In case you didn't GET the last post...

From The Catechism Of The Catholic Church:

The Gravity of Sin: Mortal and Venial Sin

1855 Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him.
Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it.

1856 Mortal sin, by attacking the vital principle within us - that is, charity - necessitates a new initiative of God's mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation:

When the will sets itself upon something that is of its nature incompatible with the charity that orients man toward his ultimate end, then the sin is mortal by its very object . . . whether it contradicts the love of God, such as blasphemy or perjury, or the love of neighbor, such as homicide or adultery.... But when the sinner's will is set upon something that of its nature involves a disorder, but is not opposed to the love of God and neighbor, such as thoughtless chatter or immoderate laughter and the like, such sins are venial.¹³⁰

1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent."¹³¹

1858 Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: "Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother."¹³²

The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger.

1859 Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God's law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart¹³³ do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.

1860 Unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offense. But no one is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man. the promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest.

1861 Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance and God's forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back. However, although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God.

1862 One commits venial sin when, in a less serious matter, he does not observe the standard prescribed by the moral law, or when he disobeys the moral law in a grave matter, but without full knowledge or without complete consent.

1863 Venial sin weakens charity; it manifests a disordered affection for created goods; it impedes the soul's progress in the exercise of the virtues and the practice of the moral good; it merits temporal punishment. Deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin. However venial sin does not set us in direct opposition to the will and friendship of God; it does not break the covenant with God. With God's grace it is humanly reparable. "Venial sin does not deprive the sinner of sanctifying grace, friendship with God, charity, and consequently eternal happiness."¹³⁴

While he is in the flesh, man cannot help but have at least some light sins. But do not despise these sins which we call "light": if you take them for light when you weigh them, tremble when you count them. A number of light objects makes a great mass; a number of drops fills a river; a number of grains makes a heap. What then is our hope? Above all, confession.¹³⁵

1864 "Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin."¹³⁶ There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit.¹³⁷ Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss.

Hmmmm...1855 through 1864...does that ring a bell with you history buffs out there?

I'm not saying...I'm just saying...

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Our moral and intellectual superiors don't have a clue as to what we lack or, The Cry Of Rodney King.

Remember how "united" we were after September 11, 2001? (You may have to look that one up.) It lasted about six months. This Kumbaya crap might last six days.

Political divide turns to bloodshed in lawmaker shooting | McClatchy ...

I know you kids are clever. 'Put on your thinking caps' and see if you can figure out what the good ol' USA is missing...

The hateful language in politics that seemed to crystallize in Wednesday’s shootings sparked anguished pleas for moderation on Capitol Hill and fears that civility in the nation is an increasingly fragile veneer.

Lawmakers and their allies demonize their opponents, and the political shout-fests on cable thrive on stoking division. Still, politicians, activists and the media all wring their hands over how volatile our politics has become.

A congresswoman is shot in a supermarket parking lot while meeting constituents. Protestors are attacked at presidential rallies, egged on from the stage by the candidate himself. Now Wednesday morning, a member of the congressional leadership – Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. - is critically wounded during a practice for an annual charity baseball game.

“We’ve been headed in this direction for a long time,” said Carolyn Lukensmeyer, executive director of National Institute for Civil Discourse, a group organized following the attempted assassination of former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona in 2011. “It’s one more dreadful example of how social norms are completely crumbling.”

Rep. Rodney Davis, an Illinois Republican, was at bat as Republican lawmakers hit the practice field when the gunfire erupted.

“I never thought I’d go to baseball practice for charity and have to dodge bullets,” he told Fox News.

Returning to the Capitol later in the day, still in his baseball uniform, his pants covered in dirt, his left arm bleeding from the fracas, Davis said in an interview: “It’s my breaking point. This has to stop. Hate has to stop. We can disagree on policies as Republicans and Democrats, as Americans, but that’s what makes this country great because we are Americans.”

Indeed, almost as soon as the gunfire died down on the Alexandria, Va., baseball diamond filled with legislators, their aides and members of a Capitol security detail, the calls rang out to turn down the nation’s white-hot political debate, which has riven Washington politics unlike any other time in recent memory.

Policy debates - health care, climate change; take your pick - are no longer disagreements in search of a compromise. They are zero sum games for one side or the other – and battle axes designed to further cleave the country.

“Your adversary has become your enemy,” said former Kansas Congressman Dan Glickman, a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “There’s alot more tribal thinking: either you’re with us or against us. The culture is just much more divisive. We need to take a deep breath.”

A survey by the Pew Research Center in January before President Donald Trump’s inauguration found that 86 percent of the public described the country as more politically divided than in the past. That followed a bitter election campaign whose hallmark was Russia’s attempt to influence the outcome – and a question that still lingers: did it collude with the Trump campaign? Was his victory unfairly gained?

More evidence of polarized culture emerged six months earlier, Pew found that more than half of the Democrats surveyed said the Republican Party makes them “afraid,” while nearly half of Republicans expressed a similar fear about the Democrats.

"Sometimes we do let our rhetoric go a little bit too far,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told reporters Wednesday. “I think it's better to relax it. Everybody here is a good person. Everybody here is trying to serve their constituents as best they can. We have different personalities. There's no question about that. Some need more policing than others."

Hatch, the second most senior member of the Senate, is something of a throwback. A conservative, he can be as fierce a partisan on issues as anyone. Yet among his closest colleagues in the Senate was the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, the Senate’s leading liberal and political bete noir of Republicans for decades.

The deepening political divide is representative of the cultural splits elsewhere. College campuses, for instance, thought to be bastions of free speech and open thinking, have become places where students protest and shout down speakers whose view they oppose. Students demand “safe spaces” where they can be sealed off from rhetoric they find disturbing or hurtful.

During last year’s president campaign, Trump ginned up his crowds by criminalizing his opponent, Hillary Clinton, with the chant, “Lock her up.” It was a reference to an FBI investigation into questions about whether she had classified material on her private email server.

More recently, Trump has villified the media, referring to critical stories about him as “fake news” and referring to the press as the “enemy of the people.”

Lawmakers, meanwhile, said they face greater risks than ever before an angry and divided populace, no matter on which side of the partisan divide they fall.

Rep. Dave Brat, a Virginia Republican who helped usher in the rise of the Tea Party rebellion against establishment Republicans, said he and a smattering of legislators from both parties were in the Capitol gym, interacting cordially away from the public eye, when news broke of the shootings.
“We were riding bikes looking at the TV, just taking it in. What’s next?” Brat asked.

He said security for members is “nothing near what it needs to be,” pointing to a spate of recent town halls meetings this spring in which angry constituents confronted lawmakers. “We go out in front of 1,000 people screaming, it only takes one person that’s off the reservation and you are in trouble,” Brat said. “Now everybody is going to reassess the risk.”

Political tensions haven’t abated much since the divisive fall campaign, and a popular election that was won by Clinton but captured by Trump in the Electoral College.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who ran as a Democrat but lost the nomination to Clinton, gathered support among many who saw both traditional parties as corrupt or ineffective.

Rep. Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican, said she’s witnessed the divisions up close.
“I’ve met some people in the last few weeks that have different politics within their marriage or within their family, and they, like, can hardly talk to each other,” said McSally. “Come on, America. We are Americans and we need to be united. The enemy is out there. The enemy is not in here.”

McSally holds the seat for the Arizona district once occupied by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who fell in the path of a mass shooter in a Tucson suburb on Jan. 8, 2011. Giffords was hit in the head, but survived, while six others died.

McSally noted that the FBI had arrested a man in her district last month that had left three threats on her voicemail, one of them saying her days “were numbered” because of her support for Trump.

"The political rhetoric in this country is only worsening, and there is a lot of anger and agitation out there," said Rep. Ryan Costello, R-Pa. “We're all here to work hard, we're all here to get things done, Republicans and Democrats, even if we disagree. "

Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kansas, tried to grab a tendril of hope.

“If there's any silver lining in today's tragedy, it's that my colleagues and I are taking time to reflect on our deep divisions and the caustic tone of Congressional debate and remember we are all on the same team," he said.

Still, the suburban Kansas City congressman added: "I do think many of my colleagues will be looking over their shoulders a bit more."

What? You still don't know why everything has gone to shit?

Poor, poor, kiddies. Let your Uncle Fyodor point you in the right direction. Write this down: Part 3, Section 1, Chapter 1, Article 8, Number IV, Paragraphs 1855 through 1864 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Ok, you millennials, I will cut you and your gnat-like attention spans some slack. Look here: The Gravity of Sin: Mortal and Venial Sin

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article156193289.html#storylink=cpy

Say it ain't so, Bobby!

If those vile Swedes don't fork over the cash, I hope the Orange Menace bombs the shit out of 'em!

Did Bob Dylan plagiarize his Nobel lecture from SparkNotes? | New York Post...

The whiff of plagiarism is blowin’ in the wind for Bob Dylan.

Phrases sprinkled throughout the rock legend’s lecture for his Nobel Prize in literature are very similar to phrases from the summation of “Moby Dick” on SparkNotes, a sort of online “Cliff’s Notes” that’s familiar to modern students looking for shortcuts and teachers trying to catch them.

The saga began when writer Ben Greenman pointed out on his blog on June 6 that Dylan appeared to have invented a quote from “Moby Dick,” which Dylan discussed in the lecture along with Buddy Holly, “The Odyssey” and “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

Then Andrea Pitzer, a writer for Slate, delved into the supposed quote and wrote in a story Tuesday that the line was not in “Moby Dick” but was very much like a line from the SparkNotes summary of the book.

Here’s Dylan: “Some men who receive injuries are led to God, others are led to bitterness”

And SparkNotes: “Someone whose trials have led him toward God rather than bitterness.”

Pitzer went on to find, and The Associated Press has verified, 20 other sentences with traces and phrases from the “Moby Dick” SparkNotes. She cites no examples in Dylan’s discussion of the other two books, and the AP found none.

The cases Pitzer found are not blatant or explicit — there are no verbatim sentences, only identical phrases and similar phrasing.

Other examples:

• Dylan: “Moby attacks one more time, ramming the Pequod and sinking it. Ahab gets tangled up in the harpoon lines and is thrown out of his boat into a watery grave.”

• SparkNotes: “Moby Dick rams the Pequod and sinks it. Ahab is then caught in a harpoon line and hurled out of his harpoon boat to his death.”

• Dylan: “The ship’s crew is made up of men of different races.”

• SparkNotes: “…a crew made up of men from many different countries and races.”

Seriously that last one's a bit of a stretch.

Dylan and a spokesman for the Swedish Academy which hands out the award weren’t immediately available for comment.

But when Academy spokeswoman Sara Danius posted the Swedish version of Dylan’s speech on her blog on June 7, she described it as “beautiful” and wrote that “the speech is rhetorically complete.”

The AP asked three literature teachers and professors whether they would call out their students for similar work in a paper, and all said they would, if not for the plagiarism, for using the modern equivalent of Cliff’s Notes.

“A high school student would get nailed,” said Joseph Vasquez who teaches English at Rosemead High School in California, “since she should have done the reading, and the closeness of text suggests she didn’t read the text but rather the SparkNotes.”

Dylan has been accused of lifting lines from older artists for his songs in the past, though many fans dismiss it as simply reflecting the common borrowing of the folk-and-blues milieus he drew from. Early in his career, he used the melody of the slave song “No More Auction Block for Me” for his protest classic “Blowin’ in the Wind.” He has since drawn upon other material, sometimes extensively, in everything from his paintings to his memoir “Chronicles: Volume One.”

“It is nothing new that Mr. Dylan might take inspiration from a pre-existing work to prepare something else,” Steven Weinberg, a copyright lawyer and musician, told the AP in an email.

“Songwriters, including Dylan, have been borrowing from other literary works to turn pop phrases for ages. Consider Led Zeppelin’s ample use of Tolkien’s classic works in many of their songs.”

Weinberg added the “surprise here is that rather than borrowing from classic literature, Mr. Dylan took his ‘inspiration’ this time from crib notes. But that should not raise eyebrows either. Even John Lennon was known to use things as ordinary as a newspaper clipping or circus posters to embellish lyrics.”

Dylan recorded the 26-minute lecture in Los Angeles and provided it to the Swedish Academy, which called it “extraordinary” and “eloquent” in a news release on June 5. The lecture is required for the winner to collect the 8 million Swedish kronor ($922,000) in prize money.

He was awarded the prize in October, bringing some controversy that an award reserved for top-flight novelists and poets had gone to a rock star. He took weeks to publicly acknowledge winning the prize, did not attend December’s Nobel ceremony in Stockholm, and left many wondering whether he would ever provide the traditional lecture.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Third "Orange Clump is a dumbass waste of oxygen" piece of the day. (This could take eight years, kiddies, so pack your barf bags.)

Pence 2018 anyone?

From Jonah Goldberg at National Review:

Democrats Take Back House in 2018? Trump Probably Impeached ...


The 1998 midterm election was a debacle for Republicans, particularly then-speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Since Reconstruction, no president had seen his party gain seats in the House in a midterm election six years into his presidency. Gingrich, who made the election a referendum on impeaching President Bill Clinton, resigned after the loss. Clearly, voters had sent the signal, “Don’t do it.”

The White House thought it had dodged a bullet. But one morning, over Thanksgiving break, then–White House chief of staff John Podesta was running in Washington’s Rock Creek park when it hit him: GOP leaders are “not going to let their members off the hook. They’re going to beat and beat and beat on them until they vote for impeachment.”

It fell to Podesta to tell the still-celebrating White House staff that the midterms meant nothing, that the push to impeach the president in the House was a runaway train that could not be derailed. “This thing is rigged,” Podesta announced at a Monday-morning staff meeting. “We are going to lose.”
President Trump’s White House could use a John Podesta about now. Because no one seems to have told Trump’s team that the Democrats are every bit as committed to impeaching Trump as the GOP was to impeaching Clinton. The difference, of course, is that the Democrats don’t control the House — yet.

If they did, as the Washington Examiner’s Byron York rightly noted recently, impeachment proceedings would already be underway. And if the Democrats take back the House in 2018, it won’t matter to most members whether the country as a whole supports impeachment, because the voters who elected them — and the donors who supported them — will be in favor of it. (A recent Public Policy Polling survey found that 47 percent of Americans support impeachment while 43 percent oppose it.)

Personally, I think it would be folly to impeach the president given what we know now. But that’s meaningless. The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” notwithstanding, the criteria for impeachment have little to do with criminal law and everything to do with politics. If 218 members of the House think it is right — or simply in their political interest — to impeach the president, he can be impeached. Whether two-thirds of the Senate decides to remove the president from office is also an entirely political decision. Given the likely composition of the Senate after the next election, however, that remains unlikely. Then again, who knows? Given how Trump responds to criticism and political pressure, would you want to bet that the tweeter-in-chief would be a model of statesmanlike restraint during an impeachment ordeal? So many of his current problems are the direct result of letting his ego or frustration get the better of him. What fresh troubles would he mint when faced with removal from office? What might he say under oath to the special counsel? Clinton, recall, was impeached and disbarred because he perjured himself in a deposition.

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi has cautioned against making the midterms a referendum on impeachment. But that is an electoral strategy, not a plan for when she gets the speaker’s gavel. And even if she declines to go straight to impeachment hearings on Day One, a Democratic-controlled House would still be a nightmare for the White House. Any hope of passing a conservative agenda would die instantaneously. Worse, once Democrats gained the power to subpoena documents and compel testimony from members of the administration, the Hobbesian internal politics of today’s White House would look like a company picnic by comparison. In short, the only hope for the Trump presidency is for the GOP to maintain control of the House. According to various reports, the GOP thinks it can hold on by running “against the media” in 2018. As pathetic as that would be, it might work. Though I doubt it. A better strategy would be to actually get things done. And the only way for that to happen is for both houses of Congress to get their act together.

Voting bills out of the House may be enough to justify a Rose Garden party, but it will do little to sway voters who’ve been told for years that the GOP needs control of all three branches to do big things. Trump won’t be on the ballot in 2018, but his presidency will hang in the balance.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Second "Orange Clump is a dumbass waste of oxygen" piece of the day.

In his head, not ours: Kathleen Parker | OregonLive.com


In one of Walker Percy's brilliant novels, "The Second Coming," protagonist Will Barrett keeps falling down for no apparent reason. He also suffers trances during which he contemplates existential questions.

Barrett comes to mind in the era of Donald Trump.

I'm not falling down on the golf course yet, as Barrett did, but I confess to a feeling of lightheadedness coupled with slight nausea. It makes perfect sense that Barrett finds salvation in a young woman recently released from an insane asylum.

When many of those around you seem to be suffering from some sort of group mania -- believing what isn't true and defending what isn't defensible -- then the officially "insane" offer some strange solace. At least there's a rational explanation for their disorder.

Today, about a third of the nation's population seems to be suffering from a reality discernment malfunction. Have they been ingesting mushrooms plucked from bull dung? Drinking water spiked with credulity-enhancing chemicals.

FLOURIDE!

Thus, when Trump speaks in his fourth-grade, monosyllabic, syntax-challenged verbiage, they hear lyrical lucidity. (Hee-hee. Suckers. - F.G.) When he brags that he has accomplished more than any other president, save for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his starry-eyed minions nod their approval. Exactly no major legislation has been passed by Congress since Trump took office..

That is a good thing, kiddies.

As Trump himself said, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they'd still love him.
This is the definition of equal madness, which seems to have spread to the highest levels, as witnessed Monday in the strangest Cabinet meeting in American history. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus spoke first, saying it was a "blessing" to serve the president. Each secretary followed suit in what became an epic, circular kiss-up, praising Trump's leadership (do you suppose the last lemming thanked the first?) and expressing his or her gratitude.

"It's an honor to be able to serve you," said Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

"I am privileged to be here," said Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta. "Deeply honored."

"What an incredible honor it is to lead the Department of Health and Human Services at this pivotal time under your leadership," said HHS Secretary Tom Price. "I can't thank you enough for the privileges you've given me and the leadership that you've shown."

The only way to process such tortured effusion is to remember James Comey. You either profess loyalty, or you go back to being a member of the privileged class so abhorred by the very folks Trump tempted at the ballot box.

Most reserved in his remarks was Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who praised only the men and women of the Defense Department, not Trump. A scholar, thinker, combat veteran and leader, Mattis knows full well what evil lurks in absolute power. The blessing is that there's at least one among the crowing crowd who puts country first and worships no mortal man.

But what to make of the rest of these Americans who seem unburdened by such concerns? Or this president, who still can do much harm? More than two dozen top psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health experts hope to provide some answers with a new book due out this fall -- "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump."

I smell a Book Of The Day!

They don't diagnose Trump, which ethically they can't do without examining the patient. They do, however, discuss his symptoms, which leads them to conclude that Trump is a "complex, if dangerously mad, man." They also propose that his mental illness is affecting the nation's mental health as well.

These experts will likely learn what many journalists have discovered: Only the already-convinced will read the book and the rest will remain convinced of their certitude. The trouble is that when one is daily immersed in clouds of distraction, it's difficult to recall what "normal" looks like.

Before long, I wouldn't be surprised to see a movement of Americans dressed in all-white and smoking cigarettes, mutely watching their former friends and family go about life as though everything were the same. Barrett doubtless would find solace in such company, refugees from the Asylum of the United States.

Let's just hope we're not watching through concertina wire. (Emphasis mine. - F.G.)


Hey, Kathy, what if the wire is already up and you can't see it?

(Mind blown.)


TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

First "Orange Clump is a dumbass waste of oxygen" piece of the day.

From Washington's other newspaper's ugliest chick who has a keen grasp of the obvious:

Of course Trump called Comey a liar: That's always been his strategy-Dana Milbank 


So Donald Trump is calling James Comey a liar.

Apparently today is an odd-numbered day, because the fascist left LOVES themselves some Jim Comey today. Who needs a calendar?

This puts the fired FBI director in some impressive company. Among those Trump has accused of lying, via pronouncements, tweets and retweets:

Ted Cruz
Marco Rubio
Ben Carson

John Kasich
Jeb Bush
George W. Bush
The Bush dynasty
Fellow GOP presidential candidates
All candidates
John McCain
Barack Obama

Well, even a blind orange megalomaniacal squirrel finds its nuts and plays with them once in a while.

The Obama administration

Ditto.

Hillary Clinton

Seriously?

Tim Kaine
Nancy Pelosi

Well, that is just too much for civilized people to tolerate. That cow is too stupid to lie. She actually believes it.

Bernie Sanders
Democrats
The Senate
George Will
GOP strategist Rick Tyler
The Club for Growth
The media
Reporters
Journalists
Fake-news media
CNN
The New York Times
The New York Post
The New York Daily News
Chris Cuomo
Megyn Kelly
Dana Perino
John King
Wall Street Journal editorialist Mary Kissel
Women who accused him of sexual misconduct
China
Doctors
Baseball’s Alex Rodriguez
Star Jones
An Ebola patient
Edward Snowden
Anyone who didn’t tune in to GOP debates to watch Trump

Man, ol' Dana had an intern earn his non-pay this week... hey, doesn't that make Dana a slaveholder?

Accusing others of lying is a bit rich coming from the man who has done more than any other to turn public discourse into a parallel universe of alternative facts. If we were psychoanalyzing Trump, we might say he is projecting. Of course, if we were psychoanalyzing Trump, we might throw the entire DSM at him, starting with antisocial personality disorder and working our way through narcissistic personality disorder and then paranoid personality disorder.

If there's one thing this bitch Milbank oughta know, it's what crazy looks like.

But Trump’s tendency to accuse others of the flaws he possesses seems to be more than a reflex. It appears to be a strategy — a verbal jujitsu in which he uses his opponents’ strengths against them.

Trump was the old guy in the Republican debates and more than once seemed to fade partway through — but he managed to brand Jeb Bush “low energy.” He did the same to Clinton, portraying her as weak and tired; now he’s keeping an exceedingly light schedule as president and passing a good chunk of the time at his private retreats. Trump told the most extravagant untruths during the campaign, had the most glaring conflicts of interest and knew the least about governing. But he branded Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted,” Clinton as “Crooked Hillary” and Rubio as a “lightweight” and “Little Marco.”

Trump did not invent this strategy. I first encountered it on the playground of the Old Mill Road elementary school on Long Island in the 1970s: “I’m rubber, you’re glue — whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” Other kids used an endlessly entertaining variant: “I know you are but what am I?”

During the campaign, when the topic turned to Trump’s leadership of the “birther” movement questioning Obama’s U.S. birth, Trump declared that “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.”

When Clinton pointed to racist “alt-right” movement, Trump responded by saying, “Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future.” When Clinton alleged that Trump was “temperamentally unfit” for the presidency, Trump responded by saying it was Clinton who “does not have the temperament to be president.”

On and on it went. Attention to Trump’s thin and vague set of policy proposals led him to say it was Clinton who “never talks about policy.” After a dark GOP convention full of apocalyptic warnings, Trump claimed that Clinton “is the only one fear-mongering.” Clinton’s charge that Trump is volatile and easily baited, likewise, led him to call her “trigger happy.”

Shortly after Clinton said Islamic State terrorists are “rooting for Donald Trump’s victory,” Trump proclaimed that those very same terrorists “dream all night of having Hillary Clinton” as president.
Trump’s answer to questions about self-dealing in his family’s charitable work was to point to “crooked” Clinton’s “criminal” foundation. His routine response, even now, to inquiries into his and his aides’ ties to Russia: They should investigate the Clintons’ Russia ties.

We’ve seen this pattern in the early months of the presidency as well — accusing the Democrats of seeking a government shutdown when it was his own late demands that threatened to upend a bipartisan spending bill, and now, when accused of lying by the former FBI director, calling that man a liar.

There’s no doubt Trump’s rubber-and-glue strategy has worked. He is, after all, the president, and Crooked Hillary, Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco and Low-Energy Jeb are not. But can the man who has established himself as one of history’s most prodigious prevaricators convince the country that the former FBI director, celebrated for his integrity, is just another lying liar? Polls before and after Comey’s testimony suggest Trump is losing that contest.

After all, who are you going to believe? Trump? Or everybody else?

Actually, La Milbank means everybody she knows or cares to quote. About a third of our fellow AmeriKKKans are so pissed at people like her they will gladly swallow every lie the Orange Mess-iah shoots (its really more of a drizzle) down their throats. In other words, left-fascists (especially Okhrana) created A Cockjerk Orange.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

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TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Never be afraid to stand up to them, kiddies. (WARNING: THIS ADVICE MAY NO LONGER APPLY ONCE THEY STARTING SHOOTING FOLKS LIKE YOU.)

From Philly.com:

In flap over free speech, Kutztown University loosens sidewalk 'chalking rules ...


Chalk it up to a lesson in free speech: Kutztown University has changed its policy on sidewalk chalk messages after an antiabortion group protested what it called “censorship by scrub brush.”

The episode began in March when a chapter of Students for Life of America used colored chalk to write antiabortion messages on sidewalks at the rural Berks County university, which is part of the Pennsylvania state system of higher education.

After university employees washed away the messages on two consecutive days, the student group turned to a conservative nonprofit legal organization, Alliance Defending Freedom. It sent a letter to the university president, accusing the school of unconstitutional censorship and demanding a revised chalking policy.

In a statement issued Monday, the university said the March incident “was simply a misunderstanding as the messages were erased during campus cleaning.”

That's plausible. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were quite fastidious.

When exactly does "campus cleaning" become brainwashing? Or worse?

“When the university administration became aware of the situation, the group was immediately informed that it had every right to chalk its messages on our campus,” the statement said.

The chalking guidelines were revised in April to “better reflect our support of free speech,” the statement added. The revision scrapped a section on message content that required messages to be “educational or informative in nature,” and prohibited messages deemed to have “a clear and present potential hazard of interfering with the process of the university.”

In a statement Monday, Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Travis Barham said: “No public university can silence student speech simply because officials don’t like what the students are saying. We commend Kutztown University officials for revising their policy to respect freedom of speech for all students.”

Around the country, “chalking” has long been a cheap, easy way for students to advertise campus events. But in recent years, a number of schools have had flaps over politically charged messages. Last year at Emory University outside Atlanta, for example, chalk declarations supporting then-presidential candidate Donald Trump prompted a protest demonstration; the university president issued a bulletin affirming the value of “vigorous debate, speech, and protest” as well as “civility and inclusion.”

Last month in California, Alliance Defending Freedom and Students for Life decried the erasure of antiabortion chalk texts at Fresno State University. But in that case, a professor and his students scuffed out messages for which the university had given permission, according to alliance lawyers.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Jay Ambrose is an unintentionally funny guy.

Jay Ambrose: Trump needs an intervention – Twin Cities


Maybe an intervention, the kind we hear about with alcoholics, could help solve our national problems.

Only in this case, the target would be President Donald Trump, who does not drink and never has. He tweets. He does it childishly and vengefully with self-defeating expertise, and while it is scarcely his only fault, it in too many ways sums up the others.

It points to intellectual effort no more than about 140 characters long, self-control on the order of no self-control, an absorption with the petty over the important and an ego issue that begs for attachment to the word maniacal. The sadness is that he’s right now a key protection against leftism,

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Oh, Margaret! As if all evildoers aren't kissing cousins! Jay, you slay me, you silly bastard!

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TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

This one's for all those classy Nashville Predators fans out there who are threatening to turn their town into Philadelphia South.

Remember, kiddies, only losers blame the refs, the commish, the league - ANYBODY but their own players who simply didn't get the job done.

In a couple of years, Nashvillians won't feel they have to pretend to know or care about ice hockey and they can get back to what they do best: producing bubblegum pop performed by guys in cowboy hats and boots.

Anyone heard from the Florida Panthers lately? Anyone? Anyone at all?

And they actually won a Cup..


From NBC Sports:

Puck Dynasty: Penguins in historic company ...



The salary cap was a passion project for Mario Lemieux, the owner, when the NHL wrestled with it during the 2004-05 lockout even though he knows it would have been something Mario Lemieux, the player, would have fought to the bitter end.

"We couldn't compete with the (New York) Rangers and LA and the big markets and Chicago and Detroit," the Pittsburgh Penguins Hall of Famer-turned-chairman recalled.

So Lemieux pushed for the cap during the NHL's lost winter, well aware the ripple effects would include a rise in league parity at the potential expense of the dynasties that have been a part of the league since it started awarding the Stanley Cup nearly a century ago.

The math was easy for Lemieux. Better to have 30ish solvent and competitive clubs than just a handful.

"The salary cap gave us a chance to spend to the cap and be on level playing fields with the other teams," he said.

The cap has proven to be more of a speed bump than a road block for the Penguins. The proof was all around Lemieux as he spoke on the ice at Bridgestone Arena on Sunday night after the Penguins nudged past the Nashville Predators in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final to become the first team in 19 years and the first of the salary cap era to win back-to-back titles.

"It's hard to win the Cups as we've found over the last 10-12 years," Lemieux said.

Just not impossible.

The Penguins flew home to Pittsburgh on Monday with the Cup in their possession for the third time in nine years. A downtown parade is scheduled for Wednesday, a party that's on the verge of becoming a rite of late spring.

Pittsburgh has done it by investing heavily in their core group and finding the right complement of players and staff around Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang to make it work.

"I always say best organization, amazing team," Malkin said. "We have great chance win every year."

That's not how it's supposed to work nowadays. Championship windows are supposed to be narrower with the cap in place, not wider. Sure, Chicago has won it three times in six seasons in the cap era but the Blackhawks were forced to blow it up after 2010. The Kings won it all in 2012 and 2014, and are now in the process of starting over.

Not Pittsburgh. The Penguins have more Cup appearances (four), playoff wins (90) and regular-season victories (467) over the last decade than any team in the NHL. And it's not really that close. While Crosby is loath to talk about his "legacy" - he won't turn 30 until August - the way he describes the only franchise he's ever known sounds an awful lot like a "dynasty."

"Your goal is to win every year and our team just had a collection of guys that knew how to win, knew how to find ways," Crosby said after picking up his second straight Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.

Having a coach with an ability to challenge his stars without alienating them and a general manager with a knack for finding the right pieces helps. When GM Jim Rutherford replaced Ray Shero in the summer of 2014, he raised eyebrows when he said he only planned to be in the job a couple of years.

Funny, nobody's asking how much longer the 68-year-old is sticking around anymore. He gave coach Mike Sullivan the blunt directive to cut through the noise when he hired him to replace Mike Johnston in December 2015. The former grinder with 54 goals in 709 career NHL games turned out to be the perfect conduit to get the Penguins to play fast and, to borrow Sullivan's pet phrase, "play the right way."

The Penguins are right up against the salary cap annually but they also don't overpay their stars. Considering their value to the team both Crosby ($8.7 million) and Malkin ($9.5 million) are bargains. They're not the only ones.

Rookie Jake Guentzel (NHL rookie playoff record-tying 21 points), Bryan Rust, Conor Sheary and Scott Wilson all found themselves playing vital roles alongside Pittsburgh's cornerstones at some point during the postseason. None of them had a cap hit of more than $675,000.

No wonder Malkin is hardly in the mood to put his career into perspective. He'll turn 31 next month. He, Phil Kessel and Letang are all under contract through 2022. Crosby until 2025.

"I think we still play together long time and maybe when we retire think about it," Malkin said. "We're still young, still hungry and of course we want more."

If Malkin and Crosby can stay healthy, Pittsburgh will certainly be right there. Oddsmakers made them the early favorite for a three-peat, something that hasn't been done since the New York Islanders won four straight from 1980-83, a full year before Lemieux made his NHL debut and nearly a half decade before Malkin and Crosby were born.

There will be turnover. Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury's handing off of the Cup to Matt Murray was a symbolic passing of the torch. Fleury will almost certainly play elsewhere next season and defenseman Justin Schultz is a restricted free agent but may have played himself into a contract too rich for the Penguins to match.

Rutherford and Sullivan will get to work trying to fit the pieces together again. Their franchise cornerstone will take a brief breather this summer, maybe go fishing back home in Nova Scotia and then start pointing toward next season.

"You have a small window to play and to have a career, and I feel fortunate," Crosby said. "I also understand how difficult it is. So you just want to try to make the best of it."

Over and over and over again if you can.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Third World problems...we've got them.

It is going to get worse and it may never get better, kiddies.

Just watch for the reaction to come...


GOP Rep. Steve Scalise shot at congressional baseball practice - CNBC...


1) Left-fascist  Colonel Sanders fan shoots Repansycans.

2) ?

Will some Clumpskyite AWUG mirror-image of Hodgkinson shoot some Democrasses and will right-fascists claim victory if one is killed?

Will there be a Clampdown ?

How many Repansycans will become gun-grabbers now that they realize that left-fascists can buy guns too?

Is this the catalyst that spurs the formation of an All-Fascist United Front to protect the perverse common interests of ALL our moral and intellectual superiors?

Don't laugh, kiddies. It most certainly can happen here.

It might have already happened...


A gunman opened fire at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday, wounding five people, including the third-ranking House Republican.

Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise was shot in the hip. He underwent surgery at Medstar Washington Hospital Center and is in critical condition. Earlier, a statement from his office characterized his condition as stable.

Two U.S. Capitol Police officers — who House Speaker Paul Ryan identified as Crystal Griner and David Bailey — were wounded. Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa said in a statement that Griner is in "good condition in the hospital after getting shot in the ankle" and that Bailey was "treated and released" following a "minor" injury.

"Had they not been there, it would have been a massacre," eyewitness Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who took cover behind a tree amid the shooting, said of the Capitol Police. The officers were present because Scalise is a member of the congressional leadership.

Ryan named the others injured: Tyson Foods lobbyist Matt Mika and Zack Barth, a staffer for Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas. Mika was transported to a hospital and remains in critical condition following surgery, according to a Tyson Foods spokesman.

Barth's condition was not immediately known.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday afternoon that the assailant had died of gunshot wounds.

The FBI said law enforcement officials identified him as 66-year-old James Hodgkinson of Illinois.

Several GOP congressmen and at least two Republican senators attended the practice, Paul told MSNBC. They were preparing for an annual bipartisan charity baseball game set to take place on Thursday at Nationals Park. That game will go on as scheduled.

South Carolina Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan told CNBC that he was approached by a man Wednesday morning who asked him whether the people practicing on the field were Democrats or Republicans. Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., who was with Duncan at the time, later told CNBC that the pair saw pictures of Hodgkinson and believe it was the same person who stopped them with the question.

It is too early to tell if the shooting was a targeted attack, said Tim Slater, a special agent in charge of the FBI's Washington field office.

The shooting started shortly after 7 a.m., ET, and witnesses described Hodgkinson's weapon as a rifle. Paul said he heard a first, "isolated" shot followed by a "rapid succession" of five to 10 shots.

Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., told CNBC that the first shot came "from somewhere behind the third base dugout and then the second shot came shortly thereafter." They then "knew it was something real, so people started scrambling."

"We are very fortunate. It could have been a whole lot worse," he said.

Capitol Police and Alexandria police officers who responded to the scene exchanged fire with the shooter, according to Verderosa. Witnesses described dozens of shots ringing out before the firing stopped.

Brooks told CNN that he saw Scalise drag himself from second base into the outfield after he was shot, leaving a trail of blood 10 to 15 yards long. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., told reporters Scalise lay by himself for "at least 10 minutes," as people could not get to him amid the shooting.

"I wanted to get to him but there were still shots going overhead from both sides," he said.

People helped an injured aide in the first base dugout, Flake later told MSNBC. They also made sure Texas Rep. Joe Barton's 10-year-old son, who attended the practice, got to safety.

Barton teared up later Wednesday when he said he felt that his son "had 25 dads. Everybody out there was looking out for him."

When they could make it to Scalise, Rep. Brad Wenstrup of Ohio, a former combat surgeon, applied pressure to the wound, Flake said. Wenstrup told CBS News that he "felt like [he] was back in Iraq."
Trump said the two Capitol Police officers "took down the gunman despite sustaining gunshot wounds."

Scalise remained coherent throughout, according to Flake. The senator said he called Scalise's wife so she did not hear about the shooting on the news first.

Officials delayed or canceled many House hearings scheduled for Wednesday. The Senate chamber also canceled votes for the day, according to multiple reports.

After the shooting, Trump called for unity.

Of course it did.

"We may have our differences, but we do well in times like these to remember that everyone who serves in our nation's capital is here because, above all, they love our country. We can all agree that we are blessed to be Americans ... and that we are strongest when we are unified and when we work together for the common good," the president said.

He called Scalise a "patriot" and a "fighter."

It has no ides who Scalise is.

In a statement to the House later Wednesday, Ryan praised the Capitol Police officers and also called for unity.

Of course he did.

"An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us," Ryan said, drawing a standing ovation.

Rep. Ruben Kihuen, D-Nev., shared a photo of Democrats at their baseball practice praying for the Republicans.

Praying to what, exactly?
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.