It’s already started. The mainstream is trying it’s level best to create some controversy about immigration. Trump has put Canada on notice, and I can’t help wondering how everybody’s feeling about it. I know Canadians are proud, but I’m pretty sure everywhere is going to be jealous.

The whole world is seeing what’s going on over here, and I can’t imagine they don’t want in. They’re going to see the exuberance of Americans and the nations are taking note. I get the feeling that the “save the planet” movement has taken its course. How can the planet be saved if China and India won’t play ball? Has anybody seen Al Gore lately?

Our heads may explode on January 20th. There are geniuses working to cut waste now. We thought we’d never see it. Everything was so entrenched that it was just the way things worked, and we didn’t know how it would end, but it wouldn’t be pretty. Is it dawning a new day?

The only thing I have to go by is the election of Ronald Reagan after four years of embarrassment. It was like someone turned on the afterburners. Business ramped up in a big way. It’s not nearly as bad now as it was during the Carter years, but it’s a different situation. But no less important.

The way we were going in the Carter years, we wouldn’t have lasted. Ronald Reagan turned things around in a way that has lasted through all these bad presidencies. At least the nation wasn’t completely destroyed yet. There was only so much they could do. But they’ve grown our bureaucracy until we thought it would never be put right. Hang on to your head.

With people as smart as the ones being chosen, it’s going to be fun. Liberal tears are like rain. And no doubt there will be showers in the months ahead. Donald Trump is already President. Decisions are being made, plans taken, and the other nations are taking notice. They can’t take advantage of us anymore. Sometimes it’s been hard to know if a president was even on our side. We don’t have to wonder anymore.

Our job, Dad’s job, was to chronicle the downfall of western civilizations and look toward prophetic fulfillment. But it looks like we’ve been granted a reprieve. Not to be complacent about it, on the contrary. We could see this whole thing go up like a firework if we don’t recognize the opportunity. We’ve been given another chance, and our children should know. We were so beat down by the media, so sure of themselves as they preached one false narrative after another. Notice how everything’s gone quiet?

They now know, if they didn’t before, that Americans are not buying what they’re trying to ram into our brains. We don’t believe in global warming or that we’re in an “existential crisis.” They can try that out on somebody else, it’s already fallen out of favor.

It’s been hard watching society in a mad rush for X-mas. But Santa didn’t save us. God had mercy on us.

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – December 27, 2024 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

I don’t think we can even envision what lies just ahead in our immediate American future.  Having listened to most of the Trump rallies, it’s going to be a joyride.  How long have we been quiet about this woke nonsense?  (We haven’t been quiet.) They’ve been introducing stuff we don’t even want to know about, and making like we think it’s fine.  We are a long-suffering people.  And we’ve been suffering forever, at least since the 80’s. For young people, their entire lives.  But our long journey to sanity might be just about over.

It’s a similar feeling to when Ronald Reagan won the White House after four years of Jimmy Carter.  Jimmy Cater humiliated the United States, and couldn’t seem to make a right decision.  Many years ago, I watched a documentary on the rescue mission for the hostages in Iran.  It didn’t turn out well, largely due to incompetence.  

These protesters speak up and don’t mind making fools of themselves in front of cameras.  We just change the channel.  But the way things have been going, they were going to bankrupt us and make our lives miserable with all their global-warming mandates. We have to bear the brunt of saving the planet while the most vile of polluters will get on board someday?  We finally had enough.

The networks are nearly broke, ratings having collapsed since the Trump win.  There were apparently some attempts to rig the election in various jurisdictions, and they all fell short.  I guess some places they’re still counting.  “Too big to rig” may have been more than a rallying cry.  There is evidence in some elections, where the loser suddenly catapulted. But it wasn’t enough. Trump won anyway.

Elon Musk is being called “the guest who wouldn’t leave.”  Apparently he’s been staying at Mar-a-Lago and it’s undoubtedly at Trump’s request.  Trump thinks he can use the guy’s ideas and influence.  After all, Musk cut Twitter’s employee rolls by 70 percent when he bought it, and it still runs just fine, maybe better.  Can you imagine if he makes recommendations for government departments along the same lines?  

Have you seen the video of the booster rocket coming back to earth?  I’m guessing the foremost rocket scientists around the world watched in awe.  I have a feeling that they’re watching the entire spectacle, wondering what comes next.

Ever heard of Matt Gatez?  There’s talk of making him Attorney General. Then there’s Kash Patel, and his new prospective job is head of the F.B.I.  Can you imagine the panic inside these departments?  They better make sure their passports are in order.  Who’s Trump going to put in charge of abolishing the TSA, or am I getting ahead?  

Suddenly the media is chasing scandal on most of Trump’s picks for high office.  Get used to it for as long as they’re in business.

I don’t know about everybody else, but we’re walking on air around here.  The media will undoubtedly try to dampen our moods with unfolding “scandals” on everyone who’s been mentioned for high office.  It’s already started.  But the media has been filling our heads with nonsense for years now.  They think we’re about to start believing them without homework?  Dream on.  

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – November 15, 2024 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

By the time most people saw the story it had already been debunked.  When was the last time you saw the Secret Service release a statement about anything?  You’ve got the limo driver and the agent and they’re offering to testify under oath?  This is the Anita Hill tactic, but it’s not first person, she heard it from a friend.  Maybe that’s why hearsay isn’t allowed in a real court of law.  But this is not a court of law.   You have to wonder what fantastic stories we’ll be treated to as the Fall draws closer.  No doubt the story has plenty of drama, even violence.  As you try to envision it in your mind, it’s a little difficult.  Then you realize it’s not true.  Classic.  But unlike Russian collusion or treason in a phone call, this one’s crashed on takeoff, but the mainstream hasn’t noticed.

The gal none of us had ever heard of is having her 15 minutes of fame, longer if the mainstream media has anything to say.  If any of this were true she’d make a living on appearances and a book deal.  This is going to be in the history books despite it’s farcical nature.  She’ll either be a star or she’ll be thrown under the bus.

What’s up with Liz Cheney giving her comments from the Reagan library? (Mark Levine says Trump haters occupy top positions on the Reagan library board) It’s an indisputable fact that Ronald Reagan turned this country around, after interminable humiliation from some Iranian whack jobs.  Gas stations had lines around the block.  There was rationing.  Some are not old enough to remember, but it was depressing to say the least.  America was perceived to be weak, and constantly humiliated around the world.  Hardly any business was being done.  That’s what happens when interest rates go ballistic.  Ronald Reagan brought in an era of patriotism and strength.  He turned the country around.   For his name to be associated with this travesty of nonsense is shameful.

Since when is an administration bent on punishing its own citizenry?  The border news is so bad we don’t want to hear it.  Inflation is hurting everyone, especially those trying to make a living.  But none of that is as important as the “insurrection” and how close we came to “losing our democracy,” to coin a phrase.

Not only is Donald Trump guilty, having “lost his mind,” grabbing for the wheel of his limo and trying to choke a secret service officer, he’s guilty of being insane and trying to overthrow the country.  Just so that those who love and support him know what they’ve teamed up with.  If he’s guilty of “insurrection” and all the rest, what does that make his supporters?

We’ve been lied to straight faced by these committees, the networks, the newspapers and realized they’re no good at eating crow.  Instead of admitting what fools they’ve made of themselves with their sober proclamations and righteous predictions, they’re doubling down.  The hatred for Trump and his supporters runs deep.  You can’t believe in the Constitution and support Trump?  Liz Cheney, with that familiar look on her face, has decreed it.  Now we’ve heard everything.  That’s about as desperate as it gets.  It didn’t matter that the story was debunked as soon as it was told.  Nevertheless, the committee was deeply distressed.

Do they not realize that the same players put the people of this country through years of this nonsense under the guise of Russian Collusion and the fake impeachment.  Have we not seen all this before?  They’ve decided the people of this country are gullible.  If big names say something, repeated by the newspapers, the websites and the six o’clock news, it must be true.  A glance at the mainstream media revealed bombshell headlines.  You have to read nearly the whole article to find out that the actual first-hand witnesses say nothing of the sort ever happened.  These sober hearings weren’t designed to glean truth.  They were designed to be the last nail in the Trump coffin.

If the United States hasn’t been drawn into a proxy war in Ukraine, you’d never know it.  The public pronouncements have become provocative, weapons and the money more so!  So, who’s at war and why?  None of our business. Leave that to the experts.  Don’t think or say anything negative or some agency might send a swat team.  Some White House spokesman has proclaimed our several predicaments less important that the future of the “liberal world order.”  The what?  “This is about the future of the liberal world order, and we have to stand firm.”  Apparently everything’s already been fixed.  Don’t you love when they tell you what it’s “about?”  They’re committed and can’t go back now.  It’s double down time, and it looks like the American citizen is hostage to the liberal world order, whatever that is.

Eventually these buffoons find out what pipsqueaks they are.  But until then…

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 1 July 2022 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The limits are being tested, and some of us have reached ours long since.  How much will the public stand for?  It seems most big concerns that advertise on television, including some very unlikely ones, are pushing former societal boundaries.  Lately we’ve seen our faces rubbed in every controversial subject, as if it’s “settled science.”  Are we going to continue using their services, buying their products, keeping these companies on top despite the fact that they make fun of everything we stand for?  “Oh that’s just politics.”  Not any more it’s not.

A strategy is in motion, and most (unless the media are lying) are buying, hook line and sinker.  Crisis is the method being used to bring about world government.  People are being frightened into mindless obedience, and feeling superior for their trouble.  The video from Melbourne during the pandemic was something to see.  Who could have imagined the lockdown being enforced brutally in a free country?  If the clashes were shot in black and white, you’d think it came from the heart of Europe in the 1930’s.  But it’s current, and a permanent blight.

Japan’s economic crisis is starting to show itself.  The one asset they own is U. S. Treasury securities.  Who’s going to bail them out?  Problem is, the Fed has been buying our own Treasury Securities.  So…

Is the land full of bloody crimes?  For some reason it’s not nice to hold criminals in jail.  What are you? Heartless?  Better that they’re on the street, committing more crimes.  That’s what is happening in Los Angeles and New York among other big cities.  But never mind the big cities, the philosophy driving much of the crime is being preached nationwide around the clock.  The networks are on it.

It’s interesting watching the testimony of the head of Homeland Security.  They should have multiple angles on the border on a big screen during the session.  We’re having to watch it.  Don’t worry, everything is under control.  They’ve figured out a way to process the flood heading our way, due to increased efficiency.  But the national scuttlebutt is that he doesn’t like the situation.  Wait ‘till the Easter Bunny finds out!

Poor Mr. Biden.  They’re treating him like an Alzheimer’s patient in public.  We’re exposed to brief snippets of confusion, then they assure us everything is fine.  It’s getting worse.  He’s going to outlaw incandescent light bulbs, again?  Better stock up.  With any luck, it will be overturned again.  Saving the planet much?  His entourage is all up in arms about the purchase of twitter by Elon Musk.  One minute you’re the darling of the left, saving the planet, taking humans to Mars, and the next is that he plans to allow freedom of speech on twitter!  The long knives are out, and apparently legislation will have to be passed, or a minister of dis-information appointed.  Otherwise, who knows what kind of hate speech will offend the weirdos.

Will it ever be our turn to be offended?  The blue (or is it green) haired nose-rings make the most outrageous accusations against anyone who would dare to quote God’s Word.  The New York Times published a shameful op-ed accusing God of being racist, violent, and anti-gay.  You won’t find it quoted here.  We don’t reprint blasphemy, and this dude better keep his eye on the sky, not that it will help.  But it seems that people who follow God just have to take it on the chin while “society” is busy being righteous.   Modern views are skewed beyond recognition.  How far we’ve come!

It’s being argued that Elon Musk has no idea what he’s in for.  Does he understand the vehemence that will be aimed at him?  There is a meltdown underway.  The analysts simply can’t imagine an environment where they can’t ban and de-platform anyone not singing from the approved hymnal.  It’s an outrage.  We can only hope.  It’s going to be difficult for Elon to decide what to allow, because you know the limits will be tested by saboteurs right off the bat.  Then the media with hair on fire will declare that freedom just can’t be allowed.  It’s too dangerous to the feelings of those who are staunchly bought in to things that just aren’t true.  Like gender is a state of mind.  Or the “planet” needs people to save us from global warming.  They’ve decided to force the issue.

Right away the response was to appoint a truth czar.  Surely it won’t pass Constitutional muster, but legal matters take time.  People will be tagged by the new truth ministry.  They’ve appointed some  woman who’s on the record being wrong on important issues.  Should be fun.  But that’s only the first salvo.  The enlightened crowd is going to control what everybody thinks and says or know the reason why.  With any luck, they’ll find out the reason why.

A famous quote from Ronald Reagan was something to the effect that it wasn’t that the opposition didn’t know much, it was just that they knew so much that wasn’t true.  Do they ever!  What if he could see what we’re seeing.  He’d shake his head in disgust.  I’d hate to think what my Dad would say if he saw what we’re up against.  Watching the news is like taking a beating.

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 29 April 2022 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

MOSCOW — President Trump’s decision to withdraw from a nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia drew sharp criticism Sunday from one of the men who signed it — Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who called the decision reckless and not the work of “a great mind.”

In announcing on Saturday that he would withdraw from the treaty, Mr. Trump cited Russian violations of the pact, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was signed in Washington in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev.

Mr. Gorbachev, who is now 87 years old, cast Mr. Trump’s decision as a threat to peace.

“Under no circumstances should we tear up old disarmament agreements,” he said. “Is it really that hard to understand that rejecting these agreements is, as the people say, not the work of a great mind.”

Mr. Gorbachev, in an interview with the Interfax news agency, called Mr. Trump’s rollback of the disarmament agreement “very strange.”

“Rejecting the INF is a mistake,” Mr. Gorbachev said. “Do they really not understand in Washington what this can lead to?”

The last Soviet leader, who is perceived more warmly in the West than inside Russia, has already watched his domestic reform agendas supporting democracy and greater freedom of the press unravel in recent years. Nuclear disarmament also defined his legacy.

“All agreements aimed at nuclear disarmament and limiting nuclear weapons must be preserved, for the sake of preserving life on earth,” Mr. Gorbachev said on Sunday.

The pact required the elimination of short- and intermediate-range missiles launched from land, and helped pull the superpowers back from the hair-trigger nuclear posture of the Cold War. The United States formally notified Russia of suspected violations four years ago, for developing banned missiles.

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/world/europe/mikhail-gorbachev-trump-russia.html

The post Gorbachev Calls Trump’s Treaty Withdrawal ‘Not the Work of a Great Mind’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Why Trump’s latest steps heighten risk of a global trade war first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn and President Donald Trump are pictured during the presidential campaign in New Hampshire in September 2016. At least two Republican senators have urged Trump not to pardon him. | AP Photo

After months of criticizing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, President Donald Trump’s supporters are issuing increasingly bold calls for presidential pardons to limit the investigation’s impact.

“I think he should be pardoning anybody who’s been indicted and make it clear that anybody else who gets indicted would be pardoned immediately,” said Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and senior vice president at the conservative Center for Security Policy.

“It’s kind of cruel what’s going on right now and the president should put these defendants out of their misery,” said Larry Klayman, a conservative legal activist. “I think he should pardon everybody — and pardon himself.”

Klayman and Fleitz spoke before Mueller indicted thirteen Russian nationals on Friday for staging an elaborate 2016 election interference operation in the United States. Democratic leaders said the hard evidence of Russian meddling underscores the importance of letting Mueller’s investigation run its course.

But many conservatives note that the new indictment shows no evidence of collusion between Trump associates and the Kremlin. That reinforces their view that Mueller’s real target, if any, should be Russian President Vladimir Putin — not Trump’s circle. “[H]ow long will the leftist witch hunt against @RealDonaldTrump continue,” the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted hours after the indictment’s release.

And while the latest indictment could make it harder than ever for Trump to fire Mueller, as he has sought to before, mass pardons would be another means of defying the special counsel.

A president has the Constitutional power to pardon any citizen convicted of a federal crime, ending any prison sentence and clearing his or her record with the stroke of a pen. Pardons face no judicial or Congressional review, and the president is not obliged to explain his decision. The act of a president pardoning himself, however, has never been tested.

Some Democrats are taking all the possibilities seriously.

“Doling out presidential pardons to try to cover up any collusion or obstruction of justice is unacceptable and will be met with furious resistance across the country,” Patty Murray, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said during a floor speech earlier this month.

Last fall, several dozen House Democrats co-sponsored a largely symbolic resolution expressing disapproval for the prospect of Trump pardoning himself or any of his family members. They’ve also been asking without success for Judiciary Committee oversight hearings on the issue.

So far, the talk of pardons has mostly centered around Flynn, whose clemency Trump did not rule out in a brief mid-December exchange with reporters. “I don’t want to talk about pardons with Michael Flynn yet. We’ll see what happens,” Trump said.

That “yet” was music to the ears of Flynn’s supporters and family members, many of whom have taken to social media to build support for pardoning the retired Army lieutenant general who pleaded guilty in December to Mueller’s team for lying to the FBI.

“About time you pardoned General Flynn who has taken the biggest fall for all of you given the illegitimacy of this confessed crime in the wake of all this corruption,” Flynn’s brother, Joseph Flynn, wrote in a mid-December tweet. “Pardon Flynn NOW!” he added in a later message.

During a video interview with the prominent alt-right activist Jack Posobiec at the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C., last week, Flynn’s outspoken adult son, Michael Flynn Jr., encouraged viewers to promote online messages calling for his father’s exoneration and pardon.

“Just keep pushing out those hashtags, the ‘#ClearFlynnNow’ and the ‘#PardonFlynnNow,” Flynn Jr., said.

Tom Fitton, president of the conservative activist group Judicial Watch, said that allegations of anti-Trump bias among Justice Department and FBI officials circulated by conservatives would justify granting clemency to Trump associates like Flynn.

“The whole super structure of the Russia investigation is compromised,” Fitton said. “Those caught up in it deserve some protection. Rather than just let the virus run its course, it’d be appropriate for the president to consider pardons for people who are caught up in the prosecution.”

Trump’s lawyers and aides insist it’s premature to discuss even the possibility of pardons. “There have been no pardon discussions at the White House,” Ty Cobb, the White House attorney who leads the president’s official response to the Russia investigation, told POLITICO on Friday just hours before Mueller’s latest indictment was released.

After the Washington Post reported in July that Trump had tasked his aides with researching his pardon powers, Trump dismissed the story — while also making clear his view of the law.

“While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us. FAKE NEWS,” Trump tweeted.

Attorneys for Flynn, Flynn Jr. and Gates declined comment. Lawyers for Manafort and Papadopoulos did not respond to requests for comment.

Presidential pardons or other acts of mercy can be highly controversial — and typically occur at the end of a president’s term.

President Barack Obama was criticized for commuting the 35-year prison sentence of Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive diplomatic cables and military reports to WikiLeaks.

Siding against his own vice president, President George W. Bush denied a pardon for former White House staffer I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was convicted for obstructing a federal investigation into the leaked identity of a CIA operative, though Bush did commute Libby’s prison sentence.

Perhaps most famously, in September 1974, President Gerald Ford pre-emptively pardoned the man he replaced in the Oval Office, Richard Nixon, who resigned rather than face impeachment over the Watergate scandal. Nixon had also stepped down just days after an opinion from his acting attorney general, Mary C. Lawton, found that “under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.”

Explaining the Nixon pardon, Ford cited a need for the country to avoid “prolonged and divisive debate” that would accompany the criminal trial of the former Republican president that many expected. He also decreed that his pardon would cover all federal crimes that Nixon “committed or may have committed or taken part in” as president.

Critics were furious at the move, which a New York Times editorial declared a “profoundly unwise, divisive, and unjust act.”

A federal district court rejected a constitutional challenge to Ford’s pardon the next year, citing an 1867 Supreme Court decision during the Andrew Johnson administration which held that presidents have “unlimited” pardoning power. “It extends to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment,” the justice writing for the 5-4 majority wrote.

Some conservatives want Trump to heed those words. In an Oct. 29 Wall Street Journal op-ed column — published on the eve of Mueller’s first indictments against Manafort and Gates and the release of the Papadopoulos guilty plea — two conservative lawyers called on Trump to “end this madness by immediately issuing a blanket presidential pardon to anyone involved in supposed collusion with Russia or Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign… and to anyone for any offense that has been investigated by Mr. Mueller’s office.”

“The president himself would be covered by the blanket pardon we recommend,” wrote the lawyers, David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, veterans of the White House counsel’s office and Justice Department in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. They argued that Russian election interference is a matter for a Congressional investigation, not a criminal one.

At a mid-November hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) grilled Attorney General Jeff Sessions on whether he thinks Trump can pardon former aides and family members even before they might be convicted of — or even charged with — crimes. Sessions declined to answer beyond saying that “the president has the power to pardon, no doubt about that.”

“We should be worried if you are telling us the president should be able to pardon in advance all of those being investigated,” Deutch replied.

Trump has issued one pardon since taking office, to the controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was facing criminal contempt of court charges for defying a court order to stop profiling Latinos.

That August action, in the face of strong political opposition, makes some conservatives think that Trump would be willing to defy his critics again. “He did it for Sheriff Joe, so I’m thinking he would do it for other circumstances as well,” Fitton said.

There has been little sign of Congressional Republican support for the idea of pardons. In the days after Flynn pleaded guilty, South Carolina Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott both urged Trump not to pardon Flynn. Scott said it is important to have accountability and “a process that is clear and transparent.”

Pardons would also come at a high political cost, former George W. Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. “It’d just raise even more questions about Donald Trump if he pardons those closest to him because people will think he’s trying to protect himself.”

“You should let justice run its course,” he added.

Even some conservatives who support pardons in principle are wary of the severe political backlash they are certain to trigger. Mike Cernovich, a conservative activist who has been affiliated with the alt-right but rejects that label, said he believes the moment for pardons has passed and that Trump needs to wait until after the November mid-term elections.

“If the Democrats take over, pardon everyone,” Cernovich said. “They’re coming for you anyway. They have their nuke with impeachment. You have your nuke with pardons. And then settle in for an interesting two years.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/19/trump-russia-pardons-mueller-flynn-417094

The post Conservatives urge Trump to grant pardons in Russia probe first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.