By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — If news events were Christmas ornaments, many homes’ trees would be shivering with sensory overload this season instead of shimmering beautifully.
Some of the baubles and trinkets among the pine needles would be lovely, others ugly. But there was such a profusion of them that limbs were near to breaking.
The synergy of social media, the assortment of electronic choices, and the Internet feed off each other and speed along news developments. The cascade of events suggested that society had taken up residence at the foot of Niagara Falls.
Each second, the Niagara Falls website says, 3,000 tons of water crash into the gorge. Does that sound like the volume of events sweeping us along today? Some would be lasting, some temporary, others entirely ephemeral. The depth of their durability in history might not be evident immediately.
Some reaction said that President Trump’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel on December 6 would be remembered by Jews not just for centuries but millennia, like Cyrus the Great decreeing rebuilding the Temple 2,500 years ago.
Other developments might not stretch over thousands of years but still had true significance, such as dominant U.S. “news” media choosing to become once again as openly partisan as when newspapers had “Democrat” or “Republican” as part of their titles.
Then there were news items that might burn up a lot of oxygen for a few months, but would they even be useful as trivia questions a few years hence?
Capturing attention as December 25 drew nearer were such events as:
Continued revelations that federal special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is riddled with partisan Democratic activists entirely unsuited to carry forward any impartial investigation of Republican President Trump’s administration, and unable to view the case as anything other than a golden opportunity to undo Trump’s legitimate presidential victory in 2016. Indeed, Mueller had concealed the evidence of partisan bias;
Argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission on whether people of faith such as Colorado baker Jack Phillips have freedom of conscience or must crumple before bureaucrats ordering them to honor serious personal sexual disorientation. The case often was misreported to say Phillips simply wouldn’t fill customer orders;
The acquittal of illegal alien José Inez Garcia Zarate on serious charges in his fatal shooting of innocent bystander Kate Steinle in San Francisco in 2015. He was free to roam only because of San Francisco’s appalling “sanctuary city” leftist policy of releasing into the public serious lawbreakers whom the federal government wants to deport;
The remarkable financial donation of $100 by putatively pro-life U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) to the Senate campaign of radically pro-abortion Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama. It probably wasn’t so remarkable that Flake donated “across the aisle” — Flake, like his anti-Trump Arizona teammate Sen. John McCain, may seem more comfortable with liberal Democrats than the GOP. But it was the small dollar amount.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, a foe of Flake, reportedly mocked him, “Come on, brother, if you’re going to write a check, write a check. . . . Man, you are a total embarrassment.”
Flake seemed so proud of his little check to radical Jones that he even posted its image for everyone to see on Twitter, with “Country over party” arrogantly written on the memo line. Flake has made much of his self-assumed moral superiority, but his small symbolic donation to Jones actually was proof of Flake placing party — that is, the liberal Democratic Party — over the national welfare.
In passing, one also might wonder why the middle-aged Flake’s December 5, 2017, check on a joint account with his wife, Cheryl, was only number 221. Had he only recently opened a new checking account?
Another anti-Trump U.S. Republican senator, Ben Sasse, a pro-lifer representing Nebraska, pointedly said Flake didn’t have to donate to either candidate in the Alabama special election if he didn’t like the Republican nominee.
“This donation is a bad idea,” Sasse tweeted. “It’s possible to be against both partial-birth abortion and child molestation. Happily, most Americans are.”
Sasse shortly followed with another tweet that he “said from day one I wouldn’t vote for either of them.”
The other candidate in that December 12 election is pro-lifer Republican Roy Moore, accused of having forced himself on several teen-age females decades ago.
Although Moore is only one of a number of politicians, often liberal Democrats, facing sexual-harassment charges these days, what’s notable in his race is that the Republican establishment strongly opposed Moore’s independent-minded conservative candidacy well before any of the harassment charges against him.
Indeed, as soon as the initial accusation was made, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and McCain, among others, immediately called for Moore to drop out. This looked suspiciously like a set-up. And Moore’s loss would leave the U.S. Senate almost evenly split, with a precarious GOP majority of only 51 to 49 — just the way Republican stand-patters opposed to reform might prefer.
Recent polls tended to show Moore recovering among voters after the shock of the initial accusations destroyed his strong lead. One speculation was that Alabamans didn’t appreciate distant Northeasterners telling them how to vote.
Dov Fischer, a southern California adjunct professor of law and a rabbi, warned at the American Spectator site that Democrats were using a familiar tactic in the Alabama race, trying to shame moral traditionalists, in effect, into abandoning the candidate who supports their views and voting against themselves.
“They make Republicans feel guilty. They con Christians and religious Catholics and observant Jews into feeling that, somehow, there is a religious or moral imperative to abandon a critical United States Senate seat,” Fischer wrote.
“Then they cynically scoop it up, cobbling together Congressional majorities built on the hands and in the trousers of their House icons and their Senate royalty like Al Franken, Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd, and other gems.”
The results of the election should be known before this hard-copy issue of The Wanderer reaches some readers. Observers will have to wait to learn how lasting the effects of this contentious campaign are.
Looking For Attention
Lest someone believe that Flake’s check to Jones was small because he was about maxed out on political giving, Federal Election Commission records show Flake not having done much candidate donation.
Arizona conservative Republican consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer on December 6 that Flake was just aiming to get media attention.
“It was typical Jeff Flake — all photo op and no substance,” Querard said. “The amount was insignificantly small coming from someone who makes nearly $200,000 a year. And Roy Moore’s campaign is smart enough that they’ll raise at least $10,000 because of it. So Flake did almost nothing to help the cause he claims to care about, actually ends up doing real harm to it, and gets himself back in the media’s eye for a while.
“Plus, he just gave his money to a man who supports abortion up until the moment of birth (partial-birth abortion) while claiming to be giving for moral reasons,” Querard added. “The smart thing for him to have done is to have done nothing and given nothing to either candidate. Naturally, he opted for the media attention.”
Meanwhile, Stephen Kruiser, a conservative activist and co-founder of the first Los Angeles Tea Party, posted at the American Spectator website:
“You can be steeped in conservative principles and oppose any number of Republican candidates. Once you’re providing financial assistance to a very public supporter of abortion, you’ve abandoned the right to call yourself a conservative. Giving comfort to the pro-abortion crowd isn’t worth whatever point Flake was trying to make there.”
As for the trial of the illegal alien accused of killing Kate Steinle, The Wanderer asked northern California conservative commentator Barbara Simpson if she thought San Francisco jurors were thumbing their noses at the nation in defense of illegal immigration and having a sanctuary city.
Simpson replied that the defendant’s immigration status, criminal record, and previous deportations never were mentioned at the trial by either prosecution or defense.
Instead, she said, “I think the focus was put on the gun, and I suspect the jury was filled with people who are afraid of guns, want gun control and have never touched a gun. In fact, at the end, they asked the judge for the opportunity to handle the gun to see how the trigger worked, and the judge refused their request, saying he would not allow ‘any experimentation with evidence’.”
Phoenix conservative Republican activist Rob Haney told The Wanderer he thought the Democratic Party’s negative influence in California factored into the trial verdict.
“California has become the showcase for the Democrat Party’s destruction of Western civilization’s core values,” Haney said, adding that the verdict on “a frequently deported illegal alien was to be expected in the California system of injustice. The Democrats have complete control of all the avenues of power in the state. The news media, entertainment industry, and universities are also controlled by an overwhelmingly left-wing hierarchy.
“Because of the radical-left indoctrination received by the residents of California, the Steinle trial would have had to have been moved to a flyover state for justice to have prevailed,” Haney said. “A sanctuary state like California is going to protect the illegal alien in all circumstances. Their population now demands it.”
Media Meltdown
Meanwhile, dominant media continued to produce one incredibly inaccurate report after another that had a curious way of usually leaning the way liberal media people would prefer them to be. That may please their biased views, but also continues to persuade many of the public that even august news institutions are fakers and liars.
An editorial posted December 5 at the conservative Washington Examiner, headlined, “Media meltdown and the damage it does to democracy,” noted some of the latest propaganda efforts:
“News media misreported stories in one direction, much as when all the mistakes in a cheat’s tax return, oddly, tend to reduce what he owes. In other words, every major ‘mistake’ in the weekend’s reporting tended to confirm what biased, left-liberal reporters already believe or affect to believe. . . .”
“These biases and the inability of reporters to suppress them long enough to do a good job prompts proper public doubt about everything the national news media say. This is bad. It’s very bad,” the Examiner said.
A concrete example was provided in a November 30 article at The Federalist site by Saritha Prabhu, an immigrant from India who described herself as a liberal Democrat but who lost faith after observing coverage by openly slanted media, leading her to agree with “what President Trump has been saying for some time: that they are often dishonest and biased. . . . I watch and read their political coverage with cynical, distrusting eyes.
“It’s not just our politics that is broken; our media is broken too, and hopelessly,” Prabhu wrote. “The bias used to be hidden, but now it is open, glaring, and shameless. Our media outlets have become very tribal and are openly rooting for or against the party and politician of their choice — truth, fairness, honesty, justice, and journalistic principles be damned.”
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress