Sunday, February 16, 2020

“God’s Love for All Mankind”

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

Every once in a while, I think it appropriate to remind Latter-day Saints and others of this very important and quie remarkable document from the First Presidency — which is to say, from the presiding authorities — of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It is a statement that has been of great significance to me in my teaching and other work regarding Islam:

Statement of the First Presidency Regarding
God’s Love for All Mankind
(15 February 1978)

The First Presidency (Spencer W. Kimball, N. Eldon Tanner, Marion G. Romney)
Based upon ancient and modern revelation, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gladly teaches and declares the Christian doctrine that all men and women are brothers and sisters, not only by blood relationship from common mortal progenitors but as literal spirit children of an Eternal Father.
The great religious leaders of the world such as Mohammed, Confucius, and the Reformers, as well as philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and others, received a portion of God’s light. Moral truths were given to them by God to enlighten whole nations and to bring a higher level of understanding to individuals.
The Hebrew prophets prepared the way for the coming of Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah, who should provide salvation for all mankind who believe in the gospel.
Consistent with these truths, we believe that God has given and will give to all peoples sufficient knowledge to help them on their way to eternal salvation, either in this life or in the life to come.
We also declare that the gospel of Jesus Christ, restored to His Church in our day, provides the only way to a mortal life of happiness and a fulness of joy forever. For those who have not received this gospel, the opportunity will come to them in the life hereafter if not in this life.
Our message therefore is one of special love and concern for the eternal welfare of all men and women, regardless of religious belief, race, or nationality, knowing that we are truly brothers and sisters because we are sons and daughters of the same Eternal Father. (“God’s Love for All Mankind,” First Presidency Statement, 15 February 1978)

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2020/02/gods-love-for-all-mankind.html

Chelsea Handler on “Mormonism”

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

Chelsea Handler, it seems, is a comedian.  Who knew?

Anyway, she recently opened up about her childhood and her relationship to religious faith:

“I grew up as a Jew and a Mormon,” she explained.  “My mom was Jewish and my dad was Mormon.”  Having learned a little bit about both religions, though, she opted for her mother’s faith: “I chose Jewish obviously.  Mormonism is so ridiculous.”

I can’t help but think of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:  “For what do we live,” says Mr. Bennet, “but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?

A Yahoo News article about Ms. Handler’s theological reflections says that

It’s not the first time Handler has spoken out about Mormonism. In a contentious 2012 interview on Real Time With Bill Maher, the comedian pushed back on a CNN contributor who said that the religion has “improved millions of peoples’ lives” and created “flourishing” institutions. “But they can’t even drink alcohol,” Handler countered. “They can’t have sex, they can’t have caffeine, they can’t have alcohol … Unless you accept Jesus Christ as your savior in the Mormon church, you go to hell.”

And, really, how can anybody have a decent life or create flourishing institutions without alcohol?  The very idea is ridiculous on its face.

Moreover, plainly, Latter-day Saints can’t have sex.  That’s why Utah’s population has steadily declined since the first Mormon pioneers arrived in the Great Basin in 1847.

No caffeine?  That’s news to me.  I find myself wondering, though, what form of Judaism Ms. Handler adopted.  I’m guessing that it’s not the kind that requires her to abstain from pork and shellfish, to avoid mixing meat and dairy, and to keep a strictly kosher kitchen where no fires can be kindled and no switches switched on the Sabbath.  If it were, I would expect her to find LDS rules about coffee, tea, booze, and tobacco absolutely libertine and licentious by contrast.

As for going to Hell unless you accept Jesus as your Savior, Ms. Handler may not realize that the notion that Jesus is the Redeemer of all humankind, that “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), is not entirely peculiar to the Latter-day Saints.  And, despite her obviously deep doctrinal research, Ms. Handler may not know that Latter-day Saints really don’t believe in Hell as traditionally conceived.  And she may be unaware of the Latter-day Saint belief in the redemption of the dead, whereby those who failed to receive the Gospel in this life still have an opportunity to do so in the life to come.

Indeed, “For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2020/02/chelsea-handler-on-mormonism.html

An ethos that puts commitment making at the center of things

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

On the flight from Salt Lake City to Phoenix last night, I began reading David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (New York: Random House, 2019).  It looks to be an extended argument for, and reflection on, the importance for a good life of strong commitments to one or all of these four things:

A vocation
  • A spouse and family
  • A philosophy or faith
  • A community

  • Reading the opening pages, in which Brooks constantly uses the term commitment, I found myself thinking very much of the various covenants associated with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and particularly those offered in the temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  And, reflecting on those, I thought of this passage from a talk given by Elder Boyd K. Packer at the April 1987 general conference of the Church:

    No matter what citizenship or race, whether male or female, no matter what occupation, no matter your education, regardless of the generation in which one lives, life is a homeward journey for all of us, back to the presence of God in his celestial kingdom.
     
    Ordinances and covenants become our credentials for admission into His presence. To worthily receive them is the quest of a lifetime; to keep them thereafter is the challenge of mortality.
     
    Once we have received them for ourselves and for our families, we are obligated to provide these ordinances vicariously for our kindred dead, indeed for the whole human family.

    Says David Brooks:

    A commitment is making a promise to something without expecting a reward.  A commitment is falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when love falters.  (xviii)

    “Building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when love falters.”

    That language really jumped out at me.  The King James Version of the Bible renders Psalm 15, which can easily be read as a kind of checklist of requirements for admission to the temple, to the “mountain of the Lord,” as follows:

    Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?
    He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.
    He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.
    In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the Lord. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.
    He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.

    It’s the Psalmist’s phrase “He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not” that has long caught my particular attention.  While serving as the bishop of a congregation of young single adults, I often used it when I was sending a young man or young woman or a couple to the temple for marriage.  At that point in their lives, they are giddy with excitement and love, and they can scarcely imagine the need for formal promises to — covenants with — each other.  Surely, they will never be out of love!  The passion will never die!

    But there will inevitably come emotional dry spells when romantic passion is at a low ebb, or where irritation has at least temporarily eclipsed love.  Where pressure interferes or urgent priorities distract.  Or where, perhaps, there is a temptation to stray.  And that’s where the remembrance of solemn oaths and covenants can serve as the backstop — as, perhaps, the last redoubt, the saving sanctuary, the guarantor against passing inclinations or disinclinations.  And, thus, as the preserver of lasting relationships and the path to future satisfaction.

    Back to David Brooks:

    I now think good character is a by-product of giving yourself away.  You love things that are worthy of love.  You surrender to a community or cause, make promises to other people, build a thick jungle of loving attachments, lose yourself in the daily act of serving others as they lose themselves in the daily acts of serving you.  (xix-xx)
     
    It’s about finding an ethos that puts commitment making at the center of things.  (xxiii)

    Covenant-making and covenant-keeping are absolutely at the heart of the Restored Gospel.  As they should be.

    https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2020/02/82892.html

    The 1st woman in US history to cast a ballot was from Utah — here’s how she got to the front of the line


    (by Carter Williams ksl.com 2-13-20)

    One hundred and fifty years ago Friday, just two days after lawmakers made Utah the second U.S. territory to allow women to vote, Seraph Young woke up and got ready for work.
    It just so happened that Salt Lake City had a municipal election that day, so Young went to her local voting center before heading off to her job as a school teacher. Her pit stop to vote gave her a spot in American history.

    So who was Seraph Young and what led her to be the first woman to cast a ballot in the United States? Her place in history starts with a growing movement for women’s suffrage nationwide, which moved westward.

    (for the rest of the article follow the link)

    https://www.ksl.com/article/46717515/the-1st-woman-in-us-history-to-cast-a-ballot-was-from-utah--heres-how-she-got-to-the-front-of-the-line

    Saturday, February 15, 2020

    Dr. Turley hits another one out of the park!



    Dr. Steve Turley gives a fantastic defense for traditional families and how without them society falls.

    Wednesday, February 12, 2020

    Going Out With A Yang: Andrew Yang Drops Bid For President



    Some good commentary on the dangers of being on welfare.

    A rebuttle to Mr. French's article by Sam Liddicott

    (from Facebook 2-12-20)

    French comes so close:



    "she doesn’t *(necessarily)* like Trump’s lying, but the Democrats lie too"




    "millions of Christians have not just decided to hire a hater *(to defend them from haters)* and to hire a liar *(to defend them from liars)*"




    The pejoratives are marked in *( )*




    The point is -- they have to "hire a liar" whatever they hire one for; so the allusion to hypocrisy is an unnecessary insult.




    The question is which liar are you going to hire?




    You have to hire one whether or not you hate your enemy, you can't just leave it to your enemy to do the hiring, or not hire because you love your enemy.




    Politics and government deal with raw power and they attract the sorts of people who are attracted to that.




    He does admit: "they actively ignore, rationalize, minimize, or deny Trump’s sins. They do this in part because they can’t bring themselves to face the truth about Trump and in part because they know it is difficult to build and sustain a political movement if you’re constantly (or even frequently) criticizing the misconduct of its leader" but he over-eggs again,




    It's not that they can't face the truth, but what are they going to do about it? Vote for the other guy? The Democrats?



    Hating on your enemies is bad enough, but it's no reason to vote for your enemy instead.




    These defenses of Trump are not actual justifications to Trump supporters, but they are defenses to his opponents. That the Democrats are as bad is no justification to the republicans but it should be enough to neutralize to the Democrats claims.




    His downplaying of abortion as the distinction is ridiculous as it forces the reader to decide which is worse: apparently (but not really) assenting to hating on your enemies, or just as apparently assenting to the shedding of the innocent blood of babies?




    French can't make an issue of the hating (and transfer it to the voters) without doing the same for the killing.

    Will Somebody Please Hate My Enemies for Me?


    Donald Trump is making it even harder for Christians to defend him, and yet they still do.

    (by David French 2-9-20)

    This year’s national prayer breakfast was a study in contrasts. Washington Post columnist and former American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks spoke before Donald Trump. He delivered a theologically true and moving address about a profound and difficult biblical command—loving our enemies. It began like this:

    (see rest of the article here)

    https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/will-somebody-please-hate-my-enemies?fbclid=IwAR1O7tDuOyxhcBBk2LI7al1U_ekik6c8tiPjiYVC2jfGoGQ1kh70_mgBMXg

    Christianity in Ethiopia

    (by Dan Peterson sic et non blog0

    I published this article in the Provo Daily Herald back at the end of January 1999:

    When the typical American thinks of Christianity, he or she usually visualizes a religion of western Europe and the New World.  If we consider the issue for a moment, however, we must realize that Christianity is actually a Near Eastern religion.  Its spread into Europe and especially into the New World came relatively late.  Indeed, Christian missionaries were preaching in Africa, India, and even China when the English were still mostly pagans.

    Christianity took root in Africa long before it dominated Europe.  In apostolic times, Philip converted an Ethiopian eunuch who was the treasurer of “Candace” (Acts 8:26-40).  (“Candace” is not a name but a title given to the queens of the African monarchy of Meroe, in Nubia, in the modern Sudan.)  Presumably, he returned thereafter to his assignment at court, perhaps founding a small Christian community in the Sudan in the first century AD.  African tradition maintains that this eunuch–whom it knows as Qinaqis–preached in Ethiopia as well.  In the following centuries, Christian teachers and merchants slowly entered Africa along the trade routes of the Nile valley, the Red Sea, and north Africa, which became home to both Tertullian and Augustine, two of the greatest early Latin Church Fathers. 
    In the early fourth century, a Christian merchant named Frumentius was captured by pirates in the Red Sea and sold into slavery to Ezana, the pagan king of Ethiopia.  As a slave at court, Frumentius demonstrated great skill, eventually (like the biblical Joseph) becoming an important minister of the king, who converted to Christianity around 347 AD.  Frumentius was then consecrated as the first bishop of Ethiopia.  Thus, only a few decades after the Roman emperor Constantine embraced Christianity, Ethiopia had become a Christian kingdom.  Although full conversion took centuries, Christianity has remained fundamental to Ethiopian identity ever since.
    But Ethiopian traditions link their country to biblical history at an even earlier period.  The Queen of Sheba and King Solomon are said to have had a son, David Menelik.  Upon the apostasy of Israel after the death of Solomon, say the legends, Menelik was commanded by an angel to take the Ark of the Covenant and a group of faithful Israelite priests and flee to a new promised land, Ethiopia.  Ethiopia thus became the true Israel.  Through David Menelik, medieval Christian Ethiopian kings claimed descent from Solomon, preserving their Solomonic dynasty until the twentieth century. The Ark of the Covenant, which David Menelik brought to Ethiopia, is said still to exist in a church there, from which it is carried in procession once a year, guarded by a beautiful canopy from the gaze and touch of the profane. 

    Although the links have sometimes been tenuous, Ethiopians have maintained ties with the Coptic Church of Egypt for centuries.  Nonetheless, Ethiopian Christianity has remained independent in many ways.  Like the Egyptian Copts, Ethiopians accept a monophysite Christology that was condemned as heretical by the forerunners of the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholics in the fifth century.  Ethiopian independence is most clearly manifest in their canon of scripture.  In addition to the traditional books of the Bible, Ethiopian scripture includes the book of Enoch.  Although fragments have been found in Aramaic in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the book of Enoch has been preserved in its entirety only in Ethiopic manuscripts.
    Christian influence in Ethiopia manifests itself at all levels of society.  The great churches at Lalibela, for example–dating to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries–represent a unique form of Christian architecture–churches entirely carved from rock. Christian themes infuse Ethiopian art in the fine metalwork of religious implements as well as in painting and manuscript illumination.  Biblical figures are often depicted as Ethiopians, with black African features and traditional garments, just as medieval and Renaissance Europeans painted Christ and his apostles as northern Europeans dressed in then-contemporary clothing.
    Today there are some thirty million Ethiopian Christians throughout the world.  In Jerusalem, Ethiopian monks, priests and pilgrims are a common sight.  Tall and ruggedly handsome in their white pilgrim robes, they can be heard singing psalms in Ethiopic and shouting “hallelujah” in a city where they have maintained a small independent Christian community for over a millennium and a half. 

    A non-LDS experience with angels?

    (by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

    Last night, I began to read Marvin J. Besteman, with Lorilee Craker, My Journey to Heaven: What I Saw and How It Changed My Life (Grand Rapids: Revell, 2012).  In it, the late Mr. Besteman, a Calvinist banker in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who died at about the age of 78 in 2012, recounts a near-death experience that he claimed to have had while hospitalized for a serious illness a few years before.  I was struck by his description of the angels that he claims to have seen:

    Suddenly, two men I had never seen before in my life walked into my hospital room.  Don’t ask me how I knew, but immediately I had a sense that these men were angels.  I wasn’t the least bit anxious, either.  (13)

    Don’t ask me how I knew the two strangers who had just walked into my hospital room were angels; I just knew they were.  Beyond any doubt, these were angelic visitors, come to take me home.  (31)

    Plainly, in his account, they didn’t look like a different “species.”

    My angels looked like regular guys, except regular guys usually don’t wear white robes.  Both looked in their mid-forties and stood about 5’8″ to 5’10”.  One had longish brown hair, and the other one had shorter hair. . . .  Everyone has a mental picture of angels, and so did I.  When I had thought of angels before I actually met one, I pictured them as younger than the beings I saw.  I also thought angels were men and women both. . . .  And no, actually, neither one of them had wings.  (I know that’s what you were wondering, because that’s one of the top questions I get about my experience: Did my angels have wings?)  (31)

    My angels looked like men I might see on the golf course, or at a hockey game, except of course they were wearing long-sleeved robes.  Their clothes were white and gauzy, almost filmy, but not quite see-through, and they hung about two or three inches from the floor.  Both angels wore ropes or long rags belted around their waists.  (38)

    https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2020/02/a-non-lds-experience-with-angels.html?fbclid=IwAR0ABPRW812h1ipMPFHIcvvg1TpQ98eHH6w1RpRHwq-hEZSndk2e1Om7SMw

    Sunday, February 9, 2020

    EXPOSED: Ben Shapiro CRUSHES Media For Coverage On Romney


    How Mitt Romney Decided Trump Is Guilty

    Comparing the president’s behavior to that of an autocrat, the Republican senator explains to The Atlantic why he’s voting to convict him.

    (by Mckay Coppins theatlantic.com 2-5-20)

    Mitt Romney didn’t want to go through with it.
    “This has been the most difficult decision I have ever had to make in my life,” he told me yesterday afternoon in his Senate office. Roughly 24 hours later, Romney would deliver a speech announcing that he was voting to convict President Donald Trump on the first article of impeachment—abuse of power. For weeks, the senator from Utah had sat silently in the impeachment trial alongside his 99 colleagues, reviewing the evidence at night and praying for guidance. The gravity of the moment weighed on him, as did the pressure from members of his own party to acquit their leader. As his conscience tugged at him, he said, the exercise took on a spiritual dimension.
    Romney, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, described to me the power of taking an oath before God: “It’s something which I take very seriously.” Throughout the trial, he said, he was guided by his father’s favorite verse of Mormon scripture: Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good. “I have gone through a process of very thorough analysis and searching, and I have prayed through this process,” he told me. “But I don’t pretend that God told me what to do.”
    In the end, the evidence was inescapable. “The president did in fact pressure a foreign government to corrupt our election process,” Romney said. “And really, corrupting an election process in a democratic republic is about as abusive and egregious an act against the Constitution—and one's oath—that I can imagine. It's what autocrats do.”
    According to Romney’s interpretation of Alexander Hamilton’s treatise on impeachment in “Federalist No. 65”—which he says he’s read “multiple, multiple times”—Trump’s attempts to enlist the Ukrainian president in interfering with the 2020 election clearly rose to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” (He told me he would not vote to convict on the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress.)
    Romney’s vote will do little to reorient the political landscape. The president’s acquittal has been all but certain for weeks, as Republicans have circled the wagons to protect Trump. But the Utahan’s sharp indictment ensures that at least one dissenting voice from within the president’s party will be on the record—and Romney seems to believe history will vindicate his decision.  
     
    He also knows his vote will likely make him a pariah on the right. Already, he says, he’s experienced firsthand the ire of the base. At an airport recently, a stranger yelled at him, “You ought to be ashamed!” During a trip to Florida with his wife this past weekend, someone shouted “Traitor!” from a car window.
    Eight years ago, he was the leader of the Republican Party, its nominee for president. Today, he has become accustomed to a kind of political loneliness. Romney famously opposed Trump’s candidacy in 2016, and while the rest of his party has fallen in line since then, he has remained stubbornly independent—infuriating Trump, who routinely derides him in public as a “pompous ass” and worse. As I wrote last year, this dynamic seems to have liberated the senator in a way that’s unlike anything he has experienced in his political career.
     
    Still, when the senator invited me to his Capitol Hill office yesterday, I was unsure what he would reveal. Romney had been largely silent throughout the impeachment proceedings, giving little indication of which way he was leaning. I half-expected to find a cowed and calculating politician ready with a list of excuses for caving. (His staff granted the interview on the condition that it would be embargoed until he took to the Senate floor.)
    Instead, I found Romney filled with what seemed like righteous indignation about the president’s misconduct—quoting hymns and scripture, expressing dismay at his party, and bracing for the political backlash.  
    Romney confessed that he’d spent much of the impeachment trial hoping a way out would present itself: “I did not want to get here.” In fact, that was part of the reason he wanted former National Security Adviser John Bolton to testify about what Trump had told him. “I had the hope that he would be able to say something exculpatory and create reasonable doubt, so I wouldn't have to vote to convict,” Romney said.
    Still, he found the case presented by the president’s defense team unpersuasive. Romney had a hard time believing, for example, that Trump had been acting out of a desire to crack down on corruption when he tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The Bidens’ alleged conflicts of interest may have been “ugly,” Romney said, but it was never established that they warranted a criminal investigation. “No crime was alleged by the defense, and yet the president went to an extreme level to investigate these two people … and for what purpose?” The only motive that made sense, he determined, was a political one.
    Romney was similarly unmoved by the Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz’s contention that a president who believes his reelection is in the national interest can’t be impeached for pursuing a political advantage. “I had Professor Dershowitz for criminal law in law school,” Romney said, “and he was known to occasionally take his argument to its illogical conclusion.” Nor was the senator swayed by the theory that a president can be impeached only for breaking a statutory law. “To use an old Mormon hymn phrase, that makes reason stare,” he said. “The idea that Congress would have to anticipate all of the offensive things a president could possibly do, and then make them a statute?” Romney posed a hypothetical: What if the president decided to pardon every Republican in prison nationwide, while leaving every Democrat locked up? “There’s no law against that!” he said. “So it’s not a crime or misdemeanor. But it’s obviously absurd.”
     
    When I asked Romney why none of his fellow Republicans had reached the same conclusion, he attempted diplomacy. “I’m not going to try and determine the thinking or motives of my colleagues,” he said. “I think it’s a mistake for any senator to try and get in the head of another senator and judge them.” But as he discussed the various rationalizations put forth by other Republican senators, he seemed to grow exasperated. He took particular issue with the idea—currently quite trendy in his caucus—that Trump’s fate should be decided at the ballot box, not in the Senate.
    “I would have liked to have abdicated my responsibility as I understood it under the Constitution and under the writing of the Founders by saying, ‘Let’s leave this to the voters.’” But, he said, “I’m subject to my own conscience.”
     
    When I asked how it felt to be formally disinvited from this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, he laughed and noted that he hadn’t attended the conference since 2013. But it seems clear that his journey from GOP standard-bearer to party supervillain has been jarring.
     
    “I was under the misimpression that what brought Republican voters together was conviction in a certain number of policy points of view,” Romney said. He recalled a political strategist during one of his early campaigns explaining how to court the three main factions of the GOP coalition—social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and foreign-policy hawks. Much of Romney’s career since then has been spent trying to win over ideological purists on the right. In 2012, he said, some Tea Party activists refused to support him, because he didn’t have a plan to balance the federal budget within a single year.
    Now the conservative movement is ruled by a president who routinely makes a mockery of such litmus tests. Deficit reduction? “There’s no purchase for that,” Romney said. Foreign policy? “The letters with Kim Jong Un didn’t seem to frighten people away … The meeting with the Russian ambassador in the White House right after the election didn’t seem to bother people.” Somehow, Romney said, he is the one constantly being told that he needs to “be with the president.”
     
    “I get that a lot—‘Be with the president,’” Romney told me, sounding slightly perplexed. “And I’ll say, ‘Regardless of his point of view? Regardless of the issue?’ And they say yes. And … it’s like, ‘Well, no, I can’t do that.’”
    For now, Romney said, he is bracing for an uncertain political future. He said he can’t predict whether Trump will emerge from the impeachment battle emboldened or constrained, but he doubts the experience has shaken him: “I think what’s fair to say about the president is that he doesn’t change his ways a lot.” Nor is he expecting that their relationship will be easily repaired. (“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” he joked.) Romney acknowledged that his vote to convict may hamper his own ability to legislate, at least for a while. “I don’t know how long the blowback might exist or how strenuous it might be, but I’m anticipating a long time and a very strong response.”
    Though he said he won’t make an endorsement in this year’s presidential election, Romney was clear that he will not cast a ballot for Trump. But, he said, “under no circumstances would I vote for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to become president of the United States.” In 2016, he wrote in his wife’s name, and he told me, “She’ll probably get [a] second vote.”
     
    For months, Romney’s detractors on both the right and the left have searched for an ulterior motive to his maneuvering, convinced that a secret cynicism lurked beneath his lofty appeals to conscience and principle. Just last week, the Washington Examiner ran a story speculating that the senator might be positioning himself for a presidential run in 2024. When I asked Romney about the report, he erupted in laughter. “Yes! That’s it! They caught me!” he proclaimed. “Look at the base I have! It’s going to be at least 2 or 3 percent of the Republican Party. As goes Utah, so goes the nation!”
     
    The truth is that Romney’s decisive break with Trump could end up hurting him even in Utah, a red state where the president is uncommonly unpopular. What that means for his reelection prospects, the senator couldn’t say. (He doesn’t have to face voters again until 2024.) But as he thought about it, another hymn came to mind. “Do what is right; let the consequence follow,” he recited. “And I don’t know what all the consequences will be.”
     

    Knowles: Mitt Romney Is Disingenuous


    The Ukraine cookie jar


    Saturday, February 8, 2020

    Our Long National Nightmare Is Over

    (powerlineblog.com 2-5-20)

    To no one’s surprise, the Democrats’ impeachment drive fell flat in the Senate today. Both articles were decided on a purely party line vote, but for Mitt Romney, who switched sides on the first article (“abuse of power”). The only mild surprise is that no Democrats voted against removal. Doug Jones of Alabama, for one, can forget about any possibility of re-election. But with Jeff Sessions waiting in the wings, he probably figured he had no chance anyway.

    Where do the Democrats go from here? They always knew they had zero chance of conviction, so their only motives were 1) the hope that impeachment would tar President Trump and reduce his chances of a second term, and 2) pure spite. So far, at least, there is little indication that Trump has been hurt politically.

    Impeachment must be viewed in the context of the Democrats’ effort to destroy Donald Trump that began prior to his inauguration. For more than three years, their get-Trump campaign has dominated the news. Mostly, it was the Russia hoax. The Democrats originally intended to use that as the basis for impeachment. When the Mueller report negated that plan, they switched–literally overnight–to the much weaker Ukraine theory. No matter. It was impeachment or bust, if only to continue filling up the nightly news with purported Trump “scandals.”

    Now the smoke will begin to clear, and I don’t think the Democrats will like the landscape that comes into focus. Their Iowa caucuses were a laughingstock. They made fools of themselves (Nancy Pelosi, especially) during Trump’s State of the Union speech. And, most seriously, they don’t have a presidential candidate. Joe Biden is in freefall, and the party’s elders, such as they are, concede that Bernie Sanders would be a disaster. Will they turn to “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg? Will Michael Bloomberg be their savior? Or will Hillary Clinton or John Kerry come out of retirement? I think they are grasping at straws.

    For a long time now, the Democrats have used their hysterical attacks on President Trump to deflect attention from the real scandal–the misuse of the Obama administration’s Department of Justice, FBI and CIA to spy on, and plot against, the Trump presidential campaign and, subsequently, his administration. This is the biggest political scandal in American history, and the Democrats, with the Russia hoax, Ukraine and impeachment now a spent force, are naked, so to speak. One can only imagine with what anxiety they are awaiting the findings of John Durham’s investigation and any criminal indictments that may accompany them.

    Much will change between now and November, but this week has been a dark time for the Democratic Party, and a shining moment for America.

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/02/our-long-national-nightmare-is-over.php?fbclid=IwAR2eEi8HtgTjV3Gvp0d9-LMzfyAI7IypTsGn88HK-yQmmXQBBNtVnw-A8ZY

    Expanding the Politics section

    I really don't like politics, never have.

    I already have a politics section on the blog but up to now it only had 6 entries, that is how much I stay away from politics. However, in this day and age it is impossible to stay away from it it seems.

    And, I have some saved political articles that I don't want to lose, so this seems as good as any place to post them. (I really don't want to create another blog just for some political articles.)

    So, as politics seems to become more and more in our faces I will occasionally put some articles up here. I will post quite a few here to begin with over the next little bit but once I clear out the politics folder they will be come less and less frequent.

    Thanks.