What’s Trump’s Ploy?. . . Both Biden And GOP Cowards Give Bad Examples To Disappointed Nation

By DEXTER DUGGAN

Americans had plenty on their plates over the Thanksgiving holiday, but only a little of the massive volume was turkey and the trimmings.
Heaped higher were serious considerations of what afflicted the nation politically, and what could be expected.
Because of The Wanderer’s Thanksgiving-week production schedule, this article was written earlier than usual, overnight on November 23-24, but certain issues would remain timely regardless of what happened in the courts and elsewhere during the holiday week.
Three topics were Joe Biden giving bad example to others, Republican Party deserters, and a third party as finally feasible.
Consider how Biden used ostentatious displays of his faux Catholicism.
Biden and everyone else knew very well that opposing massive slaughter of innocent preborn babies wasn’t some Catholic peculiarity that had to be excluded from the public square. But he and his groupies pretended that protecting their defenseless lives from torture and death was inadmissible politically.
However, this butchery and required tax funding for it were politically mandatory on the agenda of Biden and anti-Catholic Kamala Harris. Inadmissible to be pro-life but mandatory to be pro-abortion for “Catholic” Biden. What a bad example.
A continuing question, whether Biden cheats his way into the White House or not, is why he insists on welding together strong pro-abortionism with alleged Catholic fidelity.
Is Biden’s conscience hurting so badly that he seeks to balm it by flaunting before the public what amounts to a religion of death?
One thinks of the aphorism about having a bold thief sit down at the dinner table: “The louder he talked of his honor, the more we counted our spoons.”
Or, as eighteenth-century English polymath Samuel Johnson is said to have phrased it, “But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses, let us count our spoons.”
Actually, Biden does think there’s a distinction. He prefers to choose vice.
Or consider this possibility for his contrived religiosity. Biden pretty plainly seems to be preferred by the regnant globalist establishment to be president. One of its goals is to desensitize nations’ peoples to massive permissive abortion, such as cherished by bad Catholic Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Is the idea that the more Biden twirls around his rosaries and unworthily dashes up to Communion, the more that people will conclude slaughtering the preborn is fine for everyone, and not worthy of any objection? Is Biden the designated Judas goat to lead the bewildered U.S. deeper into the abattoir? Biden intentionally gives bad example to imperil others’ souls.
Do all the prelates who made small or no objection to this disgusting supposedly Catholic politician understand why their congregations doubt their own fitness to lead? Because they don’t lead — except when it comes to being out front for failed liberal Dem policies.
In his blog on November 23 (wdtprs.com), Fr. John T. Zuhlsdorf, noting the onslaughts of socialist/Communist revolutionaries in relatively recent history, reminded readers that Biden wasn’t officially a presidential winner yet, although he had an endorsement from the Vatican. Biden, Zuhlsdorf said, “as yet isn’t anything except a soul at risk of Hell.”
Fr. Shenan Boquet, president of Human Life International, posted on November 23: “The last thing this country needs right now is a radically pro-abortion, anti-family and militantly ‘progressive’ administration. We are already experiencing rock-bottom birthrates in our country, well below replacement level.
“Divorce and family breakdown are endemic. Good Christian families feel themselves under assault from increasingly brazen LGBT and anti-life propaganda in public schools,” Boquet added.
Biden did enjoy the advantage that those on his side of the political spectrum can riot as they please to enforce terror, without receiving tough criticism, but those on Trump’s side are just assumed to be law-abiding patsies. National radio host Dennis Prager said that half the country thinks it’s being cheated out of a presidential election, but one sees no right-wing riots showing displeasure.
A second issue as November was ending was the very old one of Republican Party leadership cowards curled up in hopeless surrender to bloodthirsty Democrat marauders while GOP foot soldiers looked on aghast.
Democrat political leaders, no matter how vile their agenda, seem to be pretty strong at sticking together, as shown time and again in their despicable hoaxes against President Trump. But just give a GOP coward a moment to be overcome by his ever-present fears, and he’s frantically waving the white flag again.
Disgust at this spectacle is probably a major reason Trump won in 2016. Voters were willing to take a chance on a brash leader who promised to deliver, not dither, time and again — and he turned out to do exactly that, despite full-fledged war against him by the swamp from the very first.
Presidential candidate after candidate of both parties had vowed to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, but only Trump did, despite establishment howling about the catastrophe sure to ensue. Instead, Trump’s strength kindled a spirit of cooperation in significant Arab capitals.
No Republican president, and certainly no Democrat prez, had ever shown his face right at the National March for Life in Washington, D.C., for nearly a darned entire half-century, but Trump did exactly that, as if pro-lifers were people he was proud to be seen with, not hiding from.
The list could be very long.
Yet amid the 2020 presidential election results that showed strong evidence of massive Democrat voter fraud, here came some prominent Republican politicians to urge that Trump simply concede defeat prematurely and open the way to Biden moral wickedness and the wretched old political swamp that dragged down this nation for so long.
National radio host Rush Limbaugh took a call that voiced the grave disappointments of probably tens of millions of Trump supporters. A man was on the verge of weeping over all-too-typical GOP fecklessness. “We’re tired of being stabbed in the back, Rush!…They do it every time.”
The caller said he’d traveled to join the November 14 crowd of tens of thousands of Trump backers in Washington, D.C., but not a single Republican politician showed up to speak to them. He lamented, “God forbid, what do we have left?” He recalled that Democrat politicians had readily turned out for anti-Tea Party activity of the past, “walking hand-in-hand up the steps.”
These Trump supporters are the people who now give life to the body of the Republican Party, not the old establishment Republicans who fancy that as soon as Trump is in the dump, they can resume their familiar games and deference to power-mad Dems.
What Republican politician, not even Ronald Reagan, had ever been able to turn out big adoring campaign crowds day after day chanting “We love you” to Trump, in cold states and humid ones, thousands of miles apart?
Cognitively impaired, physically declining Biden barely could manage to have any kind of campaign gathering, and certainly not like Trump’s MAGA multitudes.
Do marionette Biden and his masters think they just can sweep all these people under the rug while the corrupt manipulators dust off their globalist magic carpet that flies U.S. jobs, money and power over the horizon to malefactors dying to abuse them all over again?
How many corrupt establishments couldn’t sense their time was over — until they were overthrown? To try to understand the U.S. by consuming its dominant left-wing media is like trying to comprehend the Pacific Ocean by walking in a child’s sandbox. But even sand has its own solid reality, unlike the vapors of left-wing pundits.
The late English observer Malcolm Muggeridge foresaw that colonial rule would end in twentieth-century India while the British masters there seemed to have no idea. One may assume the same for eighteenth-century French royalty soon to be toppled. And on through the tides of history.
The idea of a third party gets gabbed about after election losses, but may seem to be sour grapes more than solid strategy. Or even self-defeating.
A decade ago, the Tea Party movement sprang up in disgust at establishment corruption. Tea Partiers weren’t lapdogs for Republicans. They debated whether they should go the third-party route, but concluded it’d be more effective to have a home in an established party.
Big-government Democrats were hardly their cup of Oolong; they decided that constitutionalism and fidelity to the Founders would receive a better reception within the GOP.
From media reporting, I had formed a picture of flinty economic libertarians unconcerned with morality. Silly me, to ever rely on major media, as I learned when I covered the Tea Party national policy summit in Phoenix in 2011 and found a real spirit of patriotism and affection for the U.S. as divinely established and guided, even if imperfectly so.
In late November we see tens of millions of Republicans inspired by Trump already being instructed by some in the GOP establishment to just give up and accept Dem political depravity, while minorities who were starting to be won over by the Trump message apparently are expected to scuttle back to the Dem plantation and settle for more failure and dependency.
There’s a failure-loving GOP establishment that wants to succeed only when it comes to suppressing conservatives. There’s an immoral Dem establishment that tries to build its dominance on the backs of hopeless-feeling minorities.
If both these establishments think they can keep running the show, is it possible we’re actually at a point when a formidable new third party can coalesce and cast off these husks?
Trump didn’t start campaigning for the presidency in 2015 as a third-partier but as a Republican who went on to strengthen a party apparently still impaired by ingrates eager to dispose of him. And then Dem political fanatics can hound him through criminal courtrooms for years to try to destroy his life that exposed them for being seething, selfish midgets.
It’d be better if Trump can carry forward as leader of an illustrious GOP welcoming others. But there can be another way forward if it comes to that.

Fraudsters Exposed

Meanwhile, a gusher of investigative articles and analyses kept giving weight to how fraudsters stole the election for Biden.
On November 20 Virginia-based Mary Ann Kreitzer’s Les Femmes – The Truth blog hat-tipped to the Canadian Vox Cantoris blog for posting a video the previous day about the Dominion voting system that’s drawing so much suspicion for fiddling with U.S. presidential election results. In Toronto, it turns out, Dominion not only is in the same office building as meddling left-wing activist George Soros’ Tides Canada, but also on the very same floor.
Kreitzer told The Wanderer on November 22: “I think the old adage applies here. ‘You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.’ Politics is a corrupt business and many politicians of both parties are willing to lie and cheat, but the Democrats have made cheating and fraud a cottage industry.
“Between the Dominion voting machines, the mail-in ballots, dead people voting, and double registrations, it’s pretty clear there’s been fraud,” she said. “Enough to undermine the election and give a win to a demented man unfit for office? Hopefully we’ll find out soon. It’s hard to believe Trump’s legal team doesn’t have evidence, because, if they don’t, they’re open to lawsuits and being disbarred.
“Dominion keeps denying their machines allow vote-switching, but their security is questionable and the company has links to the Democrats and George Soros,” Kreitzer said. “The smoke is pretty heavy, and where’s there’s smoke there’s fire. Hopefully, the hard hitters on Trump’s team can target it with a steady stream of truth.”
Blogging abortion survivor Gianna Jessen expressed hope on November 22 that skilled Trump and his team will win because “these people are VERY good at chess.”
The Wanderer asked conservative GOP political consultant Constantin Querard about many pollsters being far off from accuracy in their results, favoring Democrats.
“The fact is that the entire industry is still trying to figure out how to get accurate results,” Querard said. “Most pollsters predicted a Biden win and even called most states correctly, but their margins were generally around four points higher than actual results.
“A few of the pollsters who called 2016 for Trump missed in 2020 as well, although by a smaller margin,” he said. “And the errors were not limited to the presidential race — most GOP candidates for the U.S. Senate also outperformed polling predictions by around four percent.
“They need to figure out how to account for voters who don’t want to be polled, those who are ‘shy’ about their intentions, and they have to refine whatever they are using to predict who will ultimately turn out and vote,” Querard said. “Until then, it may be easier for the general public to accept their results and just slide the numbers four percent toward the GOP candidate.”
In the fight against Biden’s Culture of Death, the role of prayer has been recalled for having ensured the vital sixteenth-century Christian naval victory over the Ottoman Empire at Lepanto. Prayer is indispensable. But that battle involved strenuous combat, too. What is expected of us to repel the Democrat fraudsters’ corruption?

Old Pictures And Nuns Who Get It

By JOE SIXPACK

When I was a kid, I used to laugh at old pictures of my grandfather and how his mother dressed him when he was a kid. Boy, those sure were some funny-looking clothes mothers put their sons in back in those days. I remember thinking how my grandfather and his little friends looked like sissies in those clothes.
Fast forward fifty years.
The other day, I was looking at some old family photos from when I was a little boy. It struck me how my mother dressed me when I was little. I had to smile at the memory of what I thought about my grandfather’s dress when he was the same age I was in those pictures. What goes around comes around, because I was thinking how much I looked like a sissy in those pictures.
Fact is, my grandfather was no sissy. He was every bit a man, and I’m certain he was all boy when he was a kid. In fact, I’m certain of it, because I remember stories he told me of his own childhood. The boy who looked like a sissy in those old photographs was anything but a sissy, as he was doing a man’s work by the time he was ten — learning his father’s trade as a blacksmith.
Neither was I a sissy, despite how my mother dressed me. I, too, was all boy. I recall seeing my mother on laundry day going through my pockets before washing my clothes. She would get a look on her face like she was about to get her hand cut off and held my pants at arm’s length as she stuck that hand in my pants pockets. I asked her when I was older why she did that. She told me it was because she never knew what she might find in my pockets. She said it could be a dead snake or a frog or some other creature she couldn’t identify. Yeah, I was all boy . . . despite the clothing of the time.
But something has happened since those days, and I really can’t put my finger on what it is. When my grandfather got older, he began choosing his own clothes and dressed like a man. The same thing happened to me. When I was twelve and had to begin buying my own clothes with the money I earned for myself, I began dressing like a man. That doesn’t seem to be the case these days, though.
Time was when a man took pride in how he looked and was perceived by others . . . especially other men. His face was clean shaven, his shoes polished, his clothes unwrinkled and clean, his hair combed. Men tried to look like, well, men.
Today, however, men aren’t that way. There’s nothing wrong with a beard, but many men don’t grow beards. They simply go days at a time without dragging the razor across their whiskers, so they go around looking like they’ve been on a four-day drunk or are homeless. Men who work with their hands have never necessarily worn polished shoes and worn unwrinkled clothes, but they did at least comb their hair and looked neat — even if their work made them dirty.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, men these days never bother to grow up, and it shows in their personal appearances. How a man dresses and his personal appearance demonstrate self-respect and that he respects the opinions of others. A man’s personal appearance also shows how much he respects others…especially how he respects Our Lord at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. When I see men coming to Mass wearing T-shirts and cargo shorts with sandals, I wonder why they are still letting their mommies dress them.
After all, they’re not there to visit mommy. They’re there to spend time in the worship and adoration of the Creator of the Universe who is coming to them under the appearances of bread and wine. A man who dresses like he’s going to a picnic isn’t showing any respect at all toward his Creator.
Does how we dress for Mass really matter? Well, in and of itself dressing is morally neutral, as long as it’s modest. But it really does matter, because how we dress for Mass demonstrates a man’s attitude. When a man dresses sloppily for Mass he’s telling everyone his focus is on his own comfort and not at all on the Incarnate Word of God who reposes in the tabernacle and will soon be on the altar and received in Holy Communion.
I hear both men and women say they dress the way they do because it’s more comfortable, or that it’s cooler in the warm weather. Comfort. That seems to be what we’re all about these days, and that priority is the very antithesis of Catholic spirituality.
I recall a group of the Little Sisters of the Poor living in a very hot climate of the country where the humidity always made it feel like it was 10-20 degrees hotter than it really was. They cared for the elderly and the dying who couldn’t afford to take care of themselves. Where their charges lived was air-conditioned and comfortable, as one would expect for those who were being cared for by these remarkable sisters. But the sisters’ living area had no air-conditioning, and they wore their traditional wool habits.
The chaplain for the sisters thought the reason they didn’t have air-conditioning was that they couldn’t afford it, so he purchased a central air unit to be delivered and installed as a surprise for the sisters. When the workmen showed up to install the unit, Mother Superior sent them back to town…with the unit. When Father called Mother Superior to ask why she refused his gift, Mother said, “I don’t think Jesus had air-conditioning on the cross. I don’t think Jesus was comfortable on the cross.” Hmm. Lots to think about in her words, isn’t there?
I’m not advocating doing away with air-conditioning or going out of your way to be uncomfortable. I’m merely trying to drive home two principles of Catholic spirituality. One principle is, comfort isn’t a priority. Being uncomfortable once in a while can be offered up to God as a gift in reparation for your sins and the sins of the world. It makes you a better Catholic, a better man, and a step closer to becoming a saint…which is our primary purpose in this life.
The other principle I’m trying to drive home is, we men must set the example for our families and the community, and we owe Jesus Christ all the respect and love we can show Him for His sacrifice on the cross. If you’ve ever seen Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, then you’ve seen a pretty good depiction of what our Lord went through…for you. And no makeup artist in the world could show the Christ in that movie how He really looked, as one saint described Jesus on the cross as “one open, gaping wound.” We owe Him our best!
Men, we need to keep in mind that our rightful role, demanded by Almighty God, is that we are the spiritual head of our household. It is our responsibility to set the example for our children, our wives, and those outside the fold of the Catholic Church. Mommy doesn’t dress you anymore. It’s time to put on your big-boy pants. It’s time to grow up and be a man!
Men, how can you expect your children to be the sort of adults you want them to be if you don’t set the example? You can’t merely do the minimums and expect them to do the same, because human nature doesn’t work that way. Those you want to set the example for will never do as much as you, so whatever you do they’ll do even less. You have to go above and beyond what is comfortable for you. If you won’t do it for Christ, then at least do it for the sake of your children. Take charge in your household, as God has ordained (cf. Eph. 5-6, et alia).
After you clean up your act, insist that your sons dress like they’re going to visit God . . . because they are. Insist that your daughters dress in a way appealing to God rather than appealing to men — that they dress as they would at the foot of the cross while Jesus hangs there dying for our sins. Not only will you and your family be showing Jesus the proper respect, but you’ll also be going a long way to keeping your children mindful of their duties under the Sixth and Ninth Commandments…those Commandments that deal with sexual purity.
I’d be willing to wager that if you could listen in to your teenage children’s conversations with their friends, pay attention to the shows and movies they watch, check out what they do on the Internet, and review what it is they read, you’d find they don’t have a huge priority in their lives for those two Commandments.
Don’t worry. I’m nowhere near done with the topic of being a Catholic parent, because this is what we believe and why we believe it.
If you have a question or comment you can reach out to me through the “Ask Joe” page of JoeSixpackAnswers.com, or you can email me at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com.
Hey, how would you like to see things like this article every week in your parish bulletin as an insert? You or your pastor can learn more about how to do that by emailing me at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com.

2020 Is A Litany Of Endless Woes… What’s There To Be Thankful For?

By MARY ANN KREITZER

(LifeSiteNews) — Thanksgiving hovers on the horizon inviting us to reflect on the importance of giving thanks to God for our multitude of blessings. It may seem incongruous in this year of so many challenges. What do we have to be thankful for? We’ve faced the illness and death of loved ones, coronavirus lockdowns, cancelled religious services and locked churches, isolation, and unemployment, not to mention wildfires in California, riots ripping apart our cities, and devastating hurricanes with massive flooding on the Gulf Coast. The litany of woes seems endless.
And yet, in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, St. Paul tells us, “In all things give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you all.” What a message to receive only days after a presidential election that may turn out to be a disaster for the unborn, the vulnerable, and people of faith. Many discouraged voters ask, “Why?” even as they await the final result.
But our response should be to turn to God and thank Him no matter what happens, because He promises to “work all things (all things) together for good to those who love Him and serve according to His purpose.” Can fraud and corruption defeat God? Of course not!
King David’s Psalms overflow with messages of thanks. “Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and make a joyful noise to him with psalms” (Psalm 95:2). “Enter His gates with thanksgiving, And His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him; bless His name” (Psalm 100:4). “Praise the LORD! Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; For His loving kindness is everlasting” (Psalm 106:1).
Even the weeping prophet, Jeremiah, called on the people to give thanks in the midst of their suffering under the boot of a pagan empire. He reminded them that God is still in charge and they would not suffer forever. “And out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of them that make merry: and I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will also glorify them, and they shall not be small” (Jer. 30:19).
Cicero called gratitude the greatest of all the virtues and the parent of them all. No day passes without a long list for which to be thankful. From the moment we wake up and put our feet on the floor and hear the birdsong symphony outside our windows until we lay our heads on the pillow at night after gazing at a glorious sunset and a clear blue-black sky glittering with stars, we have multiple reasons to give thanks.
Gratitude offers benefits, not only for the soul, but it’s healthy for the body as well. Researcher Giacomo Bono focuses on the impact of gratitude, particularly in young people. In a four-year study of 700 students ages 10-14, researchers compared the 20 percent “least grateful” with the 20 percent “most grateful.” Grateful students were happier, more hopeful, found more meaning in their lives and experienced fewer negative emotions and depressive symptoms.
Bono summarized the findings, saying they “suggest that gratitude may be strongly linked with life-skills such as cooperation, purpose, creativity, and persistence and, as such, gratitude is a vital resource that parents, teachers, and others who work with young people should help youth build up as they grow up….More gratitude may be precisely what our society needs to raise a generation that is ready to make a difference in the world.”
Bono’s research led him to develop a classroom gratitude curriculum for students. The Greater Gratitude Science Center offers two programs, one with 30 activities for K-8th grade and one offering four classes for older students who are encouraged to keep a gratitude journal and to make a thankful attitude “intentional.” One lesson plan focuses on seeing the good in others, pointing out that:
“You can spend all of your time and energy thinking about all the things that go wrong in life, looking at people’s negative characteristics, and doing things to feel better about yourself at the expense of others. — Or you can choose to appreciate all the good things that you have in your life, recognize people’s positive characteristics, and do things that make others feel better about themselves.”
The program uses a “fill the bucket” metaphor urging students to affirm the goodness they see in others in specific ways. Did a friend tell you a joke that lifted your spirits? Say thank you. Did you drop your books and someone you hardly know helped pick them up? Acknowledge their kindness. Fill their buckets with affirmation. By “filling the buckets” of others, you fill your own.
That an attitude of gratitude makes positive changes in a person’s life seems like common sense, but it’s also confirmed by scientific studies. Bono compared the results of the full gratitude curriculum with classroom instruction and activities with a control group using only a web gratitude app called GiveThx. At the end of six weeks, students took a “well-being survey.”
Researchers found that the students who took the full curriculum showed advances over the control group in a number of measures, including emotion regulation, motivation to succeed, improved relations with teachers and their peer group, and a greater sense of the meaning of life. Parents who want to assist their own children would benefit from studying the results of Bono’s research.
Gratitude is itself a tremendous blessing for which to be grateful. A grateful heart is a healthier heart, both physically and spiritually. While Bono’s program says nothing about God, promoting natural virtue and ethics echoes God’s presence. Grace builds on nature, and gratitude for the beauty we see around us and for the people in our lives can easily lead to gratitude for the author of beauty and life itself.
May we magnify gratitude by making it not only a virtue for a season, but for a lifetime. As Catholics, we have a virtual feast of models who teach us to be grateful every day. St. Teresa of Avila offers us this gem, “In all created things discern the Providence and wisdom of God, and in all things give Him thanks.” Amen!
Happy Thanksgiving!
(Mary Ann Kreitzer writes from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and blogs at LesFemmes-theTruth.)

Two-Time Senate Loser . . . Establishment Stumbled Its Way Into Flipping Arizona Into The Blue

By DEXTER DUGGAN

PHOENIX — Republicans seemed to face severe difficulties in U.S. Senate races in the 2020 general election. After all, this time around the GOP was defending 23 spots in the Upper Chamber, including two special elections, and the Democrats only 12 seats. Just to start with, here was a mathematical burden. In warfare, would you rather have to defend 23 forts, or only 12?
Plus, everyone was told repeatedly of the “blue wave” that would sweep away Republicans. Disaster loomed for the pachyderms, the pundits chorused.
But the commentariat failed again. The blue wave was another of its fictions. The GOP even flipped one Democratic Senate seat, in Alabama, while losing two of its own, in Colorado and Arizona. The results provided more evidence there was no honest way for cognitively declining bad Catholic Joe Biden to have defeated energetic, pro-America Donald Trump for president, but that’s an argument for a different article.
Attention turns to Georgia’s two Senate special elections on January 5, with the balance of power in the Upper Chamber to be decided in those runoffs. In the nation’s capital, the Republicans hold 50 seats and the Democrats and the allies who caucus with them are at 48.
If the donkeys win the two spots for the Peach State, a 50-50 tie vote in the Senate would be broken by the vice president, who would be anti-Catholic Dem Kamala Harris if she somehow attains that position.
However, Senate control with a GOP majority already would have been assured if only Republican incumbent Martha McSally had managed to hold her seat in Arizona, instead of losing to Biden-like Dem challenger Mark Kelly, a pro-abortion gun-grabber who, too, figuratively hid in a basement.
The loss by McSally is another powerful lesson of the negative results when meddling “wise men” off in the distance pick who they declare to be “electable” moderates to win elections. This has harmed the GOP before. One hopes that a new Trumpian spirit lessens this kind of interference henceforth — although back-patting establishments fight hard against change.
McSally enjoys the dubious distinction of having lost both of a single state’s U.S. Senate races to liberal Democrats within two years. First she was cajoled into making the 2018 race for the seat opened up by the retirement of unpopular one-term GOP Sen. Jeff Flake, but she lost that to left-wing Dem Cong. Kyrsten Sinema.
Amazingly, almost immediately after that loss, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey picked McSally off the floor and put her into Arizona’s other Senate seat that had been held by cancer-ravaged Sen. John McCain right up until his death in August 2018, even though the gravity of his poor health should have effected his resignation sooner. McCain had been elected to his sixth Senate term less than two full years earlier, in November 2016.
Let’s try to explain what brought us to the spectacle of two-time loser McSally by first recalling some other political players, without becoming too labyrinthine.
In December 2015 conservative GOP activist Kelli Ward, D.O., resigned her seat as an Arizona state senator so she could focus on challenging McCain in the late-August 2016 Republican primary. For some reason, McCain wasn’t satisfied after having served two terms in the U.S. House then five six-year terms in the Senate seat that opened up with Sen. Barry Goldwater’s retirement in 1986.
Even though McCain was a longtime internationally known politician smiled upon by the liberal elite, and had plenty of backroom clout with the Arizona political establishment, Ward managed to win nearly 40 percent of the primary vote, while McCain was just over 51 percent, with about nine percent of the vote going elsewhere. About a six percent change in the Ward-McCain tally would have toppled the incumbent.
A warning of percolating discomfort with the former Vietnam POW had occurred in 2014, when both Arizona state and county GOP committeemen had censured McCain for being untrue to the GOP platform, a rebuke that galled McCain but was brushed off by the McCain-adoring Arizona Republic, the state’s largest daily.
After her defeat, the energetic Ward paused only briefly before announcing in October 2016 that she was running against Arizona’s other “moderate” GOP Senate incumbent, Flake, whose primary still was nearly two years away. Flake continued raising money for his race but sent shockwaves when in October 2017 he announced he would only serve out his one term.
It looked like Ward would be rewarded for her campaign dedication and breeze through the GOP primary basically unopposed in August 2018 on the way to the general election. But horrors, came the cry from the Eastern wise men in 2017: Ward isn’t “electable,” she’s an “extremist,” we must instead have a “moderate” who draws in all the wonderful votes.
The wise men like GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — back in the day before Trump had much chance to strengthen McConnell’s spine — and Karl Rove strove to beguile two-term “moderate” Cong. McSally, a more-liberal Republican who may have better suited her southern Arizona congressional district if not the state.
Reluctant to make the race, McSally finally announced her entry in January 2018, more than a year after Ward jumped in. By strange coincidence, former Maricopa County GOP Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced in January that he wanted the seat, too. The conservative Arpaio may have been entirely sincere, but he could have had the effect of draining off some momentum from Ward.
While McSally made campaign commercials depicting herself as a fire-breathing border enforcer — which wasn’t her record — she didn’t seem to care to appear at candidate debates. I attended one of them at a Mexican restaurant where both Ward and Arpaio presented themselves well, but the invitation for McSally to participate left the audience looking at an empty chair.
Meanwhile, The Arizona Republic ran some remarkably candid editorials — that is, the newspaper’s own official view, not some opinion columnist’s — to reassure “moderate” readers that McSally was just talking tough in order to win, as McCain and Flake had to do, but don’t worry about that.
Lamenting that GOP primary elections “are fought in the lowlands of the extreme right,” one prominently displayed Republic editorial said, “In the past, that has meant moderates like John McCain and Jeff Flake have masqueraded as hard-liners on immigration. . . . Now it’s McSally’s turn.”
This thinking may have wowed the moderates, but it hardly excited the conservative base.
Although Ward and Arpaio lost the primary to McSally, GOP state committeemen chose Ward in January 2019 to be state Republican chairman for a two-year term.
Over on the Democratic side for the Senate race, meanwhile, three-term left-wing Cong. Kyrsten Sinema also had been reluctant to surrender her congressional position until she saw an opportunity with Flake’s retirement creating the Senate vacancy. On this campaign trail, Sinema moderated her Green Party and strident feminist background.
On the night of the general election in 2018, McSally was ahead in the Senate vote, but one of those fabled long counts — like the one that gave left-wing Dem Janet Napolitano the Arizona governorship over conservative former Cong. Matt Salmon in 2002 — eventually designated Sinema as victor.
The Associated Press in 2018 noted that the vote count stretched from the Tuesday election until the following Monday.
Upon being declared the loser, McSally released a rather strange concession video as she relaxed on her couch at home with her golden retriever, Boomer, who wanted a handshake and may have drawn more attention than his owner. CNN headlined, “Dog steals show during concession speech video.” Time said that “unbothered dog is the true star of this concession video.”
She didn’t seem too distressed at her loss, and some Arizonans commented that she seemed to think she soon would be a U.S. senator anyway.
After all, when Gov. Ducey had named former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl to fill the deceased McCain’s seat in September 2018, Kyl openly proclaimed he didn’t intend to stay there long. Well, the seat would come before the voters in 2020. That wasn’t so long, was it?
But Kyl was only a piece of stage dressing, a placeholder, and shortly after McSally lost to Sinema, Kyl stepped aside so Ducey could make Senate loser McSally a senator anyway, at least for two years. That left a bad taste in some voters’ mouths, but Ducey’s move was consistent with the ways of the McCain establishment that survived its originator.
When Ducey had moved to Arizona as a young man, he got his first job with beer distributor Jim Hensley, the father of McCain’s second wife, Cindy. That would draw Ducey into the McCain orbit.
McSally’s foe in the 2020 general election, unpleasant-looking Democrat Kelly, is the husband of former Cong. Gabrielle Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt in Tucson in 2011. Kelly played the Arizona equivalent of Biden by hiding out while liberal media protected him from having to account for his left-wing pro-abortion and anti-gun positions.
Whether the election results were thoroughly honest or not, Kelly defeated McSally for her second Senate loss in two years. The Eastern wise men didn’t know best either time.
Three sources replied to requests by The Wanderer for their observations.
Conservative Republican political consultant Constantin Querard said on November 15: “McSally was not a good candidate, and she ran campaigns that seemed to ignore whatever unique qualities she had that voters might want in a senator from Arizona.
“As a congresswoman she was a moderate who didn’t care very much about what her party thought of her votes, but she ran for the Senate on both occasions as a Trump Republican, which she wasn’t,” Querard said
“Voters seemed to sense that it wasn’t genuine and she lost in 2018 and then again in 2020 when she ran a campaign that was almost identical to the losing 2018 effort.”
Northern California commentator Barbara Simpson said on November 15: “It’s a sad reflection on Arizona voters that Martha McSally lost the election to Mark Kelly. It’s just another step in turning the state liberal, and Kelly is just the guy to do it. Like higher taxes? Like more government intrusion into private property? Like green politics? Like more controls on your constitutional rights to own guns? You got him — his name is Mark Kelly.
“Whether he won because of his politics or because he was an astronaut or because so many liberal Californians moved into Arizona and brought their voting habits with them, the result is the same. Arizona is on the slide down and it is sad to see,” Simpson said.

A Legendary List

A retired chairman of the Phoenix-based Maricopa County Republican Party, Rob Haney, said on November 16: “Sen. McSally’s defeats should not be viewed through a one-decade time prism. They were a century in coming and should be viewed in context to Founder John Adams’ famous comment that our Constitution was meant only for a religious and moral people.”
Haney, a veteran foe of McCain, said: “McCain’s list of moral betrayals is legendary. McSally’s campaign statement ‘I love John McCain’ identified her as part of the Republican establishment/McCain legacy and created an opposing candidate on her right in a very contentious Republican primary.”
Republican businessman Daniel McCarthy opposed McSally in the 2020 GOP primary but received only about one-quarter of the vote.
“McSally’s comment also alienated her from the religious conservatives who were well familiar with McCain’s list of betrayals and aided her defeats,” Haney said.
“The last century has seen an infiltration of Communists and socialists into all of our cultural institutions. This has culminated in the potential overthrow of our capitalist, economically based constitutional republic,” he said.
“By corruption, most Catholic hierarchy throughout the world have played their part in replacing free-enterprise governments with Godless, socialist regimes. Liberation theologies’ elevation of the Catholic teaching ‘preferential option for the poor’ has been used by them to advance their socialist ideology.
“One of their most destructive methods of this was to undermine the American judicial system through their support of illegal immigration. They conflated illegal immigration with legal immigration, which in time resulted in the overwhelming Democrat vote and the abandonment of God/Truth. This is most clearly seen in California’s flip from a Republican to Democrat stronghold and now Arizona’s also, with Texas in the wings,” Haney said.
“With the bishops’ compliance, or at the least their silence, the Democrat Party has rejected God (Truth). Their lies now dominate every aspect of our culture,” Haney said. “Even the Pope sanctions the takeover of the Catholic Church in China by the Communists. If Trump’s voice is lost, there will be no country left that will oppose China or support Israel.”

A Beacon Of Light… Autumn And Advent

By FR. RICHARD D. BRETON JR.

(Editor’s Note: Fr. Richard D. Breton Jr. is a priest of the Diocese of Norwich, Conn. He is currently the parochial vicar of St. Andrew Parish in Colchester and St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Lebanon. He received his BA in religious studies and his MA in dogmatic theology from Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Conn.)

As the autumn leaves fall to the ground, we notice the days shortening. Daylight fades as the darkness of the night comes slowly upon us. On October 31, we entered daylight savings time. As the darkness creeps upon us and snatches away part of the day, we feel the struggle within us.
This is reminiscent of the days of the Prophet Isaiah who foretold the coming of the Light of all Light. Isaiah said:
“The people who walked in darkness, have seen a great light; for those living in a land of deep darkness, a light has shined upon them” (Isaiah 9:2).
With these words we enter the Season of Advent. Advent is the time we journey through the darkest days of the year and are reminded the Light of Christ conquers all darkness. During Advent there are many symbols used to assist us through the journey of darkness.
The most visible symbol is the Advent Wreath. Advent Wreaths are circular, representing God’s infinite love, and are usually made of evergreen leaves. The evergreens represent the hope of eternal life brought by Christ. Within the Advent Wreath are candles that generally represent the four weeks of the Advent season. The flames of the candles represent the light of Christ coming into the world.
Although each of the candles can be attributed its own significance, the candles specifically symbolize the Christian concepts of hope (week one), peace (week two), joy (week three), and love (week four). The candles usually are three purple and one rose colored. The three purple candles remind us of the penitential aspect of the season, while the rose-colored one represents the halfway point.
The Third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday. This Sunday is a time to rejoice because, in the distance, we begin to see the glimmer of light as the dawn from on high is close upon us.
Many Advent Wreaths also have a white candle in the center to symbolize the arrival … Continue Reading

Thanksgiving Plans…Or Not

By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD

This month, in fact this week, is Thanksgiving and, apparently, it has not been totally banned, although some of our political leaders and medical bureaucrats are telling us that it might be best to skip friends and family celebrations this year so we can all be around for next year. A little silly, in my book, since there is no guarantee that any of us, especially our elderly parents and grandparents, will be around in a year.
So in order to do my part in the face of the pandemic, as if I haven’t been isolated enough, I decided to look into some of the recommendations our leaders have given us for how to handle this week’s holiday. And as I reviewed them, I wondered if perhaps this was just a way to extend their control over their citizens. After all, to many of us the pandemic seemed to be the perfect vehicle for some politicians to exert control over the public almost as if they were trying to see how far they could push us.
Many used the virus as an opportunity to flex their muscles against the Church, demanding that it close its doors completely in some places or drastically and ridiculously limit attendance, sometimes to as few as 10 in a cathedral that could seat 2,000. In some locations, drive-in services where no one left their vehicles and heard their ministers over low-powered FM stations were banned and their drivers ticketed.
And, of course, the classic example was that due to the disease we could not safely vote, thus the need for mail-in voting, which would, according to the experts, provide a safe, tamper-proof way to beat the virus and safely choose our leaders.
So much for the experts. And as I researched some of … Continue Reading

Take No Survivors, Says Post Writer . . . Leftists Start Making Their Lists, But Not For Christmas Gifts

By DEXTER DUGGAN

The voting discrepancies that were manipulated in the Trump-Biden presidential contest by Democratic fraudsters are so widespread, will their full measure ever be known?
In the meantime, there absolutely was no reason for Republican President Trump to cede any power quickly to Democrat Joe Biden that would allow left-wing thugs further force over law-abiding Americans.
Vote-counting in the George W. Bush-Al Gore presidential race in 2000 lasted more than a month for just a small part of one state, Florida. Now, however, Trump was being urged to surrender soon by his foes even though several entire states were immediately at issue, plus who knows how many other areas.
Preventing Biden from gaining any sort of authority over law enforcement that should protect us was simply wise when a person recalled that throughout the summer, the basement-dwelling bad Catholic silently watched as left-wing mobs terrorized U.S. cities, until the Democrat was urged even on CNN to say something negative lest he damage his election chances.
If cognitively impaired Biden were to be assured prematurely that he would be gaining control of presidential power, what reason would he have to hold back terrorists aching for revenge upon Trump and his supporters? Trump is the president and has every reason to think he will be for another four years.
This is the time for fervent prayer and sacrifice that the U.S. and rest of the world be delivered from a host of demonic evils, and that all bad Catholics and everyone else undergo their needed conversions.
When tens of thousands of Trump backers rallied … Continue Reading

Children Are Prime Targets Of Pandemic Panic

By CHRISTOPHER MANION

A June survey by the Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, found that “more than 40 percent of women surveyed changed their plans of when to have children or how many children to have, because of the pandemic. One-third of women (34 percent) planned to get pregnant later or have fewer children.”
Amidst all the power-plays using the Pandemic Panic as their template, the war on community, family, and children qualifies as the most grotesque. And the prospect of a possible Biden administration has them salivating all the more.
Had the China Virus not been dumped on the United States this year, Donald Trump would have won reelection with ease. His success lay not only in the economy but in the culture, especially in his pro-life advocacy and the policies it produced.
Joe Biden would reverse all of it. Recognizing that abortion is the driving force that unites every Democrat faction, he has promised to write Roe v. Wade into law — undoubtedly going further to proclaim loud and clear a potential death warrant for any and all unborn.
Moreover, Biden would force the taxpayer to pay for all abortions here at home, and millions more abroad: He would strike down Trump’s expanded Mexico City Policy — the one that keeps tens of millions in U.S. taxpayer funds from paying for murdering Third-World unborn children. Of course, those are primarily what Margaret Sanger called the Blacks and Browns, echoed by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s “populations that we don’t … Continue Reading

When I Was Too Little…

By JOE SIXPACK

Little Janie was coloring in her coloring book while her mother sewed a few feet away. All at once, Janie got up and ran over to her mother. She climbed up into her mother’s lap and threw her arms around her neck and kissed her. Then laying her little head on her mother’s shoulder, she whispered into her mother’s ear, “Mommy, I love you.”
Her mother hugged Janie and asked, “Why do you love me, sweetheart?”
With tears in her eyes, she answered, “Because you loved me when I was too little to love you back.”
As I recall from my reading, the very first question in the old Baltimore Catechism is, “Why did God create me?” If you think about it, that’s one of the most profound questions man has ever asked. And this is a question man has asked in every age, baffled in search of an answer. Maybe even you have asked that question. Although it’s baffled people throughout the centuries, our Old Covenant brethren, the Jews, have had the answer to that question for over 5,000 years, and we Catholics have had it passed on to us for 2,000 years. Unfortunately, most of us seem to have forgotten the answer, and in the uncertain times we live in we need to know and understand the answer now more than ever.
God created us to know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this life so we may be happy with Him forever in the next life. Once we come to know God we can’t help but to love Him. After we learn to love Him it’s a natural extension to want to serve Him. If we persevere in our service to Him, God will reward us with eternity in Heaven with Him.
Think for a moment about the explanation the Church teaches for why God created us. He created us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in … Continue Reading

It Always Has Been… Politics Is A Dirty, Nasty Business

By BARBARA SIMPSON

(Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on WorldNetDaily, www.wnd.com, November 6. All rights reserved. Barbara Simpson has a 20-year radio, TV, and newspaper career in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.)

I remember the good old days when I was first registered to vote and did my patriotic duty in my first presidential election. It really meant something to me — I was young and naive!
Actually, I take part of that back. Yes, I was young, but I wasn’t naive about politics. That’s because my parents were active in politics at all levels. They got involved locally, and it grew from there. My mother eventually was elected state committeewoman, so we knew politicians up through the state level and higher.
Quite frankly, a lot of those proverbial political meetings in “smoke-filled rooms” took place across the round table in our dining room. I watched and listened and remembered.
It was quite an education. I saw the good and bad and realized at a young age that politics at its base is a dirty business and that the people we think are doing what they do for the betterment of the city, county, state, or country, aren’t always on that side of the table.
I saw firsthand how the “other” side will use dirty tricks to get what they aim for and that in defense, “our” side will do the same. I saw what that does to people who naively believe that getting involved in politics and running for office is a good thing to do and will be appreciated by both sides of the political spectrum.
One instance I recall was a man who ran for a local office, believing it was a patriotic thing to do. He was a Democrat. The party in power in his jurisdiction was the GOP.
He was innocent of the machinations of the political system; he just believed in the issues at hand and wanted the best for the people. He also was a naturalized citizen and didn’t realize that the other side would try to destroy him for that.
So brutal was the campaign against him that when he eventually lost the election, he vowed never to vote again. And he didn’t — even though he lived to be almost 100.
I believe it was a loss to our democracy and to our system, and a personal tragedy for this American and his family. But the essence of what happened to that man is reflected in the politics we see today. It is a cut-throat business, and it doesn’t matter whether the individual is a Democrat or a Republican, or any of the other parties.
Anyone who has paid any attention to national politics over the years knows just what … Continue Reading