Jeanne's Commentary
Wishing you and your loved ones a joyful holiday season filled with peace and hope!
Santa’s Flight Declassified
For over 60 years, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a binational defensive agency that monitors U.S.–Canadian aerospace for threats, has faithfully tracked the movements of Santa Claus as he travels on Christmas Eve to deliver presents to boys and girls across the world.
Jeanne's Commentary
Our Breakthrough team had a terrific time at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest last weekend. Native Illinoisan Charlie Kirk has truly built an amazing grassroots organization. Young – and older – Americans gathered to hear from top Conservatives and influencers. Steve Bannon hosted his show at the event, as did young podcaster (and ANOTHER ILLINOISAN), Tim Pool of Tim Pool's "Timcast"
Over the next couple of weeks, we will roll out our interviews on our website and Facebook page if you missed them Live. We spoke with a diverse group of people and tried to catch as many folks from Illinois as possible.
Here are some selected thoughts from others that I wanted to share:
Cultural Writer for Illinois Family Institute, Laurie Higgins, posted this beautiful image & article on her Facebook page.
By Wilfred M. McClay:
This year . . . “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” . . . has stuck in my brain, particularly these words, in the first verse: “To save us all from Satan’s power/ When we were gone astray.” We move through these sibilant words so quickly and rhythmically. I know I always have. And yet how plainly those few words sketch in a somber background, a whole universe of presuppositions without which the song has a very different, and diminished, meaning.
The merriness being urged upon the gentlemen (one should always remember that, in the lyrics, there is a comma between “merry” and “gentlemen”—they are not “merry gentlemen” being encouraged to “rest”) comes amid a great darkness, a darkness that never disappears, that beckons and threatens, a darkness whose presence is subtly conveyed by the minor key with which the song begins and ends. The black ship with black sails lingers on the far horizon, silent and waiting.
There are constant reminders of this darkness if one has ears to hear them, running through the great liturgy of our Christmas carols, with their memorable evocations of bleak midwinter, snow on snow, sad and lonely plains, the curse, the half-spent night. The spooky and antiseptically sterile depiction of winter in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and its cinematic adaptations is, in that sense, very close to the spirit of the older carols, and to the biblical account of the matter—much closer than the hearty merriment of rosy-cheeked seasonal songs like “Sleigh Ride” or “Let It Snow, Let It, Snow, Let It Snow.”
The older lyrics are laced with just such evocations of darkness. They help us remember why it is symbolically right, even if historically wrong, to celebrate Christ’s birth in winter.
We are constantly reminded to “keep Christ in Christmas” and to remember “the reason for the season.” And of course, we should. But, if I may be permitted to put it this way, we must also keep Satan in Christmas, and not skip too lightly over the lyrics that mention him.
For he and the forces, he embodies are an integral part of the story. It utterly transforms the way we understand Christmas, and our world, when we also hold in our minds a keen awareness of the darkness into which Christ came, and still must come, for our sake.
Later in “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” the visiting angel tells the shepherds in the field that Christ has come “To free all those who trust in him/ From Satan’s power and might.” Being subject to that “power and might” is, as we are likely to put it these days, the default setting of our human existence. But the Christmas story plays havoc with all such defaults.
It reveals the putatively normal and settled features of our world to be something very different: the ruins and aftereffects of a great and ancient calamity, the tokens of a disordered order. It lifts the veil of illusion about who we are and what we were made to be. This means that the “comfort and joy” of which the song speaks are not merely outbursts of seasonal jollity.
They bespeak the ecstatic gratitude of captives and cripples who recognize that, in and through Christ, the entire cosmos has been transformed, and their lives have been made new. Nothing can ever be the same again.
The darkness does not go away. Not now, not yet. But the light that shines into it can make even the bleakest midwinter into a landscape glistening with promise. So may it be for each of us, this and every Christmas.
From Illinoisan Julie Kelly Traitors › American Greatness (amgreatness.com). (Picture below part of CNN article - Ukraine Bakhmut: Volodymyr Zelensky thrusts frontline city onto the world stage in US visit | CNN
Traitors
Congressional Republicans think lining Zelenskyy’s army-green pockets with more U.S. tax dollars is a greater need than tackling any number of ongoing crises roiling the country right now.
By Julie Kelly
December 23, 2022
A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. But there are only a few profane words to describe the obscene scene as the two women closest in line for the presidency hoisted the Ukrainian flag from the dias of the House of Representatives while swooning over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Congress cheered on December 21. (This appears to be the first time in history that the flag of another nation essentially flew inside the U.S. Capitol building.)
“They asked me to bring this flag to you, to the U.S. Congress, to members of the House of Representatives and senators whose decisions can save millions of people,” Zelenskyy said before handing the flag to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris. “This flag is a symbol of our victory in this war.”
But even more, telling—sickening?—was the image in the same photo of a House staffer wearing a black face mask standing silently, eyes cast downward, behind a tri-folded American flag in a shadow box as the celebration ensued. The unintentional contrast said it all. Our once-thriving and a free country is slowly dying at the hands of frauds, crooks, and cowards—and they’re not even trying to hide it from us. They are flaunting it. After two decades of gradually amassing power and control under the ruse of national security, the ruling class is exercising that power in a ruthless way.
Zelenskyy’s address to a joint session of Congress—his second this year—symbolizes how the regime is actively working against the interests of the American people. While Americans struggle to pay for gas, Zelenskyy traveled to Washington in a U.S. Air Force plane accompanied by an F-15 fighter jet. Government officials literally rolled out the red carpet for Zelenskyy when he landed before he enjoyed a full-blown motorcade to the White House.
As Zelenskyy entered the House chambers Wednesday night, his lapdog benefactors in Congress rose to their feet, wildly applauding and reaching out to touch him, mouths agape as if a rock star was in their presence. But real groupies have more dignity. It was a disgusting display all around; Zelenskyy, always in character, couldn’t even manage to wear a proper suit.
His attire, of course, didn’t matter as long as his costume had lots of pockets. Zelenskyy is set to receive $47 billion more in U.S. tax dollars when those same slobbering lawmakers pass a $1.7 trillion government spending bill this month—bringing Zelenskyy’s total grab to $100 billion and counting.
The omnibus package itself is one insult after another to the American people. As Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) detailed in a December 20 tweet thread, generous funding to secure the borders of other countries is included in the bill with little more than crumbs to protect our southern border, now dangerously wide open to human smugglers and drug runners. Billions more will be spent to promote gender equity, fight “structural racism,” expand access to abortion and construct buildings and parks named after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, retiring Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ark.), and former First Lady Michelle Obama among others.
Perhaps the most outrageous provision in the bill is a hefty budget hike for the Department of Justice. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who spends the majority of his time and resources targeting Donald Trump, his associates, and his supporters, will receive a nearly 10 percent raise next year, bringing the Justice Department’s annual budget to $38.7 billion. More than $212 million is earmarked to hire almost 100 temporary government lawyers to help prosecute January 6 protesters, a caseload now nearing 1,000 Americans with promises to add another 1,000 more.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations will get $569 million more next year as that agency’s budget exceeds $11 billion for the first time. Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray have made it clear by word and deed that the imaginary threat of “domestic violent extremists,” i.e., those who dare to criticize the regime will remain their top priority. This means more predawn FBI raids of Capitol “trespassers,” more indefinite incarceration for those awaiting trial, more prison sentences for nonviolent offenses, more misery, and more destruction of Constitutional rights.
And that’s just fine with the overwhelming majority of Republicans in Washington who’ve been silent in the face of this unprecedented form of government retaliation against Trump supporters. In fact, outgoing Senator Roy Blunt (R-Miss.) explained that the Justice Department really needed the big funding boost. “I’ve always been for prosecuting anybody who violated the law on January the 6th,” Blunt told NBC News this week. “And there are, like, 800 cases already. So I can’t imagine that they don’t need some extra money.”
Good riddance, you clown.
The FBI, particularly in light of recent revelations of the bureau’s collusion with Big Tech to suppress coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop and criticism of mail-in voting, should be dismantled and defunded, not rewarded for its interference in two presidential elections among other malfeasance. Nor should the agency receive $375 million in capital funding to build a shiny new headquarters in either Virginia or Maryland as the bill also provides.
But that didn’t stop 18 Republican senators, including McConnell and two-time presidential loser Mitt Romney, from voting to pass the omnibus bill on Thursday. Another “yes” vote was from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the former chair of the Senate Judiciary who promised for years to “get to the bottom” of numerous Justice Department scandals.
No group of politicians has licked the boots of President Zelenskyy more than Republican senators. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is among Zelenskyy’s biggest supporters, insisting this week that “providing assistance for Ukrainians to defeat the Russians is the number one priority for the United States right now according to most Republicans. That’s how we see the challenges confronting the country at the moment.”
And there you have it. One of the most powerful—albeit most unpopular—leaders in Washington thinks lining Zelenskyy’s army-green pockets with more U.S. tax dollars is a greater need than tackling any number of ongoing crises roiling the country right now.
In a last bit of symbolism Wednesday night, Zelenskyy exited the House chambers carrying the case holding the folded American flag. A two-bit actor and international con man walked out with billions of American dollars and a cherished token of America’s sacrifice in the real fight for freedom, justice, and security.
And the fiends in the hall systematically destroying that legacy for the people they are elected to represent cheered again.
Traitors.
Follow-up to last week’s comments on the Battle of the Bulge, which began on December 16, 1944. The battle would continue until mid-January, and at this stage, Bastogne was under siege and surrounded by German forces. This article continues the story and even mentions the actions of Lt. Lyle Bouck.
Bastogne, Belgium: Christmas in the Embattled Forest (warfarehistorynetwork.com)
Sharing this excerpt:
Christmas Eve Mass:
Meanwhile, in Bastogne on that moonlit, bitterly cold Christmas Eve, the 3,500 civilians trapped in the besieged town tried to keep themselves warm in their cellars and church crypts for another night. Many of them huddled on the damp floors of the cellar in Abbé Jean-Baptiste Musty’s great seminary. Shivering and infested by lice, the men, women, and children lay on filthy mattresses. By flickering candlelight, the sisters of the seminary clinic circulated to comfort the old and young.
Headquarters personnel of the 101st Airborne Division gathered in the mess hall for their sundown meal, quieter and more thoughtful than usual. Roman Catholic soldiers spread the word that Mass would be celebrated at 7 pm, and when the time neared, 100 or more men entered a large room that had been converted into a chapel. Candles on the makeshift altar furnished light and tapers burned in tin fixtures along the bare walls.
A young Army chaplain in vestments celebrated the Mass, assisted by enlisted men. The worshippers sang Christmas carols to the accompaniment of a little field organ. In a brief homily, the chaplain remarked on the sacrifices that were required in Bastogne that Christmas and called for trust in God. "Do not plan," he counseled, "for God's plan will prevail."
Take time to read the entire article and recall the sacrifice of Americans of the greatest generation and contrast it with the squandering of American treasure as described by Julie Kelly.
On another note, one of my greatest privileges was to have met and spoken with Dick Duchossois. Mr. Duchossois died nearly a year ago, on January 28, 2022. I first met him at a Republican event at Arlington Racetrack. When Dick found out I had graduated from West Point, he shared with me that he had been in Patton’s Third Army serving in a tank destroyer platoon when Patton turned his Army north to free Bastogne. Mr. Duchossois – American hero, may your sacrifice never be forgotten.
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