Tuesday AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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~ Featuring ~

Smelling Christmas

by Tom McLaughlin

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White House Adviser Stephen Miller Discusses Recent

scumbag/liar-nObamacare Decision

and Border Security

by sundance

{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ White House senior adviser Stephen Miller joins Margaret Brennan to discuss the future of scumbag/liar-nObamacare and whether the government will shut down over the congressional funding battle regarding border security.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/12/16/sunday-talks-white-house-adviser-stephen-miller-discusses-recent-obamacare-decision-and-border-security/

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLnHYFTad8I

IDF finds fourth Hezbollah attack tunnel

dug into Israel from Lebanon

by JUDAH ARI GROSS

{timesofisrael.com} ~ The Israeli military uncovered over the weekend a fourth cross-border attack tunnel that it says the Hezbollah terror group dug into Israel from southern Lebanon... The Israel Defense Forces refused to specify where the tunnel was found, but said the “relevant local governments” were notified of its location. “The tunnel is under IDF control and does not present a threat,” the army said in a statement.The IDF filled the tunnel with explosives — as it did with the three other tunnels it exposed in recent weeks — in order to ensure that it could not be used to carry out an attack.“Whoever enters it from the Lebanese side forfeits his life,” the army said in a statement.The attack tunnels were found as part of the army’s ongoing Operation Northern Shield, an effort to find and destroy passages dug by Hezbollah from Lebanon...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-finds-fourth-hezbollah-attack-tunnel-dug-into-israel-from-lebanon/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2018-12-16&utm_medium=email

rino-John McCain’s Family Takes a Shot

at Likely Replacement for His Senate Seat

by Jack Davis

{westernjournal.com} ~ Rumors that Republican Rep. Martha McSally could be appointed to fill the vacant seat of the late Sen. rino-John McCain of Arizona... drew a negative response from some members of the rino-McCain clan. “McSally strikes me as an unwise choice for a number of reasons,” Ben Domenech, the husband of rino-McCain’s daughter, Meghan, tweeted Friday. “She’s like an NFL team that plays down to its opponents’ level – and she’ll be tasked with running for re-election immediately.” The tweet came after CNN, citing sources it did not name, said Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey might pick McSally to replace Sen. Jon Kyl, who was appointed to fill rino-McCain’s seat after rino-McCain’s death in September, but has said he is stepping down. During her military service, McSally was first American woman to fly in combat. McSally last month lost a hard-fought Senate contest to Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema. Sinema won the seat now held by retiring Republican rino-Jeff Flake...

https://www.westernjournal.com/john-mccains-family-takes-shot-likely-replacement-senate-seat/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=newsletter-WJ&utm_campaign=dailyam&utm_content=western-journal

‘Republican’ PAC That Attacks GOP

Bankrolled by Liberal Billionaires

by Joe Schoffstall

{freebeacon.com} ~ A prominent ‘Republican' women's political action committee that regularly receives national media attention for its criticisms of President Donald Trump and the GOP... is bankrolled by three liberal billionaire donors and activists, Federal Election Commission filings show. Republican Women for Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, was founded by Jennifer Lim and Meghan Milloy, both former employees of Republican organizations. The duo also previously founded Republican Women for scumbag/liar-Hillary and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in the past. The Republican Women for Progress PAC was established on Sept. 13 to back their work during the midterm elections, which included throwing more than $800,000 into independent expenditures supporting Democratic candidates in New Jersey, Kentucky, Michigan, and California. The group also came out in opposition of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation. The only donor to the women's PAC following its launch was Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, who cut a $400,000 check to the PAC... hy are they using 'Republican' in their title.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/republican-pac-attacks-gop-bankrolled-liberal-billionaires/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=2035088573-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_17_01_05_COPY_135&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-2035088573-45611665

Two Marines Testify On Harrowing

Attack By Angry Antifa Mob

by Fuzzy Slippers

{legalinsurrection.com} ~ United States Marines Alejandro Godinez and Luis Torres were viciously attacked by an angry mob of Antifa fascists in Philadelphia on November 17, 2018... They appeared in court on Thursday and revealed the details of their harrowing ordeal.The marines, Alejandro Godinez and Luis Torres, both testified in uniform about the incident, while three marine officers, including their commanding officer, stood in the gallery. The suspects, Thomas Massey and Tom Keenan, who have been linked to antifa on websites and social media, sat together with their individual lawyers and did not speak. The marines, who are not from the Philadelphia area, said that they had traveled to the city with other members of their helicopter unit, headquartered at Fort Dix, to attend a Marine event that night at a local hotel ballroom. They said that they had no knowledge of the nearby rally, which drew members of the alt-right as well as a large number of counter-protestors, Keenan and Massey reportedly among them. According to the marines’ testimony, they were touring historical landmarks near Front and Chestnut streets when suspect Thomas Keenan approached them. Godinez testified that Keenan asked them “Are you proud?,” to which Godinez remembers responding “We are Marines.” Torres said that he remembers Keenan asking “Are you Proud Boys?,” an allusion to one of the alt-right groups behind the rally, and one that Torres said he didn’t understand. “I didn’t know what Proud Boys meant,” he said... This got to stop America, Antifa fascists.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/12/two-marines-testify-on-harrowing-attack-by-angry-antifa-mob/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29

Smelling Christmas

by Tom McLaughlin

{tommclaughlin.blogspot.com} ~ More than a dozen Christmas carolers were gathered in the lobby of the Cumberland County Jail as I was leaving last week after conducting a Bible study. No one may go beyond the lobby without first passing through a metal detector and the Reverend Jeff McIlwain, the jail’s chaplain, was shepherding them through. All appeared to be about my age and were emptying their pockets of keys, coins, cell phones, and taking off belts with metal buckles. All were in good spirits.

Christmas carolers used to be a common this time of year and I have fond memories of joining with them and singing around my neighborhood every year. I don’t remember who organized it but we had little booklets with lyrics and notes for all the traditional, faith-based carols like “The First Noel”; “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” and many others. We’d stand in the snow outside each house and sing two or three before moving on to the next house where owners would appear in the window, smiling. We did the same thing in Lovell when the local UCC Church organized it. Houses are much scattered in Lovell and we were carted around on a hay-filled trailer pulled along slowly by a pickup truck.

I would be a good singer if it weren’t for my voice, and I mercifully allowed others to drown me out as we trekked around the neighborhood. It put me in the Christmas spirit and I was reminded at the jail how much I missed it. These days, however, it's mostly smells that bring Christmas memories back to me and balsam is one of them. My wife has been snipping branches from fir trees near our home, after which our grandchildren have been cutting the needles off with scissors and sewing them into little pillows.

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The smell of oil-based paint also reminds me of Christmas. That is probably unique to me but possibly shared by my surviving siblings because one year my mother and father decided to put the Christmas tree in our basement. Their idea was to watch us come down the stairs and look at our faces when we first saw our presents under the tree. That way they wouldn’t have to get up before dawn the way we kids always did. They put the basement off limits to all eight of us on Christmas morning until we had gone to Christmas mass and eaten breakfast. For weeks before the big day, my father spruced it up down there by painting the concrete walls and floor. The smell of oil-based paint is getting about as scarce as Christmas caroling these days, but when I occasionally get a whiff of it that Christmas memory still comes flooding back.

The smell of melting plastic does the same thing and here’s why: My mother disappointed us all one year when she brought home a box containing a reusable Christmas tree. It wasn’t even green; it was silvery. It had a central pole into which holes had been drilled and it was propped up on a stand. Into the holes, we inserted “branches” of graduated lengths — long ones around the bottom and progressively shorter ones going around up to the top. Branches were painted silver and adorned with tinsel. Beneath the tree and shining upward was an electric light focused through a rotating, four-colored wheel so the tree would change from red to green to blue to I-forget-what-color. After someone inserted a bulb with a higher wattage, the rotating plastic lenses slowly melted, hence the smell.

I never thought it would happen but I gradually came to like that tree. I even preferred it to the real, balsam-fir trees most people had. On my paper route, I’d see traditional Christmas trees in every picture window of every house on Boisvert and Euclid Roads in our town of Tewksbury, Massachusetts. Returning home in the dark of late afternoon in time for supper, I admired the changing colors on the silver-tinseled branches of that fake tree in our picture window. And, it was easier to take down after New Year’s Day when everyone in the neighborhood took down their trees.

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Many dragged their old trees down to the sand pit at the end of Euclid Road where we kids often played. During winters when there wasn’t enough snow on the nearby sledding hill we sometimes played hide-and-seek down there. My favorite hiding place was under a pile of those dried-up and discarded Christmas trees. No one could ever find me as I lay there enjoying the sweet fragrance of dried balsam. The needles smell different when they’re dry and that distinct smell — still pleasant — continues to remind me of good times playing with friends in that old sand pit.

http://{/2018/12/smelling-christmas.html

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