Category Archives: Ron Paul

Twenty-two organizations signed a letter by the Citizens Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) urging U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, to block funding for a national patient identification system known as the Unique Patient Identifier (UPI).

In June, the U.S. House of Representatives removed a prohibition on funding put into place in 1997 by former Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. A UPI is a number the federal government would assign patients so their medical information could be tracked in a national medical records system.

Such a system would undermine patient privacy, says CCHF President Twila Brase.

In an attempt to unify and control patient data, Congress threatens to put Americans and our national security at risk to hackers and others wishing to steal and leverage private medical and financial details, Brase said in a statement.

The letter cites the Google-Ascension data-sharing agreement (see page 16), which it calls troubling because it did not require obtaining explicit individual consent from patients. The letter also says a UPI is another step toward creating a national health care system.

Therefore, Mr. Chairman, we are asking you to use your considerable power to stop the National Patient ID, the letter states.

In September, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced S. 2538, which would deauthorize the UPI.

As a physician, I know firsthand how the doctor-patient relationship relies on trust and privacy, which will be thrown into jeopardy by the National Patient ID, Paul stated in a press release. Considering how unfortunately familiar our world has become with devasting security breaches and the dangers of the growing surveillance state, it is simply unacceptable for government to centralize some of Americans most personal information.

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News - Block Government Patient IDs, Organizations Ask Senate - The Heartland Institute

"The law of double jeopardy in New York state ... provides very narrow exceptions for prosecution," Justice Maxwell Wiley said in court, citing the principle that an individual can't be tried twice for the same conduct. "The indictment is dismissed."

Justice Department watchdog testifies before the Senate Homeland Security Committee

"If you're getting information that isn't advancing, and in fact potentially undercutting, or simply undercutting your primary theme or theory as was happening here ... you'd look at the Carter Page file and say, should I keep going on this?" Horowitz told the committee, explaining that the FBI wasn't finding much to corroborate allegations that Page was working with Russia.

US and South Korea fail to reach cost-sharing agreement for US troops

The current cost-sharing agreement between Washington and Seoul is due to expire at the end of 2019, but the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and US State Department said a next round of talks has been scheduled for January.

Appeals court delivers blow to Obamacare

In the case brought by Texas and joined by the Trump administration, which argued the entire law should be thrown out, the panel has told a lower court that it must consider whether the individual mandate can be separated from the rest of the law.

The court acknowledged that when the lower court reviews its opinion it might once again hold that the entire law must fall.

But the appeals court ruling stated, "It is no small thing for unelected, life-tenured judges to declare duly enacted legislation passed by the elected representatives of the American people unconstitutional."

Trump administration proposes allowing imports of certain drugs from Canada

The first proposed rule would allow states, potentially working with wholesalers and pharmacists, to develop programs to import certain drugs from Canada. The list does not include insulin, even though many diabetic Americans have traveled north to buy the drug because prices are lower there.

The second draft guidance would allow manufacturers to import lower-cost versions of brand-name drugs that they sell in foreign countries. Agency officials said drug makers are interested in doing this but have not been able to because of contracts with other players in the supply chain.

CNN's Erica Orden, Marshall Cohen, Ryan Browne, Tami Luhby, Dan Berman, Joan Biskupic and Ariane de Vogue contributed to this report.

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Following today's impeachment vote? Here's what else is happening. - CNN

SOMERVILLE, NJ - The Rev. Canon Ronald N. Pollock, pastor of St. John's Episcopal Church, celebrated the 25th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood on Dec.17th.

Popularly known as Father Ron, he was ordained by Bishop Mellick Belshaw in 1994 and has been rector of St Johns since 1998, leading the congregation in growth and spiritual renewal.

It continues to be the greatest privilege of my vocational life to walk alongside people coming from a rich variety of places. Pollock said. Helping to create partners in various kinds of ministry is very exciting to me. Creating community partners enables us to gain glimpses of heaven in serving all of Gods creation, Pollock said.

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He added, Today I thank God for being able to serve Jesus Christ and the Church as a priest for 25 years. It is the greatest joy in my life to serve Jesus Christ and the Church."

In addition to his dedication to St Johns Rev. Pollock has demonstrated strong community involvement and has been active in the church and throughout the community, including with the Somerville Fire Department and as the Somerville 2017 Citizen of the Year.

Among his many activities:

In the Episcopal Church, St. Johns and the diocese, Pollock currently serves or has served on many committees including: three years as President of the Diocesan Standing Committee; member and co-chair for two terms on the Episcopal Election Committee; member, Search Committee for a new Dean of Trinity Cathedral; Dean of the Watchung Convocation, which includes churches along the Route 22 corridor from Plainfield to Lebanon; assisted in the development and implementation of the From The Heart Thrift Shop, which awarded $95,000 to non-profit agencies in Somerset County and surrounding areas for 13 years; assisted in the development and implementation of a new monthly ministry, Laundry Love, which helps people who might not be able to afford, or are unable, to do their own laundry.

In the community, Pollock has served as the chaplain to the Somerville Fire Department since 1999; a member of the Somerset County Office on Aging, appointed by Board of Chosen Freeholders; member, Somerset Treatment Services 2013-2018, Board President from 2016-2018; member, Interfaith Community Action Network, 2018 to present; member, Somerset County Cultural Diversity Coalition since 2001 and board member of the Somerville Senior Citizens since 2018.

Rev. Pollock was also a member of the Somerset County Curbing Hunger Board (Somerset County Food Bank), 2007-2009; member, Chaplaincy to the Elderly, Board of Directors, 2011-2014; Somerset County Jail Chaplaincy Board, Board of Directors, 2000 to 2002; S.H.I.P. (Samaritan Homeless Interim Program) Board of Directors, 1999 to present; Somerville Area Ministerial Association member since 1999, president, 2004; New Jersey Council of Churches, Board Member, 1994 to 2000; and Somerset Hills YMCA, Board of Directors, 1995 to 1998.

Among his awards and honors, he received the Borough of Somerville 2017 Citizen of the Year Award; the Spirit of Somerset Award, for valuable contributions to the quality of life in Somerset County in the area of volunteerism, Somerset Treatment Services in 2012; the Somerset County Cultural Diversity Coalition Diversity Award, Faith Community, 2009; The Paul C. Harris Award for outstanding community leadership, June 2009; Certificate of Appreciation, Somerset County, Guns Buy Back Program, 2013; Commendations from State of NJ, Senate and General Assembly Joint Legislative Resolution for Ecumenical work and organizing interfaith vigil in solidarity with Jewish Community, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019; Commendation from State of NJ, Senate and General Assembly Joint Legislative Resolution for hosting Appreciation Day for all first and community responders.

Rev. Pollock holds a Master of Divinity from The General Theological Seminary, NY; a Bachelor of Arts in Human Services with a minor in psychology from Elon College, NC; a certificate in The Bible and its Setting from St. Georges College, Jerusalem; and attended the School of Social Work in Rutgers University.

St. Johns Episcopal Church is located at 158 West High St. Sunday services are conducted at 8 am and 10:15 am with music. St. Johns offers Sunday School every Sunday at 10:15 am preceded by Childrens Chapel at 10 am which features the rector offering a brief childrens message.Among its many programs, St. Johns hosts the SHIP's Galley Soup Kitchen three days a week, a Clothes Closet, and a monthly Laundry Love, assisting those who are unable or cannot afford to clean their laundry.

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Somerville: Father Ron Celebrates 25th Anniversary of Ordination - TAPinto.net

We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan. We didnt know what we were doing. So said Gen. Douglas Lute, who oversaw the US war on Afghanistan under Presidents Bush and Obama. Eighteen years into the longest war in US history, we are finally finding out, thanks to thousands of pages of classified interviews on the war published by the Washington Post last week, that General Lutes cluelessness was shared by virtually everyone involved in the war.

What we learned in what is rightly being called the Pentagon Papers of our time, is that hundreds of US Administration officials including three US Presidents knowingly lied to the American people about the Afghanistan war for years. This wasnt just a matter of omitting some unflattering facts. This was about bald-faced lying about a war they knew was a disaster from almost day one.

Remember President Bushs Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld? Remember how supremely confident he was at those press conferences, acting like the master of the universe? Heres what he told the Pentagons special inspector general who compiled these thousands of interviews on Afghanistan: I have no visibility into who the bad guys are.

It is not only members of the Bush, Obama, and Trump Administrations who are guilty of this massive fraud. Falsely selling the Afghanistan war as a great success was a bipartisan activity on Capitol Hill. In the dozens of hearings I attended in the House International Relations Committee, I do not recall a single expert witness called who told us the truth. Instead, both Republican and Democrat-controlled Congresses called a steady stream of neocon war cheerleaders to lie to us about how wonderfully the war was going. Victory was just around the corner, they all promised. Just a few more massive appropriations and wed be celebrating the end of the war.

Congress and especially Congressional leadership of both parties are all as guilty as the three lying Administrations. They were part of the big lie, falsely presenting to the American people as expert witnesses only those bought-and-paid-for Beltway neocon think tankers.

What is even more shocking than the release of this smoking gun evidence that the US government wasted two trillion dollars and killed more than three thousand Americans and more than 150,000 Afghans while lying through its teeth about the war is that you could hear a pin drop in the mainstream media about it. Aside from the initial publication in the Washington Post, which has itself been a major cheerleader for the war in Afghanistan, the mainstream media has shown literally no interest in what should be the story of the century.

Weve wasted at least half a year on the Donald Trump impeachment charade a conviction desperately in search of a crime. Meanwhile one of the greatest crimes in US history will go unpunished. Not one of the liars in the Afghanistan Papers will ever be brought to justice for their crimes. None of the three presidents involved will be brought to trial for these actual high crimes. Rumsfeld and Lute and the others will never have to fear justice. Because both parties are in on it. There is no justice.

Just days after the Afghanistan Papers were published, only 48 Members of Congress voted against the massive military spending of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. They continue as if nothing happened. They will continue lying to us and ripping us off if we let them.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

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Ron Paul: Afghanistan War The Crime Of The Century OpEd - Eurasia Review

Earlier this year after more than 16 years the Trump administration announced its intent to resumeexecuting death row prisoners. The last time thefederal government carried out the death penalty was in 2003, the long hiatus due to continued court battles over the drugs used to carry out the executions.

Two Appeals Courts, including the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit,have ruled against the administrationin their rush to begin executions this month. It said that issues with the lethal injection protocol are still unresolved. However, the Trump administration is so intent on quickly resuming executions thatitasked the Supreme Court to weigh in.

Over the weekend, the Supreme Court declined to overturn to lower court rulings saying they expect the issue to be resolved at the appeals court level. The Trump administration said they were disappointed in the ruling and would continue to the legal battle.

The short list of prisoners who would likely be the first executed include those convicted of heinous and grisly crimes. For example,Daniel Lewis Leewas scheduled to be executed on Dec. 9. Lee and his co-defendant were convicted of murdering a couple and their 8-year-old daughter.

Yet, when one delves into the testimony of the case, we find that it was Lees co-defendant, Chevie Kehoe, who killed the young girl after Lee refused to do so. Kehoe was the ringleader of this crime, according to Judge G. Thomas Eisele. However, Kehoe received a sentence of life in prison while the less culpable Lee was sentenced to death.

The miscarriage of equal justice in this case has prompted the presiding judge, the victims family members and the U.S. attorney, who investigated and prosecuted the case, to plea for Lees clemency.

This case highlights why death penalty opposition has grown steadily over the past 20 years around the world and here at home.

Numerous states considered death penalty repeals this year. Recently,New Hampshire became the 21st state to abolish the death penalty. These efforts in the statehouse are increasingly bipartisan.

Just last month, well-known conservatives including former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-Texas), former Gov. George Ryan (R-Ill.), and Richard Vigueriesigned a statement expressing their opposition.

Calling the death penalty a costly and ineffective government program, the statement says that the death penalty does not work and cant be made to work, not in spite of our conservative principles, but because of them.

Once a defender of the death penalty, I changed my mind back in 2010 as New Mexicos governor when I signed into law our states repeal. When I considered the evidence, I concluded that the death penalty was not an effective deterrent to violent crime and the data in this regard is clear.

Rheres the growing body of research showing the grave mistakes made by judges, prosecutors, law enforcement agencies and even juries that has led to increasing exonerations.Most people sentenced to death are poor and minority defendantswho have not been flanked by the best legal teams and expert witnesses available to white collar criminals.

Earlier this year,members of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty met with Pope Francis to discuss the worldwide movement to end this heinous practice. Pope FrancisPope FrancisSCOTUS is blocking federal executions and it's the right thing to do Judge in same-sex marriage denied communion at Michigan Catholic church Pope appeals to world leaders to renounce nuclear weapons MORE deserves praise for his global leadership to help end use of the death penalty. In August 2018, building on the work of his predecessor, Pope Benedict, Pope Francis ordered achange in the Catholic Churchs Catechism to state clear opposition to capital punishment.

It is, in itself, contrary to the Gospel, because a decision is voluntarily made to suppress a human life, which is always sacred in the eyes of the Creator and of whom, in the last analysis, only God can be the true judge and guarantor, Pope Francis wrote.

The challenge posed to us as Americans not as Republicans, Democrats, or Independents, but as human beings is to keep front and center in our minds what this decision and others mean to each one of us as the 2020 election approaches.

Bill Richardson is a former Congressman, Ambassador to the United Nations, U.S. Energy Secretary, and Governor for the State of New Mexico. He founded the Richardson Center for Global Engagement in 2011 to promote global peace and dialogue by identifying and working on areas of opportunity for engagement and citizen diplomacy with countries and communities not usually open to more formal diplomatic channels.

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SCOTUS is blocking federal executions and it's the right thing to do | TheHill - The Hill

A few months ago, in a house near Vancouver, nine actors in festive aprons gathered around a kitchen island to shoot a montage for the Hallmark Channel movie Christmas in Evergreen: Tidings of Joy. The island was covered in cookie-making ingredients. The director, Sean McNamara, a veteran of Hallmark movies and Disney kids series, sat at monitors nearby. O.K.! he called out. Youre having fun, youre making cookies, its Christmas, and action!

The actors rolled dough and picked up cookie cutters. The montage would be dialogue-free, overlaid with music; to set the tone, McNamara cued up Jingle Bell Rock. The cast began to bob. Good, but we probably shouldnt be dancing! McNamara yelled. One actor, looking serious, lifted an icing bag. Remember, youre having fun, and theres funny stuff going on! McNamara said. The actors burst into smiles and laughter. Now the cake! McNamara said. Paul Greene, a former J.Crew model and the male lead, presented the group with a white fondant cake topped with pine trees. They shook powdered sugar on it. Cut! McNamara yelled. Brilliant!

The Hallmark Channel is a cable network owned and operated by the greeting-card company. This year, the channel and a sister network, Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, produced a hundred and three original movies; forty are about Christmas. Since 2011, from late October to January, Hallmark has broadcast Christmas movies nearly twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. (The Hallmark Movie Checklist app, which helps guide viewers to new films, has 1.5 million users.) During this years holiday season, the programming, called Countdown to Christmas, has made Hallmark the No. 1 cable network among women between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four, and, in some prime-time slots, No. 1 in households and total viewers. Last year, seventy-two million people watched Countdown to Christmas. Fans talk of turning it on and leaving it on all season; it dominates TV screens in hospitals and nursing homes. Guys come up to me on the golf course and whisper, I love your Christmas movies! the actor Cameron Mathison (The Christmas Club, The Christmas Ornament) told me. Lifetime, the womens network long known for movies with titles like In Bed with a Killer and Your Husband Is Mine, now airs its own Hallmark-esque Christmas movies, in a block called Its a Wonderful Lifetime. Netflix, Ion, Freeform, and OWN have started making them, too.

Hallmark films tend to center on independent women with interesting jobs (novelists, chocolatiers) and appealing romantic prospects (princes, firemen). Programming is seasonal; as the year progresses, characters pair up amid winter wonderlands, Valentines Day chocolate-making contests, fireworks celebrations, pumpkin patches, and Christmas parties. The familiarity of the films is essential to their success. Hallmark screenplays have nine acts, each of which hits specific plot pointsa meet-cute in Act I, before the first commercial, an almost kiss in Act VII. The shots are lit with a distinctive warmth. Actors recur. The settings often recall Saturday Evening Post covers by Norman Rockwell, whose painting Shuffletons Barbershop inspired a Hallmark movie of the same name, and several productions have been filmed at ersatz pioneer villages. As Danica McKellar, a Hallmark regular once best known as Winnie Cooper, from The Wonder Years, told me, many actors bring nostalgia withus.

In Hallmark films, townspeople care for one another, run viable small businesses, and compete in gingerbread bake-offsAmerica as we might wish it were, and as some believe it once was. It has thrived in the Trump era. Last year, it was one of the only networks to gain viewers besides Fox News and MSNBC. It also depicts a purple America, without guns, MAGA hats, rage. Bill Abbott, the C.E.O. of Crown Media, Hallmarks entertainment company, told me that its your place to go to get away from politics, to get away from everything in your life that is problematic and negative, and to feel like there are people out there who are good human beings that could make you feel happy to be part of the human race.

Hallmarks America is also straight, often Christian, and, until recently, mostly white. Meghan Markle, whose biracial parentage made headlines after her engagement to Prince Harry, starred in two Hallmark movies; in the Fourth of July romance When Sparks Fly, from 2014, her character had white parents. In 2017, the African-American TV and film actor Holly Robinson Peete pitched a wholesome reality show about her family to Hallmark. Meet the Peetes aired for two seasons. There were six of usseven, including my momso that was a lot of diversity at once, she told me.

The Evergreen series, which began in 2017, now sees Peete playing the mayor of Evergreen, Vermont, a quaint town based on a line of Hallmark cards. The movies begin with a shot of the illustrations that inspired them, some featuring a vintage red pickup truck, which appears in the movies. A miniature of it is available as a Hallmark Christmas decoration, for $39.99. Many Hallmark films involve some form of lucrative integrationproduct placement. Balsam Hill synthetic Christmas trees appear frequently; in Holiday Hearts, from November, an eligible doctor (Paul Campbell) demonstrates the settings of a trees remote-controlled lights for a full minute. On the set of Christmas in Evergreen: Tidings of Joy, McNamara and his crew shot a scene that featured a foldaway Ninja Foodi oven. Its important to show nine cookies on the sheet, Sunta Izzicupo, the films executive producer, said. On the monitor, an actor approached the oven, said, No room? No problem, opened its door, and inserted a tray of nine cookies shaped like pickup trucks.

One theme of Tidings of Joy, written by Zac Hug, is whether Evergreen is too good to be true. (In some ways, its the quintessential Hallmark Christmas movie; in others, its a playfully self-aware critique of the genre.) In the film, Katie (Maggie Lawson), a savvy big-city journalist, makes a wish on a magical snow globe, bakes cookies, goes carolling and ice-skating, and watches the unveiling of a time capsule inside a fifteen-foot advent calendar. She also falls in love with Ben (Greene), the local librarian. The day after the cookie shoot, at a historic-house museum in Vancouver, McNamara sat at video monitors in a circa-1895 kitchen, near a hand-cranked wooden telephone. He was about to direct the films highest point of tensionthe almost breakup, usually at the end of Act VIIIwhich takes place at the Evergreen Library, where Ben has discovered Katies notes for what appears to be an expos of the town. Lawson and Greene were surrounded by wreaths, garlands, and Christmas knickknacks. Paper lanterns softened the lighting. Greene, reading Katies notes, said, Despite the warmth and honest connection these people feel, its hard not to wonder how much of Evergreen is an act. His tone hinted at anger.

Cut! McNamara said. Paul, you need to take down, like, twenty per cent of the edge. A key tenet of Hallmark screenplays, the veteran writer-director Ron Oliver told me, is that conflict can never seem like its gone so far that it cant be resolved. In the next take, Greene delivered the line in a tone of gentle disbelief. Brilliant! McNamara said.

In 1910, Joyce Clyde Hall, an entrepreneurial Nebraska teen-ager and the son of a Methodist minister, took a train to Kansas City, Missouri, bringing with him two boxes of postcards. Printed postcards had become a hot commodity, and Hall had a talent for sales. In 1914, he and his older brother Rollie formed a company called Hall Brothers, opened a shop, and began printing their own greeting cards and paper goods. The First World War was a turning point for the industry: servicemen and their loved ones enjoyed sending and receiving cards and became lifelong card buyers. And I saw something else in the custom, Hall wrote in his 1979 memoir, When You Care Enough: A way of giving less articulate people, and those who tend to disguise their feelings, a voice to express their love and affection. In 1916, Hall Brothers began printing cards that came with their own envelopes; in 1917, they invented modern wrapping paper.

The brothers began using the name Hallmark, after a goldsmiths stamp of quality, in 1928, and later paired it with a crown logo. By mid-century, Hallmark had pioneered a new card-display technique, similar to what we still see in drugstores; formed partnerships with Disney and Norman Rockwell; and built a huge headquarters, in Kansas City. In the process, the company became so intertwined with the idea of holiday celebration that the term Hallmark holiday entered the public vocabulary, connoting a holiday rooted as much in commercialism as in tradition.

In 1951, Joyce Hall wrote to his sales team, Dear Fellows: Were going to try our hand at television. Inspired by the mediums educational and entertainment possibilities, he wanted Hallmark to deliver edifying fare. That year, the company sponsored the first original opera written for television, Amahl and the Night Visitors; later, under the name Hallmark Hall of Fame, it sponsored TV productions of literary adaptations, Broadway plays, and, in time, original films. It became the most award-winning franchise in television history, with eighty-one Emmys.

Hallmark formed Crown Media in 1991, and ventured into cable. Later that decade, it bought an interest in the religious network Odyssey, which, in 2001, it took over fully, renaming it the Hallmark Channel. According to Bill Abbott, who ran Crowns advertising sales from 2000 to 2009, before becoming its C.E.O., the strategy at the outset wasnt to draw close to the brand. It didnt really have a filter. For a decade, the channel aired motley family entertainment, Hallmark Hall of Fame films, and original movies, made by an independent producer.

There were a few standouts. One was the eleven-film Love Comes Softly series, released from 2003 to 2011. Based on novels by the Canadian evangelical-Christian writer Janette Oke, the movies are lightly religious frontier dramas set out West. I watched several around 2009; inside the films covered wagons and behind their butter churns, I discovered, yellow-haired TV stars like Katherine Heigl and January Jones were living lives of noble forbearance. There were occasional speeches about the Lord, but there was also hardship and heart, la Little House on the Prairieif Pa hurt his leg, a handsome stranger would help plow the fields. Other films were set in a down-home romanticized present, among characters who proudly respect sentimental art. Some of them praise Norman Rockwell and Thomas Kinkade; in one film, a painter feels betrayed, but then grateful, when her art is used in an ad campaign. Art is about creativity and being a free spirit, she says in Act IX, just before the kiss. Its not restrictive or rigid, so why should I be? Her painting is of Santa Claus.

These series and films, along with The Christmas Card, a surprisingly effective love story between a soldier and a mill owners daughter, from 2006, helped inspire Abbott, when he became C.E.O., in 2009, to push Hallmark to embody the brand on TV. I love greeting cards and I love Hallmark stores, Abbott told me when I met him at Hallmarks Manhattan offices. To him, the stores give a sense of comfort, positivity, connections. You should turn on our channel and almost feel like youre walking into a Gold Crown store, he said. Abbott is fifty-seven, with thinning gray hair, a warm, confident demeanor, and an adenoidal vocal quality, like a man powering through a cold. He told me that he had been influenced, too, by the distinctive two-minute Hallmark-card commercials that had aired during the Hall of Fame broadcasts, starting in the sixties, which became famous for making viewers cry. In The Music Professor, from 1983, a girl races to arrive at a piano lesson before her teacher and hides a card between the pages of her sheet music. When he finds it, both struggle to contain their emotions.

Abbott and his executive team, including Michelle Vicary, Crown Medias executive vice-president of programming and network publicity, developed a strategy of leaning into Christmas. Vicary, who works at Crown Medias Los Angeles headquarters, began her career in music sales, working with bands including Nirvana, Hole, and Mudhoney, but shifted gears because of her passion for television, she told me. (She has been with Crown Media since its beginning.) In 2015, Crown started its own production company, taking control of development, costumes, locations, casting, and post-production. Abbott and Vicary read every script and watch every movie. The Christmas movies are generally shot in fifteen days, in minimal takes and with maximum efficiency, in affordable, often Canadian, locations; they use actualsexisting locations, not soundstages. Abbott and Vicary coached the development team to be brand ambassadors, who insure that each element of a production has a distinctive Hallmark feel, down to the decorative mise en scne. Vicary told me, Were not afraid to look at the dailies and call them up and say, Not enough Christmas.

In 2014, Hallmark aired Christmas Under Wraps, starring Candace Cameron Bure, who in childhood co-starred on Full House, alongside another Hallmark actor, Lori Loughlin. Bure plays a big-city doctor who finds love in Garland, Alaska, which, she correctly suspects, is home to Santas workshop. I guess when it comes down to it, a patient is a patient, she says, wide-eyed, icing Rudy the Reindeers leg. At the beginning, she is striving for a prestigious Boston surgical fellowship; by the end, she has everything she needs right there in Garland. The movie was a breakthrough, Abbott said. Soon afterward, the company ramped up production.

The Bure breakthrough was a bit like the plot of Christmas Under Wraps: Hallmark had discovered that it had everything it neededpositivity, reassurance, sentimentality, and cozy salesmanshipright there in Garland. At that point, the Hallmark Channel had a steady audience of older viewers, but it began bringing in younger ones by casting prominent actors who had starred in edgy teen fare of the two-thousandsJesse Metcalfe, Chad Michael Murrayand putting them in sweaters and Santa hats. There was something for middle-aged viewers, tooa divorced heroine wooed by a sensitive major-league baseball player, for example, who teaches her son to catch. The movies seasonal themes began to venture beyond Christmas, and holiday decoratingeven for Halloween or Valentines Dayprovided a way for characters to bond. (Since the seventies, Hallmark Cards has sold Christmas ornaments and holiday decorations.)

As the strategy started to succeed, Hallmark further expanded its fare, introducing a morning show (Home & Family, shot in a free-standing house on the Universal lot) and, in 2014, Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, the sister channel, whose titles include Murder, She Baked: A Peach Cobbler Mystery, and whose programming broadened, slightly, the companys tonal register. (In one film, Bure finds a human skull.) Often, at a mysterys climax, theres a moment of cathartic, justified violencefor example, a woman clonking a would-be murderer over the head with a piece of pottery. In regular Hallmark Channel films, violence is so seldom seen that even allusions to it can be shockingsuch as in From Friend to Fianc, from 2018, when a party scene at a paintball range features a shot of people wielding semiautomatic paintball guns. When I mentioned the off note to Abbott, he said, Thats a movie we did not write the script for. It had been produced independently, and guns werent its only problem. It got past all of us that the word suck is used in the movie, Abbott said. He grew animated. I was so mad at myself for not catching it. Its a word that has become frighteningly close to no longer being part of the four-letter-word category. Its aits just a negative, its demeaning. It shouldnt be on our channel. They edited it out.

Several well-known politically conservative actors in Hollywood have been in Hallmark filmsBure, Dean Cain, Jon Voightbut, Abbott said, Hallmark takes pains to be apolitical. The only thing we do promote is pet adoption, he said. We make no apologies about that. The Home & Family set has a dedicated pet-adoption area, and pet adoption is a plot point in many movies, including last years Road to Christmas, written by Zac Hug. It featured, as minor characters, two attractive young men who co-owned an animal shelter. Seeing this, I was briefly delighted: was this a gay couple, on Hallmark? The moment passedthey didnt act like a couple or attend a family Christmas gathering together. I mentioned to Abbott that I had thought I had seen a gay couple in a movie; I didnt say which. You did, he said. It was Road to Christmas. Hallmark wanted to reflect the broader population where it could, he went on. And we believe that if we do it authentically, without doing it just to do itwhich is the wrong reason to do it, by the waypeople will feel good about it, regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum. I couldnt tell that they were gay, I said. But thats whats great about it, Abbott said. Theyre not being called out and made to either look cool or weird.

Hallmarks sense of authenticity is rooted more firmly, perhaps, in the pioneer village. In 2014, it adapted Janette Okes 1983 novel When Calls the Heart into a series. Centered, at first, on a genteel schoolteacher, Elizabeth (Erin Krakow), a handsome Mountie (Daniel Lissing), and a local widow (Lori Loughlin) in a western-Canadian mining town circa 1910, it has a whiff of the piety of the Love Comes Softly series. When characters behave badly (covering up liability in a mine accident, putting on airs), they redeem themselves; pleasures are exceedingly gentle. The shows superfans, known as the Hearties, have an annual family reunion in Vancouver, and visit the set in tour buses. Some make social-media memes superimposing Bible passages over images from the show. When Calls the Heart has some three million viewers an episode, competing for No. 1, on Sunday nights, with The Walking Dead, about life in America after a zombie apocalypse. Until we get to Walking Dead numbers, Im not going to be happy, Abbott said.

At the beginning of the series, Abigail, Loughlins character, had lost her husband and son in a mining accident, but she perseveredopening a caf, adopting an orphan. By the time Abigail became the towns mayor, Loughlin was a cornerstone of Hallmarkas Abbott told me, a very good friend, somebody who I admire a great deal for her skill, and at the top of the list in terms of people who were accessible, were kind, were committed to her fans, and were humble.

On March 12th, Loughlin and her husband, along with Felicity Huffman and others, were indicted in a highly publicized college-admissions-fraud scheme, in which they allegedly paid five hundred thousand dollars to have their two daughters admitted under false pretenses. (Loughlin pleaded not guilty.) Two days later, Crown fired her; it pulled When Calls the Heart off the air, midseason, and edited her out of its remaining episodes.

When the show returned, Krakow, as Elizabeth, sat at a desk, writing in her diary. We never know how life will turn, she wrote. Its been a week since Abigail got word that her mother had taken ill back East. True to her nature, Abigail wasted no time in rushing off to care for her. The townspeople would pray for her and her family. In her absence, we must soldier on, and we will, Elizabeth continued. We are a community. We are strong. In one of Abigails final episodes, from February, she lovingly reassured Elizabeth, a new mother, about parenthood. If theres one thing I know, a good mother always figures out whats best for her child, she said.

In early November, Christmas Con brought together seventeen Hallmark-movie stars and several thousand regular Americans who wanted to meet them. The gathering, held at a modest convention center in Edison, New Jersey, had been organized by a small event company and sponsored by Hallmark, which had constructed a fully furnished living-room area, as if airlifted from the set of Home & Family, in the middle of the space. Guests in reindeer antlers and pro-Hallmark T-shirts drank mulled cider and posed inside a Christmas-ornament-shaped frame.

The mood was exuberant. When a group of Hallmark actors, including Chad Michael Murray, emerged from the greenroom to pose in front of a tree, thousands cheered, a sea of arms raising cameras aloft. Male stars from Hunks of Hallmark, an Instagram fan account, gamely posed as attendees asked them to: holding their hands, looking into their eyes. One couple, Jeff and Kathy Martin, from New Jersey, were beaming; the actor Nikki DeLoach had just praised Jeffs Green Bay Packers Christmas sweater. I asked Kathy why she loved Hallmark. The stress lifts right off! she told me, raising her arms in a gesture of unburdening. Later, Cheryl Longordo, a self-described Hallmark-watching junkie, told me that it took her mind off her job at a pharmaceutical company. She and her sister, who wore a chemotherapy turban, were there together. You need this, Longordo said, intensely. Its a lifeline.

Hallmark Channel fare has always struck a delicate balance between realism and something more idealized. A paradox of the channel is that the artificiality of its content, which offers predictable pleasuresthe almost kiss, interrupted by a ringing phone or a bleating goat; the ubiquitous baking contestsis often delivered alongside surprisingly realistic performances. Unlike modern rom-coms, Hallmark plotswhich almost always feature romance, even alongside the murder investigationsare driven not by arch concepts, high jinks, or panic about being single but by what Vicary described to me as a voyage of self-discovery. A long-standing trend of having Hallmark heroines tumbling off ladders into manly arms has been on the wane. As the writer Julie Sherman Wolfe told me, at Christmas Con, We dont want our strong female leads to be damsels in distress. Characters fall in love because they see goodness in the other person, Vicary saidoften because of a kind act that causes the other character to take a look at themselves. Like what human beings go through. When something touches you, you can effect change.

Some people dismiss Hallmark as presenting a fantasy, but, Ron Oliver said, its characters behave with greater maturity than many others onscreen. When youre writing something in Hallmark-land, you have to understand that people tend to act like adults do, he said. Protagonists are often motivated by their goals as much as by love. The actor Anna Van Hooft specializes in playing Hallmark villainsa bride-to-be who buys a wedding dress that was on hold for someone else, a murderer. Even the villains tend to have their eyes on their goalsbut not on the people around them, she said. For example, the marriage, but not the man.

In the heavier fare on Hallmark Movies and Mysteries and on Hallmark Drama, which began to air in 2017, violence and loss are explored within the same format that the Christmas movies use, with the same reliable happy-ever-afters. One film this year featured a subplot about medical debt. Another film, Two Turtle Doves, by Sarah Montana, is a warmhearted love story between a grieving neuroscientist (Nikki DeLoach) and a widowed estate lawyer (Michael Rady). Their romance involves turtle-dove Christmas ornamentsbut also straightforward discussions about loss. At Christmas Con, DeLoach told me, So many people have come up and told me it was a guide for learning to heal through grief. She was beaming.

Hallmarks project of uplift has begun to extend not just into real lives but into real towns, many of which could use it. (A recurring theme of Hallmark movies is saving beloved local businesses.) For a special called Project Christmas Joy, Hallmark donated homes to families in tornado-ravaged parts of Alabama; it also threw a Christmas event for the residents of David City, Nebraska, the small home town of JoyceC. Hall. Despite its historic charm, my own home town, in Connecticut, has at times struggled to thrive. Last autumn, while looking at Instagram, I saw a startling postof my childhood house and the seed company my family had owned, next door, blanketed in fake snow. Hallmark was filming a Christmas movie there. Six weeks later, I watched the heroine of Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane enter a snowman contest outside the house and fall in love with an antique dealer, whose store was in the seed-company building. Inside, the stairs squeaked just the way I remembered.

In July, the Hallmark Channel threw a party for five hundred people at Palazzo di Amore, a fifty-three-thousand-square-foot Mediterranean-style mansion atop a crest overlooking Los Angeles. It was the week known as the T.C.A.s, when networks present the Television Critics Association with upcoming-programming announcements and a glitzy good time. Upon arrival, Hallmarks marquee stars, including Lacey Chabert, Nikki DeLoach, Erin Krakow, and Andrew Walker, posed in front of a step-and-repeat wall near a fountain. Behind the house, guests mingled on a vast Italianate patio and inside a small side mansion. Cameron Mathison, in a pale-gray suit, waved at someone in jubilant semaphore across an infinity pool; two 90210 alums hugged; on a balcony, Mary-Margaret Humes and John Wesley Shipp, Dawsons parents on Dawsons Creek, took in the view. Shipp had just been cast in his first Hallmark role, and his first role as the father of a grown daughter, in The Ruby Herring Mysteries. Ive played a lot of dads, he said. I was a psycho dad in Teen Wolf. He looked around. I just saw Susan Lucci, who I did Fantasy Island with a hundred and fifty years ago.

Many of the actors I talked to compared working for Hallmark to the old studio system, by which they seemed to mean that it offered steady work, good pay, decent hours, and care. Martin Cummins, who plays the formerly villainous mine owner Henry Gowen on When Calls the HeartIve played a bad guy in a suit my whole careersaid that Hallmarks film scheduling was unusually humane. We only shoot a flat twelve, he saidtwelve hours a day. Lisa Durupt, a sidekick in eighteen movies, said, You become part of a family. Michael Rady told me, with enthusiasm, that Hallmark had changed his career. He has worked steadily, in prominent non-Hallmark projects, since his screen dbut, in 2005, in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. When I first started doing Hallmark, I was, like, Its a side hustle, he said. I wouldnt, like, lead with it. You knowyoure in L.A. Now, he said, Id be happy only working with themHallmarkforever. Rady is often asked by friends how to get involved, he said. He leaned forward and smiled. But Hallmark finds youyou dont find them.

At dinner, under a pinkening sky, on a stage with a gazebo dripping with purple flowers, Kristin Chenoweth, a new Hallmark star, sang Over the Rainbow. Abbott and Vicary delivered some celebratory remarks and announced upcoming movies, such as Sense, Sensibility, and Snowmen; afterward, several actors told me that theyd learned which movies theyd be starring in during Vicarys address. Projects were being green-lighted in a spirit of abundance. Ron Oliver told me that his latest film, Christmas at the Plaza, had originated when he posted a picture of himself at the Plaza Hotel, where he was staying with his husband, on Facebook. As a joke, I said, This is me researching my next movie, Christmas at the Plaza, Oliver said. That Monday morning, my exec called and said, If youre serious, were in. He wrote it in July, directed it in August, and it premired on Thanksgiving.

This year, Hallmark made headlines when it announced that it would produce two holiday movies with Hanukkah themes. In both, however, Christmas is the star. In Holiday Date, Brooke (Brittany Bristow) brings an actor, Joel (Matt Cohen), to Whispering Pines, her home town, for the holidays, to pose as her boyfrienda common phenomenon on Hallmark, and perhaps less so in real life. One afternoon in September, I visited the set, in a house outside Vancouver. The downstairs was festooned with pine sconces, ornaments, and bows. Tree on the move! a crew member said. Ive never done Hallmark, Cohen told me. For a decade, hed played scary roles, including Lucifer, on shows like Supernatural. I committed to the dark side and it paid the bills, he said. But this is who I really am. Im a goofball.

As Holiday Date unfolds, its revealed that Joel doesnt know how to decorate a tree, or hang Christmas lights: hes Jewish. The family is surprised but unfazed, Bristow explained. They incorporate latkes and a menorah into their festivities and teach Joel to deck the halls. Ive never celebrated Christmas, but I always wanted to, he says. In the movies trailer, Silent Night plays in the background.

That afternoon, I watched as a scene was filmed in which Joel, handsome in a Santa-red sweater, helps Brookes young niece, Tessa (Ava Grace Cooper), rehearse for a Christmas pageant. On the monitor, I could see three Christmas trees in the frame. Tessas self-absorbed parents, played by the recurring Hallmark bro Peter Benson and the Hallmark villain Anna Van Hooft, walked by, looking at their phones, and opened the front door, obscuring a tree but introducing a wreath. The living room was a riot of Yuletide splendor: trees and garlands. A fire roared in the fireplace, and a row of Christmas stockings hung on the mantel. Above them, a string of blue-and-white letters spelled out HAPPY HANUKKAH. Tessas pageant line was about family togetherness: Cause thats what Christmas is all about. Cohen beamed. Perfect, he said.

Read this article:
How Hallmark Took Over Cable Television - The New Yorker

Libertarian economist Ron Paul, a non-interventionist in foreign policy who loathes the Federal Reserve, said President Donald Trumps tariffs are far removed from capitalism and when paired with recent interest rate cuts, are giving credibility to socialists for the first time in his life.

Its a real incentive for the socialists to chime in and for the first time in my lifetime, socialists sort of have credibility, the doctor and former Texas Congressman said Friday on CNBCs Squawk Box.

Paul, a three-time presidential candidate who has written a number of books on economics and central bank policy, said the Fed is doing too much as far as monetary easing while the economy is strong.

It is central economic planning, mainly through manipulation of money and credit, Paul said, sounding much like Money and Markets columnist Bill Bonner, who constantly decries the U.S. central bank and its phony-money policies.

The Fed has cut rates twice this year, once in July and again in September, the first rate cuts in more than a decade, and the stock market is already pricing in another rate cut by the end of the year.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell, often the target of Trumps ire for not cutting rates far and fast enough, said the central bank will begin blowing up its balance sheet soon but denied it was restarting quantitative easing, or QE.

In no sense is this QE, Powell said after a recent speech, which economists have largely scoffed at.

The Fed ran three rounds of QE amid the Great Recession while people like Paul believe it stayed in easing mode for far too long, not raising rates soon enough. And here we are, easing again after a short period of tightening. The long period of easing, Paul said, also inflated stock prices.

Then Paul switched gears back to Trumps trade war, saying we get into manipulating trade.

Were so far removed from capitalism. Yet we get blamed, Paul said. Socialists come in and say, See what you guys did to our economy.

The first step, Paul said, is we need to cut spending which has soared under Trump with little resistance from formerly deficit-conscious Republican lawmakers and stop the Feds pretending they can do economic planning.

Unfortunately, thats not going to happen, Paul said. I believe were going to see a collapse that will force us to reassess the monetary policy, and that will be very disruptive.

Editors note: Do you agree that Trumps tariffs and the Feds easing while the economy is strong are giving rise to socialism? Share your thoughts below.

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Ron Paul: Socialists Have Credibility for First Time Due to Rate Cuts, Trump Tariffs - Money and Markets

byRON PAUL||When President Trump Tweeted last week that it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous endless wars, adding that the US would be withdrawing from Syria, Washington went into a panic. Suddenly Republicans, Democrats, the media, the think tanks, and the war industry all discovered and quickly became experts on the Kurds, who we were told were an ally being sent to their slaughter by an ignorant President Trump.

But it was all just another bipartisan ploy to keep the forever war gravy train rolling through the Beltway.

Interventionists will do anything to prevent US troops from ever coming home, and their favorite tactic is promoting mission creep. As President Trump tweeted, we were told in 2014 by President Obama that the US military would go into Syria for just 30 days to save the Yazidi minority that they claimed were threatened. Then that mission crept into we must fight ISIS and so the US military continued to illegally occupy and bomb Syria for five more years.

Even though it was the Syrian army with its Russian and Iranian allies that did the bulk of the fighting against al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, President Trump took credit and called for the troops to come home. But when the military comes home, the military-industrial-Congressional-media complex loses its cash cow, so a new rationale had to be invented.

The latest mission creep was that we had to stay in Syria to save our allies the Kurds. All of a sudden our military presence in Syria was not about fighting terrorism but rather about putting US troops between our NATO ally Turkey and our proxy fighting force, the Kurds. Do they really want us to believe that it is pro-American for our troops to fight and die refereeing a long-standing dispute between the Turks and Kurds?

(Click to view)

(Via: Getty Images)

It was a colossally dumb idea to train and arm the Kurds in Syria in the first place, but after spending billions backing what turned out to be al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria to overthrow the Assad government, Washington found that the Kurds were the only willing boots remaining on the ground. While their interest in fighting ISIS was limited, they were happy to use Washingtons muscle in pursuit of their long-term goal of carving out a part of Syria (and eventually Turkey) for themselves.

We can never leave because there will be a slaughter, Washington claimed (and the media faithfully repeated). But once again, the politicians, the mainstream media, and the Beltway experts have been proven wrong. They never understand that sending US troops into another country without the proper authority is not a stabilizing factor, but a de-stabilizing factor. I have argued that were the US to leave Syria (and the rest of the Middle East) the countries of the region would find a way to solve their own problems.

Now that the US is pulling back from northern Syria, that is just what is happening.

On Sunday the Kurds and the Syrian government signed an agreement, brokered by the Russians, to put aside their differences and join together to defend against Turkeys incursion into Syrian territory.

Now our Kurdish allies are fighting alongside the army of Syrian President Assad who we are still told by US officials must go. Washington doesnt understand that our intervention only makes matters worse. The best way to help the Kurds and everyone else in the region is to just come home.

(Click to view)

(Via: Gage Skidmore)

Ron Paulis a former U.S. Congressman from Texas and the leader of the pro-liberty, pro-free market movement in the United States. His weekly column reprinted with permission can be foundhere.

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Originally posted here:
Ron Paul: Washington Is Wrong About The Kurds - FITSNews

It appears that self-awareness is currently in short supply.

On Tuesday morning, ABC News broadcast its exclusive interview with Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, in his first on-camera appearance since a whistleblower alleged that President Donald Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate a gas company with ties to the younger Biden.

Hunter admitted to ABC that it was poor judgment on his part to take a seat at Burisma Holdings, a Kyiv-based company, while his father was vice president, adding that it was likely that he wouldnt have gotten that jobor many other things in his lifeif his father was not Joe Biden. At the same time, Hunter insisted there was nothing improper or unethical about his employment with the company.

Following the interview, a number of well-known Republican figures weighed in to criticize Hunter Biden for cashing in on his fathers name. And they all had one thing distinctly in common with the ex-veeps son.

Appearing on MSNBC, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), son of former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), a libertarian icon who twice ran for the Republican nomination, seemed to suggest the government ought to investigate Hunter Biden and his dynastic connectionsbut once MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle asked him if that also applied to the presidents family, Paul suddenly sang a different tune.

If we want to go down the road of the politics of self-destruction of everybody, he exclaimed. Criminalize all politicians on both sides of the aisle and go after their family, we can do that. But both sides are doing that, nobody really should excuse themselves and say, Were holier than thou and Trump is evil, instead of saying, It looks like theres been a lot of self-dealings throughout history.

Paul, meanwhile, went on to brush off any further questions about whether its appropriate for a president to ask a foreign leader to dig up dirt on a political opponent or whether the Trump familys self-dealings are an issue, instead insisting that the Bidens need to be investigated.

And then over on ABCs chatfest The View, Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Sen. John McCainthe 2008 Republican presidential nomineefelt that Hunter didnt do a great job, feeling that part of the problem is he admitted to his nepotistic benefits.

I think it was some criticism thats been held against other politicians children, she added. I always say its like being in a mafia family and you all roll together, you know what youre getting into.

But it was the decidedly anti-nepotism responses of two other famous legacy cases, however, that really drew attention on Tuesday.

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, the niece of 2012 Republican presidential nominee and current Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, took to Twitter shortly after Hunters interview aired to post a scorching hot take.

Hunter Biden got $50K a month from a Ukrainian energy company, despite having ZERO experience in energy, she wrote. His justification? That he was also on the board of Amtrakmore obvious nepotism. If thats not the swamp, I dont know what is!

It wasnt long before Ms. Romney, Ronna Romney, and Romney McDaniel were all trending on Twitter. (McDaniel famously removed Romney from her name after Trump reportedly pressured her to do so over his long-running feud with the former GOP standard-bearer, something she has denied.)

The coup de grce, meanwhile, was delivered by none other than the presidents own son.

Dumpster fire at Biden HQ! Donald Trump Jr. tweeted without a hint of irony. It is impossible for me to be on any of the boards I just mentioned without saying that Im the son of the vice president of the US. I dont think that theres a lot of things that would have happen in my life that if my name wasnt Biden Hunter Biden.

Reactions, especially from the presidents critics, quickly came pouring in.

[P]eople are dunking on jr for this but honestly i bet its incredibly peaceful and zen-like to have zero self-awareness, humorist and commentator Andy Levy tweeted.

The kind of introspective joke you make when you owe your job and your entire career path to your father and think that other people are screw-ups or corrupt for exactly the same reason, Bloomberg Opinion writer Tim OBrien noted.

World record achieved - and likely never to be broken - for self-unaware projection, The Intercepts Glenn Greenwald observed.

View post:
These Nepotists Have a Lot to Say About Hunter Biden's Nepotism - The Daily Beast

I just put up a new podcast. After a quick update about last weeks Trump/China trade deal that has turned out to be a trade truce I interview Scott Horton of The Libertarian Institute about a new book he has published titled The Great Ron Paul.

Scott has done well over a thousand, perhaps several thousand, interviews with people mainly regarding US foreign policy and foreign non-interventionism. One of his most important guests has been former Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Scott explains why Ron Pauls views have been so important since 9/11 and continue to be important today. I also asked him about where this type of thinking is going in this time of Trump and partisan polar politics?

To grab The Great Ron Paul book go here:

You can also listen to this podcast on Youtube by clicking here.

Have you ever wondered why the US has been involved in so many wars since World War II? Well grab my book The War State and find out! I think youll like it. Just click here.

-Mike

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The rest is here:
Trump Trade Deals And The Non-Interventionism Of Ron Paul With Scott Horton - Mike Swanson (10/15/2019) - WallStreetWindow.com