from Joe Manchin am I right? Manchin who I best describe as a centrist, more of a watered-down Democrat announced he was retiring. At age 76 he is pretty young in political years. All in all, he likely would have lost re-election, current governor, former Democrat Jim Justice is running, and he likely beats Manchin by decent numbers. However, Alex Mooney a congressman, hard right Trump supporter is also running. I do not think Mooney a carpetbagger who moved from Maryland to win a congress seat beats Manchin. Manchin despite being a democrat is very popular in dark red West Virginia.

The weirdness about Manchin’s announcement? He made a reference to traveling around the US and spreading his political message.

What I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see whether there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together

If you are wondering, there is a group called “No Labels” who for months has been laying the groundwork to try to field just that…. a bi-partisan ticket for the presidential race. Manchin is the perfect person to top that ticket. He is personable, likeable and spews common sense. No one at this blog would vote for him, however.

This creates another headache for Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. Machin will be very popular in certain parts of the country (think Midwest and some parts of the southwest and south), running a centrist campaign with some decent sized donors behind them. My understanding is “No Labels” has qualified to be on the ballot in several states already.

This is from an August 2023 press release but here are the states so far: The ten states are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota and Utah.

Spotlight Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina as 5 definite swing states based on recent elections. I have a feeling far more states are to come. No Labels is not forthcoming about their progress on getting on the ballots of various states, but they maintain they are adequately funded to meet their goals.

Think about this, Manchin will need a running mate. This brings another interesting couple of names up for speculation.

Mitt Romney, he also a soon to be former Senator. His retirement is also due to kind of dubious reasons. Romney hates Trump and is a “middle road” moderate type with no future in the GOP.

Kirstin Sinema, the current, no longer Democrat, Senator from Arizona is another option. She also has no chance of being re-elected as an Independent. Sinema, a former Democrat, could be a tough sell as a running mate with Manchin. In a sense it will look like a spoiler ticket to hand the election to Trump.

Romney comes with the baggage that no Trump supporter will flip to this ticket. People in the Romney crowd are either solidly in the Biden camp or supporting RFK.

No one knows what will happen but let me lay out a nightmare scenario for Joe Robinette Biden and his crew.

Assume these following tickets nominate someone in all 50 states.

GOP:                                                     Trump
Democrat:                                           Biden
Independent:                                    Robert Kennedy jr.
Also Independent:                          Cornell West (He is the socialist type, weirdo black guy)
Green                                                   Jill Stein (2020 nominee)
Libertarian                                          There will be a nominee here
No Labels                                            Manchin/Romney/Sinema/Someone else?

The problem above is outside of the Libertarian and maybe RFK, no other party will draw votes from Trump. The Green will suck maybe 1% from Joe in states that matter. No Labels could very well take 2-4% pending the ticket and each state they run in. RFK, as we detailed, will take roughly the same, again pending the states he is running in. Cornell West is pulling the 1% insane folks vote nationwide.

Therein lies the issue. It gets more complex with No Labels likely fielding a ticket in quite a few states. If Manchin is their guy, how many votes does he steal in Pennsylvania? Virginia? North Carolina? If Sinema is on the ticket, how many from Arizona? Colorado? Romney is another wild card, as he will likely be stealing Biden votes in EVERY STATE.

Like I blogged yesterday, none of these third parties win, but how much does the race change? Biden is looking at his “soft” support ceiling cracking little by little each passing day. I don’t expect significant Biden support to go to Trump, but I can see a number of people abandoning Biden for someone shiny and new. As a result, look for Dems to play hardball by deploying any gimmicks and dirty tricks at their disposal to try thwarting No Labels from fielding candidates.

The Chief

Last note: Manchin may also be angling for an Exxon Mobil Board seat as he was the top beneficiary of their donations over the years, and he, via his family, owns a gas company. If he is genuinely finished with politics, this would be a logical move.

Pope’s Damnable Lies of Transgender Acceptance

2,000 years ago, Nero played the fiddle as Rome burned. Yesterday, the Pope set Rome ablaze again. The difference is that this time the blaze was set by the fires of hell as the Pope scrapped the Scriptures and replaced them with the doctrine of demons.

No, I’m not exaggerating.

Having an atheist for a Pope is an offense, in and of itself, but when he doesn’t even fake a belief in cultural Christianity, all that’s left is balls-to-the-wall humanism. This guy is into Liberation Theology which is just baptized communism. He uses the vocabulary of the Church but only as a disguise for his secular agenda.

Let’s recap the Pope’s actions since this summer.

First, the Pope made belief in global warming (climate change) an official doctrine of the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis pulled no punches in his latest papal proclamation, calling out world leaders — who for decades have failed to protect the planet and its most vulnerable people — and spurring the world’s most powerful to take decisive action on climate change.
Ahead of COP28, pope spurs policymakers, faith leaders to push climate action

“Our responses have not been adequate,” Francis wrote in Laudate Deum, published Oct. 4. As a result, he warned, “The impact of climate change will increasingly prejudice the lives and families of many. … We will feel its effects in … healthcare, sources of employment, access to resources, housing, forced migrations.”

He lambasted, too, the capitalistic appeal of unproven technology — easy fixes to the climate crisis — that fail to address the hard work of phasing out fossil fuels and ending global deforestation: “To suppose that all problems in the future will be solved by new technical interventions is a form of homicidal pragmatism,” he wrote bluntly.

Last time I checked, God was in charge of the creation, including our planet. It is more than hubris to say man can control the climate. Such an assertion is to remove God from the throne and elevate man as his own “god”. This goes way beyond the Dominion Mandate or mankind being made stewards of God.

Second, he has allowed “gay marriage” in the Church.

Using weasel words, the Pope has not condemned German priests from conducting same sex marriages. He has said it is up to individual priests whether they wish to do this. Jesus said a house divided cannot stand, either Truth is universal, or it ceases to be true.

The Vatican holds that marriage is an indissoluble union between man and woman. As a result, it has long opposed gay marriage. But Francis has voiced support for civil laws extending legal benefits to same-sex spouses, and Catholic priests in parts of Europe have been blessing same-sex unions without Vatican censure.

Francis’ response to the cardinals, however, marks a reversal from the Vatican’s current official position. In an explanatory note in 2021, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that the church could not bless gay unions because “God cannot bless sin”.

In his new letter, Francis reiterated that matrimony is a union between a man and a woman. But responding to the cardinals’ question about homosexual unions and blessings, he said “pastoral charity” required patience and understanding, and priests could not become judges “who only deny, reject and exclude”.
Pope Francis suggests gay couples could be blessed in Vatican reversal

In other words, the pope does not call for a full embrace of Germany’s approach to blessing same-sex unions. He instead talks about how such blessings might sometimes be an appropriate expression of pastoral charity.
The pope’s latest comments on same-sex marriage, explained

The position that Francis has taken on same-sex “blessings” is the exact same that the Archbishop of Berlin, Heiner Koch, has expressed recently. Koch left it to any individual priest to decide whether they want to “bless” homosexual couples, citing statements by Francis and his new doctrine chief, Cardinal Victor Fernandez, as justification.
Pope Francis allowing same-sex ‘blessings’ shows he wants the German Synodal Way for the whole Church

Francis surely knows that he cannot change immutable Church doctrine and still be recognized as a legitimate Catholic pope. Instead, with his toleration (and promotion) of sinful acts, like the reception of Communion for unrepentant adulterers (“divorced and civilly remarried”) and same-sex “blessings,” he is changing the practice, preventing many who live in a state of objective mortal sin to see their errors and repent.

Third, yesterday the Pope opened the Roman Church to transsexuals.

This action again is couched in weasel words, but the doors are wide open for unrepentant people to join the Church. In essence, the Roman Church has abolished sin and nullified the death of Christ as a cruel and meaningless cosmic joke.

The Vatican released a document Wednesday affirming that individuals suffering from gender-identity disorders are allowed to be baptized or be named as godparents under specific circumstances.

The document is an official response to a dubia submitted by Brazilian Bishop Giuseppe Negri of Santo Amaro seeking guidance on the issue. It was propagated by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and signed by Pope Francis.

However, in a somewhat ambiguous clarification, the guidance specifies that in order for individuals with gender-identity afflictions to be baptized, it must not cause “scandal” or “disorientation.”

This same stipulation applied to their eligibility to act as godparents or witness marriages, according to the Vatican.
Vatican approves transgender people receiving baptism, becoming godparents

Father Brian Graebe, a priest with the Archdiocese of New York … told Fox News Digital that the Vatican’s guidance is not contradictory to church teaching, but possibly “deficient.”

“There’s nothing in the document that contradicts church teachings. My reaction to it when I read it yesterday was that it’s deficient. The problem isn’t so much in what it says as in what it leaves unsaid,” Graebe said.

He continued, “What I was disappointed not to see in the document was affirmation that in the right of baptism itself, whatever name the person has, we call it a Christian name [or] their baptismal name […] what we must affirm is that the correct biological pronouns are to be used.”

Roman Catholic Cardinal Cardinal Müller responded to the Pope’s declaration this way:

It is confusing and harmful when the Magisterium relies on the terminology of a nihilistic and atheistic anthropology and thus seems to lend its untruthful content the status of a legitimate theological opinion in the Church.
Cardinal Müller responds to Pope Francis’ dubia on ‘transsexual’ godparents, baptisms

Transhumanism in all its variations is a diabolical fiction and a sin against the personal dignity of human beings, even if in the form of transsexualism and terminologically spruced up as “self-determined gender reassignment.” The doctrine and practice of the Roman Church clearly prescribes: “The harlot, the fornicating man, the one who mutilates himself, and anyone else who does something that is not spoken of (1 Cor 6:6-20) should be rejected [from the catechumenate and baptism]” (Traditio Apostolica 16).

The pastoral motive that urges us to treat those who sin against the Sixth and Ninth Commandment of the Decalogue as “gently and compassionately” as possible is praiseworthy only as long as the pastor does not, like a bad doctor, deceive his patient about the seriousness of his illness …

Summary

Sorry but the Pope’s declarations are a bunch of verbal diarrhea. Either trans folks are in or out. Biblically, they can only be welcome into the Church following repentance. Please note that, concerning homosexuals and transgender people, that the Pope requires NO repentance. People dead in their trespasses and sin are being allowed into the Church without repentance and regeneration. This relegates the Church from being a hospital for sinners into just another club for the unregenerate.

Biblically we should welcome all people to our services but only upon repentance of sin and an expression of faith in Christ (followed by baptism or confirmation) should people be allowed membership into the Body of Christ.

The Roman Catholic Church has many doctrinal things that I disagree with, but the Roman Church has maintained more fidelity to some parts of the faith than their Protestant brethren. For instance, there would be no Pro-life movement anywhere without faithful Catholics leading the charge. The Roman Church has been a voice on issues of human sexuality and preserving the meaning of what it means to be created in God’s image better than any other part of the Church. By and large, Protestant Church bodies have either been silent on such issues or embraced the Satanic spirit of our age, repudiating the faith once delivered to the saints.

This Pope is nullifying the Genesis model of God creating male and female and taking his flock outside the boundaries of the historic Creeds. Thus, the leadership of the Roman Church has discarded the last vestiges of orthodoxy and instead is now preaching another gospel.

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.
2 Corinthians 11:3-4

The Roman Church is faced with something not seen since the beginning of the Reformation, should the faithful part from its Roman leaders or stay in spite of the false teaching. This Pope is betting that tradition wins over doctrine. Sadly, he is likely to win that bet.

How Trump Can Win Next Year

Photo above: Robert Kennedy Jr. candidate for President

Insurrection, mean tweets, name calling, male chauvinist recordings, little rocket man, crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, etc. Trump is a piece of work; he gets things done but he is a major piece of work. He was deeply unpopular and has been indicted, god only knows how many times, since he started running again. How can he possibly be winning an election against Joe Biden?

Easy

The only way Trump wins a second term is to “rank the race up” like he did with Hillary. Enter RFK Jr. Robert Kennedy. He will do exactly that, and he has already begun too.

While most will tell me that RFK has no chance of winning (they are correct by the way), he will be playing spoiler. RFK has only one challenge, getting on the ballot in each state. Democrats like they usually do are very aggressive at filing lawsuits/challenges to keep the Green Party off ballots in states that are “swing” in nature. Think Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The Democrats are also smart knowing full well the Kennedy name will pull pretty good numbers depending on what state he runs in. RFK is pulling about 15% nationwide, so he has a large draw, and will be invited to all 3 required debates for the general election.

More on that later, but RFK definitely “ranks up” a race where neither candidate is at or near 50%.

Neither candidate is popular. Make no mistake Joe Biden is viewed as too old, by a very large majority. He also is facing a very shaky situation globally with the Middle East and Ukraine being massive problems and the potential of China being one as well. At home interest rates on debt are high. Couple that with a slowing economy, high inflation, and constant shortages/strikes. Taken together, Biden is in trouble. He has no issues to sell the voters on except “he isn’t Trump.” Trump on the other hand is the Republican version of Hillary Clinton. No Democrat will stay at home and watch him get elected. They hate his guts. Turnout for the Democrats will not be a problem. It’s who they vote for that will be. Biden is likely a soft 48% in a two-person race, but closer to 40% with RFK in.

Trump, for all his flaws, as we see moving forward still has a “base/floor” of about 46% in a 2-person race, and in a hypothetical 3-way race with RFK, he is about 42%. These numbers haven’t and will not move. No one will be moved to vote for Trump, short of RFK being disqualified due to dubious reasons, just like most will not be moved to vote against him rather than for him. He is just too polarizing. Joe Biden is the opposite. His support is just Trump haters, and soft-shell Republicans who can’t stand him, think Romney, Lincoln Project types etc.

Here is where RFK causes a Democrat headache.

RFK is staunchly anti-vax which gives him popularity with the far-right crowd; however, his support for Reparations is a big turn off to that group. While I do not see black folks voting for RFK in droves, I could see him peel off of about 5-6% in certain states. Just look at the math. Take the 2020 election, and in every state, minus let’s say 2% from Trump totals, and minus about 5% from Sleepy Joe. Now check out what the result would be. Sure, in big Democrat states, CA, IL, WA, NY etc. it doesn’t make a difference, but I’m not talking about those states. Check out Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania. A close race gets not so close. I know that 2 plus 5 equals 7% not 5-6% but understand Biden has very high support in the big blue states, not in the flyover ones. Such a depressed turn-out for Biden also puts these races outside the margin of lawyers.

The final point on this is the cognitive issue. Very obvious Joe isn’t all the way there; mentally. If you can’t see it there may be no saving you. Trump is a wild card, but he is definitely 100% in control of his cognition. RFK is fine mentally, he is just a wild conspiracy theorist. If you agree with Joe politically, but he appears lost in a debate, or at a rally, or interview, you are more likely to not vote or change to RFK. If you are a Trump supporter, it doesn’t matter, you’re voting for him anyways.

Trump knows he only wins in a 3-man race. Hence, he is on to the general and with him vs RFK vs Biden. In this scenario, Trump can and will win.

Chief

Editor’s Note: Right after getting this post from The Chief, Senator Joe Machin (photo below) announced that he would not be running for reelection. Machin has long been rumored as a possible third-party candidate for President. Would a Kennedy-Machin ticket be lethal for Joe Biden?

Media Embedded with Hamas When They Attacked Israel Oct 7

Dang. I thought I was done with this war in Israel stuff but this one really blew my socks off. Associated Press and Reuters had people embedded with Hamas BEFORE they attacked Israel on October 7^th. Yep, Associated Press and Reuters had advanced notice that this surprise attack was coming. Oh, said people also did work for CNN and the New York Times.

These guys were posting photos of the Jewish folks being kidnapped by Hamas. They also photographed the body of an Israeli soldier who was dead being dragged thru the streets.

Let’s be clear: News agencies may claim that these people were just doing their job. Documenting war crimes, unfortunately, may be part of it. But it’s not that simple.

It is now obvious that Hamas had planned its October 7 attack on Israel for a very long time: its scale, its brutal aims and its massive documentation have been prepared for months, if not years. Everything was taken into account — the deployments, the timing, as well as the use of bodycams and mobile phone videos for sharing the atrocities.

Is it conceivable to assume that “journalists” just happened to appear early in the morning at the border without prior coordination with the terrorists? Or were they part of the plan?

Even if they didn’t know the exact details of what was going to happen, once it unfolded did they not realize they were breaching a border? And if so, did they notify the news agencies? Some sort of communication was undoubtedly necessary — before, after or during the attack — in order to get the photos published.
Broken Borders: AP & Reuters Pictures of Hamas Atrocities Raise Ethical Questions

As if that isn’t bad enough read this from a related article:

Photos posted by the news agencies of the surprise terrorist attack on Israel include ones showing terrorists breaking the gates to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where residents were caught completely off guard and dozens were murdered. Photos also show that photographers were on the scene as terrorists took civilians such as Shani Louk hostage, and attacking Israeli tanks on the other side of the Gaza border.

The photos raise serious questions about whether the news agencies had advance knowledge that the terrorist attacks were taking place. The four individuals credited by the Associated Press for images of the attacks — Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, and Hatem Ali — are all photographers based in Gaza, where it was revealed in 2021 that the Associated Press shared office space with the terrorist group.
Mainstream Outlets Had Photographers Embedded With Hamas As Terror Attack Unfolded: Report

Did you get that last part? “… Associated Press shared office space with the terrorist group.”

And Liberals wonder why folks like us believe that too many coincidences might mean a conspiracy. Every conspiracy denounced in the last few years has turned out to be true, and I think this one can be added to that list too.

Oh, on X (formerly Twitter) is a photo of photographer Hassan Eslaiah being kissed by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Really, this guy’s name in sin war? Can’t make this stuff up.

Lest you want to research this article, AP and Reuters have scrubbed their websites of much of the embarrassing photo credits, but the photos are likely still there without attribution.

Oh, per the article:

Reuters did not respond to a request for comment. The New York Times and CNN, which both have worked with the photographers in question, also did not respond to inquiries.

“When international news agencies decide to pay for material that has been captured under such problematic circumstances, their standards may be questioned and their audience deserves to know about it,” the watchdog writes. “And if their people on the ground actively or passively collaborated with Hamas to get the shots, they should be called out to redefine the border between journalism and barbarism.”

The article also takes a dig at the Old Gray Lady with the final paragraph of the article:

The New York Times is actively publishing stories from a freelance reporter in Gaza who has proclaimed admiration for Adolf Hitler.

This is a bad look for the mainstream media but wanna bet these photographers get a payoff at some point in the future? Maybe a Pulitzer? Maybe a visit from Massad? Meanwhile, look for photo credits from Gaza to be generic.

Another Red Wave that Never Happened

Last night was allegedly a bad night for Republicans as the status quo was maintained in most elections held yesterday. Today a plethora of folks on Fox News are blaming Donald Trump for these losses. Sorry but I don’t get that at all.

First the Fox article:

MIAMI – A dismal night for Republicans on Election Day 2023 is giving some of former President Donald Trump’s rivals fresh ammunition to target the commanding front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination.

The disappointing results — which included Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear winning re-election in red-state Kentucky; Democrats winning total control of the state legislature in Virginia, expanding their legislative majorities in New Jersey and winning a state Supreme Court seat in battleground Pennsylvania; and the convincing victory in Ohio of a referendum that enshrined abortion rights in the state’s constitution — follow similar results in the 2022 midterm elections, when an expected red wave never materialized.

“Last night was a sweeping loss for republicans. It was eerily similar to last November, when the anticipated ‘red wave’ never came,” James Uthmeier, who manages Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign, said in a social media post.
2023 Election Fallout: 2024 rivals DeSantis, Haley, Christie blame Trump for GOP’s rough night

I don’t know why there would be a “red wave” in the first place. Folks may be dissatisfied with Democrats and their lack of leadership, but can anybody tell me what the Republican alternative is?

Truth is that there isn’t one.

Instead, the typical Republican campaign is, “vote for me ‘cause I’m not a Democrat”.

Per Fox News, Donald Trump is somehow to blame for this? Why? Trump, as far as I can tell, is staying out of most of these contests. Oh, he might hand out a few endorsements but actively campaigning and spending money for state races is not his thing. Frankly I wish Trump would spend lots of money on candidates that say they agree with him but so far that has not happened. Trump seems to be the living embodiment of the motto “an army of one”.

On the Internet, I did see one guy in Pennsylvania say he didn’t vote because it doesn’t fix anything and there was also an article that electronic voting machines in that state were changing votes cast for Republicans in yesterday’s election. No surprise there.

I do get that people don’t trust that we have fair elections, and we also know that to challenge that reality is to be cancelled both online and in real life.

If Republicans want to fix anything, tackling fair elections would be something. But since the Country Club, Establishment, and Swamp Creatures Elites would then have to be on the same side as Trump, this will never happen. Again, it is a demographic reality that Trump was/is/will be the last Republican President in the history of this Republic. What do you think all the unfettered immigration across the Southern border is about? They want millions of dependent people in the country that will vote the right way.

The goal is to make all of the United States into California. (Governor Gavin Newsom has turned all of California into San Francisco and now wants all the other states to be like San Francisco too.) Democrats want to destroy the United States and make it into a socialist, multicultural, humanistic, cesspool. Sadly, they are emboldened by seeing their goal within sight.

Meanwhile, depending on the specific issue, Republicans vacillate between being “Democrat Lite” or looking the other way in fear of yet another circular firing squad. They have a bad habit of avoiding doing anything that will actually benefit our country or doing “the right thing”. Frankly, as a group, Republicans are a pathetic lot.

The words of Ed Hernandez keep coming to mind. He used to say something like, “There’s the stupid party and the evil party. Which are you?” That saying may not be originally from him, but it continues to rattle around in my head when I think about partisan politics.

The real cure to what ails us is spiritual not political. I just wish the Republicans would buy us enough time for the spiritual part to kick in. Right now, it’s the wrath of God 24/7. Sadly, too many frogs are enjoying the sauna as they boil and enjoy the “new normal”. Meanwhile, we get to watch the West burn to the ground. Somehow though we don’t care as long as we have our version of bread and circuses.

Hamas Was Created by Israel

Yep. Often when countries try playing geopolitics and “help” by putting their thumbs on the scales, things spiral out of control, and they end up getting bit in the butt.

We (the United States) have whole departments of the government dedicated to tinkering in the affairs of other nations. This has been going on longer than I’ve been alive. Using the Cold War as justification, and later the war on terrorism, we have overthrown many governments and typically installed dictators in their place.

For example, Ferdinand Marco in the Philippines was propped up by us for a long time. Saddam Hussain, yep that one, was propped up by us and armed with American weapons for many years. The Taliban was also armed by the United Sates under President Reagan. Virtually every ruler in South America has been helped or actively opposed by America’s intelligence networks. Some of these rulers were assassinated by agents of our government. Look at the 1950’s and 60’s and all the involvement that we had.

Often what we did was to oppose the Soviet Union or some other faceless villain and always we spoke in terms of promoting freedom. The unspoken part was supporting our freedom, not the citizens in the countries that we tinkered with. We valued “stability” above all else. Heck, nobody in the mainstream media even acknowledges that Barack Obama and Joe Biden overthrew the government of Ukraine less than a decade ago.

Israel has been doing similar things all over the world but especially in their own backyard.

Ever since its establishment in 1987, Hamas has been at the forefront of armed resistance in the occupied Palestinian territories. While the movement itself claims continuous presence in Palestine dating back to the British mandate in 1935 and the establishment in 1946 of the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (its mother organization based in Egypt), its rise in the 1990s and in subsequent years owes much to the manipulations of Israeli Intelligence.

Before Hamas (Arabic acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement) established full control over Gaza between 2006 and 2007, Israel had long financed and supported in various other ways the group’s rise as the dominant Palestinian force in the Strip. There is ample evidence from Israeli sources that successive governments in Jerusalem helped build this militant strain of Palestinian political Islam, not only in the form of Hamas but also, years earlier, its Muslim Brotherhood precursors.

The rise of the hardline Islamist movement in Gaza harks back to an uprising by Palestinians that started in 1987—known as the first Intifada—when Israeli leaders decided that the main threat to the country’s security came from the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat. The Israeli campaign against the PLO in the 1980s ended up enabling the rise of both Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah (“Party of God”) in southern Lebanon. It is particularly noteworthy that the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was jailed by Israel in 1984 and received a 12 year sentence after the discovery of hidden arms caches, but was released just a year later.
Hamas is Israel’s Golem

… the government in Jerusalem gave him money to support the Islamists in Gaza. The objective, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, was to prevent what seemed like the growing influence of the PLO and its Fatah party. [Brigadier General Yitzhak] Segev said that the goal of aiding the Palestinian Islamist movement was to create a “counterweight” to the Arafat’s PLO.

It is noteworthy that Arafat himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.” It soon became an outright adversary of the PLO, as Israel had hoped, and Arafat understood he could no longer restrain them. Any attempt to do so merely would have eroded his standing because, due to the receding prospect of a two state solution and successive parallel waves of expansion of Jewish settlements all over the West Bank, most Palestinians wanted greater militancy.

Oh, please note in the quote above the mention of a two-state solution. It was originally proposed that both Israel and Palestine would occupy the land that you probably know as “the Holy Land”. (They were to divide the area creating two countries.) However, Israel prevented the creation of a Palestinian state, and each war has been shrinking the land controlled by the Palestinians. Also, the surrounding Arab neighbors have not wanted an influx of millions of refugees and thus the areas occupied by the Palestinians are just large refugee camps where generations of people have been confined.

The next portion of this article is even more stunning:

As late as 2019, Israel’s then as well as the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu urged support for Hamas, albeit for different reasons. He reportedly saw Palestinian extremism, as embodied by Hamas, as a bulwark against the two-state solution which he adamantly opposed. “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he said at a March 2019 meeting of his Likud Party. “This is part of our strategy—to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

In other words, only four years ago Israel’s prime minister still believed supporting strong Islamist rule in Gaza would be his bulwark against a two-state, Israel-Palestine solution.

So, Israel created Hamas and supported them as a counter to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and used Hamas as a tool to stop a two-state solution.

Now that Hamas has bitten their master’s hand and tried to destroy Israel, the gloves have come off. Please note that Israel has been engineering this war for about six years now.

Israel has been taking land from Palestinians and creating Jewish settlements.

Here is an article from June of this year.

Israel’s hardline coalition government has approved plans for thousands of new housing units in the occupied West Bank and given the far-right finance minister sweeping powers to expedite the construction of illegal settlements, bypassing measures that have been in place for 27 years.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ratified the move in the cabinet, allowing pro-settler Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to bypass the six-stage process for building settlements, which are considered illegal under international law, said Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan in West Jerusalem.
Israel to ramp up settlement expansion in occupied West Bank

The plans for the approval of 4,560 housing units in various areas of the West Bank were included on the agenda of Israel’s Supreme Planning Council that meets next week.

Various factions expressed deep concerns that the entire West Bank could soon come under Israeli control.

To approve settlement activity is a “dangerous escalation to complete the annexation of the West Bank”, the Palestinian foreign ministry said.

Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, said the move would only escalate tensions in the region, while Fatah warned that “the settlers will be removed from the West Bank as they were removed from the Gaza Strip”.

Search Israel, annexation, and West Bank if you wish to see some more info on this subject.

Folk, a look at a map is instructive. Gaza is in the southern part of Israel, the West Bank is on east side of Israel but on west bank of Jordan River, and then to the north is Hezbollah operating out of Lebanon. Israel faces the possibility of a multifront war with many nations entering the fray.

Here are a few views of Gaza. The dissenters call this military action a genocide but who are the combatants? Based on these photos, pretty much every human in Gaza is the enemy.

Meanwhile Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal want to bomb Iran.

“It basically says if the war expands, if Hezbollah opens up a second front in the north against Israel in a substantial way, to overwhelm the Iron Dome, then we should hit the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is no Hamas without the Ayatollah’s support. There’s no Hezbollah without the Ayatollah’s support,” Graham said.
Senators to introduce resolution to strike Iran if Hezbollah attacks Israel

As shown above, Israel supported Hamas but gets a pass. I guess our goal is regime change in Iran and any excuse to do that is a good one for the Swamp Monsters.

On Evangelicals, Israel, and The Bible

Some say that God has approved of their mob

Esteeming their purposes alone

Choosing sides with a definite pride

And taking their cause for His own

Everybody loves a holy war

Draw the line and claim divine assistance

Slay the ones who show the most resistance

Everybody loves a holy war

Oh yeah

Many’s the man with the iron hand

Supposing his own thoughts to be divine

He will break any bond ’cause the other man’s always wrong

It’s a handy excuse for his crimes
from “Everybody Loves a Holy War”
Mark Heard (1982)

There are two million more Evangelical Christians in the United States supporting Israel than there are Jews in the USA.

Whether folks support Israel or not, is not my point. Instead, I wish to dwell on the reasons why. The short version is these Christians are wanting the Jews to go to Israel so most of them can be killed! This is disgusting but true.

Many Jews know this but keep quiet about it because if they say something then they will be cancelled. Please note that such cancelling occurred before “Cancel Culture” was even a thing. Case in point:

At the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Mark Alan Siegel, who served as the chairman of Florida’s Palm Beach County Democratic Party, told an interviewer the following about what he thought of Christian and Jewish relationships:

The Christians just want us to be there so we can be slaughtered and converted and bring on the second coming of Jesus Christ. The worst possible allies for the Jewish state are the fundamentalist Christians who want Jews to die and convert so they can bring on the second coming of their Lord. It is a false friendship. They are seeking their own ends and not ours. I don’t believe the fundamentalists urging a greater Israel are friends of the Jewish state.

It wasn’t too long before the video of the interview went viral and Mr. Siegel was forced out of his position. Where did Mr. Siegel get such crazy ideas? It’s a prevalent view among dispensational prophecy writers.
What’s Next for Israel (According to Popular Prophecy)

Gary DeMar does a good job ripping this strange brand of theology apart on his blogs and podcasts, but like a monster in a B-movie, this heresy just won’t die. In fact, people that promote it, and are constantly wrong in their predictions, make lots of money off promoting these views.

In part they base their nonsense on twisting verses like this passage in Zechariah.

And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.

And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God.
Zechariah 13:8-9

Based on passages like the verses above, Evangelicals that believe this passage speaks of a future event want Jews to go to Israel so 2/3 will die and the remainder will believe in Jesus. Evangelicals believe this will usher in the Return of Christ and that Jesus will then reign on earth for a thousand years. This view of the Bible’s end times was first popularized in the 1820’s and ‘30s. On the basis of this teaching, Christians were calling for a Zionist movement long before the Jews ever did so.

(Zionism is related to Jewish people returning to the biblical lands of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and reconstituting a Jewish State.)

Since A.D. 70, only one guy got close to killing 2/3 of the Jews and setting up a thousand-year kingdom on earth. He was an obscure dude in 1930’s Germany. Funny that this never moved the needle on people rethinking this idea.

On a recent blog post, Gary DeMar, quoted Dwight Wilson’s Armageddon Now! (1977) when Wilson wrote on page 94:

Another comment regarding the general European anti-Semitism depicted these developments as part of the on-going plan of God for the nation; they were “Foregleams of Israel’s Tribulation.” Premillennialists were anticipating the Great Tribulation, “the time of Jacob’s trouble.” Therefore, they predicted, “The next scene in Israel’s history may be summed up in three words: purification through tribulation.” It was clear that although this purification was part of the curse, God did not intend that Christians should participate in it. Clear, also, was the implication that He did intend for the Germans to participate in it (in spite of the fact that it would bring them punishment) . . . and that any moral outcry against Germany would have been in opposition to God’s will. In such a fatalistic system, to oppose Hitler was to oppose God.

In the aftermath of World War II, a Jewish state was setup in Palestine. Yep, that was the name of the place prior to 1948. Evangelicals see the modern state of Israel as the fulfillment or potential fulfillment of biblical prophecy. In order to arrive at this conclusion, they just have to ignore about 2,600 years of history. Evangelicals skip the Babylonian Captivity, the return to the Land, the Roman Empire, the destruction of Jerusalem and a number of other events. This allows them to cherry pick passages that are fulfilled and recast them as future events. Instead of letting the Bible interpret the Bible, they end up with prophecies about Cobra helicopters, rocket launchers, nuclear weapons, Marks of the Beast, SkyNet, and other stuff that somehow can only exist in modern times.

It is a logical fallacy to equate of the modern nation calling itself Israel with the ancient one. This confusion muddies up the water. Modern Israel is a secular state, not one governed by the Law given to Moses.

Modern Jews are not governed by the Old Testament, they are governed by the traditions handed down from the Pharisees, the Talmud. You know, the rules created by the hypocrites that Jesus repeatedly savaged and called dens of vipers, whitewashed sepulchers, and the Synagogue of Satan.

Per the New Testament, the promises to Israel are found in the Christian Church. As Gary DeMar notes elsewhere, the original Christian Church was exclusively Jewish for at least a decade. It is only because of the unfruitful branches being cut from the vine that believing Gentiles could be grafted into the body of Christ.

Are we to believe that one last-days generation will be grafted into the olive tree mentioned by the Apostle Paul in Romans 11 after 2000 years, and that’s what Paul means when he wrote that “all Israel will be saved”? Is that what Paul was describing in Romans 11:26? Absolutely not.
Are We Witnessing the Final Prophetic Generation?

Israelites were being grafted into the body of Christ in Paul’s day, by the tens of thousands! It’s called “the remnant”: “There has also come to be AT THE PRESENT TIME [Paul’s time] a remnant according to God’s gracious choice.” Consider the TIMING and the CONTEXT:

I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? Far from it! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? “Lord, THEY HAVE KILLED YOUR PROPHETS, THEY HAVE TORN DOWN YOUR ALTARS, AND I ALONE AM LEFT, AND THEY ARE SEEKING MY LIFE.” But what is the divine response to him? “I HAVE KEPT for Myself SEVEN THOUSAND MEN WHO HAVE NOT BOWED THE KNEE TO BAAL.” In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, since otherwise grace is no longer grace.
Romans 11: 1-6 (NASB)

DeMar is not alone in his views of biblical prophecy being fulfilled as past events.

Concerning Zionism, I found an interesting article chronicling Zionism and the relationship between Evangelicals and the Jews. I highly recommend that you read it.

THE UNTOLD STORY OF CHRISTIAN ZIONISM’S RISE TO POWER IN THE UNITED STATES

Most Jews in America vote for Democrats so why do Republicans in such large numbers stand with Israel? This article will answer this question and many others. The article was written in 2019 but still holds up well in its presentation.

If we get involved in the current war in Israel, it will be because of bad theology.

Does Trump Still have “Big Hands”?

Yep, this is one Supreme Court case that holds “big” implications for the 2024 election. So, what’s the big deal?

Well, back in 2017, some lawyer in California (why is it always lawyers and California?) tried to register the phrase “Trump Too Small” with the Patent and Trademark Office. The government agency denied the request—probably because they knew it was not true.

This lawyer, having an inflated view of his self-importance, decided to litigate this crucial issue in hopes that he could enlarge his stature and that of his personal wealth. (Again, typical Democrat, wanting to get rich off the hard work of others.)

This guy is arguing that it’s his First Amendment right to falsely claim “Trump Too Small”. On appeal, a federal court ruled that the government was wrong to deny his trademark application, and this lawyer could print t-shirts that impugned Trump’s manhood. The Patent office has appealed this case to the US Supreme Court.

The Justice Department arguing on behalf of Katherine Vidal, under secretary of commerce for intellectual property, eventually appealed the case up to the Supreme Court, arguing that the Lanham Act, which is a federal statute aimed at protecting intellectual property in trademark designations, gives the PTO constitutional authority to block Elster’s trademark request.

“When registration is refused because a mark ‘[c]onsists of or comprises a name…identifying a particular living individual’ without ‘his written consent,’ ‘[n]o speech is being restricted; no one is being punished,’” the DOJ’s petition to the high court says.
Size of Trump’s hands at center of Supreme Court trademark case: ‘Trump Too Small’

I’m sure this case is one sticky mess that the Court would rather avoid in these divisive political times. Its implications on the 2024 political cycle are out there for everyone to see. The government is right that living folks do have some protections to their name and reputation. (Perhaps some barn doors in this life are best left unopened.)

Folks the truth is that this guy can print the t-shirts and sell them all he wants; however, for him to own the phrase that we all know belongs to Marco Rubio is criminal. Claiming a legal right to spread falsehoods clearly belongs exclusively to the mainstream media.

We here at Really Right stand with President Trump. We trust that the Court will rise to this challenge to our great President (and his manhood) and send this lawyer shrinking back into the shadows of obscurity. We all know that such false claims can’t stand up to public scrutiny. It’s embarrassing that any Democrat would dream of comparing themselves with President Trump.

Anyway, this vital case will be heard by the Court tomorrow and their decision will be out just in time for the beginning of the Presidential Primary season.