#entire campaigns have begun and ended in that span

[blujayonthewing]

the passage of time is so fucked. felix is brand spanking new what the hell do you mean that was two years ago

[sa7abnews]

Trump and Musk Have Wide-Ranging Talk on X, Plagued by Technical Glitches

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/16/trump-and-musk-have-wide-ranging-talk-on-x-plagued-by-technical-glitches/

Trump and Musk Have Wide-Ranging Talk on X, Plagued by Technical Glitches

Donald Trump recounted his assassination attempt in vivid detail and promised the largest deportation in U.S. history during a high-profile return to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter—a conversation that was plagued by technical glitches.

“If I had not turned my head, I would not be talking to you right now—as much as I like you,” Trump told X’s owner Elon Musk.

Musk, a former Trump critic, said the Republican nominee’s toughness, as demonstrated by his reaction to last month’s shooting, was critical for national security.

“There’s some real tough characters out there,” Musk said. “And if they don’t think the American president is tough, they will do what they want to do.”

The rare public conversation between Trump and Musk, which spanned more than two hours and was overwhelmingly friendly, revealed little new about Trump’s plans for a second term. The former president spent much of the discussion focused on his recent assassination attempt, illegal immigration and his plans to cut government regulations.

Still, the online meeting underscored just how much the U.S. political landscape has changed less than four years after Trump was permanently banned by the social media platform’s former leadership for spreading disinformation that sparked the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress and undermined the very foundation of the American democracy.

Such disinformation has thrived at X under Musk’s leadership, although it was largely ignored during his conversation with Trump save for a passing Trump reference to a “rigged election.”

The session was intended to serve as a way for the former president to reach potentially millions of voters directly. It was also an opportunity for X, a platform that relies heavily on politics, to redeem itself after some struggles.

It did not begin as planned.

With more than 878,000 users connected to the meeting more than 40 minutes after the scheduled start time, the interview had not yet begun. Many users received a message reading, “Details not available.”

Trump’s team posted that the “interview on X is being overwhelmed with listeners logging in.” And once the meeting began, Musk apologized for the late start and blamed a “massive attack” that overwhelmed the company’s system. Trump’s voice sounded muffled at times.

Trump supporters were openly frustrated.

“Not available????? I planned my whole day around this,” wrote conservative commentator Glenn Beck.

“Please let Elon know we can’t join,” billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posted.

Ahead of the event, Musk posted on the platform that X was conducting “some system scaling tests” to handle what was anticipated to be a high volume of participants.

Read More: Donald Trump on What His Second Term Would Look Like

The rocky start was reminiscent of a May 2023 social media conversation between Musk and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Republican governor was using the social media platform as a way to officially announce his presidential bid, a disastrous rollout marred by technical glitches, overloaded by the more than 400,000 people who tried to dial in.

Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, noted that Trump mocked DeSantis at the time.

“Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!” Trump wrote in a message reposted by Harris’ campaign Monday.

Once the interview ended, Harris’ campaign responded with a statement saying, “Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself—self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.”

Monday’s meeting highlighted the evolving personal relationship between Trump and Musk, two of the world’s most powerful men, who have shifted from being bitter rivals to unlikely allies over the span of one election season.

Musk, who described himself as a “moderate Democrat” until recently, suggested in 2022 that Trump was too old to be president again. Still, Musk formally endorsed Trump two days after his assassination attempt last month.

During their talk, Trump welcomed the idea of Musk joining his next administration to help cut government waste. Musk volunteered to join a prospective “government efficiency commission.”

“You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump told Musk. “I need an Elon Musk—I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts. I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states.”

Even before his endorsement, the tech CEO had already been working privately to support a pro-Trump super PAC. The group, known as America PAC, is now under investigation by election officials for alleged misleading attempts to collect data from voters.

Meanwhile, Trump has softened his criticism of electric vehicles, citing Musk’s leadership of Tesla. And on Monday, at least, Trump returned to Musk’s social media platform in force. The former president made at least eight individual posts in the hours leading up to the Musk interview.

Long before he endorsed Trump, Musk turned increasingly toward the right in his posts and actions on the platform, also using X to try to sway political discourse around the world. He’s gotten in a dustup with a Brazilian judge over censorship, railed against what he calls the “woke mind virus” and amplified false claims that Democrats are secretly flying in migrants to vote in U.S. elections.

Read More: What to Know About Elon Musk’s Battle With a Brazilian Judge Over Speech on Social Media

Musk has also reinstated previously banned accounts such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump, who was kicked off the platform—then known as Twitter—two days after the Jan. 6 violence, with the company citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.” By November 2022, Musk had bought the company, and Trump’s account was reinstated, although the former president refrained from tweeting until Monday, insisting that he was happier on his own Truth Social site, which he launched during the ban.

Trump’s audience on X is legions larger than on Truth Social, which became a publicly traded company earlier this year. Trump has just over 7.5 million followers on Truth Social, while his mostly dormant X account is followed by 88 million. Musk’s account, which hosted the interview, has more than 193 million followers.

In a reminder that the world was watching, the chat prompted a preemptive note of caution from Europe.

Thierry Breton, a French business executive and commissioner for internal market of the European Union, warned Musk of possible “amplification of harmful content” by broadcasting his interview with Trump. In a letter posted on X, Breton urged Musk to “ensure X’s compliance” with E.U. law, including the Digital Services Act, adopted in 2022 to address a number of issues including disinformation.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung urged the E.U. to “mind their own business instead of trying to meddle in the U.S. Presidential election.”

[mythriteshah]

The Sultan’s Dream

“Nyra… Glacius…  It has been a journey of ten-thousand malms since we stepped foot upon Eorzea.  I was but a simple lordling that wanted to make a name for himself, with nothing but my two greatest companions – my best friends – by my side.  You two were always there.  Through my triumphs and my failures, you were all I had to depend on.

Yes, I have my Angels to watch over and safeguard myself and the Regalia, but even they are not always around – unlike you two. ‘Tis not often I am given an opportunity to simply enjoy the scenery and share my thoughts; there are few whom I trust enough to divulge my deepest secrets.  And to tell you the greatest truth of all, Nyra & Glacius… I’m tired. My time spent in Eorzea was one filled with so much turmoil that I would not even wish such a life on my worst enemies. And although I’ve brought the Regalia to a shining age of prosperity, I had still suffered a great deal since I first became an adventurer.

All this conflict is for the cloudkin.  I’ve already cavorted with enough primals to live three full lives.  And the repeated incursions of the Garlean Empire are evolving into quite the proverbial broken record.  There are numerous other adventurers and ‘heroes’ strewn about the realm to make an army; what’s one merchant-lord in the grand scheme of things?

We’ve played our part on this grand stage of imbeciles, Glacius.  Nyra. But now it is time for the curtains to descend.  I am done fighting and tempting fate – I’ll grow old doing this for so long. ‘Tis time we returned back home to where we belong.”

Thiji reflected back on his speech he gave to his two most trusted companions some summers ago.  While he has gained and lost much throughout his time as an adventurer, he was tolerant of the outcomes and made peace with them.  Of course, there are certain moments in time he wish would have changed for the better.

His confrontation with the Harriers and their leader in the heart of Snowcloak, though successful in its objective, costed Thiji the life of the only Angel who ever loved him – Mamai Mai, who was given the title of “Lady” posthumously.  She insisted on accompanying the then Mythrite Prince and his comrades-in-arms in his assault, offering her pugilistic skills to the table. Unfortunately, she was waylaid unexpectantly by what may as well have been a sub-zero blast of cold by the Lady of Frost.  Thiji may have withstood the brunt of it, but Mamai was not so prepared, and she fell as a result.  This was the beginning of a martial awakening within Thiji, for this event catalyzed his ascent – or descent, to some – into the path of the Dark Knight.  This would later be realized in its fullest when he battled against the fourfold master of the blade in His home turf: Ravana, Lord of the Hive.

“Martial perfection”, the Amalj’aa called it.  The apex of one’s skill for which all Amalj’aa seek to strive.  This concept stuck close to Thiji as he eventually took up the sword and shield, continuing his adventures as a Paladin during the campaign to liberate Ala Mhigo.  When he had faced off against the Lady of Bliss, whose Qalyana dreamers were coaxed into summoning their false deity due to threats from the Garlean Empire, he had received word from Nyra, who bore a message from one of his Angels informing him that his then-Sultana, Nanago Nago - whom was with child and under the care of Sarielle - had succumbed to her own avarice, consuming gratuitous amounts of aether from his weapons collected throughout his journeys during the Dragonsong War.  The resulting effulgence – combined with her own innate powers as an Astrologian – caused her and their unborn child to perish in a stellar explosion, effectively removing them from existence.  Another crushing loss – greater, even, than the one incurred from losing Mamai. Thanks to the laws of time and space, no one but he and his Angels know of this event.  Once more unhinged, Thiji found new strength in not only his martial, but his magical prowess, effectively dispatching of the Lady of Bliss, though at the cost of his own blade and board… and his soul crystal, which he casted away with his armor following the battle.

It always seemed passing strange that the Dunesfolk nobleman from the Near East would gain new strength and prowess by leaps and bounds at the expense of some tragedy – this only further added to his eccentricity.  He was a calm individual, but was incredibly vindictive – especially if one ever crossed his Angels, whom he cared for so dearly.  Others may not have picked up on the cause of these… awakenings, but Thiji was more than aware of it.  Some days following the Largesse, when he was alone in his Aldenard Branch office, he gazed upon a glistening blue greatsword of exquisite make.  It was made by a Dragoon friend of his who had a fascination for all things Allagan, and upon the length of the blade was an engraved sentence:

“As long as you make it out of a battle alive, you're one step closer to fulfilling your dream.”

More than just pretty words to the Mythrite Sultan.  He had experienced many battles and came out of each intact.  Even now, as the kingpin of the Higuri Regalia, Thiji had even conquered a battlefield which extended beyond the physical: the realm of high fashion. He toiled for many winters to get to where he is now; to be the titan of aesthetic and philanthropy which has earned the respect of many (and, for some reason, the ire of some).  Yet therein lies the problem:

What dream remained?

Sure, Thiji Higuri was a man of ambition and intellect.  But he had not enjoyed the pursuit of a dream since the assault on Djanan Qhat.  Ever since he was a child, he was spellbound by a particular play, and never missed a single showing.  Thiji had experienced it so many times that he could (and probably still) recite the entire script verbatim.  It was a tale of romance and tragedy; of a powerful sorceress with a good heart who stood up for a broken country’s people, and the solitary man who rose up to defend her:  the Sorceress’s Knight.

A dream he may have fulfilled after the Dragonsong War, but was snatched away prior to Ala Mhigo’s freedom. It was a sensitive topic, and seldom brought up in the Mythrite Sultan’s presence, lest an Angel earns his anger. Why keep the claymore, then, if he had no dream to pursue?  What other meaning could the decorative sword have to Thiji if he is a man bereft of that driving force?

The evening following the Largesse, the Mythrite Sultan was no longer present at the Aldenard Branch. He had begun making for the Main Branch for reasons as of yet unknown – probably to oversee the release of the Blessed Wardrobe’s second clothing line.  As usual, his Advisor, Veeveena Veena, was present in his chambers, enjoying some Winter Lassi as she gazed upon the moon with that lovely smile on her face.  It was yet another peaceful night in Radz-at-Han, and though she has seen the view many times, it was no less breathtaking to behold for the Near Eastern flower.

Veeveena took a few sips of her drink as the winds suddenly began to rise.  The trees amidst the emergent layer of the jungle which could be seen from the city began to sway and billow, and would eventually cause a whisper or three to blow through the balcony.  The sudden shift in temperature caught her off guard as the Dunesfolk woman let out a soft gasp, stumbling somewhat, but maintained her posture as the numerous jewels and decorations on her sampot clinked like wind chimes against her body.

“This breeze…” she whispered to herself.  “Could it be the North Wind?  Has he arrived in Radz-at-Han?”  The sheer thought of meeting the elusive debonair was too enticing to resist, and Veeveena would quickly down the last of the lassi, enduring the brain freeze that would follow.  As swiftly as she could, she doffed her garb to put on some evening attire before making her flight from the Main Branch Headquarters.  Forgoing the usual method of taking the bridge out from the city, she utilized her fans to conjure wind-aspected aether to propel herself upward, gliding down gracefully toward the canopy.

Meanwhile, as Veeveena made her way to the rivulet, a lone figure was seen dancing about.  It was shrouded entirely thanks to the shadows cast by the dense canopy beneath Menphina’s light.  The figure’s movements were seamless, effortlessly transitioning into fouettes, sliding along the waters from one side to the other as they froze over, striping the rivulet with bands of ice.  All throughout was the sound of steel ringing through the night air, and that same icy wind began picking up once more as the figure gathered aetherial energy for a brief moment before soaring from one end of the river to the other in a twirling flourish.   Upon reaching the apex of the jump, it performed a flawless jete, the silvery moon cloaking the figure all the while as if the spectacle was taken straight out from a painting. The concealed terpsichorean was releasing the stored energy as it did its finish, resulting in an arch of slick ice to form over the rivulet.  Sticking the landing with one final twirl into a plie, it detected movement within the trees.  It did not bother to take the time to discern the incoming presence, and instead fled the scene with a blinding dash into the forest floor.

When Veeveena had finally emerged, the figure she believed to be the North Wind was nowhere to be found. All that she beheld was the stark scenery of a partly-frozen rivulet, the banks dotted with shards of frost, and an arch spanning its breadth.  “This is beautiful… but the North Wind could not do this,” she thought, as she felt the scintillant snow particles kissing her face.  While she was awestruck at the sight, Veeveena had to report this occurrence to her peers.  Without wasting another moment, she contacted the Angels at the Main Branch, who would then arrive within the bell.

The “S” Trio (Sena, Sona, Suna) and the “L” Trio (Lena, Luma, Lina) were investigating the area as Veeveena brought them up to speed on what happened to the best of her ability. Sosona was easily able to deduce that the lingering aether was not the result of a primal’s thanks to her aetherometer obtained by the Scions of the Seventh Dawn (who, when asked about how she acquired them, stated that they didn’t seem to be using them anymore anyway);  Lelena and Lilina, with their own unique abilities, further deduced that the culprit was not using the ambient aether or the influence of a construct; Luluma and Susuna had also come to the conclusion that the focus area was away from any wildlife or beastmen, so none were harmed from the result of this… phenomenon.

What really stood out, however, was Sesena’s observation after gazing upon the frozen arch for several minutes:

“Hey, Angels… do any of you feel… different?” she asked them.  “Miss Veeveena?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I thought I was the only one who felt such… emotion from this scene, so I did not address it.”

“Miss Veeveena’s right… I don’t feel all that chipper,” Lilina commented, holding a hand to her heart. “It’s not… aether sickness, but when I gaze upon this scene, I’m seemingly overcome with… sorrow.  But it’s a sort of… beautiful sorrow – like a dying maiden being held in her lover’s arms before the last flames of life fade from her eyes…”

The other Angels absorbed Lilina’s words, taking in the scenery, watching the snow particles dance in the air.  The longer they remained, the more these senses seemed more profound.  They may have been involved in many conflicts both small and large, but the Angels were no strangers to emotion – especially ones as palpable as what they were experiencing.  They felt tranquility… yet sadness; bliss… yet loss.  It was as if they were traversing a thin line between positive and negative emotion.

“I’ve heard tales of his prowess, Angels, but I don’t think even the North Wind is capable of something like this,” Sesena commented.

“Whomever it is,” Sosona began, “they’re damn good at expressing themselves.”  The Angels remained for a while longer, until the icy spectacle would be whisked away by an errant gust of wind, freeing the rivulet from its frozen state in a cloud of diamond dust.

From atop the city in the Main Branch Headquarters, a Lalafell woman veiled in mythril blue and silver watched silently from her vantage point.  Lady Mimizo, the Valide Sultan, was surprisingly awake during this bell, her face obscured by one of her fans.  But for what reason was she spying on the Angels?

As Nyra flew to her side, Mimizo looked over her shoulder to find a slumbering Thiji, who seemed to be well into his sleep, a rare smile of content made visible on his face.  His mother would grin in kind as she gave a kiss to the owl’s cheek.

“[I am indebted to you, Nyra.  Thank you for keeping this secret for so long.  But soon, the Angels will have to know. Until then, pray hold your tongue a while longer],” Mimizo whispered to Nyra in their native tongue.  She would bow her head before taking wing, flying off into the night sky.  Mimizo gazed upon the vestiges of the ice particles swirling into the heavens, enjoying the sight for a moment before quietly leaving her son’s bed chambers.  She would return to accompany her husband before the Angels would make their way back to report this event to the other branches.

“May your dreams bring you the bliss you so rightfully deserve, my beloved son…”

[thewreckkelly]

NEWS ……. BREAKING NEWS …….. BREAKING NEWS ……BREAKING NEWS ……

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LIBERAL WEST COAST

A new Crowdfunding push on the dark web by a team of disgruntled Republican activists - who purposely fly under the radar - has begun to receive major traction. 

The fund is controlled through a Central America tax efficient corporation and according to their manifesto seeks to raise $250,000,000 for the purpose of developing, manufacturing, locating, implementing and managing a series of underground low frequency sonic wave emission cones at strategic points along the 750 miles of the San Andreas Continental Transform Fault Line.

To date the fund has used money raised to commence the purchase of 39 parcels of land spanning the Pacific and North American plates. Formal registration of ownership of these parcels have been filed in the name of Ron T Laddump acting in the capacity as nominal majority shareholder of FTL IBC, a Belize registered corporation. 

FTL IBC is also behind the purchase of 10 A-Level Barge Marine drilling rigs which are currently docked in a private yard at Manzanillo, Mexico.

A source close to the corporation, who has asked to remain anonymous, told the Examiner that the group controlling the project are American patriots from all over the country who are ‘sick and tired’ of Liberal constitutional abuse the West Coast of America exerts over ordinary people throughout the US. The States of California, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico and Nevada are the primary targets of the operation.

Freely available technology developed by and used in military applications for the acceleration of opencast mining has been applied in the creation of over 200 suitcase sized units - that can be activated remotely from a distance of up to 500 miles using standard GSM signal station resource pinging. 

These devices are in the final alpha stage of testing and are projected to be ready to be buried 100+ feet below the surface of land and sea at strategic points along the fault line before year end. The units are each capable of causing minor plate shifts when triggered according to our source and units can be repeatedly triggered. 

Individually the effect of triggering low frequency elastic sonic waves emitting samples of ‘Hello it’s Me’ would register in the region of 0.8 on the Geneva Emotional Scale - which on the surface would result in minor tremors for periods of up to 3 minutes.

The effect of a chain of units being triggered with the entire Rundgren catalogue could cause a major right lateral shifting of the plates and result in a measurement on the Richter Scale never seen before according to a leading US Sonic Geologist. The potential for significant earthquakes and tsunami’s culminating in the collapse and submerging of vast tracts of the West Coast cannot be ruled out according to experts.

While the FTL IBC corporation has been in existence for nearly eight months much of the funding has come in the last three weeks through a private offshore email campaign to State lists of individuals who have signed and donated to various online petitions supporting fraudulent voting practices by George Soros, Antifa, BLM and degenerate Hollywood left leaning celebrities during the November election.

Our source on the inside of FTL IBC commented; ‘There are up to 75,000,000 patriotic Americans who have demonstrated the desire to drain the swamp and we see this as the way to achieve it with their financial help’

The Examiner reached out to State and Federal authorities for comment.

[diskwrite-ffxiv]

Timeline: Leading up to 4.5 MSQ

First Commander Bleiswys Junghberkwyn was a woman of routine. On the sixth and a halfth bell each morning, she was in her office. By six and three quarter bells she expected a crisp copy of the latest Harbor Herald and a hot cup of tea- usually an Ishgardian blend with a single cube of sugar only on the side- delivered quite promptly to her desk.

At the seventh bell she switched from the newspaper to whatever memos or reports had accumulated from the evening before, and at seventh and a half bells her secretary, Corporal Hemmet Green, was to enter her office for the daily briefing which generally went fifteen minutes or more. 

It was generally acknowledged amongst the officers that served beneath her that the morning routine wasn’t something you interrupt. It wasn’t that it couldn’t be done, for the Commander always told her officers that to them her office was an open door- but in these early bells unless she deemed the matter important enough it didn’t matter how calmly the Commander carried herself. Through the entire thing she oozed a layer of irritation that made her displeasure vividly real. 

This could be easily accommodated except for one simple fact. Green’s daily briefing frequently ran long. And in the event the Commander had an eighth bell meeting, there were days the gap between it and the briefing was scarcely long enough to say, “How do you do?” You could wait until after of course, but the Commander was a busy officer- and if you reported directly to her, so were you.

So, more often than not the officers beneath her found themselves faced with a choice. Either they threw themselves at the mercy of their Commander’s hectic schedule and hoped they could squeeze an appointment into a suitable gap, they delivered a message and waited for her to call on them, or they could interrupt the routine and hope for the best.  

So it was that Ojene stood before Green’s desk with pocket chronometer in hand after the sixth bell, watching as the minute hand ticked from forty-five to forty-six.

It was a wide room, ensconced in the administrative wing of the First Squadron offices. One side of the room was given to sweeping cabinets full of records and files. Some were copies of laws and documents, while lockable drawers held relevant documents for whatever cases lay on the military legal docket. Windows spanned across the other side, their rectangular panes set in a subtle curve that fit the cylindrical wrap of the Coral Tower itself.

A center pathway cut through the room with a wide limestone arch at its end, framed by two Maelstrom banners, leading to the trio of commanders whose individual offices lay just beyond. And astride the pathway itself were six desks split half and half on either side. Even at this early bell half of them were already manned.

And so was the one Ojene lingered in front of- even if at this precise moment it was empty.

To the secretaries and filing clerks at their desks who thrust themselves into their morning business, Ojene was simply a familiar face waiting patiently for Corporal Green to return. But as she locked an eye on the ticking face of the chronometer, it was her breathing she focused on above all else. For the steady rush of air was the only way to batten down the thunderous cascade of intent that roared through her chest. The one that carried her here, from the moment she awoke. As if through a pane of glass it surged, demanding she spring to action, but in these few minutes she needed patience.

And so, to distract herself she turned her eye to the other desks. It was strange, in this liminal moment, to watch the officers work. It had been just a few scant moons since she’d come back from a diplomatic voyage to Doma- the moons-long trip she’d taken with the First Squadron Ninth Levy, the very levy her husband ran. And she’d returned to the final approving stamp of a promotion she knew she deserved, with all the extra duties that came with it. She’d only just found her routine, reclaimed old familiarity and struck a fresh stride. But now as she stood here waiting there was a sort of distance to this place, already baked in by the knowledge that her Maelstrom duty would once more send her far afield.

The chronometer ticked forty-eight, and she’d only just pocketed it when Corporal Green emerged from the rear archway. He was a bit short for a Midlander, with mousy brown hair and freckled olive cheeks that drew deep dimples every time he smiled wider than a twitch. 

“Ah- Legalman,” he said, and there were no dimples in the smile he treated her with. Even as he shuffled back to his desk, there was a distracted jitter to his eyes that pulled his gaze this way and that. A harried sort of look- one shared by so many in the Coral Tower today. The weight, Ojene supposed, of a once-more escalating war.

As he stopped at his chair- but didn’t yet sit- he asked, “What can I help you with?”

Ojene leaned forward, but she kept a few respectful ilms from the desk. “Does the Commander have an eighth bell meeting today?” she asked.

“Ah- let me see.” Green claimed his seat and slid open the main desk drawer to his right elbow. He produced a slim leatherbound book. A few thin strips of cloth of various colors dangled out from between the parchment sheets, and his fingers slid to the orange one. Deftly he flipped the ledger open, and at the very top was marked today’s date. 

Ojene’s eyes shot across the list, making every effort to peer around his fingers as they slid down the page. She spotted it before he stopped, and as he tapped the scrawling ink set just above a faintly etched line, her heart sank.

“Indeed she does,” Green continued. “It’s all to do with the Brooks trial, I believe.”

“Oh-” Ojene’s chin lilted upwards. “I forgot that was tomorrow.”

“Yes, she’s due to be in meetings til the first hearings at the tenth bell- do you need anything?” As he peered up at her, his squint drew an involuntary wrinkle in the bridge of his nose.

With a grating noise that rustled from the back of her throat, Ojene hesitated. Like wildfire the beat in her chest surged, but above its inexorable push wound a single thread of logic. It would make more sense to wait, it said. To slot in an appointment rather than risk interrupting Junghberkwyn’s morning routine with a personal matter. 

It was right, she knew, and yet- to barricade these feelings was to lock a herd of aurochs in her chest. Her hands curled at her sides, and through her nose she forced a long steadying breath. On stillness, she focused. Through the moment, Green watched her. Waiting for an answer- but this was fine. She would give the correct response. She would wait. She would-

“Is that Suinuet I hear out there?” called the Commander’s voice from around the bend. “Go ahead- send her in.”

It surprised them both. Green’s brows darted towards his crimped hairline. Ojene straightened where she stood, and an unconscious hand smoothed down the front of her uniform. But after a beat, Green cracked a smile. This time, his dimples showed.

“There you go,” he said. 

Commander Junghberkwyn’s door was already open, as it usually was at this point in the routine. And though she had a full view of the hallway, she didn’t look up from the Harbor Herald until Ojene stepped in. 

It was a spacious office, as to be expected of an individual of the First Commander’s rank. The white limestone floor gave way to polished wood in a wide oval that kept the massive desk at its centerpiece. Shelves symmetrically lined the walls on the left and right, and between the records that filled them darted the occasional small curiosity from across the star- most of them from the New World. And behind the desk itself framed a massive array of ceiling-high windows. East-facing, they poured the haze of dawn through rectangular panes, cascading a golden fringe across the Commander’s hair so vivid it nearly blotted out the faint sections where its maroon color had begun to give way to age. Bleiswys Junghberkwyn was not as old as Ojene- or even Sylbfohc for that matter- but she’d served the martial interests of Limsa Lominsa for just as long as he had. 

A single dark eye, its iris so deep brown it was almost black, turned up at Ojene- the other was ensconced by a wide eyepatch. Edges of scars poked out on either side, then etched down Junghberkwyn’s cheek and finally ended somewhere across her throat. An old injury, that if rumor was true was responsible for the permanent rasp that trapped the undertones of her voice.

With a smack of her lips after a hasty sip of tea, Junghberkwyn set both cup and newspaper down and gestured forward. “You can close it.”

Ojene shut the door, and the woman before her leaned forward, twining her hands atop the desk.

“You wanted to speak to me?” Junghberkwyn said.

“Yes.” Forsaking the trio of chairs that cluttered before Junghberkwyn’s desk, Ojene opted to stand there at attention, her hands neatly folded behind her back. “As you know ma’am, the war has once more been ramping up on the front between the Garlean Empire and the newly reformed nation of Ala Mhigo.”

Ojene hesitated. The sharp scrutiny of Junghberkwyn’s eye rested inexorably on her face, but so far her characteristic cloud of irritation at routine’s interruption hadn’t collated anywhere Ojene could see. And so- after a pause she continued. 

“With my previous service the way it stands,” Ojene said, “I believe I could best serve Maelstrom interests from the front. I know my record wasn’t something you were as familiar with in the last campaign to liberate Ala Mhigo, but everything past and present shows when it comes to fighting Garleans I’m a valuable asset in the thick of it. I would like you to send me back to Ala Mhigo and the line at Ghimlyt.”

“And presumably,” Junghberkwyn muses, “you would like me to lend you to Ostulmsyn once again?”

“Ah… yes.” There was a subtle ripple of motion that threatened to marr Ojene’s stonelike stature- but she forced a small twitch through her shoulders and the sensation subsided. “That would suffice.”

With a deep wheezing sigh, Junghberkwyn leaned back. Her steepled fingers trailed to the very edge of the desk, and she regarded Ojene through a long, silent pause.

“I am quite aware of your record,” she said at last. “I wouldn’t lend you to other commanders so often if it weren’t the case. There are those of us in this Grand Company whose skill sets are too wide for a narrow box, and I acknowledge that you are one of them. You’ve got your experience, and all else aside the commanders you worked with in that prior campaign spoke highly of you, and so yes- I agree with you. You would be an asset on the front.”

“That being said-” Junghberkwyn continued, and a wrinkle marked the broad slope of her nose, “I’ve already thought this out. And the answer is no.”

A rush prickled Ojene’s skin, as if a cold glop of something unpleasant slapped onto her neck and rivuleted down her back. It took a moment for her to find her breath again, swallowed sharply by disbelief. “I… beg your pardon ma’am, you’re… declining my request?”

“Indeed I am, Suinuet. Because I’ve been thinking about this for some time.” At once, she leaned forward, and her single eye narrowed. “We’ve all been hearing about the resurgence of the war for weeks. But through all this time I never expected you to walk in here and ask me this- that is until the news I learned last night. Do you want to guess what I heard?”

When Ojene didn’t answer, Junghberkwyn drew herself up in her chair. “Tell me what you think I heard,” she demanded.

A muscle flexed in Ojene’s cheek, and as her jaw rolled her fingernails dug into her palms. “The First Squadron Ninth Levy’s deployment orders,” she said, her voice clipped, “wasn’t it?”

“Right you are!” One finger stabbed forward. “Because I knew you wouldn’t want to go anywhere until that very moment! Your entire career since you signed on good and proper, whenever that levy’s commander gets posted somewhere, you jockey to go along with him. You’re right that you would be an asset up there, but it’s got nothing to do with why you swiving asked.”

One eyelid twitched rapidly as Ojene fought to keep her expression steady, but the rushing in her veins thrummed. “It’s hardly the only reason. I would be invaluable up there.”

“Which is all well and good, except I need you here. I can’t go replacing all my captains because they decide to rush off to the war. Someone has to keep this damned country running, and you know what? For us-” one hand cut a sweeping circle through the air, “that often means staying put.”

Ojene’s fingernails drew a sharp bite into the flesh of her palms, but she hardly noticed. “I understand your position, ma’am,” she forced. “But if we don’t defend this country and our allies when the Garleans push in, then we won’t have a country before long. I should be out there- protecting us!”

But Junghberkwyn’s eye flashed. “I did not push you up to captain just so you could run off at every foul wind.” She loomed forward, and her painted lips curled in a toothy snarl. “You’re my captain. Not his!”

A taut silence snapped between them. At last, Junghberkwyn leaned back. “Anything else?”

“No. Ma’am.”

“Dismissed,” the Commander said, but Ojene was already turning on her heel to go.

As a steady clack of footfalls swept his way, Corporal Green looked up. The dimples on his face died, shriveling just as fast as his smile. He bent his head back to his hasty outline of the day’s agenda, for it only took one look at Legalman Suinuet’s face to decide it was better to let her pass without a word. 

At the egress of her wake, Green’s eyes met the corporal’s across from him, and between them passed a silent, unexpressed shrug. Without comment, the two of them went back to work.

[manjuhitorie]

Hitori-Atelier Message Project

Communication is what spins this globe, word by word. Interactions, interconnection, trying to piece together the things you love right… A new Hitorie project has begun! During the time span of the tour they’re collecting messages. A special photo will be gifted out to everyone who sends one in. It’s for all mobile Hitori-Atelier fansite members, which is only 330 yen a month for a bucketload of content old and new... Please consider joining here...  Official description is as so: All participants who contribute a message throughout the span of the tour will receive a special photo including the setlist. All participants are also eligible for a chance to win a physical setlist paper signed by the band, 3 winners. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the tour, album, or anything you may want to say to Hitorie. ~Campaign Duration~ From 9/3 (Tuesday) at 12:00 AM ~ To 11/20 (Wednesday) 12:00 AM JST. ✴︎One application per person ✴︎After the campaign ends, the special photo will be sent to the email submitted to the HITORI-ATELIER. ✴︎The results of the lottery will be sent to the email submitted to the HITORI-ATELIER, winners contacted for confirmation. ✴︎For those with spam filter settings on, please add the domain “hitorie.com” to the list of safe senders. “ Here is the how-to 101! Click the following link and continue on to the form! >>>GO!<<< Nickname [            ] Message [             ] Mail address [            ] Confirm mail address [            ] SUBMIT The fat red link at the bottom is the submit button! Make sure to copy-paste your message into the box from a separate note to keep it safe and swift... ...

Seeing the members and staff open to honest love and hate and the entire scope of sentience, is really nice to me. Rich soil is what blossoms the seeds so, all opinions gotta be orphaned up like the perlite to the parched! Like open ears to open hearts!! “We don’t know where we’re going but for now we thought it was best to just perform as see where it takes us”: those were Shinoda’s words upon the tour announcement, so... I’m guessing they’re looking for messages now because they’re unsure on what how to handle the band going forward. They need our help! wowawa was someone who kneaded the concept of the moment and having a free empty mind, who seemed to hold a few Buddhist beliefs not just to be snazzy, but because they truly spoke to him so... I think his energy is still lingering in the air all around here also, and if of the “3 poisons” in Buddhism “attachment” is one of them, I guess unlike him I’ll be halted from samsara for a little longer... Those 3 members... I hope that’s okay with ‘em.... I’m going to continue reporting on the Hitori-Escape tour concerts! I’m going to see what happens there! Then formulate what I think I can say to help them find the best route for everybody... THOUGH FUCK IT, Unlike the letters for the Memorial Service, this is way less heavy so SLAM SOME SHIT DOWN I’m 100% positive that English or any native language would be accepted! That said, if you want the staff to understand you without abandon or Google translate etc., I can try to translate anything from ENG to JP for you if any one reading this would like..! This goes without saying but please keep any applications mannerly and respectable...💪 GOD SPEED! 🔥

[throne-of-games]

Jonsa AU - The Kennedy’s 3/?

The blood on Sansa's pale skin had long since begun to dry as she sat in a flimsy chair in an ill-lit back hallway of the hospital. Goosebumps peppered her exposed arms though she could feel no chill. She couldn't feel much of anything.

A muffled ringing in her ears kept her detached from the goings-on around her. In spite of the chaos, Sansa felt oddly still. Like a pebble stuck at the side of a river. The world flowed on around her yet there she sat, motionless.

She had always heard that when a person was close to death, their life flashed before their eyes. Sansa wondered if that were true for her husband, if he had rewatched their lives in snapshots as she had though she had not been the one targeted.

They had spent years together, shared two children and yet as she watched it all replay in front of her eyes she could focus on only one instance in particular.

Compared to the span of their lives it was a mere blip, a blink of an eye, a heartbeat. But it played over and over in her head, on a terrible loop, the words so clear and close it was as if they were being spoken that very moment.

It had been only the night before, after the gala, after Jon, after her husband’s wordless request that she stay and carry out her duty and her uncharacteristic refusal. He’d been waiting for her when she’d returned from the gardens that spanned the length of their property.

She entered their sitting room and resigned herself to the forthcoming storm, the sharp, cutting looks that only his violet eyes seemed capable of delivering.

It was strange that this charming, powerful man could inspire such devotion, such fire in his people but when displeased could become so cold and withdrawn as if he knew the effect he had on the people around him, knew how they craved the warmth he radiated. Even Sansa—try as she might— could not resist the pull, the need to please him.

But it seemed there would be no loaded silence this time, no piercing looks to illustrate his disappointment. He surprised her by gesturing for her to sit, pouring himself a drink and offering her one, to which she declined out of habit. 

"I know you're disappointed with me. Because I didn't stay," she'd said to his back as he poured scotch into a crystal glass.

"Disappointed, yes. But not surprised."

"Do I dissapoint you that often?"

He'd turned around with a wry smile. "No, my love. Though, I think you know that." Aegon had sat opposite Sansa, his eyes locking on hers. They were not cold as she'd been expecting. "You're unhappy."

His words had surprised and irritated her. She'd been taken aback at being confronted so bluntly about the state of her happiness.

"Does it matter?"

“Doesn’t it?” Her husband had swirled the amber liquid around in the glass before taking a gulp. He’d sighed and she could see the weariness in him, a rare glimpse of the toll that this life had taken on him as well. “It was so good in the beginning. We were so good. Do you remember?”

“Of course,” she’d replied. They had always been good together. A good team. When they’d first married he had stressed to her how important it was for them to always present a united front, that it was the only way to keep them safe, keep their family safe.

The beginning...before things had gotten so complicated. Before she’d realized this wasn’t the kind of life she’d been so sure she’d wanted, before the string of other women, before Jon. Was there ever really a before when it came to him? He’d always been there, just on the peripheral, out of sight but never out of mind.

She could tell where her husband’s thoughts had taken him, thinking of all the wrongs between them as she had been. He didn’t apologize for his sins and she wouldn’t ask him to. It wasn’t their way.

She'd rose from her seat then, as if she could've escaped the conversation by putting distance between them.

"I've always done what you've asked of me. I know the expectations. And you were right, you did give me everything you promised."

A golden world, he'd said.

Sansa's eyes closed. "But I was so young and naive then. I couldn't have known..." She shook her head, wishing she could go back and tell herself all that she knew now, wondering if it would change anything. "I do love you."

"I know,” he’d said, standing and setting the glass down on the table next to him. “But not like you love him."

She'd wanted to refute it but the words had stuck in her throat. Aegon had not waited for an answer from her, as it was not a question. He’d left the room without another word.

She hadn't seen him again until the next morning. They were to fly to the Stormlands to begin campaigning for reelection. Aegon had insisted on driving through the streets of Storm's End. He wanted to see the people.

They cheered for him as they always did and he looked out among them with such warmth that Sansa could not help but be enraptured by him, by the love he so clearly had for his people.

Then he'd turned to her, his smile more radiant than the sun itself and she could remember the beginning, how she'd fallen for him so.

And in a split second, everything had changed. That beautiful smile was wiped away as blood and bits of brain matter rained down around them. A mere second was all it took for their world to come crashing down.

The buzzing is Sansa's ears intensified before it ceased entirely as her attention was brought back to the present. Her eyes focused on the figure that had come to stand in front of her. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her husband’s advisors rushing towards them, desperate for any news. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

The doctor in front of her looked exhausted, defeated. "We did everything we could Mrs. Targaryen. I'm so sorry. The president is gone."

[aion-rsa]

Saving Private Ryan: The Real History That Inspired the WW2 Movie

https://ift.tt/3cXjCBF

The events as they’re presented in Saving Private Ryan would never happen that way. This was my grandfather’s terse review of the Steven Spielberg movie back in 1998. He would know. After serving in the Pacific Theater throughout the war—being there from Pearl Harbor to Saipan, and then Okinawa—he carried a quiet lifelong interest in documentaries about the World War II American experience. And he had little time for Hollywood sentimentality.

“Eight guys for one man during D-Day? Never would’ve happened.”

Indeed, the idea of eight men being potentially squandered during the largest seaborne invasion in history is probably a flight of fancy by Spielberg and screenwriter Robert Rodat. Nevertheless, there is a poignant, mostly heartbreaking truth which informs Saving Private Ryan’s fiction. The context can be absurd at times, with Tom Hanks’ Capt. Miller leading a group of U.S. soldiers behind enemy lines to find one paratrooper, Pvt. Ryan (Matt Damon), after his three older brothers died in battles around Europe. However, the idea of the U.S. military wanting to prevent an entire family from being wiped out?

That cuts to the heart of War Department policy near the end of the Second World War. Here are a few of the true stories which inspired Saving Private Ryan’s Hollywood narrative.

The Sullivan Brothers

Near the beginning of America’s entry into World War II, the family of Thomas and Alleta Sullivan from Waterloo, Iowa endured a tragedy so all-encompassing that it made national news. In November 1942, all five of their sons, George, Frank, Joe, Matt, and Al Sullivan, died after the sinking of the light cruiser USS Juneau in the Pacific. The youngest of them, Al, was aged 20, with oldest brother George being one month shy of his 28th birthday.

Before their deaths, the U.S. Navy already made it a policy to separate siblings upon enlistment, but it was never strictly enforced. And as George and Frank had served in the Navy before, they wanted to take the three younger brothers under their wing. All five volunteered to enlist in January 1942, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. But they did so only upon the written stipulation that they serve on the same ship.

“We will make a team together that can’t be beat,” George Sullivan wrote to the military. “We had 5 buddies killed in Hawaii. Help us.” The Navy granted that wish, putting them on the Juneau, which soon headed to Guadalcanal where an Allied campaign began in August to wrest the island from the Empire of Japan.

The Juneau participated in a series of naval engagements before the ship was struck by a Japanese torpedo on Nov. 13 during a naval battle near the Solomon Islands. The cruiser was forced to withdraw, and later that day it traveled with other damaged U.S. warships toward the Allied rear-area base on Espiritu Santo. The Juneau was the lone vessel not to make it there. Torpedoed again, this time by Japanese submarine I-26, the cruiser’s ammunition magazines were struck by the blast and the ship exploded, sinking immediately.

It would be several days before there was any attempt to search for survivors.

At the time of the sinking, Capt. Gilbert C. Hoover of the USS Helena deemed it unlikely anyone survived the Juneau’s explosion and considered it reckless to look for survivors, thereby exposing more wounded ships to the unseen Japanese submarine. The other ships did not turn back. Instead the Helena signaled a nearby B-17 bomber to tell headquarters to send other aircraft out to search for survivors. However, the bomber could not break radio silence and did not report the sinking until the plane landed.

The bomber’s report went unnoticed for more than 48 hours under paperwork. By the time naval staff realized the clerical error, the more than 100 initial survivors of the Juneau’s sinking had long begun to see their numbers dwindle. This included several of the Sullivan brothers.

Of the 100 or so men who went into the water after the Juneau sank, only 10 were alive when a PBY spotted them eight days later. All five Sullivans were gone. According to those who did survive, Frank, Joe, and Matt died instantly on the second torpedo’s impact. Al drowned the next day. George, meanwhile, survived for four or five days before delirium set in, apparently caused by hypernatremia (a high concentration of sodium in the bloodstream). As a result, he jumped off the raft he was sharing and was never seen again. He was one of many who died from exposure to the sun, starvation, dehydration, and of course shark attacks.

Their parents Tom and Alleta did not know any of this for months. The U.S. Navy deemed it necessary to keep the Juneau’s loss classified, so as to not provide crucial information to the Japanese. But as days became weeks, and then months, parents of all the sailors grew fearful when communication with their children stopped.

After one anxious letter by Alleta was sent to the Bureau of Naval Personnel, inquiring about a rumor that all five Sullivan boys were dead, no less than President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded.

“As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I want you to know that the entire nation shares in your sorrow,” Roosevelt wrote. “I offer you the condolences and gratitude of our country. We who remain to carry on the fight must maintain spirit, in knowledge that such sacrifice is not in vain.”

The day before the letter arrived on Jan. 13, 1943, the Navy informed the Sullivans their sons were dead. When Tom Sullivan asked the approaching chief petty officer which son had died, the Navy man responded, “I’m sorry. All five.”

The brothers left behind a younger sister named Genevieve, as well as Al’s widow and son (Al was the only brother married). It became an international story, with Roosevelt sending another letter, and Pope Pius XII sending a silver religious medal and rosary with a message of condolence to the Catholic family. Alleta was there when the Navy launched a new destroyer, USS The Sullivans, in 1943. She and her husband also became regular speakers for the war effort in the following years.

As a result of the Sullivans’ sacrifice, plus another family’s suffering, the newly named Defense Department soon implemented the Sole Survivor Policy. But before that happened there were…

The Borgstrom Brothers

Alben and Gunda Borgstrom of Thatcher, Utah were already touched by tragedy before the Second World War. The parents of 10 children, seven boys and three girls, one of their sons had already died in 1921 from a ruptured appendix at the age of 10. When World War II began, five of the remaining six sons either volunteered or were drafted into the war: LeRoy Elmer, Clyde Eugene, twin brothers Rolon Day and Rulon Day, and Boyd Borgstrom.

Over the span of about five months, four of the brothers died all over the world. The oldest of them, LeRoy, was only 30 while twin brothers Rolon Day and Rulon Day were aged 19 when they died on different sides of the English Channel.

Clyde, 28, was the first to die in March 1944, struck by a falling tree while clearing land for a new airstrip on the Solomon Islands in Guadalcanal. His older brother LeRoy followed three months later when he was killed in action while fighting in Italy. Rolon Day died in August when the bomber he was on experienced engine failure and crashed in Yaxham, England. Rulon Day, meanwhile, was reported as missing in action after an attack on Brest, France, a port city in the Brittany region held by the Germans. He was later found gravely injured, and soon died from combat wounds on Aug. 25, 1944.

Even before a mortally wounded Rulon Day was discovered, his parents had already gathered the support of neighbors and Utah congressional leaders to petition the U.S. military to release their last surviving son, Boyd, from service. The petition was successful, and Boyd was transferred home to the U.S. and thereafter discharged from the Marines with a special order of the Commandant of the Marine Corps., Gen. Alexander Vandegrift. Further the Borgstroms’ youngest son Eldon, who was not yet old enough to serve in the military in 1944, was exempted from the draft and military service.

A funeral service was held when all four deceased brothers’ remains were returned to Utah in 1948. During the service, their parents were presented with three Bronze Star Medals, one Air Medal, and one Good Conduct Medal. The loss of the four Borgstrom Brothers, like the five Sullivans before them, triggered the official adoption of the Sole Survivor Policy.

The Sole Survivor Policy

Implemented in 1948, the Sole Survivor Policy is a Defense Department directive which describes a set of regulations to be observed by the U.S. military in all its branches. The policy is designed to protect the sole survivor of families from combat duty or the draft if the son or daughter in question has siblings who already died in combat.

Read more

Movies

How the Secret of Saving Private Ryan’s Power Lies in its Portrayal of the Enemy

By Mark Allison

Movies

Jaws: Why the USS Indianapolis Speech is Steven Spielberg’s Favorite Scene

By David Crow

However, the policy is entirely voluntary. Which means the designated “sole survivor” of a family in the military must apply to be sent home by commanding officers. Additionally, it only applies during peacetime, and not in times of war or national emergency as declared by the U.S. Congress. But since Congress hasn’t officially declared war since 1942, it’s pretty much been in place in perpetuity, although each branch of the military has its own special provisions for the regulations.

While it would not have been implemented during the events of Saving Private Ryan—in fact, several of the fallen Borgstrom brothers would still be alive during the events of the film—its creation would have already been on the minds of the top brass when something like the Pvt. Ryan situation occurred. However, even if the Sole Survivor Policy had been in place by ‘44, Damon’s James Ryan would still need to apply to return home (which he did not want to do in the film)…. and that paperwork probably would not have been processed during the middle of a massive invasion.

Still, it makes for a great movie.

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3mxULaS

[abbottikeler]

The Ikelers: A Family Chronicle, 1753-2018 (Part I)

The following brief history spans some ten generations of Ikelers, from the first day in the New World for immigrant German brothers, Hieronymus and Conrad Eichler, in the 1750s, to the youngest of the clan, Rosa and Levin Ikeler, fraternal twins born in Brooklyn in 2014.  These pages incorporate much new information and correct much misinformation from my first research efforts in the summer of 2006.  I’ve tried to keep the focus not only on key personalities and events but also on the historical context in which they’re embedded, in the hope that such an approach will bring the following family chronicle more fully to life.

As with any genealogical narrative, however, there’s a caveat that must be entered: numerous questions remain unanswered; numerous gaps remain unfilled.  With luck and energy and ever more efficacious information tools, perhaps one of you, my curious, Ikeler-related readers, will someday solve all the outstanding mysteries of our family past.

Keeping that in mind, let me share with you what it is we do know as of 2018.

The First Ikelers in America The ship’s manifest and the oath of allegiance to King George II, sworn at the Government Courthouse in Philadelphia on September 8, 1753, contain the signatures of Hieronymus and Conrad Eichler among those of some sixty other adult males who sailed from Hamburg and the Isle of Wight the previous July.  The documents tell us the ship was the St. Michael, under the command of a British sea captain, Thomas Ellis, Esq.  Hieronymus, 28, was accompanied by his wife, Justina, and their two sons, Conrad, 5, and Wilhelm, 3; Hieronymus’ brother Conrad, 21, brought only his bride, Catharina.

We do not know where exactly in northern Germany the brothers came from, nor who their parents were.  The records of those who emigrated from Hamburg to the British colonies, housed for centuries in the city hall, were unfortunately destroyed by allied bombing in World War II.

We can make some educated guesses, however, about their livelihood and their motives for taking ship to the new world.  If they came from the Hamburg parish of St. Michael and worshipped, like many of their shipmates, at the Lutheran Cathedral there, they were most likely unskilled or semi-skilled laborers (Hieronymus signed his own and his younger brother’s name; Conrad merely made his mark).  If they came from a village within a few days journey of Hamburg, they were almost certainly tenant farmers, or the children of tenant farmers.  Their surname, fairly common still in Germany, derives from the German word for oak and may suggest the family’s original occupational identity (woodsman, cabinetmaker, carpenter, etc.) or possibly its place of origin (near an oak forest) in medieval times.  

As for the brothers’ motives for leaving Germany, several factors were probably in play.  Given the depressed economy in the northern German states throughout the first half of the 18th century and the grim working conditions of tenant farmers on landed estates (comparably to those of share croppers in the American South before World War II), the prospects for young married men of their class were bleak.  

My German-born daughter-in-law, Katja Ikeler (b. 1985, nee Suehling), has discovered another phenomenon of the times that doubtless encouraged their departure from the old world.  The British were actively recruiting able-bodied German, Swiss and Dutch families to resettle in the 13 colonies so they might provide cheap service and labor to the resident English population through indenture, and later (as independent farmers) bring great tracts of the wilderness under cultivation, thereby displacing the troublesome native Americans.  The British employed scores of itinerant, bilingual agents to travel from village to village, address congregations of working-class men in town halls and churches, and entice the locals to emigrate—offering them visions of land-owning in a country that yielded bountiful harvests with a minimum of labor.  German landlords were, of course, fiercely opposed to British interference with their tenant farmers--breaking up meetings when they could, and warning potential emigrants there would be no work for them if they should return.  Still, the British campaign (begun in the 1730s and continued right up to the Revolutionary War) brought more than 30,000 continental Europeans, mostly Germans, to the middle colonies.  At the peak of the effort, in 1753, some nine English sailing ships were in constant service carrying immigrants from Hamburg to Philadelphia, delivering nearly 200 new arrivals to the Philadelphia docks every month.  It was at the end of that same summer that the six members of the Eichler family trooped down the gangplank onto American soil.

Puzzlingly, aside from the two sets of signatures affixed by Hieronymus and Conrad that day, there is no evidence of the family’s whereabouts for the next seven years.  That can only mean one thing: the Eichlers, like the overwhelming majority of German immigrants to the 13 Colonies, allowed themselves to be sold into indentured service in order to pay for their passage.  Whether it was a Philadelphia merchant or a local farmer who successfully bid for their labor that day on the docks, we do not know.  Nor do we know to how many different masters the individual family members were contracted, though it is likely more than one.  No documentation on the Eichlers’ servitude has yet surfaced, but I can quote a couple of examples of similar contracts from the same year and place, in each case the passage money going directly to the captain of the vessel:

“Catherina Boon in consideration twelve pistoles paid Benjamin Shoemaker for her passage from Holland indents herself servant to Joseph Marshall of Phila. bricklayer for four years from this date, customary dues.” “John Jurg Gottschalk in consideration nine pistoles paid Benjamin Shoemaker for his passage from Holland indents himself servant to John Ecker of Lancaster County yeoman for two years and three months from this date, customary dues.”

Except for the prospect of eventual freedom and the “freedom dues” they received at the end of their contracted time (enabling them to purchase a modest piece of land), indentured servants were indistinguishable from slaves.  They could not vote, travel, buy or sell anything.  They were subject to physical punishment with no recourse in law, and women who became pregnant regularly had the length of their servitude extended for a year or more.

Circumstantial evidence suggests the Eichlers were indentured for seven years, since both wives, Justina and Catharina, had no more children until 1760, and Hieronymus, according to the records of a Lebanon, New Jersey merchant, bought a wagonload of farm tools and barn materials between 1760 and 1763.   It is also only in the 1760s that Hieronymus and Conrad Eichler appeared as members of a congregation—the Zion Lutheran Church in New Germantown (renamed Oldwick in 1918), New Jersey.  

It’s entirely possible that the “Conrad” here is Hieronymus’ son, then in his late teens, rather than his brother, since the elder Conrad fathered no children after 1760 and appeared frequently on the muster rolls of those enlisted in the British army right up to his death at the end of the Revolutionary War.  It is also at the Zion Church that the younger Conrad baptized all three of his daughters in the 1770s, with Hieronymus and Justina as witnesses each time.

Certainly the church seemed to play a central role in Hieronymus’ life.  His Christian name (Jerome in English) is not only that of a well-known saint and a celebrated Lutheran cleric in the 16th century, but also means sacred one, or one in holy orders.  That he chose to move to the vicinity of the Zion Church as soon as his indenture was up was probably no coincidence either: from 1759 through 1760, the congregation boasted Henry Melchior Muehlenberg, the founder of Lutheranism in America, as their temporary pastor.  In the same year, Hieronymus’ last child was born and appropriately named Jerome.  Even in middle age, when the ride from his farm to the Zion Church apparently grew too arduous for him to make every week, Hieronymus joined some 25 other local German farmers in founding a satellite congregation in a nearby log cabin where they could worship in German three Sunday out of every four.

It is, in fact, the document that includes his name among the original members of that primitive church—members active between 1775 and 1780—that offers us the last evidence he was among the living.  His younger brother, Conrad, again according to the muster rolls of the British army, died in camp near Charleston, South Carolina on 26 August 1780, probably of disease or fever, after years of participating in the southern campaign against the colonials.  Conrad was 48 years old.  Most likely Hieronymus, nearing sixty, died soon after on his farm in New Jersey.  Thanks to a map recently discovered by Jim Ikeler, we now know where that farm was in Hunterdon County—several miles south of New Germantown, in Tewksbury Township, beside Rockaway Creek.

About this first generation of Ikeler men, born and raised in Germany, we have (as you can see) teasingly little information.  About their wives, almost nothing.  Where exactly were they indentured?  When did Hieronymus, Justina and Catharina die?  Where are they buried?  All questions others must someday answer.

[sa7abnews]

Trump and Musk Have Wide-Ranging Talk on X, Plagued by Technical Glitches

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/13/trump-and-musk-have-wide-ranging-talk-on-x-plagued-by-technical-glitches/

Trump and Musk Have Wide-Ranging Talk on X, Plagued by Technical Glitches

Donald Trump recounted his assassination attempt in vivid detail and promised the largest deportation in U.S. history during a high-profile return to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter—a conversation that was plagued by technical glitches.

“If I had not turned my head, I would not be talking to you right now—as much as I like you,” Trump told X’s owner Elon Musk.

Musk, a former Trump critic, said the Republican nominee’s toughness, as demonstrated by his reaction to last month’s shooting, was critical for national security.

“There’s some real tough characters out there,” Musk said. “And if they don’t think the American president is tough, they will do what they want to do.”

The rare public conversation between Trump and Musk, which spanned more than two hours and was overwhelmingly friendly, revealed little new about Trump’s plans for a second term. The former president spent much of the discussion focused on his recent assassination attempt, illegal immigration and his plans to cut government regulations.

Still, the online meeting underscored just how much the U.S. political landscape has changed less than four years after Trump was permanently banned by the social media platform’s former leadership for spreading disinformation that sparked the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress and undermined the very foundation of the American democracy.

Such disinformation has thrived at X under Musk’s leadership, although it was largely ignored during his conversation with Trump save for a passing Trump reference to a “rigged election.”

The session was intended to serve as a way for the former president to reach potentially millions of voters directly. It was also an opportunity for X, a platform that relies heavily on politics, to redeem itself after some struggles.

It did not begin as planned.

With more than 878,000 users connected to the meeting more than 40 minutes after the scheduled start time, the interview had not yet begun. Many users received a message reading, “Details not available.”

Trump’s team posted that the “interview on X is being overwhelmed with listeners logging in.” And once the meeting began, Musk apologized for the late start and blamed a “massive attack” that overwhelmed the company’s system. Trump’s voice sounded muffled at times.

Trump supporters were openly frustrated.

“Not available????? I planned my whole day around this,” wrote conservative commentator Glenn Beck.

“Please let Elon know we can’t join,” billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posted.

Ahead of the event, Musk posted on the platform that X was conducting “some system scaling tests” to handle what was anticipated to be a high volume of participants.

Read More: Donald Trump on What His Second Term Would Look Like

The rocky start was reminiscent of a May 2023 social media conversation between Musk and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Republican governor was using the social media platform as a way to officially announce his presidential bid, a disastrous rollout marred by technical glitches, overloaded by the more than 400,000 people who tried to dial in.

Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, noted that Trump mocked DeSantis at the time.

“Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!” Trump wrote in a message reposted by Harris’ campaign Monday.

Once the interview ended, Harris’ campaign responded with a statement saying, “Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself—self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.”

Monday’s meeting highlighted the evolving personal relationship between Trump and Musk, two of the world’s most powerful men, who have shifted from being bitter rivals to unlikely allies over the span of one election season.

Musk, who described himself as a “moderate Democrat” until recently, suggested in 2022 that Trump was too old to be president again. Still, Musk formally endorsed Trump two days after his assassination attempt last month.

During their talk, Trump welcomed the idea of Musk joining his next administration to help cut government waste. Musk volunteered to join a prospective “government efficiency commission.”

“You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump told Musk. “I need an Elon Musk—I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts. I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states.”

Even before his endorsement, the tech CEO had already been working privately to support a pro-Trump super PAC. The group, known as America PAC, is now under investigation by election officials for alleged misleading attempts to collect data from voters.

Meanwhile, Trump has softened his criticism of electric vehicles, citing Musk’s leadership of Tesla. And on Monday, at least, Trump returned to Musk’s social media platform in force. The former president made at least eight individual posts in the hours leading up to the Musk interview.

Long before he endorsed Trump, Musk turned increasingly toward the right in his posts and actions on the platform, also using X to try to sway political discourse around the world. He’s gotten in a dustup with a Brazilian judge over censorship, railed against what he calls the “woke mind virus” and amplified false claims that Democrats are secretly flying in migrants to vote in U.S. elections.

Read More: What to Know About Elon Musk’s Battle With a Brazilian Judge Over Speech on Social Media

Musk has also reinstated previously banned accounts such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump, who was kicked off the platform—then known as Twitter—two days after the Jan. 6 violence, with the company citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.” By November 2022, Musk had bought the company, and Trump’s account was reinstated, although the former president refrained from tweeting until Monday, insisting that he was happier on his own Truth Social site, which he launched during the ban.

Trump’s audience on X is legions larger than on Truth Social, which became a publicly traded company earlier this year. Trump has just over 7.5 million followers on Truth Social, while his mostly dormant X account is followed by 88 million. Musk’s account, which hosted the interview, has more than 193 million followers.

In a reminder that the world was watching, the chat prompted a preemptive note of caution from Europe.

Thierry Breton, a French business executive and commissioner for internal market of the European Union, warned Musk of possible “amplification of harmful content” by broadcasting his interview with Trump. In a letter posted on X, Breton urged Musk to “ensure X’s compliance” with E.U. law, including the Digital Services Act, adopted in 2022 to address a number of issues including disinformation.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung urged the E.U. to “mind their own business instead of trying to meddle in the U.S. Presidential election.”

[srbachchan]

DAY 3445

Jalsa, Mumbai                    Sept 2/3,  2017                Sat/Sun 12:07 am

Birthday - EF Rajiv Laffey .. on September the 3rd of the year 2017 and may we all wish him the very best ever .. love

And so the attempt to invite and in sense incite the Ef to write a BLOG for me failed .. it is of no regret and certainly one that cannot be implemented by any force of imagination ..

But those pictures were of podium shared with the VVIP’s of the State ; the Chief Minister , the Leader of Shiv Sena Shri Uddhav Thakeray and several others that are working so diligently and effectively in the Swachh Bharat Campaign, making it more user friendly in a sense .. getting to understand that garbage should not be sent off to garbage dumps, but become a value instead .. converting it in residence into compost and making use of it as manure for the gardens and plants ..

AND when you have these dignitaries speaking glowingly about you at a public platform it does become a very embarrassed moment .. one where it is difficult to shout out to them to STOP, or  .. be in possession of that ‘don’t know where to look’ smile and get away from it all  !!!

That was what the entire first half of the picture competition was at yesterday’s LOST & Forgotten blogpost !!

The second half was symbolic .. the dark clouds were a reflection of the mood .. the mood when you miss out on something that you possess, in great regard, and suddenly it slips away unannounced .. !!

There were some very interesting inputs on this .. but for them to be made content on the Blog, would not have very prudent .. 

And so another day has ended .. and another begun .. in peace and harmony and a gentle calm to be able to look at the other side of the AAARRRGGHHH ... lost post last night .. !!

So to begin with  ..

 .. a gentle smile as I prepare to off load a number of pertinent lines in praise of the product I endorse and be the Ambassador of .. these are differently practised elements in the course of the day work .. one that involves the switching off of one plant and initiating another .. the power plant that steals signals from the ‘i dunno where’ and brings it on for the camera, watched assessed, conferenced over, and scrutinised by that ‘chaukadi’, चौकड़ी who sit grim faced in front of monitor screens and pass judgement in the finalised outcome ... DARE YOU ARGUE OR DISAGREE WITH THEM .. they be the cat’s whiskers !!

There are those moments then,  when as the next camera positioning is being set, to trundle along to the other side and perform stationary acts that give credence to the product on sale :

acts in front of still cameras with a million people looking on to justify the correct facial expressions and hand positioning .. vital to say the least .. I mean an error could affect the entire campaign ..

And several of them in different modes of combat ..

.... and by then the shot for camera in motion is set and you return to perform in voice and movement ..

idling time for all to be in preparation .. and to start all over again .. measuring focus distances selfi wise too ..

जितनी भरमारी , जितनी लोढ़ आजकल के समाज में उत्पन्न हुई है , content को लेकर , शायद इससे पहले कभी ना हुई हो ।। समाचार चित्रों ख़बरों की प्यासी ये दुनिया , तरसती है की कुछ मिले देखने पढ़ने को  ।। और फिर ये तो निशित हो जाता है की क्या, कहाँ, कैसे, उसे प्रस्तुत करना चाहिए  ।। 

Content is KING , was a phrase I had heard many moons ago, and now find its relevance even more .. this generation that has little time span graph, needs immediate and massive material instantly .. all modes of presentation therefore need to be designed accordingly .. and that be the motive of all creative process today .. some succeed, most do not .. but all know the reason why ..

AND THE biggest and the largest confirmation for the execution of such is NOTICE .. if there be no notice be doomed .. it matters not how it is noticed, but notice it must be ..

SO .. when the attitude and desire is small and facing insignificance .. the methodology is the oft repeated one .. get onto the shoulders of them that are visible .. and there you are .. !!

Not a very difficult philosophy to discard .. it works all the time .. in life in society at work at the turnstiles .. everywhere .. !! we are blessed that we are alive to witness this great change that occurs each hour in this part of the world .. I am certain it occurs more often elsewhere too ..

" काश ऐसी भी हवा चले कौन किसका है पता (तो ) चले " ~

from my dearest Ef and their thoughts .. so beautiful and prosaic .. !!

point to be noted My Lord  ..

Amitabh Bachchan

[shanedakotamuir]

The 4 main conservative defenses for Trump against impeachment, explained

President Trump attends a “Keep America Great” rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 10, 2019. | Brendan Smialowski /AFP/Getty Images

Only one of them makes sense.

President Donald Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from the Ukrainian government, seemingly to push lawmakers to announce an investigation into the son of a potential political opponent and his work with a Ukrainian energy company. That much, at least, is clear. As is the fact that Trump has an 89 percent approval rating with Republican voters.

That’s why most Republican lawmakers aren’t going to change their minds on the impeachment of President Trump. While some in Congress might privately think that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to “do him a favor” and investigate former Vice President Joe Biden was a bad idea, they won’t say so in public.

Because, quite simply, Trump is the president. He’s giving them what they want politically, the economy appears strong and, most critically, he is far more popular and powerful than they are.

But House Republicans and many Trump-supportive conservative and right-leaning writers and pundits have largely attempted to avoid saying as much.

Rather, together with constantly shifting responses to specific testimony, they appear to have developed three basic defenses for Trump as House impeachment hearings continued: He was “too inept” to have intended to do what he is being accused of doing; what he did was actually good; and his actions were bad, but not impeachable.

But some congressional Republicans and conservatives have begun saying another, perhaps most accurate, defense of Trump out loud: Whatever he did, it doesn’t matter — not to “normal people” and not to the Republican Party.

1) “Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government”

The first basic defense of Trump regarding Ukraine is the simplest: Trump lacked the intent and the basic competence to get a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine done. And without intent (legally defined as a conscious decision to commit an illegal act), some argue that what Trump did may have been bad and dumb, but not criminal — and thus, not a “high crime or misdemeanor.”

As elucidated by the Wall Street Journal editorial board in October:

... it may turn out that while Mr. Trump wanted a quid-pro-quo policy ultimatum toward Ukraine, he was too inept to execute it. Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government, and most Presidents at some point or another in office.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham seemingly agreed, telling CBS News earlier this month that the administration appeared “incapable” of forming a quid pro quo, thus rendering the entire impeachment discussion null and void.

"It was incoherent," Sen @LindseyGrahamSC says of Trump's Ukraine policy. "They seem to be *incapable* of forming a quid pro quo." pic.twitter.com/rdZxyIazNj

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) November 6, 2019

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro made similar arguments on his podcast, saying on October 7 that Trump would make a fantastic client for a defense attorney because “Trump doesn’t have requisite intent for anything. The man has the attention span of a gnat ... if you are his defense lawyer, his best defense to ‘he had a plan in Ukraine to go after Joe Biden’ is ‘dude doesn’t have plans.’” And on November 11, Shapiro argued, “I don’t think he’s had the level of intent necessary to eat a hamburger.” I reached out to Shapiro, but he was unable to comment on Wednesday.

And after all, military aid to Ukraine was eventually restored. So according to this argument, the actions for which Trump is facing impeachment (withholding aid for selfish reasons) never actually happened. Per National Review’s Rich Lowry, “The best defense Republicans can muster is that nothing came of it. An ally was discomfited and yanked around for a couple of months before, ultimately, getting its defense funding.”

And his magazine’s editorial board argued earlier this month, “It has to matter that, at the end of the day, the harm of this episode was minimal or nonexistent. The Ukrainians got their defense aid without making any statement committing themselves to the investigations.”

It’s true that intent matters — in criminal proceedings. I spoke with Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former US attorney, who told me, “Intent is very important in court, and for many of these crimes, from witness intimidation to bribery, prosecutors must prove corrupt intent. If we were in federal court, litigating criminal charges against the president, I think the “Trump is just Trump” defense would be colorable and tricky to overcome.

“With normal humans, when they act like Trump you can infer corrupt intent; the defense is that you can’t make that inference with Trump because he acts that way all the time, reflexively.”

But White added two caveats. “First, that’s a matter of proof. A jury could still reject it and see corrupt intent. Second, this ain’t federal court.” Impeachment, after all, is a political process, not a legal one.

And as to the argument that funding to Ukraine was indeed restored, the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy pointed out in October that an unsuccessful or “incompetent” attempt to commit an impeachable act doesn’t make it less impeachable:

The Nixon crew botched most of the schemes it undertook, from the Watergate caper to the attempt to audit the president’s political enemies. That didn’t save Richard Nixon from being driven from office via the impeachment process.

2) “Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani deserve praise”

Some of Trump’s defenders are taking an entirely different approach and stating that Donald Trump’s actions were not only defensible, but good. In the words of Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) (who criticized Lt. Col. Vindman for having “opinions counter” to the president), “it’s perfectly within the purview of the president’s authority” to base military aid on the assurance of an investigation into corruption (or more accurately, the announcement of an investigation).

They argue that the government of Ukraine was corrupt and Trump was elected to fight corruption — ergo, of course he would resist sending aid to Ukraine. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) put it this way: “Corruption is not just prevalent in Ukraine. It’s the system. Our president said time out, time out, let’s check out this new guy.”

.@RealDonaldTrump and @RudyGiuliani deserve praise for pushing for accountability because these officials seem to have zero concern about Ukraine's collusion w/Obama admin targeting America's election in 2016 -- and the Biden cover-up...

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) November 20, 2019

As Washington Examiner writer Byron York wrote in a piece entitled “What if Trump was right about Ukraine?”, supporters of this line of logic argue that while perhaps Trump’s actions weren’t the best, he had real and genuine concerns about Ukraine’s government and its alleged efforts to collude with the Clinton campaign and influence the 2016 election.

Those efforts are based on allegations that Ukrainian officials, concerned about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s work for a pro-Russian political party, attempted to assist the Clinton campaign and harm the Trump campaign. Right-leaning media outlets have focused serious attention on those allegations since 2017.

For example, the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway argued on Fox News in October of this year, “You have people who have already admitted that people affiliated with the Ukrainian government worked with the Democratic National Committee’s contractors to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign,” arguing that Ukraine and the DNC took part in actual collusion, unlike Russia and Trump’s campaign.

York writes that if the allegations were true, Trump’s actions make sense. “If [those concerns] were even mostly legitimate, then Trump defenders could say: “Look, he had a point. Even if one thinks he handled the issue inappropriately, the fact is, what was going on in Ukraine was worrisome enough for a United States president to take notice.” Quoting former US Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker, York concluded, “The president said Ukraine ‘tried to take me down.’ He wasn’t wrong.” (It’s worth noting that other conservatives disagree.)

This was the argument that Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a writer at National Review who published “The Case for Trump” earlier this year, made to me, saying that it made sense for Trump to be suspicious of Ukraine. He asked that I quote him in full.

“Trump is a businessman and he does not want to give much military aid in general, and naturally not to corrupt governments who have in the past, according to Politico, tried to interfere in the 2016 election.”

“Trump naturally takes the past Ukrainian efforts, again according to the 2017 Politico report, to harm his election effort, as a personal affront given they reportedly sought to stop Trump from becoming president and yet wanted him to reverse the Obama policy of no military aid once he was elected (which he did).”

“Once more, we are left with a supposed thought crime of considering delaying aid in exchange for Ukrainian promises of investigating 2016 interference in an American election—which never happened, but was actually reified by earlier suspension of actual Ukrainian investigations in 2016 (and possibly of Hunter Biden) and refusal to arm the Ukrainians.”

But this argument has problems of its own. Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, both of whom served on Trump’s National Security Council, testified earlier this month that they had seen no evidence that the government of Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. Hill added in testimony Thursday, “I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016.”

The Politico piece to which Dr. Hanson referred during our conversation notes that while some Ukrainian officials supported Clinton, their efforts were “far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails,” which was a “top-down” effort. And according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, one of the main sources for allegations that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election — including allegations that they, not Russia, hacked the DNC — was Manafort himself.

3) “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy”

But other conservatives have argued that Trump’s actions, even if tied to an “understandable and justifiable” desire to investigate allegations of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election, were improper, inappropriate, or just plain bad.

As Townhall.com and Fox News commentator Guy Benson told me, those involved in the alleged quid pro quo “were up to something that stunk.” “They misused and abused their power,” he said. “It’s serious and it should be taken seriously.

But in his view, impeachment is a step too far. “My case against impeachment and removal is that it rises to a thermonuclear option that has never been detonated before. Doing so based on this, so close to an election, in a president’s first term, would do enormous damage.”

Rather, he favors censure, a “very rare tool” last used against President Andrew Jackson in 1834 that would, as he wrote in October, “represent a severe and formal condemnation from the people’s branch, and would constitute a stain on the president’s term in office.”

Daily Caller founders Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel have also argued that impeachment is too harsh a punishment for Trump. In an op-ed in October where they stipulated that “Donald Trump should not have been on the phone with a foreign head of state encouraging another country to investigate his political opponent,” they then wrote, “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy we have in our system of government.”

And they added:

The facts are out there for the American people to weigh as they make their decision. How about we let them sort all this out? There’s no need to come up with thin excuses for a purely partisan impeachment process when we have an election right around the corner.

I spoke to Patel, who told me, “Nancy Pelosi was right for all those months when she repeatedly said that to undo that election without bipartisan support based on clear criminal behavior would tear the country apart. We are on the eve of a new election where the American people can once again vote on Trump and this time they can weigh for themselves Trump’s behavior in this Ukraine affair. That’s a much better solution.”

Thoughts after day one: Trump’s mention of Biden on his 7/25 call was inappropriate. I’ve said that all along. However, nothing I heard today leads me to change my mind : impeachment goes too far. Let the voters settle this. One party, partisan impeachment is not the answer.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) November 13, 2019

4) “No one cares”

But an even simpler defense of the president is one being made by Carlson on his Fox News show and by others within the conservative movement, and it actually doesn’t require defending the president at all.

Instead, Republicans are arguing that the entire process is a “distraction.” Moreover, they’re arguing that it doesn’t matter what Trump did or didn’t do because the Senate won’t vote to impeach the president and the average American doesn’t care.

As Townhall.com writer Kurt Schlichter wrote earlier this week, “We’re too busy working, too focused on our 401(k)s going through the roof and on [Trump] flipping circuit courts like a boss, to care about the latest outrage to end all outrages.” I reached out to Schlichter and will update if and when I hear back.

On the November 15 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson argued, “normal people” — “someone with kids and a job and a marriage you care about” — aren’t thinking about impeachment and would rather “the buffoons on TV would stop yapping about Trump 24/7 and talk about something relevant.”

It’s an argument being made by Republicans both inside and outside of the administration. For example, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham tweeted that instead of impeachment (which was “boring” and a “waste of time”), “Congress should be working on passing USMCA, funding our govt & military, working on reduced drug pricing & so much more.”

With record low unemployment and record high wage growth, Democrats know they can't beat President Trump in 2020. Democrats need to #StopTheMadness and get back to work for the American people.

— PA GOP (@PAGOP) November 20, 2019

This argument seems somewhat self-refuting — after all, tweeting or writing or saying on national television that no one cares about impeachment would imply that someone, somewhere, decidedly does.

But for the GOP, it is perhaps the most revealing. Not of the sentiment of the average American — 70 percent of whom believe Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine were “wrong” — but of the Republicans. Because they are well aware that within a slimmed-down Republican Party that has largely excised his enemies and detractors through retirements and election losses, Trump is the only available lodestar.

And so for them, it doesn’t actually matter what Trump did with regard to Ukrainian military aid: whether he intended to hurt Joe Biden’s presidential hopes, whether he was genuinely concerned about corruption, or whether he did something that constitutes an impeachable offense. Trump is all they’ve got.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/338QAa3

[gracieyvonnehunter]

The 4 main conservative defenses for Trump against impeachment, explained

President Trump attends a “Keep America Great” rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 10, 2019. | Brendan Smialowski /AFP/Getty Images

Only one of them makes sense.

President Donald Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from the Ukrainian government, seemingly to push lawmakers to announce an investigation into the son of a potential political opponent and his work with a Ukrainian energy company. That much, at least, is clear. As is the fact that Trump has an 89 percent approval rating with Republican voters.

That’s why most Republican lawmakers aren’t going to change their minds on the impeachment of President Trump. While some in Congress might privately think that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to “do him a favor” and investigate former Vice President Joe Biden was a bad idea, they won’t say so in public.

Because, quite simply, Trump is the president. He’s giving them what they want politically, the economy appears strong and, most critically, he is far more popular and powerful than they are.

But House Republicans and many Trump-supportive conservative and right-leaning writers and pundits have largely attempted to avoid saying as much.

Rather, together with constantly shifting responses to specific testimony, they appear to have developed three basic defenses for Trump as House impeachment hearings continued: He was “too inept” to have intended to do what he is being accused of doing; what he did was actually good; and his actions were bad, but not impeachable.

But some congressional Republicans and conservatives have begun saying another, perhaps most accurate, defense of Trump out loud: Whatever he did, it doesn’t matter — not to “normal people” and not to the Republican Party.

1) “Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government”

The first basic defense of Trump regarding Ukraine is the simplest: Trump lacked the intent and the basic competence to get a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine done. And without intent (legally defined as a conscious decision to commit an illegal act), some argue that what Trump did may have been bad and dumb, but not criminal — and thus, not a “high crime or misdemeanor.”

As elucidated by the Wall Street Journal editorial board in October:

... it may turn out that while Mr. Trump wanted a quid-pro-quo policy ultimatum toward Ukraine, he was too inept to execute it. Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government, and most Presidents at some point or another in office.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham seemingly agreed, telling CBS News earlier this month that the administration appeared “incapable” of forming a quid pro quo, thus rendering the entire impeachment discussion null and void.

"It was incoherent," Sen @LindseyGrahamSC says of Trump's Ukraine policy. "They seem to be *incapable* of forming a quid pro quo." pic.twitter.com/rdZxyIazNj

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) November 6, 2019

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro made similar arguments on his podcast, saying on October 7 that Trump would make a fantastic client for a defense attorney because “Trump doesn’t have requisite intent for anything. The man has the attention span of a gnat ... if you are his defense lawyer, his best defense to ‘he had a plan in Ukraine to go after Joe Biden’ is ‘dude doesn’t have plans.’” And on November 11, Shapiro argued, “I don’t think he’s had the level of intent necessary to eat a hamburger.” I reached out to Shapiro, but he was unable to comment on Wednesday.

And after all, military aid to Ukraine was eventually restored. So according to this argument, the actions for which Trump is facing impeachment (withholding aid for selfish reasons) never actually happened. Per National Review’s Rich Lowry, “The best defense Republicans can muster is that nothing came of it. An ally was discomfited and yanked around for a couple of months before, ultimately, getting its defense funding.”

And his magazine’s editorial board argued earlier this month, “It has to matter that, at the end of the day, the harm of this episode was minimal or nonexistent. The Ukrainians got their defense aid without making any statement committing themselves to the investigations.”

It’s true that intent matters — in criminal proceedings. I spoke with Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former US attorney, who told me, “Intent is very important in court, and for many of these crimes, from witness intimidation to bribery, prosecutors must prove corrupt intent. If we were in federal court, litigating criminal charges against the president, I think the “Trump is just Trump” defense would be colorable and tricky to overcome.

“With normal humans, when they act like Trump you can infer corrupt intent; the defense is that you can’t make that inference with Trump because he acts that way all the time, reflexively.”

But White added two caveats. “First, that’s a matter of proof. A jury could still reject it and see corrupt intent. Second, this ain’t federal court.” Impeachment, after all, is a political process, not a legal one.

And as to the argument that funding to Ukraine was indeed restored, the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy pointed out in October that an unsuccessful or “incompetent” attempt to commit an impeachable act doesn’t make it less impeachable:

The Nixon crew botched most of the schemes it undertook, from the Watergate caper to the attempt to audit the president’s political enemies. That didn’t save Richard Nixon from being driven from office via the impeachment process.

2) “Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani deserve praise”

Some of Trump’s defenders are taking an entirely different approach and stating that Donald Trump’s actions were not only defensible, but good. In the words of Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) (who criticized Lt. Col. Vindman for having “opinions counter” to the president), “it’s perfectly within the purview of the president’s authority” to base military aid on the assurance of an investigation into corruption (or more accurately, the announcement of an investigation).

They argue that the government of Ukraine was corrupt and Trump was elected to fight corruption — ergo, of course he would resist sending aid to Ukraine. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) put it this way: “Corruption is not just prevalent in Ukraine. It’s the system. Our president said time out, time out, let’s check out this new guy.”

.@RealDonaldTrump and @RudyGiuliani deserve praise for pushing for accountability because these officials seem to have zero concern about Ukraine's collusion w/Obama admin targeting America's election in 2016 -- and the Biden cover-up...

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) November 20, 2019

As Washington Examiner writer Byron York wrote in a piece entitled “What if Trump was right about Ukraine?”, supporters of this line of logic argue that while perhaps Trump’s actions weren’t the best, he had real and genuine concerns about Ukraine’s government and its alleged efforts to collude with the Clinton campaign and influence the 2016 election.

Those efforts are based on allegations that Ukrainian officials, concerned about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s work for a pro-Russian political party, attempted to assist the Clinton campaign and harm the Trump campaign. Right-leaning media outlets have focused serious attention on those allegations since 2017.

For example, the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway argued on Fox News in October of this year, “You have people who have already admitted that people affiliated with the Ukrainian government worked with the Democratic National Committee’s contractors to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign,” arguing that Ukraine and the DNC took part in actual collusion, unlike Russia and Trump’s campaign.

York writes that if the allegations were true, Trump’s actions make sense. “If [those concerns] were even mostly legitimate, then Trump defenders could say: “Look, he had a point. Even if one thinks he handled the issue inappropriately, the fact is, what was going on in Ukraine was worrisome enough for a United States president to take notice.” Quoting former US Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker, York concluded, “The president said Ukraine ‘tried to take me down.’ He wasn’t wrong.” (It’s worth noting that other conservatives disagree.)

This was the argument that Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a writer at National Review who published “The Case for Trump” earlier this year, made to me, saying that it made sense for Trump to be suspicious of Ukraine. He asked that I quote him in full.

“Trump is a businessman and he does not want to give much military aid in general, and naturally not to corrupt governments who have in the past, according to Politico, tried to interfere in the 2016 election.”

“Trump naturally takes the past Ukrainian efforts, again according to the 2017 Politico report, to harm his election effort, as a personal affront given they reportedly sought to stop Trump from becoming president and yet wanted him to reverse the Obama policy of no military aid once he was elected (which he did).”

“Once more, we are left with a supposed thought crime of considering delaying aid in exchange for Ukrainian promises of investigating 2016 interference in an American election—which never happened, but was actually reified by earlier suspension of actual Ukrainian investigations in 2016 (and possibly of Hunter Biden) and refusal to arm the Ukrainians.”

But this argument has problems of its own. Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, both of whom served on Trump’s National Security Council, testified earlier this month that they had seen no evidence that the government of Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. Hill added in testimony Thursday, “I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016.”

The Politico piece to which Dr. Hanson referred during our conversation notes that while some Ukrainian officials supported Clinton, their efforts were “far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails,” which was a “top-down” effort. And according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, one of the main sources for allegations that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election — including allegations that they, not Russia, hacked the DNC — was Manafort himself.

3) “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy”

But other conservatives have argued that Trump’s actions, even if tied to an “understandable and justifiable” desire to investigate allegations of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election, were improper, inappropriate, or just plain bad.

As Townhall.com and Fox News commentator Guy Benson told me, those involved in the alleged quid pro quo “were up to something that stunk.” “They misused and abused their power,” he said. “It’s serious and it should be taken seriously.

But in his view, impeachment is a step too far. “My case against impeachment and removal is that it rises to a thermonuclear option that has never been detonated before. Doing so based on this, so close to an election, in a president’s first term, would do enormous damage.”

Rather, he favors censure, a “very rare tool” last used against President Andrew Jackson in 1834 that would, as he wrote in October, “represent a severe and formal condemnation from the people’s branch, and would constitute a stain on the president’s term in office.”

Daily Caller founders Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel have also argued that impeachment is too harsh a punishment for Trump. In an op-ed in October where they stipulated that “Donald Trump should not have been on the phone with a foreign head of state encouraging another country to investigate his political opponent,” they then wrote, “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy we have in our system of government.”

And they added:

The facts are out there for the American people to weigh as they make their decision. How about we let them sort all this out? There’s no need to come up with thin excuses for a purely partisan impeachment process when we have an election right around the corner.

I spoke to Patel, who told me, “Nancy Pelosi was right for all those months when she repeatedly said that to undo that election without bipartisan support based on clear criminal behavior would tear the country apart. We are on the eve of a new election where the American people can once again vote on Trump and this time they can weigh for themselves Trump’s behavior in this Ukraine affair. That’s a much better solution.”

Thoughts after day one: Trump’s mention of Biden on his 7/25 call was inappropriate. I’ve said that all along. However, nothing I heard today leads me to change my mind : impeachment goes too far. Let the voters settle this. One party, partisan impeachment is not the answer.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) November 13, 2019

4) “No one cares”

But an even simpler defense of the president is one being made by Carlson on his Fox News show and by others within the conservative movement, and it actually doesn’t require defending the president at all.

Instead, Republicans are arguing that the entire process is a “distraction.” Moreover, they’re arguing that it doesn’t matter what Trump did or didn’t do because the Senate won’t vote to impeach the president and the average American doesn’t care.

As Townhall.com writer Kurt Schlichter wrote earlier this week, “We’re too busy working, too focused on our 401(k)s going through the roof and on [Trump] flipping circuit courts like a boss, to care about the latest outrage to end all outrages.” I reached out to Schlichter and will update if and when I hear back.

On the November 15 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson argued, “normal people” — “someone with kids and a job and a marriage you care about” — aren’t thinking about impeachment and would rather “the buffoons on TV would stop yapping about Trump 24/7 and talk about something relevant.”

It’s an argument being made by Republicans both inside and outside of the administration. For example, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham tweeted that instead of impeachment (which was “boring” and a “waste of time”), “Congress should be working on passing USMCA, funding our govt & military, working on reduced drug pricing & so much more.”

With record low unemployment and record high wage growth, Democrats know they can't beat President Trump in 2020. Democrats need to #StopTheMadness and get back to work for the American people.

— PA GOP (@PAGOP) November 20, 2019

This argument seems somewhat self-refuting — after all, tweeting or writing or saying on national television that no one cares about impeachment would imply that someone, somewhere, decidedly does.

But for the GOP, it is perhaps the most revealing. Not of the sentiment of the average American — 70 percent of whom believe Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine were “wrong” — but of the Republicans. Because they are well aware that within a slimmed-down Republican Party that has largely excised his enemies and detractors through retirements and election losses, Trump is the only available lodestar.

And so for them, it doesn’t actually matter what Trump did with regard to Ukrainian military aid: whether he intended to hurt Joe Biden’s presidential hopes, whether he was genuinely concerned about corruption, or whether he did something that constitutes an impeachable offense. Trump is all they’ve got.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/338QAa3

[timalexanderdollery]

The 4 main conservative defenses for Trump against impeachment, explained

President Trump attends a “Keep America Great” rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 10, 2019. | Brendan Smialowski /AFP/Getty Images

Only one of them makes sense.

President Donald Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from the Ukrainian government, seemingly to push lawmakers to announce an investigation into the son of a potential political opponent and his work with a Ukrainian energy company. That much, at least, is clear. As is the fact that Trump has an 89 percent approval rating with Republican voters.

That’s why most Republican lawmakers aren’t going to change their minds on the impeachment of President Trump. While some in Congress might privately think that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to “do him a favor” and investigate former Vice President Joe Biden was a bad idea, they won’t say so in public.

Because, quite simply, Trump is the president. He’s giving them what they want politically, the economy appears strong and, most critically, he is far more popular and powerful than they are.

But House Republicans and many Trump-supportive conservative and right-leaning writers and pundits have largely attempted to avoid saying as much.

Rather, together with constantly shifting responses to specific testimony, they appear to have developed three basic defenses for Trump as House impeachment hearings continued: He was “too inept” to have intended to do what he is being accused of doing; what he did was actually good; and his actions were bad, but not impeachable.

But some congressional Republicans and conservatives have begun saying another, perhaps most accurate, defense of Trump out loud: Whatever he did, it doesn’t matter — not to “normal people” and not to the Republican Party.

1) “Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government”

The first basic defense of Trump regarding Ukraine is the simplest: Trump lacked the intent and the basic competence to get a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine done. And without intent (legally defined as a conscious decision to commit an illegal act), some argue that what Trump did may have been bad and dumb, but not criminal — and thus, not a “high crime or misdemeanor.”

As elucidated by the Wall Street Journal editorial board in October:

... it may turn out that while Mr. Trump wanted a quid-pro-quo policy ultimatum toward Ukraine, he was too inept to execute it. Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government, and most Presidents at some point or another in office.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham seemingly agreed, telling CBS News earlier this month that the administration appeared “incapable” of forming a quid pro quo, thus rendering the entire impeachment discussion null and void.

"It was incoherent," Sen @LindseyGrahamSC says of Trump's Ukraine policy. "They seem to be *incapable* of forming a quid pro quo." pic.twitter.com/rdZxyIazNj

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) November 6, 2019

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro made similar arguments on his podcast, saying on October 7 that Trump would make a fantastic client for a defense attorney because “Trump doesn’t have requisite intent for anything. The man has the attention span of a gnat ... if you are his defense lawyer, his best defense to ‘he had a plan in Ukraine to go after Joe Biden’ is ‘dude doesn’t have plans.’” And on November 11, Shapiro argued, “I don’t think he’s had the level of intent necessary to eat a hamburger.” I reached out to Shapiro, but he was unable to comment on Wednesday.

And after all, military aid to Ukraine was eventually restored. So according to this argument, the actions for which Trump is facing impeachment (withholding aid for selfish reasons) never actually happened. Per National Review’s Rich Lowry, “The best defense Republicans can muster is that nothing came of it. An ally was discomfited and yanked around for a couple of months before, ultimately, getting its defense funding.”

And his magazine’s editorial board argued earlier this month, “It has to matter that, at the end of the day, the harm of this episode was minimal or nonexistent. The Ukrainians got their defense aid without making any statement committing themselves to the investigations.”

It’s true that intent matters — in criminal proceedings. I spoke with Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former US attorney, who told me, “Intent is very important in court, and for many of these crimes, from witness intimidation to bribery, prosecutors must prove corrupt intent. If we were in federal court, litigating criminal charges against the president, I think the “Trump is just Trump” defense would be colorable and tricky to overcome.

“With normal humans, when they act like Trump you can infer corrupt intent; the defense is that you can’t make that inference with Trump because he acts that way all the time, reflexively.”

But White added two caveats. “First, that’s a matter of proof. A jury could still reject it and see corrupt intent. Second, this ain’t federal court.” Impeachment, after all, is a political process, not a legal one.

And as to the argument that funding to Ukraine was indeed restored, the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy pointed out in October that an unsuccessful or “incompetent” attempt to commit an impeachable act doesn’t make it less impeachable:

The Nixon crew botched most of the schemes it undertook, from the Watergate caper to the attempt to audit the president’s political enemies. That didn’t save Richard Nixon from being driven from office via the impeachment process.

2) “Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani deserve praise”

Some of Trump’s defenders are taking an entirely different approach and stating that Donald Trump’s actions were not only defensible, but good. In the words of Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) (who criticized Lt. Col. Vindman for having “opinions counter” to the president), “it’s perfectly within the purview of the president’s authority” to base military aid on the assurance of an investigation into corruption (or more accurately, the announcement of an investigation).

They argue that the government of Ukraine was corrupt and Trump was elected to fight corruption — ergo, of course he would resist sending aid to Ukraine. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) put it this way: “Corruption is not just prevalent in Ukraine. It’s the system. Our president said time out, time out, let’s check out this new guy.”

.@RealDonaldTrump and @RudyGiuliani deserve praise for pushing for accountability because these officials seem to have zero concern about Ukraine's collusion w/Obama admin targeting America's election in 2016 -- and the Biden cover-up...

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) November 20, 2019

As Washington Examiner writer Byron York wrote in a piece entitled “What if Trump was right about Ukraine?”, supporters of this line of logic argue that while perhaps Trump’s actions weren’t the best, he had real and genuine concerns about Ukraine’s government and its alleged efforts to collude with the Clinton campaign and influence the 2016 election.

Those efforts are based on allegations that Ukrainian officials, concerned about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s work for a pro-Russian political party, attempted to assist the Clinton campaign and harm the Trump campaign. Right-leaning media outlets have focused serious attention on those allegations since 2017.

For example, the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway argued on Fox News in October of this year, “You have people who have already admitted that people affiliated with the Ukrainian government worked with the Democratic National Committee’s contractors to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign,” arguing that Ukraine and the DNC took part in actual collusion, unlike Russia and Trump’s campaign.

York writes that if the allegations were true, Trump’s actions make sense. “If [those concerns] were even mostly legitimate, then Trump defenders could say: “Look, he had a point. Even if one thinks he handled the issue inappropriately, the fact is, what was going on in Ukraine was worrisome enough for a United States president to take notice.” Quoting former US Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker, York concluded, “The president said Ukraine ‘tried to take me down.’ He wasn’t wrong.” (It’s worth noting that other conservatives disagree.)

This was the argument that Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a writer at National Review who published “The Case for Trump” earlier this year, made to me, saying that it made sense for Trump to be suspicious of Ukraine. He asked that I quote him in full.

“Trump is a businessman and he does not want to give much military aid in general, and naturally not to corrupt governments who have in the past, according to Politico, tried to interfere in the 2016 election.”

“Trump naturally takes the past Ukrainian efforts, again according to the 2017 Politico report, to harm his election effort, as a personal affront given they reportedly sought to stop Trump from becoming president and yet wanted him to reverse the Obama policy of no military aid once he was elected (which he did).”

“Once more, we are left with a supposed thought crime of considering delaying aid in exchange for Ukrainian promises of investigating 2016 interference in an American election—which never happened, but was actually reified by earlier suspension of actual Ukrainian investigations in 2016 (and possibly of Hunter Biden) and refusal to arm the Ukrainians.”

But this argument has problems of its own. Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, both of whom served on Trump’s National Security Council, testified earlier this month that they had seen no evidence that the government of Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. Hill added in testimony Thursday, “I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016.”

The Politico piece to which Dr. Hanson referred during our conversation notes that while some Ukrainian officials supported Clinton, their efforts were “far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails,” which was a “top-down” effort. And according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, one of the main sources for allegations that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election — including allegations that they, not Russia, hacked the DNC — was Manafort himself.

3) “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy”

But other conservatives have argued that Trump’s actions, even if tied to an “understandable and justifiable” desire to investigate allegations of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election, were improper, inappropriate, or just plain bad.

As Townhall.com and Fox News commentator Guy Benson told me, those involved in the alleged quid pro quo “were up to something that stunk.” “They misused and abused their power,” he said. “It’s serious and it should be taken seriously.

But in his view, impeachment is a step too far. “My case against impeachment and removal is that it rises to a thermonuclear option that has never been detonated before. Doing so based on this, so close to an election, in a president’s first term, would do enormous damage.”

Rather, he favors censure, a “very rare tool” last used against President Andrew Jackson in 1834 that would, as he wrote in October, “represent a severe and formal condemnation from the people’s branch, and would constitute a stain on the president’s term in office.”

Daily Caller founders Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel have also argued that impeachment is too harsh a punishment for Trump. In an op-ed in October where they stipulated that “Donald Trump should not have been on the phone with a foreign head of state encouraging another country to investigate his political opponent,” they then wrote, “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy we have in our system of government.”

And they added:

The facts are out there for the American people to weigh as they make their decision. How about we let them sort all this out? There’s no need to come up with thin excuses for a purely partisan impeachment process when we have an election right around the corner.

I spoke to Patel, who told me, “Nancy Pelosi was right for all those months when she repeatedly said that to undo that election without bipartisan support based on clear criminal behavior would tear the country apart. We are on the eve of a new election where the American people can once again vote on Trump and this time they can weigh for themselves Trump’s behavior in this Ukraine affair. That’s a much better solution.”

Thoughts after day one: Trump’s mention of Biden on his 7/25 call was inappropriate. I’ve said that all along. However, nothing I heard today leads me to change my mind : impeachment goes too far. Let the voters settle this. One party, partisan impeachment is not the answer.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) November 13, 2019

4) “No one cares”

But an even simpler defense of the president is one being made by Carlson on his Fox News show and by others within the conservative movement, and it actually doesn’t require defending the president at all.

Instead, Republicans are arguing that the entire process is a “distraction.” Moreover, they’re arguing that it doesn’t matter what Trump did or didn’t do because the Senate won’t vote to impeach the president and the average American doesn’t care.

As Townhall.com writer Kurt Schlichter wrote earlier this week, “We’re too busy working, too focused on our 401(k)s going through the roof and on [Trump] flipping circuit courts like a boss, to care about the latest outrage to end all outrages.” I reached out to Schlichter and will update if and when I hear back.

On the November 15 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson argued, “normal people” — “someone with kids and a job and a marriage you care about” — aren’t thinking about impeachment and would rather “the buffoons on TV would stop yapping about Trump 24/7 and talk about something relevant.”

It’s an argument being made by Republicans both inside and outside of the administration. For example, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham tweeted that instead of impeachment (which was “boring” and a “waste of time”), “Congress should be working on passing USMCA, funding our govt & military, working on reduced drug pricing & so much more.”

With record low unemployment and record high wage growth, Democrats know they can't beat President Trump in 2020. Democrats need to #StopTheMadness and get back to work for the American people.

— PA GOP (@PAGOP) November 20, 2019

This argument seems somewhat self-refuting — after all, tweeting or writing or saying on national television that no one cares about impeachment would imply that someone, somewhere, decidedly does.

But for the GOP, it is perhaps the most revealing. Not of the sentiment of the average American — 70 percent of whom believe Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine were “wrong” — but of the Republicans. Because they are well aware that within a slimmed-down Republican Party that has largely excised his enemies and detractors through retirements and election losses, Trump is the only available lodestar.

And so for them, it doesn’t actually matter what Trump did with regard to Ukrainian military aid: whether he intended to hurt Joe Biden’s presidential hopes, whether he was genuinely concerned about corruption, or whether he did something that constitutes an impeachable offense. Trump is all they’ve got.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/338QAa3

[corneliusreignallen]

The 4 main conservative defenses for Trump against impeachment, explained

President Trump attends a “Keep America Great” rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 10, 2019. | Brendan Smialowski /AFP/Getty Images

Only one of them makes sense.

President Donald Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from the Ukrainian government, seemingly to push lawmakers to announce an investigation into the son of a potential political opponent and his work with a Ukrainian energy company. That much, at least, is clear. As is the fact that Trump has an 89 percent approval rating with Republican voters.

That’s why most Republican lawmakers aren’t going to change their minds on the impeachment of President Trump. While some in Congress might privately think that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to “do him a favor” and investigate former Vice President Joe Biden was a bad idea, they won’t say so in public.

Because, quite simply, Trump is the president. He’s giving them what they want politically, the economy appears strong and, most critically, he is far more popular and powerful than they are.

But House Republicans and many Trump-supportive conservative and right-leaning writers and pundits have largely attempted to avoid saying as much.

Rather, together with constantly shifting responses to specific testimony, they appear to have developed three basic defenses for Trump as House impeachment hearings continued: He was “too inept” to have intended to do what he is being accused of doing; what he did was actually good; and his actions were bad, but not impeachable.

But some congressional Republicans and conservatives have begun saying another, perhaps most accurate, defense of Trump out loud: Whatever he did, it doesn’t matter — not to “normal people” and not to the Republican Party.

1) “Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government”

The first basic defense of Trump regarding Ukraine is the simplest: Trump lacked the intent and the basic competence to get a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine done. And without intent (legally defined as a conscious decision to commit an illegal act), some argue that what Trump did may have been bad and dumb, but not criminal — and thus, not a “high crime or misdemeanor.”

As elucidated by the Wall Street Journal editorial board in October:

... it may turn out that while Mr. Trump wanted a quid-pro-quo policy ultimatum toward Ukraine, he was too inept to execute it. Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government, and most Presidents at some point or another in office.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham seemingly agreed, telling CBS News earlier this month that the administration appeared “incapable” of forming a quid pro quo, thus rendering the entire impeachment discussion null and void.

"It was incoherent," Sen @LindseyGrahamSC says of Trump's Ukraine policy. "They seem to be *incapable* of forming a quid pro quo." pic.twitter.com/rdZxyIazNj

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) November 6, 2019

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro made similar arguments on his podcast, saying on October 7 that Trump would make a fantastic client for a defense attorney because “Trump doesn’t have requisite intent for anything. The man has the attention span of a gnat ... if you are his defense lawyer, his best defense to ‘he had a plan in Ukraine to go after Joe Biden’ is ‘dude doesn’t have plans.’” And on November 11, Shapiro argued, “I don’t think he’s had the level of intent necessary to eat a hamburger.” I reached out to Shapiro, but he was unable to comment on Wednesday.

And after all, military aid to Ukraine was eventually restored. So according to this argument, the actions for which Trump is facing impeachment (withholding aid for selfish reasons) never actually happened. Per National Review’s Rich Lowry, “The best defense Republicans can muster is that nothing came of it. An ally was discomfited and yanked around for a couple of months before, ultimately, getting its defense funding.”

And his magazine’s editorial board argued earlier this month, “It has to matter that, at the end of the day, the harm of this episode was minimal or nonexistent. The Ukrainians got their defense aid without making any statement committing themselves to the investigations.”

It’s true that intent matters — in criminal proceedings. I spoke with Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former US attorney, who told me, “Intent is very important in court, and for many of these crimes, from witness intimidation to bribery, prosecutors must prove corrupt intent. If we were in federal court, litigating criminal charges against the president, I think the “Trump is just Trump” defense would be colorable and tricky to overcome.

“With normal humans, when they act like Trump you can infer corrupt intent; the defense is that you can’t make that inference with Trump because he acts that way all the time, reflexively.”

But White added two caveats. “First, that’s a matter of proof. A jury could still reject it and see corrupt intent. Second, this ain’t federal court.” Impeachment, after all, is a political process, not a legal one.

And as to the argument that funding to Ukraine was indeed restored, the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy pointed out in October that an unsuccessful or “incompetent” attempt to commit an impeachable act doesn’t make it less impeachable:

The Nixon crew botched most of the schemes it undertook, from the Watergate caper to the attempt to audit the president’s political enemies. That didn’t save Richard Nixon from being driven from office via the impeachment process.

2) “Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani deserve praise”

Some of Trump’s defenders are taking an entirely different approach and stating that Donald Trump’s actions were not only defensible, but good. In the words of Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) (who criticized Lt. Col. Vindman for having “opinions counter” to the president), “it’s perfectly within the purview of the president’s authority” to base military aid on the assurance of an investigation into corruption (or more accurately, the announcement of an investigation).

They argue that the government of Ukraine was corrupt and Trump was elected to fight corruption — ergo, of course he would resist sending aid to Ukraine. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) put it this way: “Corruption is not just prevalent in Ukraine. It’s the system. Our president said time out, time out, let’s check out this new guy.”

.@RealDonaldTrump and @RudyGiuliani deserve praise for pushing for accountability because these officials seem to have zero concern about Ukraine's collusion w/Obama admin targeting America's election in 2016 -- and the Biden cover-up...

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) November 20, 2019

As Washington Examiner writer Byron York wrote in a piece entitled “What if Trump was right about Ukraine?”, supporters of this line of logic argue that while perhaps Trump’s actions weren’t the best, he had real and genuine concerns about Ukraine’s government and its alleged efforts to collude with the Clinton campaign and influence the 2016 election.

Those efforts are based on allegations that Ukrainian officials, concerned about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s work for a pro-Russian political party, attempted to assist the Clinton campaign and harm the Trump campaign. Right-leaning media outlets have focused serious attention on those allegations since 2017.

For example, the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway argued on Fox News in October of this year, “You have people who have already admitted that people affiliated with the Ukrainian government worked with the Democratic National Committee’s contractors to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign,” arguing that Ukraine and the DNC took part in actual collusion, unlike Russia and Trump’s campaign.

York writes that if the allegations were true, Trump’s actions make sense. “If [those concerns] were even mostly legitimate, then Trump defenders could say: “Look, he had a point. Even if one thinks he handled the issue inappropriately, the fact is, what was going on in Ukraine was worrisome enough for a United States president to take notice.” Quoting former US Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker, York concluded, “The president said Ukraine ‘tried to take me down.’ He wasn’t wrong.” (It’s worth noting that other conservatives disagree.)

This was the argument that Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a writer at National Review who published “The Case for Trump” earlier this year, made to me, saying that it made sense for Trump to be suspicious of Ukraine. He asked that I quote him in full.

“Trump is a businessman and he does not want to give much military aid in general, and naturally not to corrupt governments who have in the past, according to Politico, tried to interfere in the 2016 election.”

“Trump naturally takes the past Ukrainian efforts, again according to the 2017 Politico report, to harm his election effort, as a personal affront given they reportedly sought to stop Trump from becoming president and yet wanted him to reverse the Obama policy of no military aid once he was elected (which he did).”

“Once more, we are left with a supposed thought crime of considering delaying aid in exchange for Ukrainian promises of investigating 2016 interference in an American election—which never happened, but was actually reified by earlier suspension of actual Ukrainian investigations in 2016 (and possibly of Hunter Biden) and refusal to arm the Ukrainians.”

But this argument has problems of its own. Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, both of whom served on Trump’s National Security Council, testified earlier this month that they had seen no evidence that the government of Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. Hill added in testimony Thursday, “I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016.”

The Politico piece to which Dr. Hanson referred during our conversation notes that while some Ukrainian officials supported Clinton, their efforts were “far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails,” which was a “top-down” effort. And according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, one of the main sources for allegations that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election — including allegations that they, not Russia, hacked the DNC — was Manafort himself.

3) “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy”

But other conservatives have argued that Trump’s actions, even if tied to an “understandable and justifiable” desire to investigate allegations of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election, were improper, inappropriate, or just plain bad.

As Townhall.com and Fox News commentator Guy Benson told me, those involved in the alleged quid pro quo “were up to something that stunk.” “They misused and abused their power,” he said. “It’s serious and it should be taken seriously.

But in his view, impeachment is a step too far. “My case against impeachment and removal is that it rises to a thermonuclear option that has never been detonated before. Doing so based on this, so close to an election, in a president’s first term, would do enormous damage.”

Rather, he favors censure, a “very rare tool” last used against President Andrew Jackson in 1834 that would, as he wrote in October, “represent a severe and formal condemnation from the people’s branch, and would constitute a stain on the president’s term in office.”

Daily Caller founders Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel have also argued that impeachment is too harsh a punishment for Trump. In an op-ed in October where they stipulated that “Donald Trump should not have been on the phone with a foreign head of state encouraging another country to investigate his political opponent,” they then wrote, “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy we have in our system of government.”

And they added:

The facts are out there for the American people to weigh as they make their decision. How about we let them sort all this out? There’s no need to come up with thin excuses for a purely partisan impeachment process when we have an election right around the corner.

I spoke to Patel, who told me, “Nancy Pelosi was right for all those months when she repeatedly said that to undo that election without bipartisan support based on clear criminal behavior would tear the country apart. We are on the eve of a new election where the American people can once again vote on Trump and this time they can weigh for themselves Trump’s behavior in this Ukraine affair. That’s a much better solution.”

Thoughts after day one: Trump’s mention of Biden on his 7/25 call was inappropriate. I’ve said that all along. However, nothing I heard today leads me to change my mind : impeachment goes too far. Let the voters settle this. One party, partisan impeachment is not the answer.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) November 13, 2019

4) “No one cares”

But an even simpler defense of the president is one being made by Carlson on his Fox News show and by others within the conservative movement, and it actually doesn’t require defending the president at all.

Instead, Republicans are arguing that the entire process is a “distraction.” Moreover, they’re arguing that it doesn’t matter what Trump did or didn’t do because the Senate won’t vote to impeach the president and the average American doesn’t care.

As Townhall.com writer Kurt Schlichter wrote earlier this week, “We’re too busy working, too focused on our 401(k)s going through the roof and on [Trump] flipping circuit courts like a boss, to care about the latest outrage to end all outrages.” I reached out to Schlichter and will update if and when I hear back.

On the November 15 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson argued, “normal people” — “someone with kids and a job and a marriage you care about” — aren’t thinking about impeachment and would rather “the buffoons on TV would stop yapping about Trump 24/7 and talk about something relevant.”

It’s an argument being made by Republicans both inside and outside of the administration. For example, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham tweeted that instead of impeachment (which was “boring” and a “waste of time”), “Congress should be working on passing USMCA, funding our govt & military, working on reduced drug pricing & so much more.”

With record low unemployment and record high wage growth, Democrats know they can't beat President Trump in 2020. Democrats need to #StopTheMadness and get back to work for the American people.

— PA GOP (@PAGOP) November 20, 2019

This argument seems somewhat self-refuting — after all, tweeting or writing or saying on national television that no one cares about impeachment would imply that someone, somewhere, decidedly does.

But for the GOP, it is perhaps the most revealing. Not of the sentiment of the average American — 70 percent of whom believe Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine were “wrong” — but of the Republicans. Because they are well aware that within a slimmed-down Republican Party that has largely excised his enemies and detractors through retirements and election losses, Trump is the only available lodestar.

And so for them, it doesn’t actually matter what Trump did with regard to Ukrainian military aid: whether he intended to hurt Joe Biden’s presidential hopes, whether he was genuinely concerned about corruption, or whether he did something that constitutes an impeachable offense. Trump is all they’ve got.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/338QAa3

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Gettysburg (Post 96) 7-8-15

I have four favorite colonels in life and only one of them makes chicken; the other three fought a desperate fight on a rocky hill in rural Pennsylvania more than a century and a half in our past.  In the town of Gettysburg, on July 2nd, 1863 the outcome of the Civil War hung in the balance, but the Union forces held the high ground and ideally had well-prepared defensive lines organized in a fish-hook shape from Culp’s Hill to Little Round Top.  Except they really didn’t. Dan Sickles, by all accounts an incompetent general, repositioned his forces away from the ordered line without authorization, leaving Little Round Top unmanned and the left flank of the Union line completely exposed. A Brigadier General was sent to investigate Sickle’s mayhem and discovered the empty position on Little Round Top in time to notice the Confederate troops streaming across the heavily wooded Big Round Top headed to the occupy a commanding position on the smaller hill, a leverage point from which they would have first slaughtered Sickle’s troops and then likely rolled up the entire Union line.

But the Brigadier acted quickly enough.  He happened across Col Strong Vincent, who rather than wait for confirming order, moved his brigade into position about five to ten minutes before the rebel yell announced the first onslaught.  Strong Vincent positioned Col Joshua Chamberlain and his 20th Maine Regiment at the extreme left of the Union forces and then returned to overall brigade command where he was shot dead within the hour.  Col Paddy O’Rourke, likewise swiftly answered a call for reinforcements and brought his troops up across Little Round Top to push back the Confederate attack. O’Rourke too was mortally wounded while leading the charge of his soldiers from a frontal position.  Thus two of my favorite colonels died bravely leading their men in an extraordinary situation that required risk and heroism.

Among his brave men the third colonel, Chamberlain, defended his position until there was almost no ammunition left to return fire.  He and his officers knew that they would soon be swept away by their determined adversaries, and that their failure would seriously endanger the entire Army of the Potomac, which had massed for the pivotal standoff.  Rather than retreat, though, they made the decision to fix bayonets and charge, an act that was immortalized in the movie Gettysburg, a film that began my fascination with this particular Civil War campaign.

Anyway, this is not a story about my love of history; it is about my journey over last weekend.  Determined for the last several years that if I ever returned East, I would visit Little Round Top, this holiday I finally made the trip.  I guess you would have to characterize my Gettysburg journey as a line item on a pretty underwhelming bucket list.  I have no desire to scuba, sky dive or ride for even one second on a bull named Fu Manchu, but I am attracted to several places associated with a paradigm shift, a collision of the tectonic plates of American history.  

I find these times and places especially alluring because, to me, they represent our most clear vision of the continuing chess game between Satan and Jesus that spans the centuries.  When there occurs a virtual volcanic crescendo of positive providential happenstance, I feel like I can finally distill God’s will clearly in our most muddied and relativistic times.  I gravitate to those places where spiritual struggle is most concentrated. If I ever visit Europe again, I will certainly stop at Fatima, at Lourdes, and most certainly, at Auschwitz where Maximilian Kolbe’s selfless act rebuked the Nazi killing factory.   In cooperation with Jesus and his vicious captors, the great saint poured out the libation of his life singing hymns to encourage his companions.

So Stephen Jr. and I headed off on an Independence Day pilgrimage to Little Round Top.  I like military history; Stephen likes gift shops at historical sites; my parents like peace and quiet every once in a while.  What is not to like?

We started on Friday morning and I accidentally left a GPS preference enabled that routed me away from all toll roads.  I use this preference to avoid a daily $4.50 shakedown I would otherwise receive by using the Ohio Turnpike to get to Youngstown. I didn’t like bridge tolls in the Bay Area, but here I can avoid the extra cost fairly easily, so I choose to. Unfortunately, if you leave that particular preference in effect on a sojourn from Cleveland to Gettysburg, you will drive through the boondocks of Pennsylvania.  Apparently, you could, in fact, drive on Route 30 from Gettysburg to either Long Island or to the city of San Francisco, but my fascination is with history not with stoplights so I would never do that.

Anyway, I realized my mistake after it no longer made sense to correct the error.  If we were so inclined, Stephen and I could have enjoyed some beautiful scenery of Western Pennsylvania.  Instead we were mostly lost in our own thoughts and tuned out the splendor of God’s creation.  Now that Natalie often rides with me, I have begun to listen to some pop stations again as relentlessly repetitive and sappy pap can pass the time on a long drive.  I must have eventually gotten sick of the audio cotton candy, as I think I was praying a rosary when I noticed the road sign.

Route 30 happens to lead through Shanksville on its meandering circuit towards the location of Abraham Lincoln’s most famous public address. I, like many Americans, vowed long ago never to forget 9-11, but it is not in my nature to remain steadfast in vigilance.  I am easily distracted by the Women’s World Cup, whatever is on the Velocity Channel, and assorted mundanity.  For instance, I missed Nathan’s hot dog eating contest this year because I was traveling.  Still I had intended to visit the Flight 93 Memorial back when I remembered that there was such a thing.

Although 9-11 was a highly significant event, it is probably not as historically important as Gettysburg, after which everything was entirely different, and America continued its ascent to a position of global power, a Godly country that Our Creator put to good use on many occasions until these last couple decades.  As a memorial, Shanksville is a smaller and newer one, but it is and will always remain a place of quiet contemplation.  I took several pictures there and will remember the experience for quite a while, although I now understand that my memory of Todd Beamer’s name etched into a white wall with various mementos lain at wall’s base will eventually fade.

My many pictures of Gettysburg will not serve as fuel for my imagination down the road, as I took very few shots on my July 4th tour.  Because it was a short trip, I decided to not pack my phone charger and instead planned to charge my phone in the car as I drove.  Unfortunately, there is no drive to charge your phone when you stay the night before at the place where you are going in the morning.  Perhaps I should have forwent updating my Facebook page the night before, but the phone would have probably only been a distraction from the documentary, bus tour, museum, cyclorama painting and obligatory visit to gift shop, which Stephen deemed quite satisfactory.  I made it to Little Round Top, the Wheat Field, The Peach Orchard and the Devil’s Den where the strategically challenged Gen Sickles got his leg blown off, which eliminated the need for his superior officers to cashier him.

What I didn’t find in Gettysburg was quiet contemplation. It is hard to engage in meditation in such a popular historical site on such an appropriate day.  In the end, after a good tour, laden with assorted trinkets Stephen and I headed off to Antietam which is down the road a spell, but seemed likely to be less popular.  I don’t know as much about that battle, but I understand that it was pivotal on a smaller scale.  I hoped for a quieter experience there, but Stephen and I were greeted with a crowd overflowing the parking lot and what looked like pumpkin chuckers on the horizon. They were actually amplifiers.  To our great surprise we discovered that the Antietam had closed down as a historical exhibit about an hour before our arrival and was instead being set up for an outdoor night concert by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.  We could have stayed for the fireworks but we arrived at 4 PM, without a blanket or picnic basket, so it seemingly was not the right time for our visit and we headed up the road.

Interestingly, we had spent an hour on the drive at another site we just stumbled across.  Mount Saint Mary’s University, America’s second oldest Catholic University, also a diocesan seminary, is evidently located upon the same Emmitsville Pike along which the Confederate forces traveled towards Gettysburg in search of quality footwear.  We stopped over because there were signs for a Lourdes Grotto on a hill above the campus. The grotto we found was an incredibly beautiful peaceful place.  There is another Lourdes Grotto in Cleveland, but although it is convenient, the Cleveland Lourdes site is largely a deserted and dilapidated relic from the area’s Catholic heritage, although beautiful and peaceful.  I spent time there after Pam’s passing.  While it is also beautiful and peaceful, the grotto at Emmistville, Maryland is wonderfully alive with serene and respectful layman, priests, brothers and sisters of all orders.  Had I not been hurrying towards my disappointment in Antietam, I probably could have sat their quietly all afternoon.  Unencumbered by my unnecessary and doomed holiday syllabus, Stephen enjoyed the stop at the grotto quite a bit.

Already, Stephen has asked me to revisit the grotto on our next trip south, this time a pilgrimage to my wife’s final resting place. Emmitsville was that very memorable stopover for him, although he did like the gift shop at Gettysburg as well. Ironically, the two unplanned stops were more powerful for the both of us, even though I have been planning the ascent of Little Round Top for many years.  I guess that oddity is consistent with all of our pilgrimages, through life. I often assemble and try to execute my own agenda with mixed results.  Sometimes I’ll leave a family member out of an activity if I think that they may be less enthusiastic about my plan than I am.  When instead of over planning, I hand the rudder over at least partially to Jesus, throughout my endeavors, the results are usually much better, more powerful and often more moving that my original idea.  The spiritual wellspring I experienced during the two providential stops on our little weekend trip is continued proof to me that Jesus delights in providing me with more happiness than I expect.