Essentially, Hunter Biden was a bag man for the Biden family; courting foreign businesses and governments for money so the payments could be laundered (by front businesses) and used to support the Biden family. That is the general takeaway from the interview with one of the legitimate business people, Tony Bobulinski.
More curiously though…. Mr. Bobulinski has the receipts; actual evidence of how businesses were set up to funnel the bribes, scheme and graft payments into the Biden family. According to the details he laid out Bobulinski was recruited to help set-up and facilitate the influence peddling program.
The described network is a smaller version of the Clinton Global Initiative; but essentially the intents and purposes were the same.
As Bobulinski detailed the engagements, one of the more glaring aspects was how easily the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement apparatus could monitor everything that was happening. Many of the meetings were with foreign officials outside the U.S; and many of the structural parts of the network were assembled in locations easily infiltrated by the U.S. intelligence apparatus.
The Biden network’s attempted communication was not too sophisticated. Their electronic trail of communication was captured and recorded by people inside the network. There is a ton of evidence for what they were doing including text messages, emails, phone call records and traceable meetings with all of the participants as outlined by Bobulinski.
So, knowing that, why did the U.S. intelligence apparatus not do anything about it?
Obviously, as outlined during the interview, some of the initial set-up was taking place while Joe Biden was Vice-President. The aggregate U.S. intelligence apparatus was obviously monitoring these activities; it would be intellectually dishonest not to accept that at some level this was well known inside the U.S. government.
Later on, as Hunter Biden began a downward spiral of addiction and dangerously abhorrent behavior; and keeping in mind he was formerly in the U.S. military -and kicked out due to a cocaine addiction- so his risk behaviors and issues would have been known as a risk by the U.S. government; he was a prime target for an influence operation by foreign intelligence adversaries. This would have been clear to anyone in the intelligence community and undoubtedly shared up the information chain.
Yet, at no point did anyone do anything to try and stop the construction of the schemes?
It just doesn’t make any sense… unless….
…Unless the objective of those within the U.S. intelligence background (writ large) was to capture and retain all of this information as part of a black file for use as leverage/control later on against a Biden administration, and likely the Biden family.
There is a similarity of purpose here resembling the FBI refusing to provide a defensive briefing for presidential candidate Donald Trump as part of a strategy to gather evidence against Trump in their sketchy investigation of him. However, in the Trump example, ultimately was no ‘there‘ there; so the investigation held no value beyond the assembly of a political narrative. Ergo, Weissmann/Mueller and the insurance policy.
The transparent lack of effort by the U.S. intelligence community to intercept the Biden issues well in advance of the compromise of national security, is alarming. However, it must be considered their lack of action was a purposeful decision…. and then the motive of those entities really becomes the bigger question.
This is a rather dangerous rabbit hole to start to consider. However, against what we know of the intelligence community as a result of President Trump holding office, there are some really serious questions that need to be explored.
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A mostly a cathartic exerciseBy: Ted W. BrownOctober 25, 2020 Dear family, friends and former friends, I feel a great need to unburden myself. Why, might you ask? I am a part of a group of people who are held by many as the cause for the nation’s problems. Yes, I am a voting for Trump. I did not say I agree with his personal morality, manners, or his general decorum. I said, I am voting for him. Before you throw me on the pile of irredeemable deplorables, consider the following, and let my beliefs stand, not a label. Please read to the end………though I believe my narrative is correct, I hope I am wrong. The historical divide of our two parties has always been in agreement of outcome but different ways of achieving it. This has led to political solutions of compromise. Some better than others, but a consensus under the political boundaries of the republic, has been achieved. Today we are faced with an ideology with a clearly diverging vision for America. Both men running for president have moral failings, Trump, however, is the clear leader in this category. We expect our leaders to exceed us, to set the bar higher for us, they do not. Perhaps they do exceed us if we were in their shoes. It has been attributed to George Washington, when one of his generals was complaining about the quality and character of men under his command, Washington responded, “since we can not have men as we would like them, we must take them as they are.” That is where I find myself today. All analogies fall apart at some point, but consider this. Five men are given the job of cutting down a tree, one says, I have a saw, another has an ax. A third suggests we leave it alone, eventually it will fall down, the fourth says we must burn the forest to the ground, for nothing good resides there. The fifth man says there is no tree. Then one man decides other men shall not be permitted to discuss the merits of their plan. There is a good chance a fight might break out. Can there be a conversation about the methods, or is shutting down dialogue useful? Is canceling helpful? Does a dismissal of the facts even make a conversation possible? Does this drive discussion and resentment underground where is can fester? Are riots accomplishing anything positive? Or do they alienate people? Does speaking out for law and order alienate people? Why is it that our politicians can so easily sacrifice the American people on the altar of political advantage? Where is the press to call both parties to task? Martin Luther King succeeded because he had virtue on his side, and everyone could see his point, front and center and loud and clear, far better than burning down neighborhoods. So go ahead and burn it down, is this helping your cause? America? America has been a place where ideas are discussed, debated, and decided where usually the best ideas win. Were you ever convinced against your will? If you were, most likely you are of the same opinion still. Free and open speech is imperative for the preservation of the republic. The exchange of ideas, good and bad, make better policy. Who is responsible for this? The Press, by my account and those of a small and growing group of clear thinking liberal democrats would agree. The press has done a disgraceful job of even-handed reporting. The press is not required to be nice to the president, or his campaign or the challengers: they are not to pick sides, but, sort out the truth. Do people believe they do? I am afraid they may, yet consider this: Does anyone really believe a president can have a record of being 99% wrong? Flipping a coin, one could do better, or doing the opposite would be 99% right. Things do not work that way. Has the role of big tech gotten too big when they censor major news outlets? Is this free and fair reporting? I will not attempt to argue the facts, since today, facts are malleable and consequently no one can agree on them. For the purposes of conversation, lets say what progressives, BLM, and SJW’s espouse is true: white privilege, systemic racism, institutional racism, the founding of our nation was built on slavery, the legacy of slavery created, and the victimhood of people of color, fluidity of gender, reparations, pervasive police brutality, (some version of defund the police), climate change, marginalizing the nuclear and hetero-normative family. Let’s say, yes, all of this is true. What is the best way to correct it? If you believe electing Joe Biden will make all this better, and we can all just get back to brunch, you MUST vote for him. Or is a vote for Joe Biden a referendum on the man Donald Trump? If it is the later you are by default opening the door to all manner of progressive policy, and if that is what you want, let me say it again, you have no other choice than to vote for Joe Biden. You should also ask yourself if these problems have been on our shores since 1619, how have they remained invisible during the 8 years of the Obama administration? First and foremost, victimhood, lays the foundation of much of the progressive narrative. Are people victims? Of course, this is true, and has been the case since recorded time. The world is tragic, and people suffer, some more than others, some much more, but does that define you? Is the color of your skin a marker for victim or perpetrator? Some for the most tragic victims have not permitted circumstances to define them, rather, hardship has been the engine to achieve outstanding success. You can prove this to yourself. Which one of us would raise our children inculcating them that they are victims? No way, unless they wish to establish themselves as misguided saviors. Thomas Sowell states “intellectuals give people who have the handicap of poverty the further handicap of a sense of victimhood.” Is it really the best course to create a victim class, or a perpetrator class? I have no issues with people declaring themselves victim or perpetrator, but to institutionalize this practice, I fear has horrible consequences. Well intended “woke” parents inculcate their children that they are perpetrators and sustainers of systematic racism by virtue of their white privilege, imbeds guilt for the crime of whiteness. Somehow, that does not appear it will work out well for these children. Entitlement follows, after all if you are a victim, are you not entitled to special treatment? If that special treatment includes equal opportunity sure, equal outcome, not so much. Have you ever known an entitled person? I have, maybe you enjoy their company, I do not. The constant droning of what they expect, how they did not receive what they deserved; demanding their rights and no exercise of responsibilities is draining. Sadly, they believe each and every word, and the world owes them. Entitlement is not a rich poor issue, wealthy parents create it, and well meaning activists. Parents have to live with the ever increasing whining of their offspring, and society has to listen to the ever increasing demands of the entitled. Entitlement is not going to raise a generation of builders. Entitled means free. Have we forgotten there is no free lunch? Free does not mean it is without cost it just means someone else will pay for it. Free health care, free college, free child care, welfare, food stamps, corporate subsidies, every dollar given away is a dollar taken from someone. Hear me, I am not saying there should be no safety net for those in need, there should be, and it is up to wise leaders to craft a system to address the needs of the poor. It should not be a system to create a permanent welfare class of generational poverty with few or no incentives to elevate one’s station. A government able to give us everything we want has the power to take anything they want. Just raise taxes, if the person is rich who cares? They have more than enough money to live on, yes, that is true, and even if they live extravagant lifestyles, it is nothing compared to the greater wealth they posses to invest, grow their businesses and create wealth and a better life for millions of Americans. Since when is it the role of our leaders to punish and vilify wealth creators? I saw a bumper sticker that called for outlawing billionaires. A little checking provided a list of countries that have no billionaires. You could move there anytime you want but I doubt you would want to. We are all benefactors of men and women becoming wealthy providing innovation, jobs and lower prices. , Apple, Amazon, Target, Netflix, just a few companies, and others you have not, companies that build roads, homes, skyscrapers, airplanes, produce energy that keep you warm, power your car, fossil fuel or electric, develop drugs, grow our food, make our cars, create movies and music. American free enterprise is not perfect, there are winners and losers. Why would someone risk millions to have the fruits of their labor confiscated to a level of disincentive? Apple started in a garage, Amazon likewise started humbly, selling a few books online. If there is no benefit the enterprise goes broke, customers determine the success of the enterprise, not government. You think the government is best suited to make these decisions? Do you not remember Solendra? Businesses need to be kept in check, just like government, there is little restraint on the human capacity to bend to corruption. Competition is one way to keep businesses in check, elections and the press for our government. Business given franchise protection of Washington policy is to betray the freedom of capitalism. How is demonizing the wealth creators a good thing? As much as you may dislike it, it is because of them, we enjoy our prosperity. Even George Soros changed the status of his hedge fund to a family office to reduce his tax burden. If Donald Trump paid more federal income taxes than legally required, he is a bad real estate developer. We have transformed the social and economic safety net into a permanent scaffolding of dependence. Nature does not endure, dependent upon unnatural support. Yes, it can be cultivated, and at a point it must make its own way. The same is true for man. The child is nurtured and prepared to leave the home, making their way, able to nurture others, start a family, the social unit of development for millennia. With confidence comes competence. Without such development we are forever stunted and live in a state of dependency. A growing number of black Americans are waking up to this phenomenon, and resisting the idea of permanent dependence. Are they being celebrated? No, they are sellouts, betraying their race, becoming the punching bags of progressive politics. Men and women develop dignity, purpose and meaning in their life by achievement, making their way, creating their identity in their accomplishments. This is human nature, working at cross-purposes to this and you build a prison, where its occupants depend on the jailer. Compassion is a wonderful thing and foundational to Christian faith, un-tempered from reason it is debilitating to humanity. The Overton window, what is that you might ask? It is the idea that some things cannot be said even though they are undeniably true because they offend a group. Is this any way to work on a problem? We are not able to articulate the issue because it will offend a group. It was not long ago Don Lemon, CNN commentator, reported six things blacks needed to do to make a better life; today those comments would be labeled racist, even though he is black, they would land him in the Candice Owens, Larry Elders corner betraying their race. Really, you betray your race, if you tell them the truth. There was a time that if someone told you the truth it was a sign of love. Your mother would, a loyal friend would say the hard thing, is not fun. Personally, I would rather gloss over the issue, have fun, but it is not a part of me. Slamming my hand in the car door and saying what I need to say is preferable to living with the duplicity of watching a friend taking a bad path and then witnessing the wreckage. Solutions, there is no such thing as a solution to the problems that face us. What! There are only trade offs. Can we eliminate automobile deaths? Yes, without a doubt we can reduce the automobile death toll from 38,000 annually to practically zero. How? Reduce the national speed limit to 30 MPH. That is impractical, you are correct, that is why each solution is a trade off. Just remember this when some grand plan is laid out to solve some big problem. Ask yourself what other problem will pop its head up like a whack-a-mole. And oh, you say we can think of all the implications of the solutions we create, that is complete hubris, just do a little research on the minimum wage or banning plastic shopping bags in CA. The unintended consequences of the simplest policy stretch far beyond our ability to project, we are not as smart as we think. You can create all the government programs you want. Indoctrinate everyone with “woke” political discourse. Have social workers intervene in every domestic dispute. Remove every micro aggression from our vocabulary, have mayors, police chiefs, and district attorneys and police of color. You can have all the critical race theory classes. Legislate our country to reflect the exact percentages of racial distribution in every company, team, political body, student body. Give free health care, child care, housing. You can give universal income bringing all to parity to whites and you will never be one step closer to healing racial problems until there are fathers in the home. For us as a country to succeed, race must become nothing, we are making it the only thing. The world would not be a good place if I was in charge. My pragmatism must be balanced with compassion, and this is only possible with people of goodwill, working to craft a solution with acceptable tradeoffs. Intractable positions by people possessed by their ideology make this impossible. Remember the five men given the task to cut down the tree? Unless there is courage to stand up to canceling and censoring, the conversation will never move forward. We, the people, are wiser than those at the helm of government or media think. We can decide for ourselves given the true and honest reporting. By some indications Joe Biden will be our next president, his liberal progressive allies and agenda would take the country to a place that does not make us better. Could I be wrong? I can only hope so. RespectfullyTed W. Brown Email link https://conta.cc/3e7j2QL RIP MCINTOSH
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PUBLIC DISCOURSE, a Journal of the Witherspoon Institute
More deeply understanding the truth about marriage and human sexuality will help all of us flourish. And that is what a pastor like Pope Francis desires. We can understand—indeed we share—the frustration of our fellow Catholics with the ways in which the Holy Father conducts interviews and the ways in which the media distorts them, but we must not do anything to undermine the truth that sets us free.
Moral truths are what they are. Human beings can fail to grasp them. They can defy them even if they do grasp them—people have free will. Human beings cannot, however, change them.
Catholics believe that the Church is a reliable teacher of moral truth and that when it teaches something definitively (by its own explicit criteria for “definitive” teachings), it is, by the grace of God, protected from teaching moral error. Under certain circumstances, the pope can do so in the name of the Church. By the Church’s own understanding of morality and truth, however, the Church herself cannot—and the pope cannot—make what is inherently morally wrong permissible. It—and he—cannot change moral truth. Nor can the Church—or the pope—change teachings about moral truth (or other matters of faith) on which the Church has taught definitively.
Last week, as a result of reports of comments by Pope Francis that are evidently contained in a video biography of the pope, the media were filled with stories of the Pope changing, or planning to change, Catholic teaching about morality—if not changing morality itself—on matters that have long been the subjects of definitive teachings of the Church. The subject was the one on which the Church’s teaching is most dramatically at odds with the dogmas of contemporary secular progressivism—sexuality and marriage. The pope endorsed, we were told, “same-sex civil unions,” thus overturning the historic Catholic teaching that sex outside the bond of marriage, considered as the conjugal union of husband and wife, is in principle immoral, as well as the longstanding teaching that homosexual inclinations, inasmuch as they are not ordered to the unitive and procreative good of marriage, are intrinsically disordered. Sexual progressives—including those identifying as Catholic—cheered. Traditionalists booed.
It has now become clear that the Pope’s remarks were made back in 2019. And while we still don’t have the full context (and it appears that the documentary maker spliced and diced several different quotesfrom the pope to make them appear as if they formed one single quotation), there is a plausible interpretation of Pope Francis’s comments under which they are consistent with historic Catholic teaching and moral reality.
However, it is up to Pope Francis to make clear that this interpretation is sound, and lest the faithful be kept in confusion (and distress), it is his obligation to provide the necessary clarification. We do not propose to speak for the Pope; nor do we seek to absolve him from what seems to us his duty to speak. As the Catholic journalist John Allen has noted, “if a leader believes he or she has been misrepresented and yet remains silent, even sending signals of approval, then ownership of that message shifts to the leader.” Clear teaching is all the more pressing given the headlines we’re now seeing about the president of Venezuela: “Venezuela’s Maduro, citing Pope, asks congress to consider same-sex marriage.” Ambiguity about the truth will be used against the truth.
The Nature of Marriage, Sexual Ethics, and the Law
The Catholic Church has consistently taught these basic truths or straightforward implications of the moral law:
Marriage is the conjugal union of husband and wife. It is a bond consummated and actualized by sexual intercourse uniting spouses as one flesh, and naturally oriented to, and uniquely apt for, the bearing and rearing of children.
All non-marital sexual acts—including same-sex acts—are immoral.
All people are made in God’s image and likeness and are, as such, bearers of profound, inherent, and equal dignity. Those who experience same-sex attraction, no less than others, are precious in God’s sight, and they are to be loved and treated with benevolence and generosity as well as justice. They, no less than anyone else, are subjects of moral duties as well as rights, and they are called, as all of us are, to exercise the virtue of chastity.
Children have a right to be raised by a mother and a father whenever reasonably possible.
The political common good depends on marriage as the basis of the family and the fundamental unit of society. By eroding people’s understanding of marriage and of children’s right to a mother and a father, and by sanctioning non-marital sexual partnerships, the legal recognition of same-sex relationships as marriages harms the public good. It is therefore unjust.
It is likewise unjust for government to undermine the institution of marriage through competing “marriage-lite” unions, or to promote non-marital sexual activity by this or other means. Insofar as “civil unions” do so, they must be opposed.
We think the first three truths have been taught in ways that satisfy the Catholic Church’s explicit criteria for definitive (and thus irreformable) teaching. The subsequent three truths follow from the preceding ones (and have been affirmed by popes and bishops as well, though not taught definitively). No one could change these teachings. No pope can change them. Pope Francis’s informal comments reported in the news last week strike us as re-affirming point 3, but calling into question point 6. More on that below.
Fundamental moral and metaphysical realities cannot be altered by human willing or declaring. Thus, no public official or religious leader can change the nature of marriage or the moral status of non-marital sexual conduct. But some laws do obscure the nature of marriage and encourage (and even facilitate and license) non-marital sexual acts. The Church has long opposed them for that reason. For a law to serve the common good, it must reflect the truth about marriage. Getting marriage law wrong harms the common good and harms people who act based on a faulty notion of what marriage is.
The same thing is true for civil unions that are just “gay marriage” by another name. Whether labelled “marriage” or not, such legal arrangements do harm if they obscure the true nature of marriage by creating a competing institution that mimics marriage, and if they directly encourage and promote non-marital sexual relationships. They do this if they provide legal benefits that are predicated on the presence (or expectation) of a non-marital sexual relationship—for example, if they are made available only to two men or two women who are unrelated to each other.
Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity.
In other words, legal institutions that intentionally promote immorality are themselves immoral, and thus no one should support them.
This does not, however, exclude the possibility of other policies that would provide certain legal rights and benefits for people who undertake the obligation to care for and support others, or each other, if those policies do not compete with marriage or single out non-marital sexual partnerships. Anyone who is not married, for whatever reason, whether committed to living with a sibling or a friend or alone, may find it useful or advantageous to designate non-spouses for a variety of roles—hospital visitation and power of attorney, next-of-kin, insurance beneficiary, etc. And so public policy could be crafted to address those needs, quite independently of any considerations having to do with sex. If this is what is meant by civil unions, it is not intrinsically immoral to support them: they do not intentionally incentivize non-marital sexual activity, nor do they equate non-marital sexual relationships with marital ones. (In our book What Is Marriage and in a 2009 essay, we discussed such legal proposals and noted important prudential reasons to be skeptical of them, as indeed we are, but the case for or against them will be just that—a prudential one, based on a weighing of social costs and benefits.)
The former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal William Levada, did something like this as an employment policy when he was Archbishop of San Francisco. Here’s how the Catholic News Agency described it when Levada passed away last year:
Before his appointment to Rome, Levada served as Archbishop of San Francisco for 10 years, from 1995. While in that archdiocese, Levada was known as a vocal defender of the Church’s teaching on marriage as the city of San Francisco expanded domestic partnership benefits to same-sex and unmarried cohabitating couples.
In order to avoid the archdiocese’s being forced to recognize illicit relationships, Levada instituted a policy that allowed unmarried employees in the archdiocese to select any person they lived with as their “domestic partner,” regardless of the nature of their relationship.
The basic idea was to treat “civil unions” or “domestic partnerships” as exactly that—an arrangement to address shared domestic or civil responsibilities, not responsibilities predicated on sexual activity or a sexual relationship. There are prudential reasons to oppose the creation of such legal entities—for example, California’s civil unions law was used in court precisely to strike down California’s Prop 8, which defined marriage correctly—but there is nothing intrinsic to a civil union (a legal fiction created by positive law) that has to conflict with moral reality, and it is possible to imagine circumstances in which they would be the prudent choice, all things considered.
Indeed, the current Archbishop of San Francisco, and the former chair of the USCCB’s defense of marriage committee, Salvatore J. Cordileone, responded to this week’s news by pointing out how a civil union could be structured. He writes: “a civil union of this type (one which is not equated to marriage) should be as inclusive as possible, and not be restricted to two people of the same sex in a presumed sexual relationship. There is no reason, for example, why a brother and a sister, both of whom are unmarried and support each other, should not have access to these kinds of benefits.”
Pope Francis’s Comments
From media reports, and subsequent analysis, it appears that five different phrases from the Pope were spliced together to make them seem like one continuous whole. Of course, we ourselves don’t know the full context, and we caution against rushing to judgment. It strikes us that the cause of truth would best be served by the Pope himself making clear what he meant and means. That said, let’s look at what he said in two parts.
First and most straightforward, in the documentary film Francis is presented as saying: “Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.” This “quote” is actually a pastiche of three different sentences placed together from a 2019 interview. Here’s the original full text, with the phrases creating this new “quote” in bold:
“I was asked a question on a flight—after it made me mad, made me mad for how one news outlet transmitted it—about the familial integration of people with homosexual orientation, and I said, homosexual people have a right to be in the family, people with homosexual orientation have a right to be in the family and parents have the right to recognize that son as homosexual, that daughter as homosexual. Nobody should be thrown out of the family, or be made miserable because of it.”
“Another thing is, I said when you see some signs in the children and from there send them to— I should have said a ‘professional,’ what came out was ‘psychiatrist.’ I meant to say a professional because sometimes there are signs in adolescence or pre-adolescence that they don’t know if they are homosexually oriented or if it is that the thymus gland didn’t atrophy in time. Who knows, a thousand things, no? So, a professional. The title of the daily paper: ‘The Pope sends homosexuals to the psychiatrist.’ It’s not true!”
“They asked me the same question another time and I repeated it, ‘They are children of God, they have a right to a family, and such.’ Another thing is—and I explained I was wrong with that word, but I meant to say this: When you notice something strange—‘Ah, it’s strange.’—No, it’s not strange. Something that is outside of the usual. That is, not to take a little word to annul the context. There, what I said is that they ‘have a right to a family.’ And that doesn’t mean to approve of homosexual acts, not at all.”
As this context suggests, Pope Francis was making the entirely uncontroversial point that people with same-sex attractions are children of God and members of families—brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins. That children with same-sex attractions should not be thrown out of the house, and adult relatives with same-sex attractions should not be excluded from family activities (though obviously consideration should be given to how they or indeed any relatives or friends by their conduct and example might support or undermine efforts of parents to form children in the truth). In sum, no one should be made miserable because of the particular challenges they face; everyone should be assisted in meeting them in morally upright ways.
Second, in the film Francis is presented as saying: “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered. I supported that.” The public has very limited context for this “quote.” These lines, too, come from the same 2019 interview as the above. And we now know that the third sentence here was spliced to follow the first two as if it were one continuous whole. Here’s how the Catholic News Agency describes the 2019 interview with Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki:
During a discussion on the pope’s opposition to a same-sex marriage proposal when he was an archbishop in Argentina, Alazraki asked Pope Francis if he had adopted more liberal positions after becoming pope, and if so, whether that was attributable to the Holy Spirit.
Alazraki asked: “You waged a whole battle over egalitarian weddings, of couples of the same sex in Argentina. And later they say that you arrived here, they elected you pope and you appeared much more liberal than what you were in Argentina. Do you recognize yourself in this description that some people who knew you before make, and was it the grace of the Holy Spirit that gave you a boost? (laughs)”
According to America Magazine, the pope responded that: “The grace of the Holy Spirit certainly exists. I have always defended the doctrine. And it is curious that in the law on homosexual marriage. . . . It is an incongruity to speak of homosexual marriage. But what we have to have is a law of civil union (ley de convivencia civil), so they have the right to be legally covered.”
It is not clear when the pope said “I stood up for that,” or if that sentence references the remark on civil unions. The magazine also did not indicate how it had obtained the footage omitted from the publicly aired interview.
There is debate about the English translation of the original Spanish interview. Some have argued that the proper translation of “ley de convivencia civil” isn’t civil union law, but civil coexistence law. Regardless of the translation, the comment could mean any number of non-controversial measures that accord with metaphysical and moral reality, including the sort reflected in Archbishop Levada’s and Archbishop Cordileone’s proposals. Indeed, in a 2014 interview, Pope Francis emphasized that there’s no such thing as a “civil union” in the abstract, but a variety of legal instruments governments could create, and they’d need to be evaluated on their own terms:
Marriage is between a man and a woman. Secular states want to justify civil unions to regulate different situations of cohabitation, pushed by the demand to regulate economic aspects between persons, such as ensuring health care. It is about pacts of cohabitating of various natures, of which I wouldn’t know how to list the different ways. One needs to see the different cases and evaluate them in their variety.
It would be very helpful if the Pope made clear that any such laws should not be limited to those who are presumed to be in a sexual partnership—a limitation that would directly promote same-sex sexual partnerships.
One final point on the documentary film. It features a snippet from an interview in which the Pope saysprecisely that he “doesn’t mean to approve of homosexual acts, not at all.” For a lengthy documentation of Pope Francis on sexual morality, marriage, and civil unions, see this post from Fr. Matthew Schneider.
Living in Accordance with Metaphysical and Moral Reality Leads to Happiness
In What Is Marriage, we opposed a “consent-based” view of marriage that saw marriage as being primarily about companionship, establishing a companionate relationship with what one scholar called “your number one person.” We argued that a faulty understanding of marriage actually makes it harder for people to find happiness, both inside and outside of marriage. That a vision of marriage that sees it as just about whatever ordinary friendships and relationships have, but taken to the nth degree—that marriage is simply the best, most important of whatever makes human sociality good to begin with—gets marriage wrong in ways that can harm both married and unmarried people.
For married people it can make them presume that their marriage is to be their primary means of fulfillment in all the areas of their life, that they should be able to say of their spouse “you fulfill me.” But no one human being and relationship totally fulfills any of us. And no one should seek total fulfillment from their spouses or their marriage.
For unmarried people, it can make them feel—and the rest of society view them—as not only lacking one aspect of fulfillment, marriage itself, but as lacking the pinnacle of human fulfillment, and thus as not flourishing at all. A vision of marriage that sees the relationship between spouses as the peak of human sociality in turn renders the unmarried as second-class flourishers.
Instead, we should view marriage correctly, as a distinctive good with a distinctive nature: a conjugal union of husband and wife ordered to, and thus normatively shaped by its unique aptness for, the bearing and rearing of children. Doing so not only allows us to see family as involving much more than just the spouses themselves—to include extended family and friends grafted into the family—but also allows us to appreciate the unique and irreducible goodness of non-marital forms of human sociality.
A sound vision of marriage thus offers wide vistas of human fulfillment to people who may never marry, for whatever reason. It offers hope of meaningful non-sexual relationships to people who experience same-sex attraction in a way that makes forming a truly marital partnership impossible.
More deeply understanding the truth about marriage and human sexuality will help all of us flourish. And that, of course, is what a pastor like Pope Francis desires. We can understand—indeed we share—the frustration of our fellow Catholics with the ways in which the Holy Father conducts interviews and the ways in which the media distorts them, but we must not do anything to undermine the truth that sets us free.
Ryan T. Anderson is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Public Discourse. He is also the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He is the author of When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment and Truth Overruled: The Future of … READ MORE
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and as a member of the President�… READ MORE
Tony Bobulinski, a whistleblower who was a former business partner of Hunter Biden, told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday that Jim Biden, the brother of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, told him that Joe Biden would not be hurt by their foreign business dealings because of “plausible deniability.”
Bobulinski says that he met with Joe Biden at a conference and that he met afterward with Jim Biden for two hours at the Peninsula Hotel, where Jim Biden “walked through his history, in his own words, stating with all the work and effort he did to get Joe Biden elected initially in Delaware and then through the family history and the role that he had played in it.”https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.419.0_en.html#goog_809830210Pause0:15Full-screen
Bobulinski said that he was skeptical of what was going on because of his high-level security clearance as a military official and his knowledge about needing to report gifts.
“And I’m thinking about the Biden family, like, how are they doing this? I know Joe decided not to run in 2016, but what if he ran in the future? Aren’t they taking political risk or headline risk?” Bobulinski continued. “And I remember looking at Jim Biden and saying, ‘How are you guys getting away with this, like, aren’t you concerned?’”
Bobulinski said, “He looked at me and he laughed a little bit and said, ‘plausible deniability.’”https://88a00b00cb82cdc890a8a63dc43d6ee0.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
TONY BOBULINSKI, HUNTER BIDEN FORMER BUSINESS PARTNER: And I’m — I’m thinking about the Biden family, like, how are they doing this? I know Joe decided not to run in 2016, but what if he ran in the future? Aren’t they taking political risk or headline risk?
And I remember looking at Jim Biden and saying, “How are you guys getting away with this, like, aren’t you concerned?”
And he — he looked at me and he laughed a little bit and said, “plausible deniability.”
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX HOST: He said that out loud?
BOBULINSKI: Yes, he said it directly to me one-on-one in a cabana at the Peninsula Hotel after about a, you know, hour-and-a-half, two-hour meeting. With me asking out of concern how are you guys doing this.
Aren’t you concerned that you’re going to put your brother’s future presidential campaign at risk—the Chinese—the stuff that you guys have been doing already in 2015 and 2016 around the world?
And I just can almost picture his face, where he sort of chuckles and says, you know, plausible deniability.
CARLSON: So he said—this is a man who has been drafting off his brother’s political career for almost 50 years—he said to your face essentially, we’re lying about it?
BOBULINSKI: Anyone watching this interview can look up what plausible deniability means—
CARLSON: Yes.
BOBULINSKI: And the definition is very distinct.
CARLSON: That’s remarkable.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on THE DEALINGS WITH RED CHINA BY JOE, JIM AND Hunter Biden, THAT HAVE ALL THE CHARACTERISTICS OF TREASON ARE CLEARLY REVEALED IN THIS INTERVIEW BY PATRIOT TONY BOBULINSKI IN THIS INTERVIEW WITH TUCKER CARLSON
“Major media are either denouncing the allegations as unproven or ignoring the story, the motive for which is apparent. Journalistic duty be damned. We have to get rid of Trump. And anything that jeopardizes that highest of goals should be buried until after Election Day.”
If Joe Biden loses on Nov. 3, public interest in whether his son Hunter exploited the family name to rake in millions of dollars from foreign donors will likely fade away.
It will not matter, and no one will care.
But if Joe Biden wins the presidency, a prediction: By the Ides of March 2021, there will be an independent counsel or special prosecutor named to investigate the Biden family fortunes and how they were amassed.
Why is such an investigation a near certainty in a Biden era?
First, there is a 50-year tradition in America of an antagonistic media and political enemies pulling down presidents they oppose.
Watergate was the prototype — a political bugging of the sort that J. Edgar Hoover used to do as a courtesy for presidents.
Yet, the petty crime and White House cover-up was blown up by a hostile Congress, media and special prosecutor’s office to bring down a president who had just won 49 states and 60% of the nation.
In 1984, Ronald Reagan won a 49-state landslide. But when he lost the Senate in 1986, Washington, D.C., sought to break his presidency and bring him down for sending aid to anti-Communist Contras in Nicaragua. Reagan narrowly escaped to go on and win the Cold War for the West.
An investigation by an independent counsel of President Bill Clinton’s Arkansas land deal metastasized into a sex scandal about which the president perjured himself. This led to his impeachment by a Republican House.
Even before he became president, Donald Trump was the target of an FBI probe. That evolved into the Mueller investigation, which took years to conclude that Trump hadn’t colluded with Vladimir Putin in the 2016 election.
Yet, serious damage was done to Trump’s presidency. And despite the failure of the Mueller investigation to find a smoking gun, Nancy Pelosi’s House impeached the president for a phone call in which he suggested to the president of Ukraine that he might cooperate in a U.S. investigation of what Joe and Hunter Biden were up to in his country.
So it is that America has become a country where if you lose the presidential election, the fallback position is to impeach the victor.
The Third Worldization of American politics is well-advanced.
Yet, the cliche remains true: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
And Hunter Biden’s business and investment career is like a California wildfire where the smoke can be seen in Colorado.
Consider. While Vice President Joe Biden was President Obama’s point man on cleaning up corruption in Ukraine, son Hunter, with zero experience in the oil and gas industry, was suddenly offered a seat on the board of Burisma Holdings, a corrupt gas company in Ukraine, at $83,000 a month.
In 2013, Hunter accompanied his father to Beijing.
During his stay, Hunter apparently peeled off to arrange for $1.5 billion in Chinese funds to be transferred to an investment fund in which he was an advisor. So claims Trump.
According to a Senate report, in 2014, the widow of the mayor of Moscow transferred $3.5 million to an investment company started by Hunter Biden. Hunter’s lawyer denies it.
Comes now word that Hunter was in business with a Chinese company in 2017 and may have taken in $5 million, while stiffing his partner Tony Bobulinski.
Bobulinski, a former naval officer, claims that Hunter sought to leverage the Biden family name, and that he, Hunter and Joe Biden’s brother Jim were involved in a project to raise cash from the Chinese. Moreover, the former vice president was a silent partner, the “big guy” in the operation whose name was never to be mentioned.
Bobulinski said he met with Joe Biden for an hour to discuss it.
The Biden campaign calls this Russian misinformation.
Bottom line, says Joe Biden:
I have never received a dollar in foreign money. I never used my office or influence to advance my son’s business with foreign entities. I never spoke to my son about any of his dealings in Ukraine, Russia, China or anywhere else.
Major media are either denouncing the allegations as unproven or ignoring the story, the motive for which is apparent. Journalistic duty be damned. We have to get rid of Trump. And anything that jeopardizes that highest of goals should be buried until after Election Day.
However, if Joe Biden is elected, the incentive to cover for him and for Hunter vanishes. The old journalistic enthusiasm for the hunt to bring down another president will reappear, and more information will come spilling out.
And as the claims and counterclaims, and allegations and counterallegations collide, pressure will build for Biden’s Department of Justice to bring in an independent counsel to investigate and separate what is true from what is false and what is unethical from what is criminal.
If Biden wins, son Hunter is going to have an exciting spring.
Rip McIntosh
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on If Biden wins, son Hunter is going to have an exciting spring.
The more we learn about the Bidens’ corrupt business dealings, the worse Joe Biden looks.It’s no secret that Biden’s son, Hunter, used his father’s name to get rich and close all kinds of shady deals. In 2014, for example, Yelena Baturina, a powerful Russian oligarch who used to be married to Moscow’s mayor, wired $3.5 million to Hunter’s investment firm.Perhaps most notoriously, in November 2013, Hunter’s firm merged with Bohai Capital, a company linked to the Chinese government, to create Bohai Harvest RST (BHR), a billion-dollar private investment fund. The next month, Hunter accompanied his father, then the vice president, on an official trip to China. Shortly after returning home, the new fund, backed by the state-owned Bank of China, had its business license approved.Just look at Burisma, the shady Ukrainian energy firm. Hunter had joined the company’s board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month, despite having no relevant credentials. But we recently learned from emails obtained by the New York Post that Hunter introduced his father to a top executive at the firm who had previously asked Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.I discuss in-depth the Biden family’s corrupt dealings abroad with China, Russia, and Ukraine on the latest episode of my podcast, “Newt’s World.”I outline all of the details that the American people need to know, showing how the entire Biden family benefited financially from Joe’s time as a senator and as vice president. And they did so by working with unsavory characters, including adversaries.Joe Biden has repeatedly said that he has no knowledge of his son’s business dealings and that they never discussed such matters. This of course defies logic: As former Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli (NJ) said last year, “Nobody has a son who gets paid $50,000 a month in something in which he has no experience, no background, and you don’t discuss it.”But that’s not even the worst of it. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Joe Biden’s story defies evidence. In other words, the Democratic presidential nominee didn’t just turn a blind eye to his family’s dealings; he was involved in and benefited from them.The Biden family has consistently exploited its name and disregarded public trust. The idea that somebody this dishonest and this willing to accept money from Chinese communists might be president is sobering and should concern every American.I hope you will listen to this week’s episode to learn the truly disturbing details of the Biden family’s corruption.Click Here to ListenExclusive Offer!
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on THE BIDEN FAMILY CORRUPTION INVOLVING RED CHINA
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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