The significance of this story is that many who believed Mr. Smollett’s account weren’t satisfied with wanting to bring the perpetrator of that alleged assault to justice, or even with standing in solidarity with Mr. Smollett as a victim. No, those “believers” immediately and with certainty blamed President Trump and his supporters for the outrage committed against Mr. Smollett. And it wasn’t only activists – many Democratic politicians, including several who are running for president, unquestioningly accepted that the story was true, and did not hesitate to blame the President and those who support him. Those candidates, and the mainstream news media, did not even qualify their opinions with the word “alleged” or one of its variants. They believed Mr. Smollett’s words and charges, and were never skeptical or suspicious of any detail, and the media and the candidates used the the story to hammer the President, a man whom, for all his faults, was not out on the streets of Chicago that night with a noose and “an unknown chemical substance” prowling for Mr. Smollett or anyone else. He could not possibly have committed the attack, yet was blamed for it anyway. And it bears repeating that: A) the incident that Mr. Smollett claimed took place was manufactured by him and people he paid; and B) the President and people wearing MAGA hats had nothing to do with it.
BY JOHN SHAFFER Most of us have heard of the Jussie Smollett case. The Chicago police have charged him with faking a “hate crime” which he attempted to blame on some unidentified supporters of President Trump but which was, they charge, perpetrated by Mr. Smollett himself and people he hired. The details of the story as first presented by Mr. Smollett always smelled a bit fishy, and the local Chicago media and most conservatives who commented on the original story pointed out inconsistencies and circumstances that made it unlikely that the incident took place as the “victim” claimed. Supporters of Mr. Smollett, and the national mainstream media believed him at that time, and some still do, but the significance of this story is not that someone faked a “hate crime,” because such crimes have been faked by the hundreds in the last couple of years. Even one actual “hate crime” or politically motivated attack is too many, and the country does not need additional ones hoaxed up by the political right or the political left.
The significance of this story is that many who believed Mr. Smollett’s account weren’t satisfied with wanting to bring the perpetrator of that alleged assault to justice, or even with standing in solidarity with Mr. Smollett as a victim. No, those “believers” immediately and with certainty blamed President Trump and his supporters for the outrage committed against Mr. Smollett. And it wasn’t only activists – many Democratic politicians, including several who are running for president, unquestioningly accepted that the story was true, and did not hesitate to blame the President and those who support him. Those candidates, and the mainstream news media, did not even qualify their opinions with the word “alleged” or one of its variants. They believed Mr. Smollett’s words and charges, and were never skeptical or suspicious of any detail, and the media and the candidates used the the story to hammer the President, a man whom, for all his faults, was not out on the streets of Chicago that night with a noose and “an unknown chemical substance” prowling for Mr. Smollett or anyone else. He could not possibly have committed the attack, yet was blamed for it anyway. And it bears repeating that: A) the incident that Mr. Smollett claimed took place was manufactured by him and people he paid; and B) the President and people wearing MAGA hats had nothing to do with it. BY JOHN SHAFFER We traditionalists lament the loss of many qualities and conditions that once were common but have been disappearing in recent years, but there is one American tradition that never seems to go away, and that is the mounting US national debt, which just crossed the $22 trillion mark. President Trump and the Republicans, not without merit, clobbered President Obama for the ballooning debt during his eight years in office – but we have surpassed the $20 trillion, the $21 trillion and now the $22 trillion marks since President Trump took office, and the annual deficit for the current fiscal year may come in around $900 billion, which should be pretty embarrassing for any President, especially a Republican one.
Sad to say, it doesn’t seem to make much difference what party controls Congress or has the White House, the debt climbs anyway. Furthermore, we consider it a “victory” when a year’s budget deficit is less than the previous one – even though all that means is that the debt continues to rise. We had a brief period during the second term when Bill Clinton was President and Republicans controlled Congress when there were budget surpluses, but in the Bush years they soon disappeared with the terrorist attacks of September 11, the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and, later, with the prescription drug benefit, and continued to grow in the Obama years with Obamacare, the auto bailout, the stimulus package and much more. BY JOHN SHAFFER The first time we wrote about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was after she unseated 14-term Congressman Joe Crowley in the 2018 primary election. We were aware that she represented the leftward course of the Democrat party, but we had no idea that she would become the intellectual, spiritual, moral, and public relations face of the party so rapidly. A media favorite, she has already reached the iconic level of being known by her initials, same as FDR, HST, DDE, JFK, and LBJ. She is the “go-to” person for every issue imaginable, and as the de facto leader of the Democrats in Congress and everywhere else, her public statements have been frequent and highly-sought. The “freshman class” of the present US House of Representatives includes 59 Democrats and 29 Republicans. We doubt if the other 87 in combination have received as much media attention as AOC has.
AOC’s latest public pronouncement is “The Green New Deal,” which in keeping with the current fashion we will identify as “GND.” AOC, assisted by extreme progressive Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, introduced GND, and it almost immediately was endorsed by most of the big name candidates for the Democrat nomination for President. By the way, almost all of these folks also have endorsed “Medicare for All,” and are undaunted by that $32 trillion price tag over ten years, and also want to end private insurance, so it should come as little surprise that the cost of GND is something that doesn’t concern its sponsors. by John Shaffer ~ editor@myweeklysentinel.com Last week we wrote about New York State’s recently enacted Reproductive Health Act, which legalizes abortions up to the point of delivery. This makes the Governor of that state and the legislative advocates of the measure appear pretty callous toward unborn life, but they must be at least a little troubled by the idea of killing a baby at the point of delivery, because they defend the practice by declaring that although legally late-term abortions can occur for any reason, most of them are due to severe fetal deformity or imminent threat to the life of the mother. The main problem with that claim is that the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which is a pro-abortion group, states: “Data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal abnormality or life endangerment.” We add that if a baby is killed as it is being delivered, it still must be delivered, meaning that whatever risk there was to the life of the mother because of delivery, it would continue to exist.
The most unchallengeable opinion we have heard on the subject comes from Frank Stephens, a man who has Down Syndrome, who in his testimony to Congress eloquently defended his life, and who this week told an interviewer “I don’t want to make abortion illegal. I want to make abortion unthinkable.” We emphasize that Mr. Stephens has a condition which, if the laws introduced by the Democrats are enacted, would perhaps make a future Frank Stephens a candidate for an abortion. |
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