Warren Throckmorton – Page 109 – Warren Throckmorton

Conor Lamb Holds Narrow Lead Over Rick Saccone in PA's District 18 Congressional Race

In a closely watched race for PA’s 18th District Congressional seat, Democrat Conor Lamb has a 627 vote advantage over Republican Rick Saccone as of this afternoon with all absentee and polling ballots counted. Some provisional and military ballots must be counted which won’t be final until next week. However, there may not be enough of them to make a difference in the total.
For now, Lamb has declared victory while Saccone has not conceded. Republican leaders outside of the district are leveling blame at Saccone. According to the Washington Post, Corry Bliss of the Congressional Leadership Fund called Saccone a “joke.” In my view, the joke is on Bliss. His group ran expensive false and negative ads in the district. For instance, a series of ads claimed Lamb was a follower of Nancy Pelosi. To the contrary, Lamb does not support Pelosi and has argued for new leadership in the party. If anything, those ads may have alienated suburban Republican voters and pushed them toward Lamb who ran a positive and issues oriented campaign.

While Saccone’s judgment is open to question (he thinks David Barton is a fine historian), his Republican record and resume are consistent with Trumpian populism. He has been a state legislator, has years of foreign service (even if embellished), and thinks Trump walks on water. In my opinion, all of the complaining about “candidate quality” is an effort to put the best face on what must be a very frightening prospect for Republicans running in 2018. There are numerous districts around the nation where GOP representatives are more vulnerable than the GOP slot was in PA’s District 18.
While a recount is not mandatory in a close House election, Saccone’s team has not ruled out the potential of legal maneuvers to hold up the declaration of a Lamb victory. The outcome might not be official until the legal challenges are exhausted.

The Guardian Confirms Reporting on Rick Saccone's North Korea Experience

On March 1, I reported that those serving with Rick Saccone in North Korea did not recall his time in North Korea as he has portrayed it during his

campaign for Congress in PA’s 18th District. Saccone has claimed he was a diplomat negotiating daily with the North Koreans and was the only American in North Korea for a year between December 2000 and December 2001.
Then, on March 10, The Guardian posted a reported which confirmed and extended my article. Reporters Benjamin Haas and Ben Jacobs spoke to Ambassador David Lambertson and a South Korean official who served with Saccone. Lambertson confirmed to Haas and Jacobs what he told me. The South Korean, Kim Joong-keun, said of all the Americans he worked with Saccone was ranked “at the bottom.”
Saccone has used this experience in his campaign ads and Donald Trump referred to Saccone’s North Korean experience during his campaign stop over the weekend. Trump said Saccone told him things about North Korea that his experts didn’t know. Before a friendly crowd, Trump made Saccone’s few months of experience in North Korea into a matter of great prestige which is exactly what Saccone has been doing the entire campaign.
Saccone’s ad on North Korea:

In fact, according to career foreign service officers who served at the same time as Saccone, he wasn’t the only American in the area and he wasn’t there a year. His work with the North Koreans did not rise to the level of a diplomat according to those who also represented the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization as did Saccone.
The PA Congressional race is very close with the newest Monmouth poll out today showed Saccone’s Democrat challenger Conor Lamb ahead by a six point margin. The special election is tomorrow.
Additional Articles:
Nonprofit Cornerstone Television Endorses Christian Nationalist Rick Saccone in PA’s 18th District Congressional Race
Announcement for Rick Saccone’s U.S. Senate Bid Featuring David Barton

Nonprofit Cornerstone Television Endorses Christian Nationalist Rick Saccone in PA’s 18th District Congressional Race

Posted on Thursday, an episode of Cornerstone Television‘s Real Life featured an interview with GOP candidate for Congress in PA’s 18th District Rick Saccone (source – start 15:38). Cornerstone CEO Don Black interviewed Saccone and offered his endorsement, encouraging viewers to vote for him. Watch:

And then after the interview Black added a specific call to viewers to vote for the “man of God.”

Cornerstone Television is a nonprofit organization and as such is not supposed to offer political endorsements for candidates. The Johnson Amendment is still in place and even if the IRS goes easy on churches, Cornerstone Television is not a church. From the IRS website:

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.

The Lord is Leading America?

In the first clip, host Black asked Saccone if America’s greatest days are ahead. Saccone said the Lord was leading America now. Saccone’s evidence for this that we have a strong economy with strong markets.

At the same time, I think many Christians are lamenting the leadership of a President who has paid a porn star for silence, prefers white immigrants to dark skinned ones, and rips apart families at our borders. The evangelical church is widely regarded as a joke and many leaders mock the importance of moral leadership.

This episode provides yet another lesson about what is wrong with identifying Christianity with one political party. Eventually the religion and the politics are so intertwined that they become indistinguishable. The religious talking points and the political talking points are the same. Strong markets, economic prosperity, and voting for the GOP are now all the Lord’s work.

Hallelujah!

Other posts on Rick Saccone:
Former Colleague Question Rick Saccone’s North Korea Diplomat Claims
David Barton Endorses Rick Saccone
Conor Lamb and Rick Saccone Square Off in PA District 18 Debate

Regret in Medical Transition: Research from the Amsterdam Gender Dysphoria Study

One of the significant issues in treating gender dysphoria is an examination of regret, if any, experienced by patients who engage in surgical interventions. In a remarkable paper published recently in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, a report of cases seen from 1972-2015 in the largest gender identity clinic in Amsterdam is presented. The sample was large and as a group showed very little regret.

6,793 people (4,432 birth-assigned male, 2,361 birth-assigned female) visited our gender identity clinic from 1972 through 2015. The number of people assessed per year increased 20-fold from 34 in 1980 to 686 in 2015. The estimated prevalence in the Netherlands in 2015 was 1:3,800 for men (transwomen) and 1:5,200 for women (transmen)*. The percentage of people who started HT within 5 years after the 1st visit decreased over time, with almost 90% in 1980 to 65% in 2010. The percentage of people who underwent gonadectomy within 5 years after starting HT remained stable over time (74.7% of transwomen and 83.8% of transmen). Only 0.6% of transwomen and 0.3% of transmen who underwent gonadectomy were identified as experiencing regret.

The idea that regret is common is promoted by Christians who disapprove of gender transition.*** One such website “Sex Change Regret” (sexchangeregret.com) carries articles by Ryan Anderson, Walt Heyer, and Michelle Cretella.** Whether one agrees with transition or not, one should not promote a tendentious reading of research to promote one’s views. While a very small number of people have expressed regret, most don’t. In this study, some experienced social losses after transition, while others did not experience relief from their dysphoria.
If anything, the appropriate stance for a Christian is love and curiosity. Let’s keep our minds and hearts open.
**UPDATE:
After I published this post, Ryan Anderson took exception with my characterization of his position. See his tweet below:

Please quote what I have said about regret being “widespread.” This is bearing false witness. Very unchristian.

— Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanTAnd) March 9, 2018

Although Anderson quoted Walt Heyer’s article Regret Isn’t Rare in his new book When Harry Became Sally, I removed this phrase in the post:

all of whom promote the idea that regret is may be widespread

Anderson denies that he believes anything about regret. I also asked him to characterize his position which I will include in a separate post. There was no intent to misrepresent him. Given the section in his book on the subject of regret, his approving citation of Walt Heyer, and an essay in the Daily Signal, I felt I fairly and non-controversially represented his position.

*In the study, the authors defined “transwomen as having a male birth assignment and transmen as having a female birth assignment who might receive medical treatment to adapt their physical characteristics to their experienced gender.”
***edited to change “disapprove of transgender people” to “disapprove of gender transition.” To transgender people, there is little difference, but to be as fair as possible to those who have moral misgivings about transitioning, I made the change.

K-LOVE to Buy Chicago Rock Station for $21.5 Million

Attention K-LOVE listeners. Your easy gifts have helped K-LOVE pay $21.5 million for one of the biggest stations in rock. According to Chicago media analyst Robert Felder and this FCC filing, Educational Media Foundation is gobbling up Chicago rock station WLUP-FM 97.9.
As Felder points out in his article, K-LOVE just last year bought Los Angeles rock station “The Sound” and two other stations for $58 million. The Christian music giant pays for their expansion with twice yearly pledge drives.
Felder quotes industry analyst Tom Taylor praising the business strategy of nonprofit EMF:

“They’re very, very sharp, business-wise, and very strategic,” Taylor said of the company headquartered in Rocklin, California, near Sacramento. “They buy based on a formula of x dollars per person under [covered by] the signal.”

It should be obvious then that Chicago is a huge score. Get ready Chicagoland listeners, soon you will be asked to make those easy pledges of $40/month so you can keep K-LOVE on the air. They will need a little less than an entire pledge drive to pay for that station.
What happens when K-LOVE buys all the stations?

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