While it is important to understand current events and how they will affect our lives, remember who has the ultimate authority over your life. Be sure to start each day in Scripture and prayer.

The erasure of Joe Biden from the national political scene continues apace. Day 2 of the 2024 Democratic National Convention will be remembered for the Regime Media’s collective pining for their favorite president. Case in point, CNN’s John King. Consider this embarrassing reaction to Barack Obama’s speech (click “expand” for transcript): CNN's John King, pining for an Obama Restoration with Kamala Harris as its vessel, asserts that there "we weren't in any big wars" during the Obama Administration. The drone strikes must've ordered themselves. pic.twitter.com/wAHETaBf5s — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) August 21, 2024 CNN DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION 8/20/24 11:56 PM ANDERSON COOPER: Scott, I'm sorry, John King. I want to hear from you. JOHN KING: I- Anderson, I think you guys have covered the power of the words from the Obamas very well, certainly to rally the base. But I want to focus on something I think is also very powerful tonight- is just the optics of Obama and Michelle Obama, President Obama, Michelle Obama coming on stage, the big embrace, then both speeches. What is Donald Trump doing? He mispronounces her name. He says, “is she black or is she Asian? She's a radical.” He's trying to disqualify Kamala Harris, to somehow make her scary, to somehow make her unacceptable. And there you had our first black President, our first black late- First Lady up on the stage. They didn't say these words, but essentially “We had this for eight years. I was President, she was First Lady. I was re-elected. She was with me. We had a pretty booming economy that we handed off to Donald Trump. This is not weird, this is not strange. We had this for eight years”, and I'll tell you from my travels- you know, first, the first thing Democrats have to do is turn out their base. And if Kamala Harris can get the historic or near historic black turnout that Barack Obama got in his two election campaigns, then that puts her in good stead. It's not enough though. You have to compete and win, or at least break even in the American suburbs, Barack Obama did that twice. In my travels, you meet a lot of people, a lot of Republicans, who maybe didn't vote for Barack Obama, or maybe who did once who remember the Obamas in the White House. They were dignified. They were respectful, they had those cute girls who became beautiful young women in the family. So I think the optics tonight, given how Donald Trump is campaigning against Harris, I think the optics of “oh yeah we did that for eight years, it was pretty good for the country”. Even if you didn't like it, even if you're a Republican who didn't vote for it. We're all still here. Right? We weren't in any big wars at the time. The optics to me, given how Donald Trump is campaigning against the vice president, were almost as important as the very powerful words. What is King even talking about here? No major wars? Did Osama bin Laden shoot himself in the face? Did the drones just launch themselves? In order to re-elevate Obama to secular godhood, King is compelled to make stuff up. Active disinformation in furtherance of a political narrative. King speaks here as if the American people themselves did not move on from Obama’s divisive politics (despite Obama’s personal popularity), and as if they forgot his original authoritarianism (siccing the IRS on Tea Party-adjacent groups, suing The Little Sisters of the Poor, prosecuting journalists).  These things didn’t happen in a vacuum. The People remembered, and chose to move on in 2016. King, along with the rest of the Regime Media, may wish to recast history in order to transfigure Kamala Harris into the next vessel of Hope and Change and thus reclaim that era. Even if it means gaslighting the American people.  

A rare 12th century picture stone with unique iconography has been discovered under a house in the village of Klotzow, northern Germany. Homeowner Peter Wittenberg was doing some construction work on the foundations when he came across a boulder carved with the image of a person with a cross over his belly. Only about 20 picture stones are known, and this is only the sixth one from the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. It is also the only picture stone ever discovered that features a cross in the engraving. The granite stone is about three feet long, two feet wide and 1.3 feet deep. It is carved into a pointed arch shape and engraved with a deep outline drawing of a standing man. The cross is carved onto a stole that hangs from a loop around the neck. The stone was found in a horizontal position next to the wall of the house with the image facing upwards. It was likely used as a step, but the house was built in the 18th century, so the stone is not in its original location. Picture stones are believed to have been memorials to honor the dead, although they did not mark graves. The presence of the cross links the stone to the period when Bishop Otto of Bamberg (ca. 1060-1139) converted Pomeranians to Christianity. It’s even possible that the stone depicts Bishop Otto himself, and that the stole is a pallium, a vestment conferred by the Pope onto high-ranking clerics as symbols of their authority. Otto received the pallium in 1111. Minister of Culture Bettina Martin : “With this exceptionally significant find, we can add another important piece to the mosaic of our country’s history. Bishop Otto of Bamberg undertook his first missionary journey to Pomerania in 1124. The fact that a picture stone from this period has now been found exactly 900 years later is an extremely fortunate circumstance. The finder deserves thanks and the highest recognition for reporting his find immediately. The experts from the State Office for Culture and Monument Preservation and the lower monument protection authority will now take care of securing and further examining this unique find.” The stone is currently being scanned to create a 3D model that will clarify the engraving.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has ended his latest visit to the Middle East without securing a cease-fire in Gaza. He warned on Tuesday that “time is of the essence” even as Hamas and Israel…

As the Democrats eye a political future unburdened by what has been, they can’t resist a few looks back. While President Joe Biden’s swan song, delivered outside of primetime by a politician past…

The former President Barack Obama linked his own political narrative to that of the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, in a Tuesday speech to enraptured attendees at the Democratic National…

“Everybody, wasn’t that a great roll-call?” asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) of the cheering crowd, after having walked onto the stage of the Democratic National Convention dancing. …

This might impact entire ecosystems.

Politics Can Harris Bridge the Great Divide? The street is not with the vice president. CHICAGO—The former President Donald Trump’s seeming desire over the past few weeks to hand the election to Vice President Kamala Harris has understandably obscured a number of very real divisions that still plague the Democratic Party at the start of its convention week in Chicago. The question that ought to haunt the dreams of Democratic partisans and their friends in the media is whether Harris can (or even wants to) bridge the great divide between the street, as exemplified by the protests taking place outside the convention, and the party establishment.  The first and most important split between progressive activists and the vast majority of the Democratic delegates has to do with the matter of the administration’s slavish deference toward Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime. The specter of tens of thousands of antiwar protesters descending on the streets of Chicago did little to dissuade President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken from approving, only last week, $20 billion dollars in arms sales to Tel Aviv. The package includes, among other niceties, 50 F-15IA and F-15I fighter jets, 37,739 120mm tank rounds and 50,000 120mm mortar rounds. All of which, if nothing else, brings to mind the philosopher Simone Weil’s observation that “evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.”  As of now, the party establishment seems bound and determined to ignore the demands of the street. Harris herself was fairly explicit on that point only last week when confronted at a speech in Michigan were antiwar activists interrupted her speech by chanting, “We won’t vote for genocide.” Harris’s response was nothing if not cavalier: “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”  And this seems to be the general attitude of the Democratic establishment toward those who are dissenting from the program: so desperate are they to win, they will, as Weil once observed, excuse just about anything.  The longtime Washington Post columnist Colbert King was one among many warning the activists not to ruin Kamala’s coronation. A week before the convention, King took to his column to warn that, “What followed in ’68 is no prescription for today.” “Tear up next week’s convention, fuel disarray, drag down [Kamala] Harris and make a second [Donald] Trump administration happen,” wrote King. “See where that gets Gaza and the West Bank.” Of course the attitude of the establishment isn’t lost on the protesters. Thomas, a labor activist from Chicago, told The American Conservative, “If Vice President Harris doesn’t change course, she’s going to own this genocide. And a lot of people that otherwise may have voted for her are going to stay home.”  Ann, who traveled to Chicago from New York with Jewish Voices for Peace, told TAC, “I do not want to vote for Trump. But why isn’t Kamala Harris afraid? She clearly doesn’t think she needs our votes because she’s not going for the vote. I want to be able to support her. If she does not move the needle and has more to say, if she doesn’t have an action planned, she will not get my vote.” A panel convened this afternoon at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs barely touched on the issue of the Israeli war. The former U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice and Maryland’s Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen were in agreement that the principal challenge facing the U.S. centered around great power competition, a global competition between authoritarian states and Western democracies. Like for their Republican counterparts, for the Democratic foreign policy establishment, China, which Rice described as “aggressive, self-oriented and uninterested in cooperation,” looms large. The ongoing U.S.-funded genocide? Not so much. When it did come up, Van Hollen reiterated Israel’s “right to defend itself” while tepidly acknowledging the plain fact that Gaza is now, in his words, “a wasteland.” Democratic politicians and partisans may want to, but cannot, simply wish away tens of thousands of protesters. The strategy of ignoring and belittling them—which the Democratic establishment seems intent on pursuing—may cause them grief come November. The post Can Harris Bridge the Great Divide? appeared first on The American Conservative.