Another Hate Crime Hoax: Church Organist Admits He Vandalized His Own Church with Trump and Nazi Slogans

An Indiana community was shocked after a local church was vandalized with Nazi slogans and Donald Trump graffiti, but now police say it is a hate crime hoax and the church was not attacked by an outsider. They have charged the congregation’s own organist, a Hillary supporter and gay activist, for the crime.

After St. David’s Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom, Indiana, was vandalized, many suspected they were targeted by KKK members or a Nazi group. Members of the church urged police to investigate the incident as a hate crime, WTHR Channel 13 reported.

But after an investigation, the Brown County prosecuting attorney’s office shocked the congregation by charging the church’s own organist, 26-year-old George Nathaniel Stang of Bloomington.

It was Stang who first reported the vandalism to police last November only days after last year’s presidential election.

It was immediately thought to be a hate crime because the small Episcopal Church is a progressive congregation that welcomes gays. The graffiti spray painted on the church walls read “Heil Trump” and “Fag Church.”

But during their inquiries police quickly came to feel that the vandalism was done by someone familiar with the church and began looking at the crime as an inside job. After an investigation, police arrested Stang.

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Chicago Police Suicide Rate Surges To 60% Above The National Average

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He isn't even Hitler

Rand Paul Says Obama Administration May Have Spied on His Campaign

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Friday told Breitbart News that several sources have told him that the Obama administration spied on his presidential campaign.

“We’ve had several people come to us and say that it happened. I don’t have access to that information, but I’ve been very concerned that too many Americans’ information is being culled through without a warrant,” he told Breitbart News.

“I don’t have any facts to say it happened,” he said. “But numerous sources are coming to us saying it did happen so I want to search through, find out why I wasn’t notified. Was it on purpose?”

“There’s a lot of things to be found out, particularly since we found out that Susan Rice was unmasking people and we need to know was there a political motivation, because one of the real dangers in a free society is if government gets so powerful it’s listening to all of our phone calls, the possibility of extortion, the possibility of blackmail — all of that goes up exponentially,” he said.

Rand Paul will not let this go away if there is anything to it.

Shocking

Survey of Viewership in Swing State Market Shows Republicans Abandoning ESPN in Droves

Cable industry analysts have debated the fall of ESPN for months, especially after its recent shedding of over 100 jobs. There has been much speculation that the network’s liberal tilt has alienated viewers, even as liberals scoff at the notion. But, statistics now show that ESPN really has lost viewers over its constant infusion of left-wing politics into its sports coverage. . . 

Recently, a poll emerged showing that Republicans have begun to turn away from ESPN, but now we have some of the first hard data to prove that, yes, ESPN has lost viewers over the last few years, a time coinciding with the network’s growing amount of liberal content.

According to TV data service Deep Root, viewers that identify as Republican really have quit watching the cable sports network.

Deep Root focused on a swing election state to gather its viewership data over a two-year period.

Maybe ESPN should bring back Keith Albertan ;)

On this day in 1945

SIX KILLED IN OREGON BY JAPANESE BALLOON BOMB

Only civilians killed during WWII on continental U.S.

In Lakeview, Oregon, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five neighborhood children are killed while attempting to drag a Japanese balloon out the woods. Unbeknownst to Mitchell and the children, the balloon was armed, and it exploded soon after they began tampering with it. They were the first and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental United States during World War II. The U.S. government eventually gave $5,000 in compensation to Mitchell’s husband, and $3,000 each to the families of Edward Engen, Sherman Shoemaker, Jay Gifford, and Richard and Ethel Patzke, the five slain children.

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Here's a step toward the future

Bipartisan bill seeks to remove roadblocks to telemedicine under Medicare

“Telehealth is the future of health care. It expands access to care, lowers costs, and helps more people stay healthy,” Senator Brian Schatz said in a statement. “Our bipartisan bill will help change the way patients get the care they need, improving the health care system for both patients and health care providers.”

The CONNECT Act has five main goals as a means to taking down barriers to Medicare-covered telemedicine. As it currently stands, there are several provisions of the Social Security Act that are holding back Medicare reimbursement for telehealth, including restrictions on originating sites, limitations in store and forward technology, and only allowing for telemedicine to be used in certain rural areas. The bill aims to take those roadblocks down by expanding remote patient monitoring programs for people with chronic conditions; defining reimbursable CMS telehealth codes; expanding remote monitoring programs at community health centers and rural clinics, giving HHS the authority to lift restrictions on telehealth; and establishing new allowances for global and bundled payment models.

“The CONNECT for Health Act provides a carefully-crafted approach to begin helping countless American Medicare recipients realize the benefits of connected health technology,” Morgan Reed, executive director of the App Association’s Connected Health Initiative, said in a statement. “By lifting arduous limitations on the use of telehealth and empowering Medicare physicians to utilize innovative remote monitoring technologies, responsible and secure connected health solutions may be introduced more broadly throughout the continuum of care to improve patient health outcomes.”

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Of course

FBI report finds officers ‘de-policing’ as anti-cop hostility becomes ‘new norm’

An unclassified FBI study on last year’s cop-killing spree found officers are “de-policing” amid concerns that anti-police defiance fueled in part by movements like Black Lives Matter has become the “new norm.”

“Departments — and individual officers — have increasingly made the decision to stop engaging in proactive policing,” said the report by the FBI Office of Partner Engagement obtained by The Washington Times.

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On this day 2011

OSAMA BIN LADEN KILLED BY 

NAVY SEAL TEAM SIX

Team Six Members Later Ambushed in Afghanistan in Suspected Revenge Killing

On this day in 2011, Osama bin Laden, was killed by U.S. forces during a daring raid on his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan.  At a press conference days after, Vice President Biden broke from protocol and identified the U.S. forces as part of Navy SEAL Team Six.  Three months later, 30 Team Six members, including some who had participated in the bin Laden raid, and other special forces were ambushed and killed in Afghanistan in what many believe was a revenge killing abetted by disloyal Afghans with insider knowledge regarding Team Six’s presence and activities.  The ambush remains the worst loss of Americans in a single incident during the Afghan campaign.

Wikipedia

Daily Caller Team Six Ambush Article by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Clarence Thomas

Wash Times article re Team Six ambush

The Daily Beast: Outside the Bubble (otherwise known as Flyover Country)

The Arrogance of Blue America

If you want to see the worst impacts of blue policies, go to those red regions - like upstate New York or inland California - in states they control.

The article

The Onion

Trump Voter Feels Betrayed By President After Reading 800 Pages Of Queer Feminist Theory

Today's chuckle

Perfectly logical

JIMMY KIMMEL TURNS HIS NEWBORN SON'S OPERATION FOR HEART DISEASE INTO AN ANTI-TRUMP SCREED

You don't think the liberals are desperate?

The Art of the Deal.  Dilbert nails it again.  But the media doesn't get it.

USING PERSUASION 

TO CREATE ASSETS OUT OF NOTHING

Yesterday President Trump unexpectedly said he would be “honored” to meet North Korea’s Kim Jung-un. 

And that’s how a Master Persuader creates an asset out of nothing.

I’ll explain.

By holding out the possibility of meeting with Kim Jung-un, President Trump has conjured out of thin air a virtual “asset” that he can use for negotiating with North Korea. I’m sure the North Korean leader would like the international respect and recognition that such a meeting would confer. Best of all, Jung-un could use that future meeting as evidence for his citizens that he stared-down America and negotiated a great deal in which we remove some of our military assets while they end their nuclear weapons program. Or something like that.

The point is that President Trump created this “asset” out of nothing but persuasion. Now Kim Jung-un has something to gain, and something to lose. And that option simply didn’t exist a week ago. 

Do you think this was a unique situation?

Consider that President Trump has already built a border wall with Mexico out of nothing but persuasion. Immigration from Mexico is down more than 50% just from Trump’s persuasion alone. I suppose we will get something like a physical wall someday too. But for now, Trump’s Wall of Persuasion is doing a lot of work.

More here

The Art of the Deal.  From my second favorite economist.

Canadians should be worried about NAFTA because the Loonie could fall to 50 cents.

Gary Shilling interview

Rush on the terrible spending bill

“Why is anybody voting Republican, if this is what happens when we win?”

But the dirty little secret is that there isn’t any evidence that anywhere in Washington is there any aspect of the Trump agenda on display. It doesn’t seem to be that in the House of Representatives that there is a desire to implement any of the Trump agenda. It doesn’t seem in the Senate that there is a desire to implement any of the Trump agenda. It does seem in the House that there is a lot of energy devoted to stopping a Trump agenda. Ditto in the Senate…

This budget is a direct slap in the face. This budget is a stop sign. And it’s throwing down the gauntlet. “You may be elected president, but you’re not getting anything. Nothing’s gonna happen here.” And if Donald Trump cannot rely on the members of his own party — are you really telling me we can’t get a replace and repeal Obamacare bill after all this time? And I don’t mean since Trump won the election; I’m talking about since it was passed seven years ago, six, whatever it is now…

I’m telling you, folks, the will isn’t there. The establishment, whatever you want to call this bunch of people, the ruling class, the establishment, the donors, whatever you want to call ’em, they’re not just gonna roll over and let Trump implement those things that he campaigned on just because he won the office, just because he won the presidency. And he’s going to have to overcome this if he’s going to be successful. And the way he’s going to have overcome it, he’s going to have to have his own staff, legislative staff in the White House that writes this legislation and muscles its way through…

WaPo

Trump Promoted by Dems from Hitler to Defeated

Democrats think they have set the stage to block President Trump’s legislative priorities for years to come by winning major concessions in a spending bill to keep the government open.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) secured nearly $5 billion in new domestic spending by exploiting disagreements between Trump and GOP lawmakers over spending priorities.

Democrats’ lopsided victory on the five-month deal, which is likely to be approved this week, means it will be very difficult — if not impossible — for the GOP to exert its will in future budget negotiations, including when it comes to Trump’s 2018 budget blueprint.

That’s because Republicans are hopelessly divided over how much to spend on government programs, with a small but vocal minority unwilling to support such measures at all. That has forced Republicans to work with Democrats to avoid politically damaging government shutdowns.

And that means Democrats are in the driver’s seat when it comes to budget battles, even with Trump in the White House.

 Vice President Pence credited President Trump with a key role in the spending deal, but many congressional aides said the president was unhelpful in reaching the agreement. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

“I think we had a strategy and it worked,” Schumer said in an interview with The Washington Post. “Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate were closer to one another than Republicans were to Donald Trump.”

WaPo Article

On this day in 1960

Russia Shoots Down American U-2 Spy Plane Piloted by Francis Gary Powers

On this day in 1960, the Soviet Union shot down a U.S. spy plane over Russia.  The CIA told Republican President and former general Dwight Eisenhower that the Soviets did not possess anti-aircraft weapons sophisticated enough to reach the high-altitude plane but, if they did, the plane would self-destruct and the pilot would kill himself.  As a result, the U.S. initially said the plane was a weather plane, had wandered off course, and crashed.  Soviet leader Khrushchev responded by not only displaying the wreckage but also pilot Powers.  At a later major summit of the super powers, Khrushchev blasted the U.S., prompting Eisenhower to walk out.  Eisenhower privately called the “stupid U-2 mess” one of the worst episodes of his presidency.  Powers spent about two years in a Soviet prison before being exchanged for a Soviet spy.

Wikipedia

Pat Buchanan, the man who presaged Trump

WHERE THE TRUMP-MEDIA WAR IS HEADED

Whatever happens to Trump, the respect and regard the mainstream media once enjoyed are gone. Public opinion of the national press puts them down beside the politicians they cover – and for good reason. 

The people have concluded that the media really belong to the political class and merely masquerade as objective and conscientious observers. Like everyone else, they, too, have ideologies and agendas.

Moreover, unlike in the Nixon era, the adversary press today has its own adversary press: Fox News, talk radio and media-monitoring websites to challenge their character, veracity, competence and honor, even as they challenge the truthfulness of politicians.

Trump is being hammered as no other president before him, except perhaps Nixon during Watergate. It is hard to reach any other conclusion than that the mainstream media loathe him and intend to oust him, as they relished in helping to oust Nixon.

If this war ends well for Trump, it ends badly for his enemies in the press. If Trump goes down, the media will feel for a long time the hostility and hatred of those tens of millions who put their faith and placed their hopes in Trump.

For the mainstream media, seeking to recover the lost confidence of its countrymen, this war looks like a lose-lose.

Full article

The Art of the Deal

NATO Considers New Counterterrorism Post Following Trump Demands

BRUSSELS—The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is considering appointing a senior official to oversee counterterrorism efforts, a move aimed at meeting one of President Donald Trump’s demands that the alliance focus more on terror threats.

The proposal is similar to NATO’s recent decision to create a top intelligence post, a move that Mr. Trump has repeatedly praised and that he has cited as evidence the alliance has responded to his criticisms and is no longer obsolete.

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On this day in 1863

LEE ROUTS UNION FORCES AT CHANCELLORSVILLE

Stonewall Jackson Shot, Dies

On this day in 1863, Robert E. Lee cemented his reputation as a tactical genius by outsmarting and routing Union General Joseph Hooker at the Battle of Chancellorsville despite the fact that the Union forces outnumbered the Army of Northern Virginia by a 2:1 ratio.  During the battle, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, while returning from a reconnaissance mission beyond Union lines, was mistaken for a Union soldier as he returned and shot three times by his own troops.  One of Jackson’s arms was amputated but he died several dies later from pneumonia.

Source Article
Wikipedia
History.net

Peggy Noonan/WSJ

Trump Has Been Lucky in His Enemies

Cursing pols, screeching students and intolerant abortion advocates have become the face of the left.

Mr. Trump has struggled so colorfully the past three months, we’ve barely noticed his great good luck—that in that time the Democratic Party and the progressive left have been having a very public nervous breakdown. The new head of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, performs unhinged diatribes. He told an audience in Las Vegas that “Trump doesn’t give a sh— about health care.” In a Maine speech, “They call it a skinny budget. I call it a sh—y budget.” In Newark, he said Republicans “don’t give a sh— about people.”

This is said to be an attempt to get down with millennials. I know a lot of millennials and they’re not idiots, so that won’t work.

The perennially sunny Rep. Maxine Waters of California called Mr. Trump’s cabinet “a bunch of scumbags.” New York’s junior Democratic senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, has taken to using the F-word in interviews.

I thought Mr. Trump was supposed to be the loudmouth vulgarian who swears in public. They are aping what they profess to hate. They excoriated him for lowering the bar. Now look at them.

And they’re doing it because they have nothing else—not a plan, not a program, not a philosophy that can be uttered. . .

That most entrenched bastion of the progressive left, America’s great universities, has been swept by . . . well, one hardly knows what to call it. “Political correctness” is too old and doesn’t do it justice. It is a hysteria—a screeching, ignorant wave of sometimes violent intolerance for free speech. It is mortifying to see those who lead great universities cower in fear of it, attempt to placate it, instead of stopping it.

When I see tapes of the protests and riots at schools like Berkeley, Middlebury, Claremont McKenna and Yale, it doesn’t have the feel of something that happens in politics. It has the special brew of malice and personal instability seen in the Salem witch trials. It sent me back to rereading Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” Heather Mac Donald danced with the devil! Charles Murray put the needle in the poppet! As in 17th-century Salem, the accusers have no proof of anything because they don’t know, read or comprehend anything.

The cursing pols, the anathematizing abortion advocates, the screeching students—they are now the face of the progressive left.

This is what America sees now as the face of the Democratic Party. It is a party blowing itself up whose only hope is that Donald Trump blows up first.

He may not be lucky in all of his decisions or staffers, or in his own immaturities and dramas. But hand it to him a hundred days in: He’s lucky in his main foes.

Another insightful article from Peggy Noonan. Click the X on the subscribe box or go to her on Twitter.

WSJ asks:

Did Muhammad Ali refuse draft induction because he was afraid of being killed by the Nation of Islam?

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