Der Gleichschaltung demands your presence at the gathering

All together now

That’s a German expression from the Nazi era meaning total conformity to the state:  "Consolidation. All of the German Volk’s social, political, and cultural organizations to be controlled and run according to Nazi ideology and policy. All opposition to be eliminated."

The Germans may have coined the term, but communists and other dictatorships also employ it and now it’s forcing its way into the US. Chick-fil-A’s denying funding to the Salvation Army is just one recent example, the latest came Sunday night:

Hallmark has caved to demands from people who don’t, and won’t watch their cheesy movies, and will now add plots with lesbians, gays, transgenders and presumably threesomes.

I have never watched one of these Hallmark specials and barring an armed intruder forcing me to, I never will, but that’s not the point: neither have Hallmark’s critics. In our brave new world no one is permitted to hold ideas different than those dictated by the masters, and dissension is ruthlessly rooted out. For some curious reason, they’re currently using homosexual sex as the tip of the spear, but that’s just one weapon. Obama enunciated the goal: the fundamental transformation of America, and to accomplish that, everything must go, from church to patriotism and pride of country to the work ethic to individualism. The western canon of literature and philosophy and art has been replaced by barf from mewling stooges, our science replaced by a new Soviet-style method where there is no objective truth, only constructs from social wokeness.

And so on. Hallmark is just another of their conquests, another example of them discovering and rooting out a pocket of people with outdated, incorrect political thought who must be extirpated.

Transgender twerking lessons for kindergarteners is no accident.

On the other hand, our Paper of Record has found Hallmark’s quavering obeisance acceptable, sort of.

Some people said the development was "kinda comforting," though, since it's a tried and true formula where there aren't any surprises. Viewers said having the same plot repeat itself over and over is better than having to watch a confusing new plot, like if a company were to stand up to the LGBT lobby and stay true to traditional values despite the financial cost.

"Sometimes it's nice to know that the world continues to spin, the sun continues to rise in the east, and companies will continue to cower before the powerful LGBT lobby day in and day out," said one Hallmark Channel fan in Iowa. "There's something reassuring about it all."

"It's kinda heartwarming, to be honest."

Sale pending out west

4 Alec Templeton Lane (off Sherwood, off Riversville), $1.495 million. 1970 construction, nice yard leading to Merritt Parkway. Attractive location for Westchester refugees, I suppose.

New Cos Cob listing

43 Mianus View Terrace, $1.875 million. North Street and Central schools. There might be room for some negotiating here, because it doesn’t look like there was a million spent on construction, and the existing house was purchased for $817,000 (on a $795 asking price). Then again, builders expect to make a profit, and demand for new homes in this range is high, so you just never know.

Technically a re-do of an existing 1965 home, but there’s not much left of the original; I’d call it new.

Pre-renovation

Fifteen years after whirlpool tubs fell out of favor, builders have finally stopped installing them. Next up: Sub-Zero stoves and refrigerators will be replaced with better brands.

Obama sets the stage for Michelle

Coming back for more

Women are better than men

If women ran every country in the world there would be a general improvement in living standards and outcomes, former US President Barack Obama has said...

"Now women, I just want you to know; you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you're better than us [men].

"I'm absolutely confident that for two years if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything... living standards and outcomes... If you look at the world and look at the problems it's usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way." [emphasis added]

It’s unclear whether the community organizer includes gender dysphorics in his world of super women — I assume he does — but it’s quite clear who he’s referring to in the last part of his address: old, sort-of-white Elizabeth Warren and the even older man he has refused to endorse, Joe Biden.

Coming at a time when Democrats are panicking at the thought of any of the current candidates trying to beat Trump, and party leadership begging Michelle to run, Obama’s intentions seem clear. And while Michelle may be enjoying her current life of unlimited new wealth, her husband clearly misses the power of the presidency. Can he convince the Little Woman to take him back to the White House? I think he can, because, though better hidden, Michelle’s ambition is as rapacious as his.

I've been wondering the same thing myself

Comey says the FBI made far more serious mistakes during his tenure than engaging in a corrupt campaign to undermine the presidency. Really?

Congressman Gaetz would like to know.

Comey was the guest on Fox News Sunday when host Chris Wallace asked the former agent if he were still in charge of the FBI, would he feel obligated to resign after the release of the damning report from Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz that found that FBI agents and officials made 17 major errors or omissions in the FISA applications.“No I don’t think so. There were mistakes I consider more consequential than this during my tenure.”

April, fool. And a liar

April Doss mug shot

Powerline looks back at the falsehoods penned by April Doss last year

Last year one April Doss published articles at the Atlantic and the Weekly Standard on the FISA warrants taken out on Carter Page. Doss had served as senior minority counsel on the Senate Intelligence Committee (she worked for the Democrats). She also spent over a decade at the National Security Agency, where she was associate general counsel for intelligence law. Doss touted her professional experience and expertise to assure us that the FBI had dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s when it took out FISA warrants on Carter Page. In the process of assuring readers that all was in order with the FBI’s work on these warrants, Doss also disparaged Devin Nunes (whose memo laying out problems with the warrants had been released in February) as a crazy conspiracy theorist.

…

On Friday last week the Wall Street Journal cruelly quoted the July 27, 2018 Weekly Standard article by Doss that I had addressed last year in the post linked above. In its Notable & Quotable feature the Journal quoted Doss without comment under the heading “Conspiracy Theory”: 

[House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin] Nunes insisted on releasing a memo that endorsed a new conspiracy theory about how a Democratic administration had: abused the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] process by using salacious opposition research (with the implication that the funding source made the information itself suspect), incorporated that suspect research into a FISA application, and sent the application to the secret proceedings of the FISC without telling the court there could be bias in the information. Through this complicated string of subterfuges, Nunes claims, the Democrats managed to pervert justice in order to spy on the Trump campaign.

Over time, the conspiracy theory would deepen: Since the dossier included information from sources in Russia, that meant that the Hillary for America campaign had colluded with Russia to provide fake information to Christopher Steele, who slipped the fake news to the FBI, which then pulled the wool over the eyes of a succession of four FISC judges, each of whom signed off on further surveillance against Carter Page.

It’s an exhausting theory to contemplate, and yet one that many people, fueled by conspiracy-mongering rumors on the Internet about the workings of the “deep state,” believed.

Part of this woman’s resume reads: “April Doss spent over a decade at the National Security Agency working in a variety of capacities, including technology development, intelligence oversight, information sharing policy, counterterrorism, foreign liaison, and serving as the head of intelligence law in NSA's Office of General Counsel”.

After publishing her false and deceptive narratives Doss hired on to work with the Democrats on the Senate Judicial Committee to help “investigate” Russian interference with the 2016 election. Ten years inside the NSA; it’s fair to ask what other lies this woman engaged in durig her tenure there, and what harm she is still doing, as a member of the very deep state she denies exists.

Friday, Doss was on CNN to lend her analysis and knowledgable insights into her Democrat employers’ impeachment efforts. She has declined, however, to repond to inquies regarding her current views on the intelligence community’s sabotage of our republic.

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

Epstein did kill himself

Corbyn: We won the argument, but failed to convert that into a majority

And Hillary’s our president

I'd say this pretty much sums it up

(Holden points out that the disclosure this week of an unbroken record over 18 years of lying and deceit by the Pentagon and our politicians about our “progress” in Afghanistan also deserves mention. If those NYT readers want to be truly depressed, they should reflect on the sorry state of congress, the executive branch, the military and our intelligence services. And the courts, and our educational system, and ….)

Group therapy for Times readers

The new thing is “Democracy Grief’, and these people are suffering terribly.

Lately, I think I’m experiencing democracy grief. For anyone who was, like me, born after the civil rights movement finally made democracy in America real, liberal democracy has always been part of the climate, as easy to take for granted as clean air or the changing of the seasons. When I contemplate the sort of illiberal oligarchy that would await my children should Donald Trump win another term, the scale of the loss feels so vast that I can barely process it.

The article, by a Times columnist who a decade ago bewailed the impending takeover of the country by fundamentalist Christians (it never happened, in case you haven’t been paying attention), whines on and on, with the obligatory reference to Hitler and interviews with psychiatrists who treat rich Upper East Siders, but this comment from a reader sums it all up nicely:

Thanks for writing about something that so many of us feel. I live in a place where most people close to me – friends, family and colleagues alike, seem blissfully unaware of anything beyond the day to day rigors of raising kids, managing the home and businesses and, now, the holidays. I sometimes crave to join the “ignorance is bliss” camp, but just cannot stand to see the danger today with worse to come if Trump wins again (though glimmer of hope, however unlikely, of Dems winning the Senate).

Paying attention to their children, jobs and home — having a life, in other words — instead of cowering under the bed, awaiting the crashing arrival of Trump’s storm troopers at the door? Oh, my, God! Don’t they see what’s happening?! Aaaaagh! Eeeek!

I so, so hope that Trump is reelected. And if he can take back the House … oh, my God!

But we're assured that the shooters acted alone

Mssrs. Fool, Bungler, and Idiot

Gun stash found

A New Jersey man was busted by federal authorities after cops found his phone number scrawled on a note in one of the Jersey City shooter’s back pockets, authorities said.

Ahmed A-Hady’s Monmouth County pawnshop and house were searched over the weekend and feds found him illegally in possession of six rifles, including three AR-15-style assault rifles, three handguns and one shotgun, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said late Saturday.

Authorities also found hundreds of bullets, including a “large number” of hollow-point rounds, according to the criminal complaint.

The feds tracked down A-Hady, 35, in Keyport Friday evening after finding his phone number on a handwritten note on 47-year-old David Anderson — who opened fire on a Jewish food store Tuesday, killing three, and gunned down a Jersey City cop.

The FBI is investigating the ramage as a “domestic terror event” after finding a manifesto and social media posts connecting the murderous pair to Jewish hate groups, including the Black Hebrew Israelite movement. 

Despite their ties to hate groups, federal authorities believe they acted alone.

They said it, I believe it, that settles it. Look for the agent in charge to be on all the talk shows next week, congratulating the agency on its exemplary work.

Related: Back in 2008, FBI agent in the Ted Stevens case backdated documents and withheld exculpatory evidence from the senator’s defense team, all while under Mueller’s command. The senator’s conviction was reversed when the FBI’s perfidy was exposed, but Mueller stayed on for years.