Ever hear of Rose Cleveland? You are about to.

By Rubashov

Billionaire Jeff Bezos is one of our new masters.  A global master.

Bezos owns Amazon.com, with its tentacles of business interests, and he owns mass media outlets like the Washington Post.  Jeff Bezos is an adherent of that modern preoccupation – the sex lives of other people. 

Of course, sex has always been an important tool for those trying to sell us something, but never has it been made so central to how we define ourselves.  As some borders go down, others go up, and the most ubiquitous border between us today is the one that tells us we are what we screw. 

Based on what you do to who, and how you do it, you will receive a marketing designation – in the form of a letter – and you will, from henceforth on, be defined by that letter primarily, and all the rest of you will be dragged along behind it.  

This is how marketers work.  This is how they sell you things and, more importantly, it is how they manipulate you into believing that you need to buy those things. 

But can the endless ways in which human beings order their lives really be bound and categorized by a half dozen letters – or indeed, a thousand?  And that is not the end of it.  The marketers  demand that we embrace their designation that they assign to us, as something springing from within us, in our blood and inescapable.  We are who they say we are… forever. 

And death offers no escape.  Rather like the Mormons, with their fondness for converting the dead, the marketers are intent on assigning designations to those who are past caring.  It’s a marketing tool to be used on those who are. 

And then we have the middlemen.  Those self-described “leaders” who set themselves up to speak for this letter or that – or indeed, a collection of letters.  They act as a kind of herdsmen, whippers-in, to corral and then to assign interests and behaviors.  “We are your leaders,” they tell us, “We know what you want.” 

And who thinks to question them?  We are sent to our silo, designated by a letter, and then piled in like so many ears of corn.  We need do nothing more.  Others will speak in our name. 

Quiet, in our designated silos, we will know what to buy, how to think, what to feel.  We will be “targeted” by marketing and do what is expected of us.  Ideally, we will forget that we were once human and with endless meaning, a multitude of possibilities.  We will be a letter – for their convenience.

Cheap politicians are always looking for a short-cut.  They love middlemen.  Why deal with many when you can deal with one?  So the middlemen are thus confirmed to speak for who they say they speak for.  And if there is a certain emptiness in what is done in our name, who is to know it? 

There is a pseudo-religious aspect to all this – in that it is based on faith, resistant to science and debate.  You accept it or you do not.  You are either good or you are bad.  If good, you are always good, good in all things, one of the Elect.  And if bad, then there is no hope for you, we should have nothing to do with you.

As with many pseudo-religions, it becomes all about the children.  Jim Jones, David Koresh, the “Children of God” cult… Did they not all operate under the banner than children be sexualized at the earliest possible moment?  Did they not preach endlessly about “Love”?  That “Love is the Answer”, “Love is Love”? 

And so they come for the children.  The marketers, their middlemen, the herders and stockers of silos.  And the cheap politicians hand over the children to them.  Sex is as addictive as tobacco and like the sellers of cigarettes (or narcotics) they like to get them while they’re young.

And so we have Rose Cleveland, sister to President Grover Cleveland., who served as a kind of “First Lady” to her bachelor brother.  A footnote in history… until now.  With the school curriculum in states like New Jersey mandating the teaching of people from history based on their alleged sexual practices (because, being dead, we cannot ask them), we can expect Rose Cleveland to become a household word.  As Jeff Bezos’ house organ called her – this “gay first lady” – should easily surpass her brother in pride of place in the textbooks.  After all, he was just the twice elected President of the United States, the only holder of that office to get elected, defeated, and then re-elected.  But what is that compared to allegedly having been gay? 

A long-ago President, the once-upon-a-time affairs of state, those are the real footnotes.  Such past things have no utility to the marketers.  But a lesson to living children in the here-and-now, to embrace a category chosen for them, to adopt a silo and pliantly comply, now that has a practical utility for the marketers. 

And so we are on the threshold of a new great forgetting.  When marketing removes the need for personal experience and pseudo-religion takes the place of knowledge.  Who needs the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights… when we have Rose Cleveland’s love letters? 

Study hard, children.  Be sure to get an “A”.  

Republican Assembly Leader takes on cop-killers

The “new” Democrats have gone nuts… they’re sounding more and more like those crazy, Soviet-era, New Age socialists from the 1970’s.  Forget pragmatic “centrists” like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrat millennials have embraced their grandparents’ politics… it’s like Jim Jones all over again. 

Remember Rev. Jim Jones?  He was the woke, hip, socialist, New Age, Pro-Green, Pro-Ass, spiritual/political leader so near and dear to the Democrat Party of the 1970’s.  Jones even campaigned with First Lady Rosalynn Carter and was appointed to high office by the liberal Democrat Mayor of San Francisco…

Of course, Jones and his “People’s Temple” ended very badly.  But make no mistake about it, Jim Jones was the original Social Justice Warrior…

We’ve been thinking a lot about this, in light of the so-called “People’s Summit”, a gathering in Washington, DC, that opened with remarks from an officer of the NAACP who led the crowd in a chant that honored a convicted cop-killer.  Now once-upon-a-time, the NAACP was a respected, mainstream civil rights organization, but apparently they’ve gone off the deep end too… or at least one of their officers has.  Here’s the story as it was reported:

As the event began on Monday, there were a series of opening remarks from participants and organizations, and Jamal Watkins of the NAACP led the crowd in a chant.

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

These possibly familiar words are from convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur (aka Joanne Chesimard). In this famous quote, Shakur is herself referencing Karl Marx, who famously wrote “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

The event’s organizers and sponsors include Planned Parenthood, the SEIU, the Sierra Club, and CPD Action, part of the Center for Popular Democracy, the community organizing group that effectively replace ACORN.

Former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army member Shakur was convicted in the murder of a New Jersey state trooper. She escaped and fled to Cuba where she was granted asylum. In 2013, the FBI under President Barack Obama named Shakur to the Most Wanted Terrorists list, the first woman to ever make the list.

Shakur’s words are often recited at protests, including Black Lives Matter marches and the 2018 “March for Our Lives.”

The Women’s March under the leadership of Linda Sarsour faced controversy in 2017 for celebrating Shakur’s birthday in a tweet.

Eventually the organization was forced to make a statement, saying in a series of tweets that the “Women’s March is a nonviolent movement. We have never and will never use violence to achieve our goals” and that Shakur’s “resistance tactics were different from ours. That does not mean that we do not respect her anti-sexism work.”

Shakur “took a militant approach,” the organization tweeted. “We do not. That does not mean we don’t respect and appreciate her anti-racism work.”

As reported on Matt Rooney’s Save Jersey website, New Jersey State Police Colonel Patrick Callahan stepped up in defense of his murdered compatriot:

“It is an affront to every man and woman who wears the badge that someone would choose to evoke the words of a convicted cop killer and fugitive from justice at a political conference,” said Callahan. “The men and women of the New Jersey State Police will never forget the sacrifice made by Trooper Werner Foerster on May 2, 1973 nor will we forget that the person convicted of his murder remains a fugitive for nearly 40 years. We will remain steadfast, both in the pursuit of Joanne Chesimard and in the preservation of the memory of Trooper Werner Foerster, Badge #2608.”

And Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick launched his own broadside at Democrats who want to make a hero out of a cop-killer:

This year there are a bunch of woke Democrats – all long on emotional rhetoric, with solutions that reek of socialist banality.  All A.O.C. wannabees running for Assembly… like Darcy Draeger and Lisa Bhimani in LD25, Deana Lykins in LD24, Stacey Gunderman and Lisa Mandelblatt in LD21, and Laura Fortgang in LD26.   

Assembly Republicans – led by Jon Bramnick – are standing against their tragic emotional appeals that have failed so horribly in the past.  It is imperative for conservatives to stand with the Republican Leader in this effort.  Jon Bramnick, whose very platform is “reason” – whose watchwords are probity and human decency – must defeat this emotional onslaught from a terrible past. 

Think the People’s Temple can’t happen again?

Think the emotions expressed at the People’s Summit were a fluke? 

The emotion-driven contagion of socialism stalks our nation again.  Rational Americans of all political parties must join together to drive it back into the past, where is should remain as a nightmare remembered. 

Anti-Religious Asbury Park City Council Violated Constitution, Unwittingly Supported Hate and Neglected Black People

By Thomas DeSeno

NOTE:  This story originally appeared in MoreMonmouthMusings.net – courtesy of our friend, Art Gallagher.

Asbury Park Democrat Chairman Giuseppe Joe Grillo, Deputy Mayor Amy Quinn, Tommy DeSeno and Mayor John Moor. photo via facebook

The Asbury Park City Council, using government letterhead, made a declaration opposing a religious belief.  Government can no more denounce a religious belief than they can endorse one, without violating the 1st Amendment Establishment Clause.  They then went on an illegal bullying campaign against a Pastor.  So caught up in a mob-induced false narrative of gossip, they ignored that the Pastor was bringing financial relief to the Westside black community, something all City Councils failed to do for 50 years.

Pastor JD Shuttlesworth scheduled a weeklong “Festival of Life” here, as he does in poor communities across America, handing out cash cards, groceries, even a car.  He celebrates Jesus while doing so. He wanted to serve Asbury Park’s poor black community as he did in Camden.  The applicant for the permit to use Bradley Park was local Pastor Lyddale Akins, who was jointly sponsoring the event.

Unfortunately Asbury Park has an “outrage team.”  It is comprised mostly of middle-class white people who commit cultural appropriation, pretending to be marginalized.  They constantly protest whatever is in the news that week, outrageous or not.  They are inorganic. Different protests, same gang “virtue signaling” every time.

One of them started gossip that Shuttlesworth preaches hate against gays.  This triggered the outrage team.  They started false and heinous rumors, portraying this man as the second coming of Jim Jones. The City bought it.

They said Shuttlesworth is a Bible Belt Evangelical (a dog whistle to the virulently anti-Christian).  He’s actually a Pentecostal from Pennsylvania. While his religion believes  gay sex is a sin, stating that dogma isn’t “hate;” just as other pastors stating sodomy committed by straight people is sinful, is also not “hate.”

Be clear: Nothing compels me to agree with or defend Shuttlesworth here.  I’m not. That isn’t the point.  It’s Ok for every person, business, church and political officeholder to protest the Pastor’s religion. Have at it, if that’s your way.  But you know who is not free to protest his religion?  The Government itself.  If Government condemns some dogma you end up with a state religion of dogma not condemned, violating the Establishment Clause. That’s the point.

Pastor JD Shuttleworth preaching in Asbury Park

Let’s tell this story chronologically.  It spans about 96 hours. Its antagonists are the City Council, 3 local Pastors and the outrage team.   Let’s see how the rumors of one person from the outrage team quickly seduced the City Council to become a Star Chamber of religious intolerance and turned 3 local Pastors who joined them into Christian apostates and bullies.

The Wednesday before the Sunday the festival began, a City Councilperson who had been told an outrage team member claimed Shuttlesworth was homophobic, made a phone call to the City Manager. That Council member inquired what could be done about Shuttlesworth, and the manager responded that they should get a Special Events Permit for a protest.   That night the outrage team held a panic meeting to plan that protest, in league with a representative of the City.  The following morning (Thursday) the City Council issued their government position attacking the Pastor’s “rhetoric” on homosexual sex.  Let’s pause the chronology to look at that.

The “rhetoric” is one YouTube video, with Shuttlesworth sermonizing in church, citing his religion’s dogma that gay sex (not simply being gay) is a sin.  I have made dozens of requests of the City, the outrage team and their supporters  to show any other videos, and they can’t (most couldn’t cite that video, stating only they heard gossip the Pastor was bad). So the City Council issued a government position, condemning a church sermon about a religious belief, which is illegal for them to do.

Back to the chronology.  The next morning (Friday), the outrage team issued a statement that their protest would likely be in Atlantic Park, adjacent to Bradley Park.   To rent a park in Asbury, one must apply, get scheduled for a council meeting, be reviewed by the Special Events Committee, have a public comment session and win the council vote.  It takes about 45 days or longer.

Not so when the City itself is secretly planning the event for you.  Friday afternoon the outrage team walked into City Hall with an application and walked out with a one day permit.  The City Council wasn’t there.  The City Manager was at a meeting in Trenton.  But the City Manager gave word to a clerk to hand them a permit (normally he legally he can, but since this was his idea, it probably wasn’t legal due to a conflict of interest). Let’s stop the chronology again to look at that very moment.

The application was in the name of the owner of a concert sound company.  Why?  He has the biggest speakers in town to drown out the Pastor.  But the permit wasn’t issued to him.  It was issued to a non-existent entity called “Rally of Love.”  Since no such thing exists, the taxpayers are on the hook for liabilities.  For insurance, the President of the Chamber of Commerce has a business and tried to use hers, with a declaration page insuring the park and the City.  The problem is, if she didn’t tell her insurance company she was neither the applicant nor the permit holder, they will deny all claims, again leaving the taxpayer footing the bill for lawsuits.

The $1,500 fee to rent the park has not been paid.  Also, the outrage team used the park not 1 day like their “permit” said; the City let them use it 5 days.  They owe the taxpayers $7,500.00, and they aren’t paying it. I suggest the Homeowners Association take them and the City Council to court for it.

Back to the chronology.  By Saturday, Pastor Lyddale Akin was brow-beaten by the outrage team into pulling out as co-sponsor of Shuttlesworth’s Festival of Life. Who could blame him.  The outrage team are bullies.  Privately, businesses are expressing a fear of saying no to the outrage team’s constant demands for money or donations. With social media, they can start an online propaganda campaign, create posters and protest you near instantaneously.  Scarier, the City Council joins every protest, thus legitimizing them, while media reports on them dutifully.   The outrage team can conduct a digital Kristallnacht against your business or church at any time using this neo-fascist method. #Love though –  it says so on all their signs.

On Sunday, who was on the stage with giant speakers drowning out a Pastor preaching Gospel and handing out gifts to primarily poor blacks?  A City Council majority. It was their gig, from the idea of it, to planning, to greasing the permit, to the protest. It’s wrong, and I supported Mayor Moor and Deputy Mayor Quinn in their every election. I still admire and support them, noting that in this instance, they didn’t guard themselves from the impetuousness and groupthink of the outrage team.

The outrage team also claimed the City encouraged people to make noise complaints and bring Shuttlesworth to court, calling it “a new form of protest,” thus using our Municipal Judge as a weapon against a religion.  Government gone wild. Good grief.

Gays rightfully spent years fighting the government power to value some people less than others.  Now that some gays are in Asbury Park’s government,  they used government power to devalue Shuttlesworth.  I’ve always supported gays being themselves.  Some gays in Asbury don’t want Shuttlesworth to be himself. They want him to be exactly like them. #Diversity, I guess. Don’t accuse me of being too broad.  I know we’ve had gays on Asbury Park’s City Council in the past who didn’t act like this.

We have to talk about 3 Pastors: Pastor Friedel of Shore Christian Church, the Rev. Dr. Vanzant of Second Baptist Church and Reverend Harris of the AME Zion Church.  They stood onstage to protest Shuttlesworth for espousing that gay sex is a sin.  Hypocrisy alert:  All three of their churches have Christian dogma that holds gay sex is a sin.  They protested what they believe to be the Word of the Lord. Look Pastors –  I get your fear of the outrage team.  I also know that Peter denied Christ three times before the cock crowed, but at least he cried bitterly when he did.  And the Romans had swords.

Other Protestant churches in Asbury Park also say gay sex is a sin, as well as two Catholic Churches and the Mosque on Ridge Avenue.  I don’t see the City Council, the outrage team or these 3 Pastors protesting Mt. Carmel or Holy Spirit Church.  Of course they’d never picket the Mosque –  that would counter too many Democrat talking points in an election year.

Let me tell you something else Pastors Friedel, Vanzant and Harris – you’re bullies. Imagine justifying to your Youth Ministries what your consorts did to Shuttlesworth and the bullying you supported by standing with them:  They spread lies that Shuttlesworth is a pedophile, a drug addict, shows infidelity to his wife,  has sex with strangers in bathrooms and is gay (something wrong with being gay?).  They  claim to be mailing annoyances to his Church. They had children as young as 6 tearing down Shuttlesworth’s posters so poor people couldn’t find out free groceries were available. They harassed businesses who had the posters.  They went online and made fun of Shuttlesworth’s children and his family’s clothes. #Love? You teach this?  You let yourselves become this. Where’s your decency?

Pastors, you helped drown out a sermon in the public square instead of promoting listening and dialogue. Giant speakers were used against him. The outrage team tried to have bagpipes,  bands,  noisemakers  and drum circles to stop his sermon from his west. From his east, The Beach Bar’s DJ turned up his volume to drown out the sermon. They also surrounded him, driving cars around Bradley Park with radios on full. You pastors drowned out a sermon.  #Christian?

You didn’t just surround Shuttlesworth, you came at him from above. The outrage team reported that the Asbury Hotel, whose owners iStar are partners in contracts with the City, threw colored confetti onto Shuttlesworth’s crowd from their roof. The bullies laughed online when the primarily poor black crowd first began to cower from not knowing what it was. I know what it was – litter-trespass-assault-impoliteness-annoyance. It’s all iStar. It’s all the City. And it’s you 3 intemperate Pastors, too. #Welcoming?

Here is what Christianity expects from you, Pastors.  You should issue an apology to Shuttlesworth for what you and your co-adventurers did to him and his family while visiting Asbury Park.  You can keep your distance from his ministry; you owe an apology to his humanity.  But I expect less from you. Christianity expects you to never partner with the outrage team again.  But I expect less from you.

Christian Fuscarino of Garden State Equality. file photo

Another bad actor here was Garden State Equality, the LGBT activist group whose head, Christian Fuscarino, is on the outrage team.    Last year Fuscarino was on stage with some of these same Pastors, and nearly summoned the courage to bring up their Churches’ stance on gays.  He should have, but he chickened.  Last week he teamed with them again, knowing they believe the same as Shuttlesworth.  But the mob targeted only Shuttlesworth, therefore so did he.  Garden State Equality has an anti-bullying campaign.  Maybe you should attend one of the meetings, Fuscarino.

Fuscarino had an ugly display of Christo-phobia while Shuttlesworth was here, but also showed a callous disregard for the black community.  It was selfish.  Mr. Fuscarino, let me tell you and the 3 Pastors what is meant by “Black Lives Matters:”  You have 10 fingers.  If one is cut and bleeding, at that moment, that finger matters. Not that the rest don’t, but that finger needs particular redress. Shuttlesworth saw that poor blacks in Asbury’s Westside both matter and need redress.  But Garden State Equality couldn’t stand the sight of some marginalized group getting attention on a day they were not. Selfishly, it must always be about them. So they tore at a Pastor bearing gifts – poor blacks receiving those gifts be damned. The City Council helped. I know none of you intended racism, but reckless actions have unintended consequences, like de facto racism.  #InstitutionalRacism?

Fuscarino is useless to gays anyway.  After Omar Mateen pledged his support to the Islamic State and killed 49 at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Garden State Equality immediately issued a statement of solidarity –  with Islam. The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) recently reported there are 8 countries in the world that put gays to death and 5 more who legally can, and all 13 use Islamic law to do it. They reported zero non-Islamic country killing gays.

ILGA doesn’t bring that up because they are  Islamophobic.  ILGA doesn’t bring it up to say all Muslims are bad.  Simply put Mr. Fuscarino, no LGBT advocate should show “solidarity” with Islam with that being the state of their world, while also viciously attacking a Christian who says gay sex is a sin. Your loyalty lies not with gays, but with the Democrat talking point that believes votes can be gained by calling everyone else Islamophobic. So you pledged solidarity to Omar Mateen’s inspiration and threw gays not under the bus, but off the roof (the preferred method for killing gays in 13 countries).

Probably the hardest part to understand was criticism of a Pastor giving away money, when criticism is usually reserved for Pastors asking for money.  When the owner of Johnnie Mac’s bar walked around Asbury last Christmas handing out tens of thousands of dollars in gift cards, all these same people praised him.  Shuttlesworth was simply doing the same in June. Is this hatred because he is a preacher? Asbury Park was named after a circuit preacher, much like Shuttlesworth is one.  What has happened to this City?

I telephoned Pastor Shuttlesworth.  I found a man who was magnanimous toward his haters.  Even the government.  He spoke only of his thrill to be able to preach to the people in Asbury Park and lift them.  I tried to bait him into complaints about his detractors and he would only express his love for them.  He praised our police.  He rarely brings up homosexual sex in his sermons. It is unfortunate that became the hyperbolic scream of his Asbury Park protestors. He told me he is used to it.  In today’s world, wherever he preaches, an anti-Christian bias appears in protest.  He still loves them.

That conversation made me reflect upon the state of Asbury Park.  Since when do we believe that people are only one thing?  It is wrong to label people “all good” and “all bad.”  It is wrong to find one thing we disagree with about someone, then label them “all bad.”  Certainly someone who holds one trait we dislike can have a thousand others we do.  Certainly a person with whom we disagree with in one area is also capable of many good deeds.  Isn’t that the point of diversity, even multiculturalism?  What happens to love if one disagreement triggers hate?

To the 3 Pastors, I ask you to recall the story of Cyrus from the Bible – which reveals to us that  God will even call upon a heathen to do good works. You could have supported Shuttlesworth in his quest to help the poor while disagreeing with him in other areas.

So what can be done?  Someone could file a complaint with the State Department of Community Affairs against the City Council.  This isn’t the first time this has happened in Asbury.  Last September the outrage team held a rally that protested a political party, where only officials from the Democrat Party were allowed to speak.  It turned into a rally against white people, America and the President. Yet two of the sponsors were the Asbury Park School District and The Asbury Park Housing Authority, and they had officials on stage.  Government entities can’t do that! Government entities can’t join political rallies!  Asbury’s constant mixing of Government and activism is out of control.

Maybe if the Publisher of the only daily newspaper around here wasn’t so busy accepting community service awards from the very same people that he should be investigating/reporting about, he might file a complaint with the DCA.

But forget that complaint.  I hate seeing people jammed up. I say to the City Council there is a better way.  Start by issuing a withdrawal of your government statement.  Apologize to Shuttlesworth for how he was treated as a visitor.  You can stay away from his ministry, but like the Pastors, you owe an apology to his humanity.  Unlike the Pastors, I have higher expectations of you and believe that you will.   The other thing that you MUST do is avoid letting activists use the Government as a tool.  It’s illegal.  Stop it.  Tell the outrage team the City Council is going to take a break from the constant protests in town. Leave activism to the activists.

All that’s left is for me to ask Pastor Shuttlesworth to pray for me, because I know what  happens when someone holds a minority view in this City these days.  Instead of inspiring dialogue and healing, I’ll receive hate, public humiliation and excoriation. The gentleness and love Blue Bishops once held for each other is gone, replaced by gentrifying newcomers whose spirit is based not upon compassion, but ill-will and glory-seeking.

I hope instead the outrage team will reflect upon my motto:  Politics is a tiny part of who we are – never let it stop you from enjoying the rest of a person.

Tommy De Seno is an attorney, a journalist and a contributor to the website Ricochet.com