Greetings from Tyler,

The marina looked familiar.  It was Table Rock Lake near Branson, Mo., a location many of us have enjoyed as it is near one of our popular Feast site locations.  The heartbreaking death toll has risen to 17, families with children out to enjoy the beautiful scenery in that gorgeous environment.  The boat was an amphibious “duck boat” designated to tour vacationers around the lake.  An unexpected storm blew up and whipped the calm waters up into ocean swells and breaking waves that overcame and overturned the clumsy tour boat filled with passengers.

No doubt we’ll be hearing more, the stories and photographs of the victims over the coming days.  The grief of the survivors and their families must be unimaginable.  We know there are those who mock prayers, as if they’re meaningless and do nothing for those suffering.  This is an instance where none of us need to be told what to do, and may the naysayers never find themselves in a circumstance where they need God’s aid or comfort.  They will sooner or later.

Is it treason if a U. S. president meets privately (with only interpreters) with the leader of a hostile power?  If the president is Trump, and the other is Putin it must be treason!  Besides, Trump cast doubt on the authenticity of “intelligence” generated by agencies staffed by Obama?  How dare he!  Why, that’s siding with Putin against the USA!  TREASON.

That pretty well sizes up this whole week’s coverage from the mainstream outlets.  Trump was “owned” by Putin.  You could almost see the strings Putin was pulling to make him dance.  Putin was clearly the stronger leader, and Trump just looked smaller than ever.  “We all know Putin is holding something over Trump’s head, but we don’t know what it is.”  That was Joe Scarborough of MSNBC, but CNN’s limp-wristed tag team is on the case too, trying and convicting the President of every evil, bigoted, misogynistic, racist, hate crime. And few there be that defend him.  Just say, Brennan, Clapper, and Comey.  What else needs to be said?

Until recently Trump’s America First slogan was proof of his white supremacist tendencies, promoting the interests of the United States at the expense of globalist institutions and poor under-developed (often Communist) countries.  Now, all the experts are sure he’s doing Putin’s bidding, giving him everything he wants while “selling out his own people.”  That’s the narrative across the board.  Some squinty anchor is probably “unpacking” that logic on one of the cable networks right now as you’re reading these words.  And are they ever emotional!

It would be good if everybody could see what happened to Judge Jeanine Pirro yesterday on one of the country’s most watched, most popular daytime network programs.  It is clear that none of these mainstream network programs is about to let a knowledgeable patriot be heard.  They interrupt, they talk over, then start throwing a fit ending in a lot of epithets.  It means they can’t deal with any truth, or any View that conflicts with the narrative they want their audience to hear.  It’s not new.  It happens nearly every day in these televised debates, assuming there’s a conservative on the panel.  Often there isn’t, and they go off like lunatics anyway.

The mainstream doesn’t want reason or logic.  They want violence.  That’s what the Occupy movement was about, that’s what Black Lives Matter was about, it’s what Antifa is about.  Have you noticed how many times mainstream publications have depicted President Trump dead?  The “play” in Central Park, the “comedienne” with the severed head, and this week a flattened Trump at the bottom of an escalator not only flat on his face, but clearly lifeless.  That’s how much they love abortion, gay “marriage,” the unfettered invasion by illegal aliens, socialist redistribution and on and on.  The way they see it, there’s only one man standing between them and their Utopian socialism, which they thought they’d won.  After eight years of bowing, scraping and apologizing for our nation, our history, the gutting of the Constitution and the pen and phone routine it was in the bag, or so they thought.  Now they want him, and whoever supports his agenda attacked and shown the error of deviating from approved group-think.  It’s reminiscent of a meme that went around recently, “Socialism:  Ideas so good, they have to be mandated!”  Maybe they’d be happier in Venezuela or Cuba.  Maybe somewhere in Europe, like in the same neighborhood as a refugee shelter.

But there is good news in Europe.  Only 845 cars were torched over the July 14th weekend in France (Bastille Day), fewer than last year.  At least this year they didn’t have a rental truck mowing down families on the boardwalk.  But there is such a wave of crime in Europe, it’s against the law to discuss it.  Immigrants seem always to be the victims, even when they commit assault, robbery, rape or murder.  They get very short sentences, and they get to stay after time served.  Don’t talk or write about it.  Even in England, you’ll go to prison if a judge deems such discussion insulting to the culture enrichers.

An Islamist sermon was published this week.  It pointed out the declining birth-rate among indigenous Europeans compared to the onslaught of refugees (ahem, immigrants) and their birthrates.  It won’t be long, maybe two or three generations, as the bearded preacher pointed out, until Europe is majority Muslim.  That assumes nothing changes, and that may be an erroneous assumption.

Thank God for our freedoms.  We’d be out of business if not for tour Constitution and the First Amendment.  It’s a watershed time we live in.  President Trump is moving at warp speed domestically, economically and internationally.  To list the achievements of his first year and a half would take at least the next two pages, and you can look them up easily if you’ve forgotten or not heard.

But it’s like we’re living in a never-ending episode of Three’s Company.  The media inevitably jumps to an erroneous conclusion, goes ballistic over a false premise never realizing they’ve completely (often intentionally) misunderstood.  But in this case, they don’t misunderstand.  They just hope we do.  We understand completely and see right through them, and nothing infuriates them more than people (deplorables) who are on to their haughty outrage.  May God guide and protect us through this period of national, and hopefully international, revival.  Western civilization was on its last leg and may be yet if the Social Justice crowd gets its way.

Mark  Armstrong