Daniel Hurt

Political & Media Consultant. Reputation is what people think of you. Character is what you are.

[HotSotin 🇫🇮🇺🇦🇪🇺△ @HotSotin]

russian democracy - while voting, soldiers may check that you vote correctly

[Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins]

Thomas Massie in his concession speech: "While gas is almost $5 a gallon and diesel is almost $6, they're talking about this big ballroom...It looks like the Roman Empire. I see a few analogies there..."

[Al Jazeera Breaking News @AJENews]

BREAKING: Israeli troops ram UN peacekeeper vehicles with tank, destroy cameras and obstruct view of UN outposts in south Lebanon,
UNIFIL says

🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/YTN16W8rVT

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: Trump to address nation tomorrow with 'important update on Iran'

[NBC News @NBCNews]

EXCLUSIVE: Russia took satellite images of a U.S. air base days before Iran attacked the site and wounded Americans, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says. https://t.co/7dWwDLfG2G

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: Loud blasts heard in Baghdad, cause is not yet clear.

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

🇷🇺: Annex/Occupy 🇮🇱: Assert Ownership

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

RESEARCH: Study finds that individuals with high levels of narcissism tend to have 'thin skins' and are prone to aggression 'when provoked', making narcissism a risk factor for violence.

(Source: Psychological Bulletin)

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: Iranian opposition leader Reza Pahlavi says 'global assistance will arrive soon' and tells protesters 'await my next messages'

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: US calls on nationals to leave Venezuela as armed militias are 'setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence of U.S. citizenship or support for the United States'

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: Iran's Press TV reports that at least 200 'ringleaders of riots' have been arrested

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: Staff at three hospitals in Iran say their facilities are 'overwhelmed with dead or injured patients' and that was not enough space in morgues, according to BBC report.

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: Protests have spread to over 100 cities and towns 'across all of Iran's provinces' according to BBC report

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: Russia has sent a 'submarine and other naval assets' to escort an oil tanker off coast of Venezuela that has 'become a new flashpoint in U.S.-Russia relations', according to Wall Street Journal report.

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: Reports that Venezuela's Vice President is safe, following capture of Maduro, according to Wall Street Journal report.

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

US OPERATION IN VENEZUELA

- US military has captured Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro and wife, who have been flown out of the country.

- US conducted strikes on strategic targets, including key military sites and targets in the capital Caracas.

- Venezuela condemns 'imperialist aggression'.

- Condemnation from Iran and Cuba.

[Karoline Leavitt @PressSec]

STATEMENT FROM PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

[The Spectator Index @spectatorindex]

BREAKING: 🇻🇪 Venezuela calls for 'entire nation' to mobilize against US strikes, which it calls 'imperialist aggression'.

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[Daniel Hurt @Hurtforky]

RT @phildstewart: Maduro calls on Colombia's army to come to Venezuela's aid, if necessary, as Trump escalates his standoff with Caracas. C…