The Same Old, 

Same Old Déjà Vu

There will also be more post-election surprises.

Yet the only mystery will be why Republicans

will still be shocked by déjà vu.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

The Patriot Post

November 22, 2022

Attorney General Merrick Garland has announced the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith. But Smith’s team will not look into the Biden family quid pro quo syndicate nor its incriminating confessionals on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Instead, it will further investigate Donald Trump’s possession of presidential records that were hauled off from Mar-a-Lago, as well as his purported role in the January 6 “insurrection.”

We know the script that will follow because we suffered through it for 22 months and spent $40 million for it under Robert Mueller’s special counsel team.

First, the Smith investigation will bear no resemblance to special counsel John Durham’s probes. The media ignored Durham. His team did not leak to the press. And neither a Washington, D.C. nor northern Virginia jury was ever likely to convict any perceived enemy of Trump.

Second, upon the announcement of Smith’s legal staffers, the media will grow giddy that their resumes portend another “dream team,” “all-stars,” or “a hunter-killer team.”

Puff pieces will blanket the media. They will attest, just like “good Ol’ Bob Mueller,” that the former Obama Justice Department public integrity unit lawyer Smith is “an old hand,” “tough but fair,” “nonpartisan,” and a “prosecutor’s prosecutor.”

Weeks into the investigation, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, or MSNBC will darkly inform their audiences that “unnamed sources close to the investigation” tell us that “a bombshell” is about to go off.

Perhaps the “stunning development” will be similar to the fake “walls are closing in” scoop about the conspiratorial pinging in Trump tower from the Alfa Bank in Russia, or the “game-changer” Christopher Steele-fed, pee-pee, Moscow hotel room fable.

Yet one thing that will be different this time around is that the Biden administration is in power. Garland remains an unapologetic, embittered partisan. He is fresh off siccing a now-weaponized FBI on school kids’ parents and various MAGA enemies of the state.

After two prior failed impeachment trials, a failed special counsel’s investigation, and a failed and biased January 6 committee probe, Washington government lawyers know that their last and only Wile E. Coyote chance of catching the Roadrunner and now presidential candidate Trump is to get at least something into the hands of a Washington, D.C. jury.

We also know the script of the 2024 election from the last two elections. Election Day 2004 will be an afterthought. Election Night will be an introduction to Election Month.

Sudden ballot “drops” will start pouring in during the wee hours. Voters who went to bed watching many Republican candidates with sizable leads will awake to magical Democratic “comebacks.”

We will again suffer through early voting, mail-in voting, ranked-choice voting, and majority-only voting. The more who vote, the more we will be warned of “voter suppression” and “election deniers.”

“Get out the vote” left-wing, electronically fueled projects like this year’s “Mind the Gap” involving Sam Bankman-Fried’s family, or Mark Zuckerberg’s 2020 $419 million de facto absorption of balloting collection in key precincts, will merely be replaced by new names.

There will be new, even richer virtue-signaling billionaires. But otherwise, the same old Silicon Valley-Wall Street font will vastly out-raise pathetic Republican efforts.

Unfortunately for Americans, the 2024 economy will likely still be wounded by nearly four years of inflation. High-interest rate correctives will still have choked off the housing market.

Unemployment and stagflation will still be termed “transitory.” Growth will continue to be slow but dubbed “steady.” High gas and energy prices will be near permanent but “coming down.” A wide-open border will still be termed “secure.” Talk of historic crime rates will still be “racist.”

President Joe Biden will still shake imaginary hands, talk of passing legislation through Congress that he bypassed with executive orders, and still claim gas was $5 a gallon when he entered office. Fact-checkers will ignore all that mythology and still obsess over Republican “lies.”

The left-wing nexus will still warn of back-alley abortions that threaten millions of women, of children still likely to die if “Mega-MAGA” voters win, of yet another January 6 in the wings, and of the dangers of “semi-fascist” Trump.

There will be more pre-election October surprises, such as the spurious narrative that the man who assaulted Paul Pelosi — David DePape — was a captive of right-wingers. Who knew that the hemp-jewelry maker, illegal alien, nudist, and resident of a BLM/Pride-flagged commune was supposedly addled by “un-American” Trumpism?

There will also be more post-election, November surprises — like the mysteriously sudden discovery just days after the voting that Sam Bankman-Fried was a multibillion-dollar con artist and huge Democratic Party donor, and the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Trump.

Who would have known that before November 8, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago presidential papers proved neither “nuclear secrets” nor designed for his personal sale after all?

Yet the only mystery will be why Republicans will still be shocked by déjà vu.

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Bill Gates Is Preparing For The Next Pandemic – Should You?InboxPandemic Warning <support@transformationinsider.com> Unsubscribe1:51 PM (4 minutes ago)to meFall 2019   A group of billionaires and global elites, including Bill Gates, held an event called Event 201.   It was a ‘war game’ type event where they practiced what they would do if a global pandemic happened.   They laid out a plan for forced vaccinations and ID cards.   Of course, just a few months later we all know what happened when COVID-19 hit.     Coincidence? Maybe.   Now fast-forward…   Spring 2022   Gates says: “We’ll have another pandemic. It will be a different pathogen next time.”   Is he planning for it, or planning it?   Either way, this quote is raising the suspicion of patriots everywhere.   Remember what Gates said in a 2010 speech:   “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s heading up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower [world population] by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent.”   That’s right, Bill and his elite cronies want to LOWER the world population.   What better way to do that than a contagious disease with mysterious origins?   Fortunately, there is one man who can help.   He’s a rogue Connecticut doctor who is part of the growing ‘medical underground’.     He treated hundreds during the pandemic without hospitalizations and without vaccines.   His ‘gang of seven’ recipe can help almost anyone fight off or prevent an infection.   And these common nutrients are often just laying around the house.     See how it works and how you can prepare for the next ‘plan-demic’ right here.

Mary Soto just commented on JORGE BERGOLIO SEEMS TO BE PROMOTING WORLD WAR III WITH RUSSIA.

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR SEARCHHH What might be Francis’s real agenda in promoting World War III with Russia? First, …

URGENT GETTING HERSCHEL WALKER ELECTED OBAMA & BIDEN have publicly accused the REPUBLICANS of planning to reduce funding for the SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM & MEDICARE. . . LIES It NEVER happened, but repeated often enough, the voters will believe the lie Mr Walker is Pro-Life and a Chalkboard episode & political commercials pointing out how each and every abortion weakens the Social Security System would shine a very bright light on a very neglected aspect of abortionWhen a baby is denied the right to be born, they are also denying that little human being the opportunity to become a wage earner and being a valued contributor to the Social Security system making the S. S. system more financially secure. Voters who are on the fence or are indifferent about killing the baby in the womb, especially those voters in their mid-40s and beyond, will realize that babies born this year will become the wage-earners that will keep the Social Security system solvent for S.S. recipients. EVERYONE born in 1973 and beyond are abortion survivors The ripple effect of generations of abortions is horrendous If the inhumanity of the violent dismemberment of a defenseless baby doesn’t sway the voter, perhaps the uncertainty of a viable Social Security check will Now, this is directed to lifelong Democrat/pro-abortion “Catholics”… the confidentiality of the confessional and the voting booth are the same… only you, Jesus & the evil one will know how you voted. CHOOSE WHO YOU WILL SERVE  Mr Beck has conducted many impressive Chalkboard presentations on many important subjects, but perhaps, none as important as one that will save hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent babies’ lives

Greg Abbott penned a scathing letter to Joe Biden accusing him of this gross violation

The past year and a half under the Biden administration we have seen record immigration and related tragedies on the southern border.

That has led to a cold war of sorts between border states and the federal government.

Now Texas Governor Abbott has raised the stakes with this scathing letter to the President that directly accuses his administration of this serious offense.

https://decide.dev/lad/15117606981932902?pubid=ld-7664-8923&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fuspoliticaldaily.com&rid=&width=696&utm_source=uspdnl&utm_campaign=email&utm_medium=campaigner

Abbott wins big in the election and then goes head-to- head with Biden over immigration

Governor Abbott has been making headlines by sending illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C. 

He’s joined other GOP Governors who have specifically targeted Democrat-run “sanctuary cities” with these buses.

Now after winning reelection handily, Abbott is picking it up a notch. 

First, he moved on the border, declaring an invasion and deploying troops to stop the influx of migrants from continuing. 

Alongside his deployment he sent a letter to the Biden Administration that is placing all the blame on Biden and accusing him of violating the Constitution.

Abbott says Biden Administration is putting states in “imminent danger” and accuses them of violating Constitution

Abbott wrote, “Your sustained dereliction of duty compels Texas to invoke the powers reserved in Article I , § 10, Clause 3, which represents ‘an acknowledgement of the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.’”

He put it all back on Biden for bringing this situation to the doorsteps of normal Texans. 

“By opening our border to this record-breaking level of illegal immigration, you and your Administration are in violation of Article IV, § 4 of the U.S. Constitution,” Abbott argued.

Abbott said that “in the more than 240 years of our great nation, no administration has done more than yours to place the States in ‘imminent danger’” and said that this is because of “policy decisions and refusal to deliver on the Article IV, § 4 guarantee.’

Abbott says Biden Administration needs to see the “chaos firsthand”

The US government is charged with defending national borders and the sovereignty of the states. 

There’s no reason why the state governments should even get to this point. 

The one thing that Abbott might have gotten wrong is calling it “absence of action by your Administration to secure the border.” 

Most Americans can see that there are actions being taken but they have the opposite of national security in their minds.

Abbott makes the point that the federal government’s silence is “deafening” on the matter. 

Kamala Harris, who is the “border czar,” hasn’t visited the border a single time. 

Abbott wishes they would so they could get “a firsthand look at the chaos [they] have caused” and calls it “damning.”

Biden is the “sole cause” for Texas’ deployment at the border

He slammed the Biden policies as a catalyst for “an unprecedented crisis of illegal immigration” and says they are “the sole cause of Texas having to invoke [its] constitutional authority to defend” itself.

The White House issued a weak response to the letter from Abbott. 

They claimed he was just “vying for political relevance” and that Texas is “using asylum seekers fleeing communism and law enforcement officials as political pawns.”

This is a tall statement coming from an administration that claimed their border patrol agents were whipping illegal aliens.

Americans can see right through the lies and they won’t be fooled again. 

US Political Daily will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story. 

The Nation Magazine Celebrates Feticide on Thanksgiving: ‘We’re Thankful for Our Abortions’

9JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty ImagesJOSHUA KLEIN

24 Nov 2022810

Having aborted a child — or several — is something to be “thankful” for, according to a Thanksgiving piece in The Nation that claims many “celebrate” the experience, while slamming the “utter disregard for all Indigenous people” in the past that “fuels the same systems of white supremacy that dehumanize all of us today.”

The Thanksgiving day essay, titled “We’re Thankful for Our Abortions,” was penned by Nikiya Natale, deputy director of We Testify, a group created by the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF) that advocates for women who have undergone abortions.

Her “passion” for her organization’s work “stems from her own multiple abortion experiences,” according to the group’s website.

The Thursday article claims that many of those who have had abortions “celebrate their experience” and goes on to detail the “thankfulness” of a handful of women for their abortions.

Calling Thanksgiving a “complicated” holiday, the author questions why the country bothers celebrating it.

“This year I find myself reflecting not only on all the people I love and cherish but also on the outcomes and impact of the midterm elections, and on why our nation celebrates the complicated holiday of Thanksgiving at all,” she writes.

Natale then slams the national festivity, which she describes as “founded on the unforgivable genocide of Native Americans.” 

As a result of her “commitment to justice for all people,” celebrating that which she is most thankful for, she claims, is a “difficult” thing.

“[T]he harsh reality is that the utter disregard for all Indigenous people in the 1800s fuels the same systems of white supremacy that dehumanize all of us today,” she charged.

According to the author, “Black lives are taken by the police and the prison-industrial complex, any sense of LGBTQ+ peace and tranquility has been obliterated by gun violence and hate, and, ultimately, the small promise of abortion access guaranteed by Roe v. Wade was stripped away by an illegitimate Supreme Court.”

“When I look at the state of this nation, the anger piles up, and my gratitude is depleted,” she adds.

Despite that, Natale expresses gratitude for her multiple abortion experiences and for having access to abortion “while it was still legal” in Texas.

She admits that when expressing “gratitude for my abortions,” sometimes she (and others) are “met with questions and chiding from family members or loved ones who believe that we shouldn’t ‘celebrate’ or be ‘thankful’ for our abortions” — even those who are “pro-choice.” 

“But I am thankful for both of my abortions,” she writes, calling it something she has “immense gratitude for,” especially considering the current “political climate.”

But the author is not alone, she claims.

“Many people who have abortions celebrate their experience,” she writes. 

The essay continues with her and her colleagues at We Testify “sharing appreciation for our abortions,” adding that “[n]o matter if it’s their first abortion or fourth, people should be supported in whatever they decide, every time.”

Asked how they came to “feel good celebrating and being thankful” for their abortions, the group’s staff each offered their own thoughts.

We Testify’s Boston-raised operations coordinator Savannah Williams, who is described as an “aspiring abortion storyteller,” discussed the upcoming “sixth anniversary of my second abortion.” 

“When I think about how far I’ve come and the things I’ve been able to do—such as finishing college and starting my small business—I am grateful that I was able to do them without having to worry about making ends meet and struggling to care for two small children whom I wasn’t ready for,” she said. “I am thankful for the freedom of self.”

Noting that some may call her decision “selfish,” Williams says she does not. 

“I am able to care for myself and live free from anxiety and parts of my life that I have needed to leave behind,” she said. “I have deep gratitude that I was able to make a decision that was good for me.” 

“I felt compelled to have my abortions, not because of what I thought other people might think of me, but because it was what I needed to do,” she added. “I am grateful for the bravery I showed myself.”

Williams —  who was already pregnant during her high school graduation — admits she had originally never imagined herself as someone needing an abortion because, she insisted, “I never imagined myself as being pregnant at all.” 

“When I realized that I was pregnant both times, I was surprised,” she said. “It made me realize that people can be pregnant at any time.”

We Testify program manager Kenya Martin, a “reproductive justice activist” hailed as “The Abortion Diva,” called sharing her abortion stories “an act of gratitude.”

She details becoming sick in 2015 and needing emergency surgery which she credits with saving her life, though she admits it was not her first abortion.

Martin has since offered encouragement to patients awaiting abortions who previously underwent the procedure and “felt conflicted due to stigma against multiple abortions.”

She has also learned to “celebrate my life, my abortions, and how thankful I was for each abortion I had.”

“Why can’t there be an abortion narrative where people are happy, had choice, and created the life that they wanted?” she asked.

The women also addressed how they learned to “unlearn the shame and stigma” towards those who have undergone multiple abortions.

Emma Hernández, the group’s media relations manager, describes her first abortion at 21, along with the feeling that she “had all the reasons to not continue with the pregnancy.” 

“I was in my senior year of college, didn’t have a job or a car, my father had recently been deported, and I couldn’t fathom a lifelong tie to a toxic relationship,” she said. 

“If any life circumstance necessitated an abortion, surely it was mine,” she added.

Yet, eight years later she found herself pregnant once again, with all her reasons for aborting years earlier no longer applicable.

“It was a different situation entirely. All the things that my first abortion had made possible were things that, on paper, now made me an ideal candidate for parenthood,” she admitted. “I was now a financially stable homeowner with a healthy relationship, an established career, and on the brink of completing my graduate studies.”

“But one thing remained the same—I still didn’t want to be a parent,” she added. “I struggled through the morning sickness and the realization that some part of me still believed abortions, especially multiple abortions, had to be justified.”

The essay follows the Supreme Court overruling of Roe v. Wade in June, holding in the Dobbs case that the Constitution does not include a right to abortion and returning the issue of abortion laws and regulations to state legislatures.

The landmark decision has since sparked violent public upheaval across the country, as Democrats, the mainstream media, and members of the far left continue their attacks on the pro-life movement and its supporters.

In September, ABC’s “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg referred to the unborn child of a mother having “difficulty” with a pregnancy “requiring” an abortion, as a “toxic thing” within its mother.

In July, Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) claimed the word “abortion” has been “weaponized” by pro-lifers to “raise the emotions” of others, as she called for an end to the use of the word in favor of one less “negative” in order to “have a real conversation” on the issue.

Last year, abortion was the 

Abortion Leading Global Cause of Death in 2021 with 43 Million KilledThomas D. Williams, Ph.D.Abortion was the leading cause of death globally in 2021, with nearly 43 million unborn babies killed, according…

leading cause of death globally, with nearly 43 million unborn babies killed in the womb, according to data provided by Worldometer, compared with 8.2 million deaths from cancer, five million from smoking, 1.7 million of HIV/AIDS, 1.3 million from traffic fatalities, and one million from suicide.

A Sign of HopeThanks be to Godcharliej373Nov 23By Charlie JohnstonThe last week and a half have been eventful. The death of my father on Nov. 12 was not entirely unexpected, but it threw many things into both an emotional and a nostalgic tizzy. And now it is time for Thanksgiving. I have much to be thankful for. The next generation behind me is looking very solid. All but two are living joyful, responsible lives – and raising kids in joyful households. Of the two who are not, my daughter is just ready to finish up her rehab program in which she has been immersed since last summer. I have good hope that it is taking this time. The other is my nine-year-old niece. I love her, but don’t quite know what to make of her. She is the sweetest-tempered Johnston kid I have ever known. Most in our brood can be funny, kind, intense…but all have a few rough edges. She absolutely adores all her family and animals and all things bright and beautiful. So I have very high hopes for her, too. As for the rest of us, age has smoothed out a lot of the rough edges…but not enough that you would ever be deceived that you were dealing with a brood of fluffy bunnies. Almost all are solidly committed to faith, family and freedom. Dark as things are getting, I have high hopes that the events borne by our massive global dysfunction will make it unanimous. Isn’t that what the whole point of faith is? To draw people to the fountain of life that is Christ?As I said last time, I think our downfall is so shocking to many that normalcy-bias is causing many good people to gather round the car with a blown, burning engine and make absurd suggestions like changing the plugs or inflating the tires to get it roadworthy once more. I have a much harsher take on things: America as founded is over. It is beyond reclamation. The sooner people realize that, the sooner the work of rebuilding a just, healthy and Godly society can begin in earnest. That is the primary reason CORAC was founded. That is something to be thankful for – for God has chosen each of us to live in these times. They are certainly terrifying times. The Gospel reading from Wednesday seems particularly appropriate:“Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Men will seize you and persecute you; they will hand you over to the synagogues and to imprisonment, and bring you before kings and governors because of my name – and that will be your opportunity to bear witness. Keep this carefully in mind: you are not to prepare your defence, because I myself shall give you an eloquence and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to resist or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relations and friends; and some of you will be put to death. You will be hated by all men on account of my name, but not a hair of your head will be lost. Your endurance will win you your lives.’”-Luke 21But these are the birthing pains of the great renewal. Each of us has the glorious opportunity to serve as heralds of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart, of the renewal of the faith and face of both the world and the Church. We won’t do it by running around with our hair on fire. Act as if you know that God wins. Be deliberate, be just, be charitable, act with courage and resolve, and take the next right step under God. Almost all who do this will live to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.Going forward, that will be the primary focus here – how to go forward together under God. I will be back at it seriously next week. I have dropped the ball on a lot of things this last week and a half. But as I have often said, people are smart enough to know when they sprain their ankle they should stay off it for a while – and they should be smart enough to know when they have sprained their spirit they should give themselves a little time to grieve and recover. Which is what I have been doing. I encourage all of you to read the latest edition of the CORAC National Newsletter. It is where the action is on how to weather this storm and connect with others who are committed to faith, family and freedom in action.CORAC cousins arrive for dinnerIf communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.Find me on Gab at Charliej373 or at the CORAC group.Find me on Twitter at @Charlie62394802Donate to CORAC!Join the Conversation!The Corps of Renewal and Charity (CORAC)18208 Preston Rd., Ste. D9-552Dallas, Texas 75252CommentLikeYou can also reply to this email to leave a comment.

Pied Beauty 

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Glory (and thanks) be to God for dappled things – (including people)

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; 

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; 

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; 

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; 

      And áll (people), trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. 

All things counter, original, spare, strange; 

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) 

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; 

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: 

                                Praise him.

 The Strange Morality of the

Bay-Area Billionaire Left

Sam Bankman-Fried is the ultimate dangerous 

and ridiculous expression of the most toxic and

creepy culture in America.

By Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

November 20, 2022

“Ya. Hehe. I had to be. It’s what reputations are made of, to some extent. I feel bad for those guys who get f—ed by it, by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.” —Sam Bankman-Fried

The FTX Bitcoin empire of 30-year-old CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is in shambles. Or more specifically, his “dumb game”cryptocurrency exchange has destroyed thousands of lives. Electronically, he may have robbed perhaps a million investors, and along with them hundreds of large institutional investors. 

Mysteriously, only after the conclusion of the midterm elections, did we suddenly learn that this left-wing “philanthropist” and benefactor of Democratic politics, this megadonor to the quid pro quo puff-piece media, this con artist protected from federal securities regulators, had drained off, lost, hidden, or spent billions of dollars of other people’s money. 

As a result, the Bahamas-basking, tax-avoiding, polyamorous sybarite, and heartthrob of progressive moralists, now claims he has no wherewithal to honor his financial commitments to his investors. Preliminary postmortem auditors sigh that they have never encountered a greater financial mess than what Bankman-Fried has left in his wake. 

How does the most sophisticated financial system in the history of civilization allow a virtue-signaling nerd to nearly wreck it? Where were the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, the IRS, and all the other alphabet soup agencies that supposedly exist so that someone like Bankman-Fried does not? Where is Merrick Garland and his special prosecutors, the FBI with its televised SWAT swoops and leg irons?

For all the performance-art boasts of simply doing good for others by doing far better for himself, Bankman-Fried may soon be revealed to be one of the great, dissolute con artists in American history. Like the infamous Charles Ponzi, “Bankman” may become our eponymous word in the 21st century for electronically driven, pyramid-scheme theft. 

His Stanford-Silicon Valley moral veneer was shiny but otherwise razor-thin. Yet Bankman-Fried told at least one truth when he explained to obsequious media what his ilk easily does to fool purported suckers who send him cash, while he avoided federal and media oversight: “This dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”

Well, not everyone. Instead, he might qualify his “everyone”as the like-minded, cynical, left-wing politicos, the kindred media hacks at the Washington Post and New York Times, and brethren investor toadies who helped him render Bernie Madoff a small-potato sinner in comparison.

Bankman-Fried had showered Joe Biden in 2020 with millions of dollars in campaign donations and did so again with larger sums to congressional candidates in 2022. His public relations arm of FTX exuded the usual virtue speak—including promised impending multibillion-dollar gifting—for utopian, Democratic, and progressive causes. And the media on spec gushed about their pet grunger as he sought to buy protection from Democratic fixers. 

“Effective Altruism,” Ponzi-Style

Yet Bankman-Fried is merely one in a long line of Bay Area social-justice hypocrites and frauds. They share in common loud but cynical left-wing politics. They choreograph their personas to win exemption from left-wing government regulators, to guarantee puff pieces from a toady media, and to romance the rich, left-wing elite. Consider how the Washington Post gushed of the scam artist: 

Harnessing the enormous wealth created by FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange that Sam Bankman-Fried had founded, they undertook a project to spend potentially billions of dollars on pandemic prevention, a long-neglected priority on Capitol Hill even amid the coronavirus crisis. The plan, drawn from the brothers’ adherence to a philosophy called effective altruism, sought to maximize philanthropic giving in ways that can have the most impact.

Bankman-Fried surely has had “the most impact.” If he had worn a suit and said the wrong “shibboleths,” he would now be behind bars. 

What were the moral seeds of FTX? Bankman-Fried grew up on the progressive, moralistic Stanford campus, the son of two crusading Stanford law professors who often wrote about morality and the dispossessed. 

SBF, as he is known, was groomed and prepped at an exclusive nearby Hillsborough private academy before being packed off to MIT. Progressive souls like Bankman-Fried distrust capitalism so much that, in his case, he retreated to the Bahamas to maximize its rewards. There he embraced a hedonistic lifestyle, tax breaks, and lack of regulations, all to better short taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars in income tax revenue. 

Such vulture capitalism is predicated on the presumption that young, loudly left-wing Bay Area hipsters in ratty clothes are the cool “good guys” if they have deep Democratic pockets and talk of “equity” and “fairness.” And so, they use the system to defeat the system—defined in their view as toxic traditional mores and values.

Indeed, Bankman-Fried’s mother, Stanford Professor Elizabeth Fried was a “utilitarian,” perhaps best defined as advocating any means necessary to achieve what she felt were the best ends for everyone. She moonlighted from her supposedly full-time job by running “Mind the Gap,” a central collection agency for Silicon Valley dark money to be funneled secretly to the “right causes.” The means of getting the millions was always excused by the ends of how it was used.

Apparently, some of her fund’s wherewithal was dripped in by some in her son’s stash circle—or rather his investors’ cash. Mind the Gap’s specialty was funding “to get out the vote.” To understand these dark-money operations in 2020, simply reread Molly Ball’s obnoxious Time magazine story of February 2021—a long boast of how stealth left-wing money, a toady progressive media, an army of lawyers, and social media combined to change voting laws, modulate the Black Lives Matter/Antifa street protests, and warp dissemination of news to craft a good utilitarian “conspiracy” that saved us from Donald Trump. 

Will the Bankman-Fried family now atone, and try to give back to the robbed and deluded any of the real money that was funneled into Democratic candidates from the massive fraud? Does the water flow uphill?

So how can the progressive embryos of Silicon Valley, Stanford University, Bay Area prep schools, and progressive humanitarian politics birth such an utter fraud who destroyed so many? Rather the question might be reversed, how could all that not?

Performance Art Grifting

In the context of Bankman-Fried, we recall another kindred Bay-Area erstwhile momentary billionaire charlatan. Do we remember the now felonious and prison-bound young prodigy and Hillary Clinton aficionado Elizabeth Holmes? She, too, was birthed and swam in similar Stanford-Silicon Valley waters.  

Her scheme was Theranos. That was the pretentiously named fake-blood testing corporation that duped some of the most powerful investors in the United States to fork over billions of dollars to a twentysomething con artist. Holmes, like Bankman-Fried, was sired in the orbit of Stanford. She eschewed the slob props of Bankman-Fried, and instead preferred copy-catting Steve Jobs’ slicker all-black outfits.

Holmes assembled on her fake corporate board some of the biggest names associated with Stanford University and Silicon Valley, whose brands masked what was likely the greatest corporate medical fraud in American history.  

There is a pattern here of the “good” people doing “good”things with their “good” money that turns out very bad for everyone else. 

Silicon Valley multibillionaire and fellow leftist Mark Zuckerberg prefers T-shirts, sneakers, and jeans to the Bankman-Fried bum-look or Holmes’ Apple black-draped getup. He is now laying off thousands of Facebook employees as his Meta disaster erodes his stock value and takes his net worth down tens of billions of dollars. 

But it was just two years ago that Zuckerberg answered the utilitarian call of fellow leftists to use his mega-money and power to stop the prince of darkness, Donald Trump. So Zuck, as he is known, poured $419 million into pro-Biden left-wing activist groups. That unprecedented sum was used to absorb the work of state election officials in key precincts to ensure the right people voted in the right way to ensure the right winner. 

Leftists still brag how the good mega-money sandbagged dullard Republicans and helped to give Biden the election.  

Zuckerberg recently confessed that his left-wing company had also worked with the FBI to suppress online social media expression. Translated, that meant that the FBI partnered with Facebook to quash news deemed not helpful to the Biden election cause, such as the all-too-true revelations from the incriminating Hunter Biden laptop that was falsely passed off as “Russian disinformation.”

Is that a very liberal, civil libertarian thing to do—to weld the state and the media to punish political enemies and censor the news? Was the FBI-Facebook fusion a sort of “electronic insurrection” designed to warp democracy—absent the buffoonish cow horns and face paint? Might Zuckerberg have passed on channeling his dark money to “nonprofit” leftist organizations, and instead banked it to save a few of his now laid-off employees?

This column could become endless if it referenced all the Silicon Valley and Stanford progressive politico saints with feet of clay. Do we remember Tom Steyer, the Silicon Valley zillionaire, Stanford University board member, and former left-wing green presidential candidate, who spent $191 million without winning a single delegate? 

At least candidate Michael Bloomberg got a few delegates at roughly $18 million a pop for the hundreds of millions of virtuous dollars he blew up in 2020. Steyer used his 2020 campaign to lecture us on ending the fossil fuel economy—but only after he had made a fortune in financing dirty coal-burning plants in the impoverished Third World. 

Posh Virtue

What is going on? 

The 21st-century globalized economy saturated the corridor between San Francisco and San Jose with wealth never before seen or imagined. Its beneficiaries discovered several things about the arts of becoming and staying ultra-rich. 

One, they never needed to worry about the essentials of life that troubled the other 99 percent of the country—affordable fuel, food, and housing, safe streets, and a fair and legal immigration system. 

Or to put it another way, they could pose as progressive utopians—preening their moral superiority to the media, pouring money into the Democratic Party, funding foundations and PACs devoted to woke causes, climate change, and diversity, equity, and inclusion—and all the time never subject to the ramifications of their own exalted agendas. 

They could not have cared less about crippling $6 a gallon gas, the exorbitant kilowatt cost of air conditioning, out-of-reach $1,000-a-square foot bungalow housing, the mayhem on San Francisco streets, or the reparatory elite university admissions policies that drastically curtailed working-class male admissions. Their wealth guaranteed them leverage, and leverage ensured exemptions. 

But Bay Area morality was not just a pragmatic matter of the exempt elite force-feeding utopia down the throats of others who had no such immunity. Boutique, rich leftism also provided penance for the anointed, a mechanism that alleviated any residual guilt of talking like Eugene Debs while living like Marie Antoinette. 

The multimillionaire, social justice warrior House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) assumed, as one of the Bay Area’s liberal icons, that she had a right to break quarantine and sneak off to her private hairdresser, or cluelessly boast of her $13 a pint ice cream, home delivered to her $24,000 twin imported refrigerators—all amid a near depression as the national COVID-19 shutdown ruined millions of small business and devastated the educations of tens of millions of children. 

As a member of the classy Bay Area elite, she knew the bankrupt political morality of the Left all too well: acts like tearing up the Trump State of the Union speech on national television veneered her privilege and made her one of the proverbial good people fighting for us from one of her various mansions. 

Bay Area ZIP codes have produced the now-familiar rich, liberal politicians whose exempt lives are not damaged by the ideology that damages others. Consider the billionaire Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who for two decades was chauffeured by a Chinese spy while head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, or multimillionaire former Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), now ensconced in Rancho Mirage as a registered foreign agent for a Chinese surveillance firm, or multimillionaire Gavin Newsom, who bragged how the COVID lockdowns might greenlight “progressive capitalism,” as he pushed social distancing and mask-wearing—while he palled around with lobbyists, maskless, at the French Laundry.

Sam Bankman-Fried is the ultimate dangerous and ridiculous expression of the most toxic and creepy culture in America. If he did not exist, someone like him would have to be invented.

Disney’s Iger Is The Problem, Not The Answer November 22, 2022 Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the new Disney head: Bob Chapek, who was fired as the Disney CEO, certainly made enemies in and out of Disney. But he is not entirely to blame. Much of that goes to his predecessor, and now successor, Bob Iger. Few outside of Disney even heard of Chapek until he made a big splash sticking his nose into politics earlier this year. In March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Parental Rights in Education” bill, a measure that prohibits attempts to sexualize little boys and girls in grades kindergarten through third grade. Chapek’s initial stance was to stay out of the controversy. But Iger, who had retired, couldn’t resist undercutting the man he handpicked to succeed him. On February 24, while the bill was being debated—in Florida and around the country—Iger tweeted his opposition to it, siding with President Biden. Our “devout Catholic” president called the attempt to protect children from being sexualized “hateful.” Iger added that the bill “will put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy.” Less than two weeks later, Chapek folded. On March 7, he pledged his opposition to parental rights. “I want to make it crystal clear: I and the entire leadership team unequivocally stand in support of our LGBTQ+ employees, their families, and their communities.” On March 11, he dug himself in deeper when he apologized to the radicals who pressured him. It would be a mistake to think that Iger opposes parental rights for business reasons. No, he does so for moral reasons. On March 31, CNN aired an interview that Iger had taped with Chris Wallace a few weeks earlier.  “A lot of these issues are not necessarily political. It’s about right and wrong.” Similarly, he said, “When you’re dealing with right and wrong or when you’re dealing with something that does have profound impact on your business, I just think you have to do what is right and not worry about the potential backlash to it.” Iger’s statement could not be more clear. The man who now leads Disney thinks it is morally right for teachers to question kids about whether they are content being a boy or a girl—that is exactly the kind of grooming exercise that DeSantis, and millions of Americans, oppose. Look for things to deteriorate further, on the moral front, at least. Chapek’s biggest weakness was in working with the creative team at Disney. One of Iger’s first comments as CEO was to assure that this will be corrected. “It is my intention to restructure things in a way that honors and respects creativity as the heart and soul of who we are.” By “creativity,” the woke masters at Disney mean such things as women kissing each other in children’s films. That’s why the LGBT crowd pressured executives to include a gay kiss in the movie “Lightyear.” They got what they wanted. Well, not exactly. Disney did not show the gals kissing in the Middle Eastern and Asian version, electing not to offend Muslim despots and the Communist slavemasters in China. As for religious folks in America who would like to be spared such fare, that’s just too bad—they need to be reeducated. It’s not just Iger who wants to morally pollute America—it’s Disney’s president Karen Burke. She likes to brag that she has “one transgender child and one pansexual child.” More important, she boasts Disney has “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters.” Disney won’t stop until parents rebel. While there are some very encouraging signs that parents have had it, there needs to be more resistance to those who want to eroticize children. We need to teach Iger what “right and wrong” should really mean.

“Blessed Be He Who Has Saved a Child’s Heart From Despair”

 hicksonfamily  Catholic Church, Literature  November 14, 2022 5 Minutes

Dr. Robert Hickson                                                                         6 November 2022

                                                 Saint Leonard of Limoges  (d. 559)

 Josef Pieper (d. 6 November 1997—R.I.P)

“Blessed Be He Who Has Saved a Child’s Heart From Despair”

Some Reflections from The Diary of a Country Priest (1937) by Georges Bernanos

Epigraphs

“Don’t let your hour of mercy strike in vain.” (The Paperback 1954 Doubleday Edition, page 48)

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“Blessed be he who has saved a child’s heart from despair.” (Ibid., Page 41)

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“What is this Sloth which can merit the extremity of divine punishment? St.Thomas’s answer is both comforting and surprising: tristitia de bono spirituali, sadness in the face of spiritual good. Man is made for joy in the love of God, a love which he expresses in service. If he deliberately turns away from that joy, he is denying the purpose of his existence. The malice of Sloth lies not merely in the neglect of duty… but in the refusal of joy. It is allied to despair.” (Evelyn Waugh,Collected Essays, page 573 of the “Sloth” Essay.)

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In view of Georges Bernanos’ 1937 spiritual novel The Diary of a County Priest—first published in French, just before the outbreak of World War Two—we now also come to understand better (and often thus savor) a fresh supernatural Beatitude: about saving a child from despair.  Does it not gradually become a binding obligation of our Catholic Faith in its fuller virtue?

That is to say, “Blessed be he who has saved a child’s heart from despair.” Such a Beatitude  comes from, and depends upon, Grace—i.e., the indispensable (and gracious) Order of  Grace.

My German wife, Maike Maria, was immediately touched by this implicit beatitude—and was freshly inspired—by this effectively proposed new Beatitude; and she thus guided me also at the challenging end of my preparatory, mortal temporal life, too. We shall try to convey in this short essay some of these intimate insights.

For example, it will relate how the sacrament of Extreme Unction channels and prepares  a stronger  life of grace with clarity and strength. Moreover, there are two forms of hopelessness: despair and presumption. The Sin of Spiritual Sloth is one of the Seven Capital Sins, and an effective preparation for the Sin of Despair. Other interwoven insights will now follow, especially about growing in Spiritual Childhood and letting the Little Ones come loyally and affectionately to Christ.

Indeed, at the core of these reflections is “the concept and reality of spiritual childhood.” We are to live and die supernaturally alive in sanctifying grace. The Lord also spoke of (and to), the Little Ones –unless you become a little one….!

The Diary of a Country Priest ends with the diarist’s  words as he died:

“Does it matter? Grace is everywhere….” (page 233, my emphasis added).

The priest (Curé) of Ambricourt now thus introduces us to his parish and village:

My parish is bored stiff; no other word for it. Like so many others! We can see them being eaten up by boredom, and we can’t do anything about it. Some day perhaps we shall catch it ourselves – become aware of the cancerous growth within us. You can keep going a long time with that in you.

This thought struck me yesterday on my rounds. It was drizzling. The kind of thin, steady rain which gets sucked in with every breath, which seeps down through the lungs into your belly. Suddenly I looked out over the village, from the road to Saint Vaast along the hillside – miserable little houses huddled together under the desolate, ugly November sky. On all sides damp came steaming up and it seemed to sprawl there in the soaking grass like a wretched worn-out horse or cow. What an insignificant thing a village is. And this particular village was my parish! My parish, yes, but what could I do? I stood there glumly watching it sink into the dusk, disappear…. In a few minutes I should lose sight of it. I had never been so horribly aware both of my people’s loneliness and mine. I thought of the cattle which I could hear coughing somewhere in the mist, and of the little lad on his way back from school clutching his satchel, who would soon be leading them over sodden fields to a warm sweet-swelling byre…. And my parish, my village seemed to be waiting too – without much hope after so many nights in the mud – for a master to follow towards some undreamed-of, improbable shelter.

Oh, of course I know all this is fantastic. Such notions can scarcely be taken seriously. A day-dream! Villages do not scramble to their feet like cattle at the call of a little boy. And yet, last night, I believe a saint might have roused it….

Well, as I was saying, the world is eaten up by boredom. To perceive this needs a little preliminary thought: you can’t see it all at once. It is like dust.You go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it. It is sifted so fine, it doesn’t even grit on your teeth. But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. To shake off this drizzle of ashes you must be for ever on the go. And so people are always ‘on the go.’ Perhaps the answer would be that the world has long been familiar with boredom, that such is the true condition of man. No doubt the seed was scattered all over life, and here and there found fertile soil to take root; but I wonder if man has ever before experienced this contagion, this leprosy of boredom: an aborted despair, a shameful form of despair in some way like the fermentation of a Christianity in decay.

(Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest, translated from the French by Pamela Morris, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1937, 1954, pages 1-2 – my emphasis added)

Despite the many pervasive manifestations of sadness and intimate sorrow, the Curé of Ambricourt touches the heart and affirms almost everyone he meets. For example: experience the betrayed Countess, also young Chantel; and the sensitive French Foreign Legionnaire (and motor-cyclist), and the Curé de Torcy (the faithful mentor of the idealistic and younger priest).

The reader will be profoundly enriched by this text, and he will want to savor its slow wisdom and eloquence—at least more than thrice down the years.

Let there be hope for the Little Ones. And a yearning for sustained Grace.      

                                                             –Finis–