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Former Congressman David Stockman also headed Reagan's Office of Management and Budget. Not of the Reagan White House Office, but the Office of the entire United States. Here's what he said about the failed budget negotiations:
"Fiscal governance in Washington is totally kaput. They never pass an annual budget resolution and enforcement plan, which was taken as a sacred duty back in the day; and there are never even annual appropriations bills for the mere 25% of the budget still subject to the Congressional “power of the purse”.
Instead, what occurs is a perennial string of short-term Continuing Resolutions (CRs) followed by an 11th hour, 3000 page pork-ridden “Omnibus Appropriations” bill that no one has read and which gives log-rolling (i.e. more domestic for more defense) a new definition.
In short, the debt ceiling was the only fiscal control mechanism left. And even that has been neutered time after time in the last decade by the hideous, flat-out lie that if the Treasury on any given day is one dollar short of being able to cover all of its due bills it must default on each and every one of them including interest payments, thereby destroying the credit of the United States. Yada, yada.
Finally, that lie was being put to the test and would have been eviscerated sometime next week. Yet after a lifetime on the public teat, Kevin McCarthy like his two GOP predecessors surrendered to the Doomsday Machine because he works for the GOP wing of the Swamp, not the voters, current and future.
And he did so while expectorating the most risible of lies: Republicans are changing the culture and trajectory of Washington—and we’re just getting started.
Not close. Not in the ballpark or even the catcher’s box behind home plate.
The deal does absolutely nothing to change the current “trajectory” toward fiscal disaster because it reduces nary a dime of built-in spending for defense, entitlements/mandatories, veterans and net interest, while those items account for 89% of the $80 trillion of built-in spending over the next decade."
"In the personal identification documents of subjects of the Russian Empire, there was not a column [for] nationality—there was none. In the Soviet passport there was, but in the Russian one—there was not. But what was there? “Religious faith.” There was a common value, a religious value, association with Eastern Christian religion, with Orthodoxy… There were other values, but this was the defining one: which values do you share?
"That’s why, even today, it doesn't matter to us whether a person is from the east, west, south, or north. If they share our values, they’re one of us."
-- Vladimir Putin
"What we see in Africa today is a kind of silent genocide or silent, brutal, savage war that is occurring in the shadows and all too often ignored by the international community… Christians are going to be targeted and destroyed…. That jihadist groups are in a position to take over not one, not two, but several countries in Africa – take over the whole country or most of several countries – is dangerous.
"It's very dangerous for the national security of the United States let alone the security of the poor people who are there – Christians or Muslims or whoever they are… [The goal of these jihadist groups is] eliminating Christian communities… [Muslims are] given a choice: ‘either join us or you too will face killing and annihilation.’ Christians, of course, are not going to be asked to join. Christians are going to be targeted and destroyed."
-- Former U.S. diplomat Alberto Miguel Fernandez
Charlie was a hard-working and very talented man, but he worked hard at what? He was a campus evangelist and a podcaster. He had thrown himself into the mission of talking about doctrine and comprehensive worldview with nineteen-year-olds. Doing that, he became such a cultural force that he was shot and killed by the darkness we are up against. And at the memorial service for this campus evangelist, you had the president’s cabinet sitting in the front row, the secretary of state declaring the gospel, the vice-president of the United States walking us through the Nicene Creed, numerous faithful Christians pointing the way to Jesus Christ, the president himself present and speaking, a beautiful widow speaking her beautiful words, and with thousands upon thousands in the stadium, and a hundred million people watching around the globe.
-- Doug Wilson
