There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
1 Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not become discouraged, 2 saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect [any] person. 3 “Now there was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Give me justice against my *opponent.’ 4 “For a while he was unwilling; but later he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect [any] person, 5 yet because this widow is bothering me, I will give her justice; otherwise *by continually coming she will wear me out.'” 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unrighteous judge said; 7 now, will God not bring about justice for His elect who cry out to Him day *and night, and will He delay long for them? 8 “I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find [fn]faith on the earth?” Luke 18:1-8 / New American Standard Bible / NASB20
These two books are now available on Amazon. All proceeds go directly to Pastor Hines:
Pray & Dont Lose Heart – Pastor Patrick Hines Sermon
From the church website:
We subscribe to the Westminster Standards as our doctrinal statement. It consists of the following documents:
The Westminster Confession of Faith
The Westminster Larger Catechism
The Westminster Shorter Catechism
We also believe that Christian Worship is to be regulated and defined by God’s Word, the Bible.
Our worship services are designed to please and honor the Triune God of the Bible. We place Scripture reading and the preaching of the word of God at the center of worship along with Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These are God’s gifts to His church and ought to always be at the center of Christian worship. We are a congregation that loves to sing God’s praises, recite His Word back to Him, and actively engage in hearing and learning from God’s Word.
We embrace and promote a comprehensive Christian world and life view.
There is no area of life which is not under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It is to God and His law which all people, including governments and civil rulers, will answer. The Word of God embraces and informs the way we view marriage, the family, children, education, politics, worship, law, government, war, the church, missions, evangelism, and worship. In the world today there is a battle of opposing worldviews. There are basically only two positions: God’s Word and man’s ideas. We stand positively for Biblical truth and negatively against man’s ideas which are opposed to Biblical truth.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only hope for mankind.
Because all men fall short of obeying God’s law, all men everywhere are in need of divine grace and salvation from God. This salvation is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ who died for sinners, was buried, rose again, and is alive today seated at God the Father’s right hand.
We Worship God Together as Families.
We offer nursery during the morning worship service for newborns and infants but encourage people to keep as many of their children as they can with them for morning worship. The audio of the service is in the nursery via speakers. There is also a crying room with a video screen and audio of the sermon. We offer Sunday school classes for all ages, but worship together as families. We do not offer “children’s” church. Children need to be in morning worship as soon as possible so they can learn how to participate as active worshipers of the Living God which includes the singing of His praises and listening actively to sermons.
COMMUNION.
Communion is served monthly. All who profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and are members of an evangelical church are cordially invited to participate with us in the Lord’s Supper.
Ineffective evangelism can cause a lot of soul searching for the one evangelizing. Some re-evaluate the message while others question their methodology. But those are only worthwhile endeavors insofar as the message remains faithful to the one true gospel. Beyond that it all boils down to something we have absolutely no control over—the heart condition of those who hear the gospel.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us.” (Read John 1:1-4).
For a long time I treated the Bible as a self-help book. I would read the instructions given and work as hard as I could to obey them. And I would fail miserably. Then I’d get upset with myself: Why couldn’t I do it? And I would get upset with God: Why wasn’t He blessing my efforts?
One day it dawned on me: it doesn’t depend on my frantic self-efforts to live the Christian life. The Bible is not a self-help book, but a revelation of the Living Word: Jesus Christ (John 1:1-14) He said,
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever lives in Me and I in him bears much (abundant) fruit. However, apart from me [cut off from vital union with Me] you can do nothing” (John 15:5 Amplified).
A branch in a tree doesn’t worry about staying alive or how much fruit it will bring. It is totally dependent on the sap that comes to it from the tree. As long as it abides in the tree, it will have all it needs to flourish and bear fruit.
We are to be like that branch totally dependent on the Christ-life within us working through us.
How comforting this is when I face a challenge that is beyond me.
“Dear God,” I pray, “You know that in myself, I can’t do this. You said so yourself: ‘without me you can do nothing.’ But Christ in me can do this. Now I depend on him to work through me.”
The result is often amazing: Not only was the thing done, but there was joy in doing it.
Jesus, I am so prone to doing my own thing. Remind me, again and again, that without You I can do nothing, but with You I can do all things
Charles Haddon (C.H.) Spurgeon (June 19, 1834 January 31, 1892) was a British Reformed Baptist preacher who remains highly influential among Christians of different denominations, among whom he is still known as the “Prince of Preachers.” In his lifetime, Spurgeon preached to around 10,000,000 people, often up to 10 times a week at different places. His sermons have been translated into many languages. Spurgeon was the pastor of the New Park Street Chapel in London for 38 years. In 1857, he started a charity organization called Spurgeon’s which now works globally. He also founded Spurgeon’s College, which was named after him after his death.
Spurgeon was a prolific author of many types of works including sermons, an autobiography, a commentary, books on prayer, a devotional, a magazine, and more. Many sermons were transcribed as he spoke and were translated into many languages during his lifetime. Arguably, no other author, Christian or otherwise, has more material in print than C.H. Spurgeon.
I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (2 Corinthians 6:16)
Here is a mutual interest. Each belongs to each. God is the portion of His people, and the chosen people are the portion of their God. The saints find in God their chief possession, and He reckons them to be His peculiar treasure. What a mine of comfort lies in this fact for each believer!
This happy condition of mutual interest leads to mutual consideration. God will always think of His own people, and they will always think of Him. This day my God will perform all things for me; what can I do for Him? My thoughts ought to run toward Him, for He thinketh upon me. Let me make sure that it is so and not be content with merely admitting that so it ought to be.
This, again, leads to mutual fellowship. God dwells in us, and we dwell in Him; He walks with us, and we walk with God….
Oh, for grace to treat the Lord as my God: to trust Him and to serve Him, as His Godhead deserves! Oh, that I could love, worship, adore, and obey Jehovah in spirit and in truth! This is my heart’s desire. When I shall attain to it, I shall have found my heaven. Lord, help me! Be my God in helping me to know Thee as my God, for Jesus’ sake.
Do you think of yourself as rich? No matter how much money you have, if you’re a believer in Jesus, you’re extremely wealthy because God has lavished the riches of His grace upon you. At the moment of salvation, He deposited into your account “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (v. 3). Why, then, do so many believers live in spiritual poverty?
1. Ignorance. Some Christians don’t know about this unlimited spiritual “bank account,” and, therefore, they never draw upon it.
2. Confusion. Too many believers just don’t know how to access the treasures of God’s grace. As a result, they worry and complain about their needs and problems or in desperation come to the Lord begging and pleading for help, never realizing His abundant supply has already been deposited into their account.
3. Competing Interests. Distraction by things of this world may be the most common reason. Christians in this category focus on possessions, pressing responsibilities, and advancement but lack interest in God’s spiritual blessings.
The riches of God’s grace supersede any earthly wealth. They give the peace and contentment that money can never buy, and their benefits reach all the way into eternity.
The only way to access God’s spiritual riches is by faith. We don’t have to beg or persuade the Lord to give what He has already made available to us. Instead, we simply choose to believe that we are who He says we are and can do what He has called us to accomplish.
When we have worry, doubt, and fear clutched tightly in our hands and our hearts are ruled by anxiety, God wants to say something to us of this effect,
“Let go of your burdens and give them to me. I will put in your hands that are now empty and open…
Joy Peace and Freedom.”
All we need to do is give God our burdens and He will give us rest. He will give us joy, a fullness of indescribable joy we have not known before.
From my own experience, I can tell you it will not happen if we keep holding on. We have to let go of one to gain the other. I know what He has to offer is so much more than what we are holding on to, and I know this because I have walked that road before.
The joy I now have is because I finally made the exchange. When I grew weary and tired of my burdens, I finally trusted and obeyed My Father’s voice. I finally let go and I was amazed.
I don’t ever want to walk that road again. The road that says it is too hard to let go. If you want to walk in joy, make the exchange. Open your hands to Him, let go, and place your burdens in His hands. Soon you will know what it is to walk in His peace and joy. Soon you won’t be weary under the load of burdens you were carrying on your own.
It starts with a step of faith and a heart of trust and emptying your hands of the burdens God asks you to lay in His hands.
Will you make the exchange?
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
Do you know this love that is found in God alone, through Jesus? Would you like to give your burdens to him and have a relationship with Him? It doesn’t mean that life will be easy but it does mean you have Jesus walking by your side. It starts with a simple heart felt prayer:
Lord, thank You for dying so we can be set free from all of guilt and sin — no matter how big or small. Your blood has erased all of our sin. Thank You so much! Lord Jesus, I want to know you personally. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life to you and ask you to come in as my Savior and Lord. Take control of my life. Thank you for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Make me the kind of person you want me to be. Amen
Biden’s Collapsing Sgt. Schultz Defense: New Evidence Shows The President Played Direct Role In Addressing Hunter’s Business Deals Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, Biden maintains that he “knows nothing, nothing” about Hunter Biden’s business deals. He recently doubled down on this defense by even denying that family members received money from foreign sources. He repeated his denial even after the release of financial transfer reports from his own administration showing millions transferred from China. Now, emails have emerged that show that Biden personally helped draft responses to the controversial deals in 2015 when he was Vice President. It also appears that Biden officials like former Biden Communications Director Kate Bedingfield knew of his role as the President continued to deny any involvement.
Hunter Biden’s FBI mole named “One-Eye” The New York Post is reporting on the arrest in Cyprus of Dr. Gal Luft, a former Israeli Defense Forces officer. He is accused of gunrunning but claims that he was being set up by the White House to keep him from spilling the beans on the Biden family. Luft reportedly has extensive ties in the intelligence community and in Asia and he has quite the story to tell. He claims that Hunter Biden’s “business associates” in China were tipped off about investigations into their activities by an FBI mole …
Federal judge rejects feds’ attempt to get out of censorship fight Evidence already has confirmed 11 agencies told social media what was allowed. A federal judge has rejected the federal government’s attempt to get rid of a censorship lawsuit that Joe Biden faces. It already “has exposed an elaborate, multi-agency federal government censorship regime,”
Uganda Says NO to LGBTQ with ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ In our country, we will have our morals. We will protect our children. We are making this law for ourselves. We are making this law for our children. We are making this law for the children of our children.” -Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
Perseverance rover snaps gorgeous shots of drifting predawn clouds on Mars The new cloud images, released by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory today (March 23), were taken with one of the rover’s navigation cameras just before Martian sunrise on March 18. That was the 738th Martian day, or sol, of Perseverance’s mission; a sol is just a little longer (24 hours, 37 minutes) than a day on Earth.
5 planets will align on March 27 and you won’t want to miss it. Here’s where to look. On March 27, a planetary parade made up of Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Uranus will march across the sky. At this particular time of the year, amateur astronomers are participating in the Messier Marathon. Originally conceived by the late comet hunter, Don Machholz, it takes place around the time of the new moon, and within a week or so of the Vernal Equinox.
Brazil Exhibits Demons During Festival & Storm Hits The Next Day: Is Brazil Facing Judgment? During Brazil’s Carnival Festival 2023, they exhibited demons in the parade. Then the next day, a great storm devastated the nation. And many people are asking, “is Brazil facing the judgment or wrath of God?” In one video clip, the devil dragged and persecuted the man who played Jesus in the parade.
Exclusive: JPMorgan, Citi, BofA tell staff not to poach clients from stressed banks -memo, sources As a series of U.S. lenders were besieged by customers yanking out their money this month, banking behemoths JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC.N), warned employees: Do not make it worse. JPMorgan, the nation’s largest bank, told all employees they “should never give the appearance of exploiting a situation of stress or uncertainty,” in a March 13 memo, extracts of which were seen by Reuters. “We do not make disparaging comments regarding competitors.”
The judicial coup isn’t coming from where you think it does Despite the fact we’re conditioned to believe that the right is adamant about canceling democracy, the actual coup is coming from the left, desperately holding on to whatever power it is granted by the judiciary, fully aware that it would lose elections
Archaeologists Discover Oldest Pearl City in the Gulf in the UAE While earlier pearl towns have been mentioned in historical texts, this is the first time archaeologists claim to have physically found one dating to this early period in the entire Persian Gulf region.
Netanyahu: Until today my hands were tied on judicial reform dispute What is real and what endangers democracy is an all-powerful court. On the other hand, the opponents of the reform think that what will endanger democracy is a Knesset and a government that will act without restraints and without brakes, that will endanger the rights of the individual,” he said.
OP senators urge EU to designate IRGC as terror group Twelve Republican senators called on the European Union to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity on Wednesday, warning in a letter to EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell of the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ continued support for “Russian war crimes in Ukraine” and the Iranian government’s “goal of sowing terror in the West.”
‘Tens of thousands’ will stop showing up for duty, IDF special forces reservist warns Tens of thousands of IDF reservists have signed the Brothers in Arms public letter to the government that they will suspend presenting themselves for duty if the government goes through with its judicial overhaul, said Sayeret Matkal reservist Eyal Nave on Thursday.
Soldier sentenced to 27 months in jail for leaking secrets, IDF intel An IDF intelligence soldier was sentenced on Thursday to 27 months in jail as part of a plea bargain by an IDF military court for revealing classified information which could endanger the state. The intelligence soldier was also convicted of conduct unbecoming.
Netanyahu heads to London on Iran, as domestic turmoil heightens Netanyahu and his British counterpart Rishi Sunak are expected to discuss strengthening the strategic ties between Israel and the United Kingdom and increasing security and intelligence cooperation.
Special forces eliminate terrorist commander in Samaria Israeli security forces eliminated early Thursday morning a terrorist known in the Palestinian Authority as the “Commander of the Tulkarem Brigade” after he opened fire on them. Amir Abu Khadijah, 25, had established the local terror cell after leaving the Jenin Brigade at the end of last year.
Biden approval dips near lowest point Just 38% of Americans approve of Joe Biden’s job performance as inflation rates remain high and economic stability in question following bank failures.
Fatal Rebellion Amidst all the turbulence, confusion and chaos we are witnessing across the world, rebellion is surely the word to sum it up. According to St Paul in his second letter to the Thessalonians, such a scenario is an alarming precursor to the rise of the Antichrist in the run-up to the return of the real Christ, Messiah Yeshua.
EF-1 tornado hits Montebello, California — the strongest tornado to impact Los Angeles Metro area since March 1983 An EF-1 tornado hit the city of Montebello near Los Angeles, southern California on Wednesday, March 22, 2023, ripping roofs off buildings, throwing cars around, and injuring 1 person. This is the strongest tornado to impact the Los Angeles Metro area since March 1983, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. It is also the second tornado to hit California within 24 hours.
Unseasonal rain and hailstorm cause significant crop loss in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh Prayagraj District, the most populous district in the Uttar Pradesh state of India, has been hit by heavy unseasonal rain and hailstorm that devastated the farming community on March 19 and again on March 21, 2023. The natural calamity has caused extensive damage to crops of over 10 030 farmers in the region.
Many Companies Are Already On Their Second Round Of Mass Layoffs We haven’t seen a tsunami of layoffs like this since the Great Recession. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of job cuts announced in January and February was 427 percent higher than during the same period in 2022.
Poland Preparing For WW3 As Ambassador Announces Country Will Go To War With Russia If Ukraine Loses Jan Emeryk Rościszewski, Poland’s Ambassador to France, made the startling declaration that Poland would declare war on Russia should Ukraine lose the war. “If Ukraine fails to defend its independence,” the ambassador told French television, “we will have no choice, we will be forced to enter the conflict.”
Redfield: Gain-of-Function Research Will Cause Next Pandemic, Which Will Be ‘Much’ Worse than COVID On Monday’s broadcast of Hill.TV’s “Rising,” former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said he believes that the next pandemic will come not from animal spillover, but “from gain-of-function research or intentional bioterrorism.” And that the next pandemic “will be much more brutal to the world than COVID was.”
Paris Erupts As Hundreds Of Thousands Of French Citizens Riot In The Streets Protesting The Latest Move Of Antichrist-In-Training Emmanuel Macron What has Emmanuel Macron done to rile up the anger of the French people to such a degree? Oh, not much, just attempting to ram through highly unpopular legislation in his own government without allow the duly-elected representatives of the French people to cast their votes. You might say to me that these latest riots disprove our assertion that Macron could be the biblical man of sin who becomes the Son of Perdition, Antichrist, after the Rapture of the Church. But we would disagree, and here’s why.
NY Governor Demands Court Authorization to Detain Citizens in ‘Quarantine Camps’ New York’s Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul is demanding that the courts grant her authorization to detain citizens in “quarantine camps” against their will. Hochul has gone back to court seeking permission to detain New Yorkers in quarantine camps.
DEA Warns ‘Zombie Drug’ Hitting US Streets, Set To Worsen Overdose Crisis President Biden’s efforts to end a nationwide drug crisis, which he promised to end during the 2020 election campaign, may face further challenges as the Drug Enforcement Administration issued an alert on Monday regarding a new concoction of fentanyl and a veterinary tranquilizer hitting American cities and towns.
WHO and Media Fuel Another Disease Panic, This Time a Deadly Yeast Fungus Brought on by ‘Global Warming’ After Covid-19 and monkeypox, citizens will hardly fall for such propaganda horror reports… Are we now all going to die from a killer fungus due to climate change? Alarm, alarm: Candida auris infection is “worrying ” and “fatal,” says the mainstream media in its headlines. ‘Climate change’ is said to be to blame for its “alarmingly rapid spread.” The WHO calls for the fungus to be given top priority.
Vaccine Being Prepared For A Bird Flu Jump To Humans A bird flu shot for humans is being prepared “just in case” it mutates. But if it hasn’t mutated to infect humans yet, how do the “scientists” have access to the sequencing to create an effective vaccine anyway?
Moderna Is “Standing Ready” For The Human Bird Flu Pandemic Big Pharma companies are already prepared to rake in the cash after a human bird flu pandemic begins. If the H5N1 avian flu mutated to infect humans, vaccines are already being created that you’ll probably be coerced into getting…once again.
Secret Government Documents confirm COVID-19 Vaccine roll-out caused Excess Deaths in Australia to increase by 5,162% Secretive data, strangely given to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) by the Australian Government confirms the first 38 weeks of the year 2021 saw a shocking 1,452% increase in excess deaths following the rollout of the Covid-19 injections compared to the same period in 2020. Unfortunately, as the months passed, the situation only worsened.
“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government.” —George Washington (1796)
What you need to know about the social media giant and what’s at stake in hearings and policy.
Emmy Griffin
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew gave his public plea to Congress yesterday in an attempt to forestall the forced ban/sale of the company in the U.S. The social media company has come to stand as a symbol for all the ills that social media is bringing to society. TikTok has the additional condition that its parent company, ByteDance, is based in Beijing, and there are significant indications — including Chew’s admission — that it’s collecting an extraordinary amount of biometric and other spy data for the Chinese Communist Party, as well as having an algorithm that actively seeks to promote images and material that are harmful.
Of course, he also lamely insisted, “I don’t think that spying is the right way to describe it.” Sure thing.
Though TikTok is far from the only social media platform to denigrate society via its toxicity, it is by far the most popular with 150 million users in the U.S. Chew has taken to the app to speak directly to his American users in order to influence lawmakers in favor of the app, but he may already be too late (thank goodness).
TikTok has already been banned on government officials’ devices in many states and by the Biden administration. Why would they do that if there weren’t significant evidence of foreign spyware?
The Washington Post insists that this forced TikTok ban/sale of the company is based on rumors and that this is a larger geopolitical play for power. That is to say: Who controls the Internet puppet strings? However, WaPo in the same article points out several telling factors that seem to corroborate the suspicions that the app is spyware. In 2018, ByteDance had to change the parameters of another app because it made fun of communism. “Chinese state [forced ByteDance] to close a comedy app that regulators had deemed ‘vulgar and improper,’ the founders said in an apologetic public letter that they’d work to ensure that communist values were ‘broadcast to strength.’”
Another point WaPo makes is that the Trump administration already attempted to put a stop to TikTok in the U.S., demanding the same thing that Congress is pushing now: that the U.S.-based operation of the app be sold to an American company, or the app be banned entirely. What did the CCP say at the time? TikTok was a “strategic asset.”
Chew’s latest attempt at a compromise is what he has dubbed “Project Texas.” It’s a $1.5 billion restructuring plan that would give the U.S. government leverage over operations, data, and the algorithm. Chew is fighting incredibly hard for his company not to be taken from the American market.
Even the promises of altering the algorithms to protect kids is too little, too late for those who care about this issue. Seventy percent of American teens are TikTok users, and they are given access to horrible, shallow, or destructive content that ruins their mental health. In fact, Ekō, a corporate watchdog group, conducted an experiment wherein the users posed as young teens to see if that qualification would affect the algorithm. The “kids” were bombarded with destructive content and suicidality within the first 10 minutes of scrolling down the “For You” page. There is another point to be made here about the responsibility of parents who allow their children to use the app, but that is a rant for another day.
Here is what’s at stake for American lawmakers:
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) represented the bipartisan sentiments of many in Congress when she said last week: “Americans deserve to know the extent to which their privacy is jeopardized and their data is manipulated by ByteDance-owned TikTok’s relationship with China. What’s worse, we know Big Tech companies, like TikTok, use harmful algorithms to exploit children for profit and expose them to dangerous content online. We need to know what actions the company is taking to keep our kids safe from online and offline harms.”
For some lawmakers, a TikTok ban could be the first step in giving them an upper hand on Big Tech censorship, which is a double-edged sword. Conservatives, rightly, have complained that there is too much censorship, while leftists complain there is not enough. This perhaps is the biggest worry when it comes to this motion by Congress. As stated earlier, TikTok is a stand-in for every other social media company like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. As our Mark Alexander wrote five years ago, user data should be protected by more than a vague user agreement:
Congress has the authority to protect consumer privacy through legislation, and in the case of Facebook and other aggregators of private data (which should be classified as private property), that legislation should include explicit requirements regarding the dissemination of consumer data and profiles. When it comes to invasive privacy violations — the collecting and marketing of individual profiles — a ubiquitous blanket “user agreement” is completely insufficient.
Congress should enact legislation requiring that social media and other aggregators of individual data (Facebook, Google, et al.) be required to obtain specific and explicit user permissions for each and every transfer of such data, prior to the sale or transfer of any individually identifiable profiling data.
Then there are those who oppose the ban. Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), member of “The Squad,” claims this ban is “political fearmongering” and reflects “xenophobia around China.” He cannot conceive of how the Chinese could possibly use the information that they’ve gathered to conduct espionage. Another politician, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, also pointed out that TikTok has been a very useful tool for leftist propaganda. Raimondo said that “the politician in me thinks you’re gonna literally lose every voter under 35, forever” if the ban goes through.
It will be interesting to see what pans out in Congress and the overall actions toward TikTok. Will Congress protect the people of the United States and ban TikTok? Will it enact much-needed reforms in general on data-mining? We wait with bated breath.
Discerning between political substance and clickbait churn in the DeSantis/Morgan interview.
Mark Alexander
Hours before sunrise each day, our editors are reviewing reliable and trustworthy media sources. That review results in an 0800 editors meeting to determine, as a digest of news and policy, the few topics that deserve further analysis. Less important topics are covered in our short Executive Summaries. Moreover, we determine what we are not going to cover because it amounts to “clickbait churn.” Some news junkies thrive on that churn, but the fact is, it’s a mainstay of both the commercial Leftmedia talkingheads and scribes and, unfortunately, most of their conservative media counterparts because clicks equal advertising revenue.
The reality is that, most mornings, the majority of news we review is advertising churn, and that is a disservice to all Americans.
Case in point this week would be the relentless speculation about whether Donald Trump was going to be indicted by a thuggish partisan New York prosecutor. I covered that issue the day after Trump set the churn machine on fire last week, under the title “The Relentless Prosecutorial Persecution of Donald Trump,” coming to Trump’s defense against absurd prosecutorial overreach. Douglas Andrews followed up this morning with a look at the angle of two-tiered justice.
Another case in point would be comments by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in an interview this week, every word being spun one way or the other.
No, DeSantis did not “Rip Trump’s character and chaotic leadership style,” as interviewer Piers Morgan put it, asserting “Gov. Ron DeSantis has finally taken the gloves off and launched a blistering attack on his former mentor, former President Donald Trump.”
But what DeSantis did say ahead of announcing his candidacy for president in 2024 is important.
There is one thing Tump accomplished that DeSantis would like to accomplish, and that is to serve our nation as president. There are many attributes that DeSantis brings to office, including his extraordinary military and academic background, that Trump would like to claim.
DeSantis has clearly proven himself in one of the nation’s largest and politically most significant states, Florida, as affirmed by his landslide reelection last November. As House Republicans limped across the finish line nationally, barely taking control of the House and losing the Senate, despite exaggerated rumors of a “red wave,” in Florida, DeSantis won 62 of the state’s 67 counties and beat Democrat challenger Charlie Crist by nearly 20 points. On that resounding victory, which included substantial Hispanic and Demo crossover votes, DeSantis declared: “We have embraced freedom. We have maintained law and order. We have protected the rights of parents. We have respected our taxpayers, and we reject woke ideology. We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die!”
And he has sustained that momentum every day since his reelection.
Acknowledging his record as governor and his national appeal, Morgan asked DeSantis how he differed from Trump. DeSantis responded: “Well, I think there’s a few things. The approach to COVID was different. I would have fired somebody like Fauci. I think he got way too big for his britches, and I think he did a lot of damage.”
On all the Trump drama, DeSantis added, “The way we run the government, I think, is no daily drama, focus on the big picture and put points on the board, and I think that’s something that’s very important.”
Trump thrived on the chaos and drama, which I warned about just months after his election — pleading with him to stop undermining the good he was doing by “swapping spit with jackasses.” Notably, in a recent conversation, a person within Trump’s inner circle mentioned that, frequently, Patriot Post articles were included in White House staff briefings. Apparently they missed this one.
A wise friend and a very astute political observer, Cal Thomas, offered this observation about all the Trump chaos and drama: “Trump was questioned at a White House press briefing about polls showing his popularity was declining. Asked to explain, he responded, ‘Nobody likes me. It can only be my personality. That’s all.’ It was a rare moment of transparency for him.”
As for Trump’s unfortunate trademark petulance, like calling the governor “DeSanctimonious,” DeSantis responded: “I kinda like it, it’s long, it’s got a lot of vowels. … I mean, you can call me whatever you want, just as long as you also call me a winner because that’s what we’ve been able to do in Florida, is put a lot of points on the board and really take this state to the next level.”
He would not take Morgan’s bait on Trump, adding: “To me, it’s just background noise. It’s not important for me to be fighting with people on social media. It’s not accomplishing anything for the people I represent. So, we really just focus on knocking out victories, day after day, and if I got involved in all the undertow, I would not be able to be an effective governor.”
Ahead of DeSantis’s first election as governor in 2018, Trump declared: “Ron DeSantis is a brilliant young leader, Yale and then Harvard, who would make a great Governor of Florida. He loves our country. He’s a true fighter.” Indeed he was and is.
DeSantis told Morgan: “We had a good relationship [when I was a congressman] and I think one of the reasons he got to know me is because I saw the Russia collusion thing as a farce from the beginning. Very few people said that. We had a handful of us in Congress that were fighting back against that. So, I would go on TV, and I would defend him when it wasn’t popular and when it was kinda politically risky, but I just thought it was the right thing to do. I thought that he had good ideas for the country. And then when I became governor, his last two years as president, we worked very well together. He had a place in Florida and worked well with us to serve our state.”
Morgan noted correctly that DeSantis made a fatal mistake with Trump. “What’s that?” asked DeSantis, to which Morgan responded, “You got too popular.”
Indeed, in typical slash-and-burn fashion, Trump assailed DeSantis: “Now that Ron DeSanctimonious is finally admitting he’s in the Race…let me explain the facts. He is, for a Republican, an average Governor.” He then insisted Morgan was “a ratings-challenged TV host” and then started trashing Florida. Par for the Trump course.
He recently condemned Fox News and The Wall Street Journal for daring to say something positive about DeSantis. Recall that popular Fox host Tucker Carlson privately said of Trump even before the J6 protests: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately. … What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
Given the outrage of his fans over that remark, Carlson is trying to make amends with Trump.
Regarding Trump’s destructive fratricidal attacks, DeSantis said, “My view, though, is we should want the country to do well, I want other Republicans to do well.”
That clearly contrasts his approach with fellow Republicans and that of Trump, whose self-aggrandizing fratricidal fire is in stark contradiction to Ronald Reagan and his 11th Commandment on Republican primaries: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”
Of the coming contest between DeSantis and Trump, political commentator Ben Shapiro concludes: “So, what can DeSantis do? The answer: It’s not really up to DeSantis. It’s up to Republican voters. It will be DeSantis’ job to remind Republican voters that Trump has won precisely one election in the last seven years; it will be the job of Republican voters to acknowledge that reality. It will be DeSantis’ job to point out that Trump didn’t clean out the executive branch and gave Fauci power; it will be the job of Republican voters to acknowledge that such criticisms aren’t ‘unfair attacks.’ It will be DeSantis’ job to remind voters of his record; it will be the job of Republican voters to look to that record rather than tweetstorms for policy victory. Will Republican voters use their heads rather than their hearts? We’ll find out soon enough.”
Drone strike and retaliation, Biden left 175 Americans behind in Afghanistan, more bravery in the NHL, and more.
Thomas Gallatin & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
Drone strike and retaliation: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin released a statement Thursday noting that the U.S. had launched a series of airstrikes in Syria against Iranian-backed facilities that resulted in the deaths of at least four individuals. Austin explained that “the airstrikes were conducted in response to today’s attack as well as a series of recent attacks against coalition forces in Syria.” Hostile forces associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard had conducted a drone attack on U.S. forces in the region that left one U.S. contractor dead and wounded five American troops. The war in Syria has long served as a proxy war for Iran against the West.
Biden left 175 Americans behind in Afghanistan: In a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged that there are still American citizens detained by the Taliban in Afghanistan after Joe Biden’s disgraceful surrender and retreat. When pressed on the number, Blinken said “about 175,” adding that “44 of them are ready to leave, and we are working to effectuate their departure.” The disastrous pullout of Afghanistan continues to haunt the Biden administration and, more importantly, those Americans and Afghan allies who were left behind to suffer at the hands of the Taliban. No Americans should have been left behind — that is a momentous failure that has only emboldened America’s enemies. Of all the plethora of poor decisions Biden has made since taking office, his capitulation in Afghanistan to the Taliban is near the top of the list.
More bravery in the NHL: More National Hockey League players are refusing to participate in their teams’ “Pride Night” LGBTQ+ promotions. The latest are two Florida Panthers, brothers Eric and Marc Staal, who refused to don Pride-themed warmup jerseys prior to a game. Both cited a commitment to their Christian faith as the reason for refusing to participate. “We carry no judgement on how people choose to live their lives, and believe that all people should be welcome in all aspects of the game of hockey,” they explained. “Having said that, we feel that by us wearing a Pride jersey it goes against our Christian beliefs.” Meanwhile, the Chicago Blackhawks team has canned wearing Pride warmup jerseys for its upcoming Pride Night over concerns that it would needlessly threaten its Russian players, who could face legal repercussions when returning home, as the country has laws banning the promotion of homosexuality.
Good for West Texas A&M University! In a statement emailed to students and posted on his blog that he titled “A Harmless Drag Show? No Such Thing,” West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler explained why he recently canceled a student drag show on the school’s campus. Wendler noted drag shows are inherently degrading and misogynistic and therefore run counter to the school’s commitment to promote and protect the dignity of all members of the school. “WT endeavors to treat all people equally,” he wrote. “Drag shows are derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny, no matter the stated intent. … I do not support any show, performance or artistic expression which denigrates others — in this case, women — for any reason.” He added: “Mocking or objectifying in any way members of any group based on appearance, bias or predisposition is unacceptable. No amount of fancy rhetorical footwork or legal wordsmithing eludes the fact that drag shows denigrate and demean women — noble goals notwithstanding.”
Kidney equity: The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a private nonprofit government contractor, wants to rewrite priority standards for the transplant waiting list in order to adhere to the Left’s “equity” dogma. Currently, those at the top of the organ waiting list have met a number of factors that include age (children are generally higher on the list), being an organ donor themselves (living donor), or being a biological match. UNOS is specifically targeting the living donor prioritization, claiming it’s a standard that promotes inequity and is therefore unfair. The trouble is, the waiting list for organs is long, and deprioritizing living donors — it’s usually a kidney they have donated — will only serve to disincentivize and therefore diminish the number of living donors. In other words, UNOS is effectively virtue-signaling in a way that would result in effectively shrinking the already severely limited number of organs available.
Biden blackouts are coming: As winter quickly turns to spring and spring to summer, the strain on America’s power grid will become more pronounced as people seek to cool their homes. In places like California, summer brings an increasing number of blackouts as demand on the aging power grid, as well as an increasing reliance on inherently inconsistent renewable energy sources, strains the system. Democrat politicians will repeatedly blame their favorite bogeyman climate change for the grid problem, but the real root of it has to do with bad policy, not climate. In reality, it has more to do with a disarray of political agendas and tangled regulations that serve to slow down development. Joe Biden hasn’t helped matters, as his ridiculous promotion of the radical leftist anti-fossil fuel agenda has only further hampered the power grid and spread California’s problem across the country.
Headlines
TikTok CEO refuses to say whether officials at Chinese parent company helped him prepare for hearing (Daily Wire)
The Democrats’ unending criminalization of our political differences poses a grave threat to our United States.
Douglas Andrews
Years from now, the history books may well record this as the week during which the Still-Somewhat-Loosely-United States of America walked up to the edge, stared into the abyss of banana republicanism, shook its collective head, and said, “No thanks.”
But we doubt it.
After a steady stream of will-he-or-won’t-he churn about hard-left Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s Herculean efforts to indict Donald Trump for a seven-year-old nuisance payment to a porn star, Bragg’s office canceled the grand jury’s Wednesday meeting to regroup and, it seems, to quell dissension within his camp about the ridiculousness of his endeavor.
As Matt Margolis at PJ Media quipped, “It looks like their dreams of seeing him in handcuffs are slipping away faster than a greased pig at a rodeo.”
Somehow, though, we don’t think we’ve heard the last of this guy. Nor have we heard the last of Jim Jordan and his House Judiciary Committee.
“House Republicans,” as the Washington Examiner reports, “have slammed the potential indictment as being politically motivated and … have also requested documents and testimony from [Bragg] related to the investigation. Bragg responded to the request Thursday by arguing doing so would interfere with law enforcement and that Republican leaders only became interested in the investigation once indications had been given that Trump may be indicted.”
Funny, not funny, how Soros DAs like Bragg are notoriously soft on crime, except when they can claim a Republican scalp. That this scalp would be the first ever of a former president is all the more alluring. And corrupting.
Noted defense attorney, Harvard Law professor emeritus, and author of the book Get Trump Alan Dershowitz was, shall we say, less than enthusiastic about the merits of the case:
I have never seen a case in my 60 years of practice which has so many holes in it. Start with the statute of limitations. It’s seven years before he committed the crime. The New York State statute says the only exception for that is if his whereabouts are unknown. I have to tell you, even Bragg could have found that he was in the White House. … I don’t see how you can twist and turn to make the statute of limitations disappear. And then you have all the other. How many holes are there? Shall I count the ways? …
I think he’s worried that if he brings this case and he uses a witness who he has to know is lying, there are going to be investigations of him and there should be investigations. … So I hope he comes to his senses and doesn’t bring this case.
Another sharp legal mind, constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley, put it this way: “One would say Bragg is outside of his lane, but in this case, he’s on a completely different highway. This is an effort by a state official to effectively prosecute a federal crime, a crime that the Department of Justice decided not to prosecute. … This has the feeling of a thrill kill for many on the left, and they need to think seriously about what this [means] for the legal system.”
Earlier this week, our Mark Alexander covered “the relentless prosecutorial persecution” of the former president. As he’s noted repeatedly, the Democrats are attacking Trump for what their own people have done: “First it was the high-profile raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence last August, endeavoring to indict Trump for what Hillary Clinton actually did, after failing to convict him as president for doing what Joe Biden actually did.”
What’s ahead is hard to say. But if there’s one good thing about the criminalization of politics, it’s that it tends to distract our elected representatives from passing bad legislation. Don’t just do something, we say. Stand there.
When one considers the all-consuming nature of the Democrats’ war on Donald Trump — from phony Russia collusion hoaxes to nuisance lawsuits to probes of his tax returns to illegitimate impeachments — it’s a wonder the man was able to accomplish all he did while in office.
One might’ve thought that the Democrats would’ve learned their lesson. But one would’ve been wrong.
Here, we’re reminded of the sad truth of an animal fable — the one in which the frog finally agrees to ferry the scorpion across the river, only to be stung by the deadly arthropod halfway across, causing both of them to drown.
“I’m sorry,” said the Democrat scorpion after agreeing with the Republican frog that the criminalization of our politics will be the end of us, “but I can’t help it. It’s in my nature.”
So it likely goes.
If any lesson can be learned, any warning can be heeded, from the efforts during the past seven days of a hard-left district attorney to bring a weak, petty, pathetic, gymnastically contorted, grotesquely partisan case against Donald Trump, it’s this: We’re lost as a nation if we continue to criminalize our political differences.
Sadly, though, one thing is clear: Nothing short of a prison sentence will satiate the Democrats’ sick, twisted, remorseless, Ahabian quest to GET TRUMP!!
This president’s foreign policy fecklessness is paving the way for China to become the world’s preeminent power.
Brian Mark Weber
Since President Joe Biden took office, it’s been challenging to keep up with the whirlwind of scandals, cover-ups, and truly mind-boggling decisions.
One that seems like ancient history is the withdraw of American troops from Afghanistan. There may have been good reasons to end or greatly reduce our presence there, but the way Biden did it was dishonorable to the good men and women fighting for our nation, and deadly to 13 of them. By any measure, it was a disastrous retreat and surrender and an international embarrassment for the world’s superpower.
A year and a half later, that decision has proved to be even worse than we expected.
Biden’s reckless decision effectively announced American weakness to the world and invited Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. At the same time, the Biden family’s dirty dealings with China let Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party know that America could be bought and sold.
In barely more than two years, it’s not an overstatement to declare that the Biden presidency has destroyed American credibility, prevented us from wielding any leverage on the international stage, and left our country in a state of irrelevancy as Putin and Xi pull the puppet strings of the global political order.
There’s always jockeying in global power politics, but China seems to be acting too comfortably. Could it have something to do with those Biden family financial ties?
A recent memo published by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability reveals how Chairman James Comer and other members are looking into questionable payments, including a $3 million transfer to a Biden family associate less than two months after Joe Biden left office as Barack Obama’s vice president on January 20, 2017.
Apparently, as long as Joe Biden is in the White House, China can do as it pleases.
It’s no wonder that Putin and Xi have formed a closer relationship: Russia needs China’s manufacturing might, and China needs Russia’s energy abundance.
“Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement to expand their economic ties during a bilateral meeting in Moscow on Tuesday,” reports Fox News. “Xi is in Moscow for a multiday series of meetings with his Russian counterpart, aimed at demonstrating the two countries’ new ‘friendship without limits.’ Xi and Putin emphasized the importance of jointly safeguarding their countries’ energy security. Putin touted plans for a gas pipeline from Siberia to China ahead of the meeting, saying the agreement was all but finalized.”
As Xi told Putin, “Change that hasn’t happened in 100 years is coming and we are driving this change together.”
China and Russia may be forming a new alliance, but China is calling all the shots. The Chinese relationship with the Russians is merely a means to a globe-dominating end.
“The visit also makes plain the contrast between Beijing’s emboldened geopolitical ambitions and Russia’s embattled economic and political standing in the world,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “Beijing has thrown an economic lifeline to Russia amid Western sanctions, buying up its oil and gas and supplying it with microchips and other advanced technologies that can have military uses.”
It certainly seems like there’s a new sheriff in town, and maybe that explains why Biden National Security Council spokesman John Kirby keeps going out of his way to remind us how great American leadership is.
There was a time not too long ago when we didn’t have to keep telling the world about American preeminence. They saw it with their own eyes. These days, while our nation wrestles with inflation, bank failures, a mind-boggling national debt, and a military more focused on sex and skin color than missiles and ships, China is setting its sights on global dominance.
One of the key components of China’s long-term agenda is known as the Global Security Initiative. The complex plan, which is vague in many respects, seeks to forge political alliances around the world with the goal of positioning China as the globe’s arbiter of political, economic, and military affairs.
Our own Emmy Griffin recently wrote about one of those military affairs: “As tensions mount between the three nuclear powers, questions are rising once again about China and President Xi Jinping’s ‘no limits’ relationship with Russia. Putin has been struggling in his war, in no small part thanks to the weapons and financial aid that the U.S. has provided to Ukraine. Xi may feel like it’s time to intervene in a more palpable way.”
Former UN ambassador and current presidential candidate Nikki Haley sees Chinese intervention in a similar way: “Beijing has set its sights on overtaking the U.S. militarily, economically and culturally. Mr. Xi is in Moscow because supporting Mr. Putin advances his dark vision. He wants Russia to conquer Ukraine so it’s easier for China to invade Taiwan. He wants Russia to threaten the rest of Europe because it draws America’s attention from Asia.”
With the American president bought and paid for, and with our foreign-policy fecklessness on full display for the rest of the world, the road for China’s ascendancy is paved with silk and Russian natural resources.
A committee on the subject is making progress against the DOJ, the Air Force, and NewsGuard.
Nate Jackson
The weaponization of government really began under Barack Obama, who masterfully used federal agencies to punish and persecute his political opponents. His understudy, the ostensibly mild-mannered moderate Joe Biden, has continued this banana republic hackery. Republicans in the House are busy challenging it and working to, as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently put it, “hold the Swamp accountable.”
Right off the bat once taking control of the House in January, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan established and is leading the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. That subcommittee, wrote our Douglas Andrews at the time, “will investigate, among other things, the FBI’s effort to censor and ban conservative Twitter users, and the Justice Department’s probe of ‘threats’ from parents who’ve had the temerity to speak out at local school board meetings against wokeness and rampant leftism.”
How goes that work?
Earlier this week, the subcommittee released a damning report regarding the Justice Department’s targeting of parents concerned over woke indoctrination in public schools. Republicans made official what we already knew:
Although the Biden Administration declined to cooperate with this oversight in the 117th Congress, whistleblower disclosures and a report commissioned by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) shed some light on how the Biden Administration colluded with the NSBA to create a justification to use federal law-enforcement and counterterrorism resources against parents.
The bottom line: Having “no compelling” justification for targeting parents, the subcommittee concluded that “the Biden Administration misused federal law-enforcement and counterterrorism resources for political purposes.”
Unfortunately, Attorney General Merrick Garland stubbornly rejects accusations of wrongdoing and refuses to revoke the DOJ memo.
In other news, the subcommittee is investigating the U.S. Air Force over the improper release of Official Military Personnel Files to Due Diligence Group, LLC, which did opposition research against 11 Republican political candidates leading up to the 2022 election. An Air Force spokeswoman recently admitted that USAF “employees did not follow proper procedures,” but she insisted “there was no evidence of political motivation or malicious intent.” Jim Jordan and his fellow Republicans aren’t convinced.
Recruitment is hard enough under the woke regime headed by this commander-in-chief. Unlawfully releasing private information against military service personnel who belong to a certain political party is unlikely to help matters.
Finally, one of our humble team’s “favorite” organizations, NewsGuard, is under the weaponization subcommittee’s scrutiny. The New York-based company was started by some former journalists with the ostensible goal of objectively evaluating news reporting.
Predictably, it soon became apparent — including through our own experience — that NewsGuard would be better named LeftGuard or Praetorian Guard. It’s “fact-checkers” and evaluation team do little but use leftist opinion games to discredit, suppress, and censor conservative news organizations for reporting inconvenient facts. NewsGuard is a key part of what journalist Michael Shellenberger of Twitter Files fame told the committee is the “censorship industrial complex,” and he rightly says it’s been “caught spreading disinformation.”
We’ve likened the Left’s censorship scheme to racketeering.
It would be bad enough if only web users were paying for NewsGuard’s browser add-on, or if only social media sites were using its work. Yet the truth is that you, dear taxpayer, are helping to fill the coffers of these fact-checking thugs. The House committee learned that NewsGuard took in $750,000 from the Defense Department in 2021, after collecting $25,000 from DOD and the State Department in 2020.
NewsGuard cofounder Gordon Crovitz insists this doesn’t mean his company is “government-funded” because “government entities [simply] pay to license our data.”
If the federal government is using taxpayer dollars to pay a company that is demonstrably a part of the Democrats’ censorship industrial complex, that constitutes weaponizing government.
Perhaps worse is this from The Washington Times: “House Republicans previously raised questions about NewsGuard after it signed a deal with the American Federation of Teachers to put the rating tools on devices of millions of American teachers and schoolchildren.”
“Fact-checkers” like Crovitz may conveniently hide behind a phony wall of separation here if his company’s supposedly nonpartisan work is going to teachers and students without being directly paid for with tax dollars. Yet that’s a distinction without a difference. Ask those concerned parents above if they don’t see this infiltration into public school classrooms for what it truly is.
In short, House Republicans are doing important oversight work via this Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It’s an incredible uphill battle, however, and it remains to be seen what will come of it other than a few sternly worded memos.
Douglas Andrews: A Tale of Two Woeful Judicial Nominees — Knowledge of even the most basic legal principles is of little concern to Joe Biden, whose nominees need only check the right boxes.
Gary Bauer: Bishops Stand Firm — The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a strong statement this week standing firmly on the side of biology and Christian teaching.
Ron Helle: ‘Beware All Who Enter Here!’ — God’s blessings come through obedience and servanthood. There is no other way.
In Brief: How to Define ‘Woke’ — American institutions are set up for oppression, all gaps can be explained because of that, and “equity” is the solution.
AOC Cries Fascism Over GOP Parents’ Rights Bill — House Democrats took to the floor Thursday to denounce a GOP bill on parental rights, saying the bill was fascist and would lead to book bans.
“The Judeo-Christian principles upon which our country was founded teach us to be tolerant and compassionate, but they don’t tell us to abandon common sense. If we hope to change this corrosive course, we have to start by acknowledging a simple fact: The human species populated the world and created a civilization, for better or worse, through the union of man and woman. That was no accident. It was by design.” —Peter Lemiska
“It’s one thing to try to attract voters. It’s another thing to do so by demonizing others and propagating lies from the pits of hell. Ultimately, we must engage and defeat the transgender industrialists no matter how loudly they shriek.” —Douglas Andrews
A Broken Clock Is Right Twice a Day
“I’m a woman. Please don’t ever refer to me as a person with a uterus, birthing person, or person who menstruates. How do people not realize how degrading this is? You can support the transgender community without doing this sh*t.” —”The Young Turks” co-host Ana Kasparian
Political Futures
“Democrats are going to sink $50 million into ballot harvesting operations in Pennsylvania and Arizona. Without a GOP plan to counter that, your Trump vs. DeSantis arguments are pretty much pointless. Cause we aren’t winning the White House.” —Jesse Kelly
The BIG Lies
“Extreme MAGA Republicans don’t want the children of America to learn about the Holocaust.” —House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)
“When we look at how strong the economy is, it’s because of the president’s work.” —White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
Hot Air
“Our transportation systems … cope with profoundly disruptive forces that include … increasing threats from climate change.” —Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
“There’s no ban on gas stoves. I have a gas stove. It is just about making the existing electric and gas stoves — and all the other appliances — more efficient.” —Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm
Demagogues
“Students being murdered at their desks is not enough for [Republicans] to value lives over toys. … They don’t want commonsense regulations on gun ownership. Their perverted view of the Second Amendment compels them to argue against reasonable restrictions. … We will not succumb to the nihilist, insurrectionist view of the Second Amendment.” —Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-MO)
“When we talk about progressive values, I can say what my progressive value is, and that is freedom over fascism.” —Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)
“I just realized something — Republicans ain’t got no swag. That’s why they want to ban TikTok.” —Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY)
Veep Thoughts
“During Women’s History Month, we celebrate and we honor the women who made history throughout history.” —Kamala Harris
CNN just received its smallest primetime (8-11 p.m. ET) audience in more than three decades among 25-to-54-year-olds — that all-important demographic — with only 84,000 average viewers last week.
The dust continues to settle after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, and the ensuing government bailout. Many people in the mainstream seem to think the crisis has passed. But a closer look at the condition of the banking system reveals these two banks were just the tip of the iceberg. Peter Schiff appeared on NewsMaxWake Up America to talk about the financial crisis. He said that there are more bailouts to come.
Peter emphasized that the problem wasn’t just two isolated banks going under, saying most US banks are technically insolvent.
This is the result of a dozen years of zero percent interest rates and quantitative easing. The Federal Reserve created the first financial crisis with artificially low interest rates. And the current financial crisis is actually even worse because it kept interest rates even lower for longer.”
One of the hosts noted that Silicon Valley Bank filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy and asked “what happens next?”
I think what happens next, unfortunately, is more bailouts. We’ve already bailed out several banks and their large depositors. The president of the United States is pretending that this doesn’t cost anybody any money. It’s going to cost everybody! Because inflation is the way we’re paying for this.”
Everybody’s bank account is now at greater risk than ever, maybe not because your bank is going to fail because the government is not allowing that to happen, but because everybody’s bank account is going to lose value. Inflation is going to destroy the value of everybody’s savings.”
The host pointed out that some struggling banks are getting bailed out by bigger banks. Peter said it’s important to remember that a lot of these bigger banks are getting money from the Federal Reserve.
Remember, these large banks are able to take their Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, which have depreciated dramatically because they were foolish enough to invest when interest rates were at all-time record lows. So, they’re able to take paper that maybe is worth 70 cents and just give it to the Federal Reserve in exchange for a dollar. And then they’re taking some of that windfall and depositing it in other banks. So, the whole thing is a bailout in disguise. And again, the bag-holder is the American public. They get the bill in the form of higher prices.”
So, is the banking system safe?
Peter responded with an emphatic, “No!” adding that it is completely unsafe.
But again, even if the government steps up and bails out all these insolvent banks and stops the runs, the only way they can do it is by printing trillions and trillions of dollars, and it gets spent into circulation. So, either you’re going to lose your money because your bank fails, or you’re going to keep your money because your bank is bailed out, but your money isn’t going to have much value. So, what good is it if you can withdraw your money, but when you go to spend it, you can’t buy very much?”
The hosts played a clip of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explaining why Silicon Valley Bank lost money selling its bond portfolio, noting that it had lost value due to the recent interest rate increases. They asked if the central bank would have to reconsider its rate hikes to fight price inflation. Peter’s first response was to call Yellen “incompetent.”
She was incompetent at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She was incompetent as Fed chair. She kept interest rates at zero for practically her entire term. That’s what helped banks load up on these low-yielding Treasuries. But unfortunately, the Fed is going to stop raising interest rates. It’s already gone back to quantitative easing. They should be raising interest rates much more. And the government under Secretary Yellen should be cutting back spending. If she was competent as secretary of the Treasury, she would be telling her boss Joe Biden that we need to dramatically cut government spending. Instead of trying to raise the debt ceiling so we can go deeper into debt, she should be advising her boss to start cutting spending and actually pay our bills so we don’t have to raise the debt ceiling.”
President Joe Biden is reportedly frustrated at Vice President Kamala Harris for not “rising to the occasion” as his second-in-command, according to a recent report from Reuters.
The bombshell story from Reuters included comments from high-ranking officials in the Biden administration who revealed some of president’s candid opinions about Harris.
“If he did not think she was capable, he would not have picked her,” one former Biden official told Reuters.
“But it is a question of consistently rising to the occasion,” the official said.
A second former official highlighted a “point of tension” between Biden and Harris.
“I don’t think that the president sees her as somebody who takes anything off of his plate,” a second former White House official said, adding a “fear of messing up” had caused Harris to be late in joining important political fights, like the ongoing border crisis.
Biden put Harris in charge of border issues in 2021, but she has notably neglected visiting the border, going only after she took heavy flack in the press and from interest groups.
The National Border Patrol Council grilled Harris for failing to do her job and protect the border in January.
“If you were given a job 2 years ago with the explicit goal of reducing illegal immigration, and then you sit around and do nothing while illegal immigration explodes to levels never seen before, you should be fired and replaced. Period,” the Council wrote.
A current administration official acknowledged Harris’ weakness on border issues in comments to Reuters. “She, I think, is smart. She does not see this as a political win for her. Because it’s not. It’s a really hard issue,” the official said.
This is not Harris’ first conflict with Democratic Party heavyweights. CNN reported that Harris stopped receiving Sen. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s phone calls for a time after the Senator seemingly refused to endorse the VP for re-election in 2024.
“I really want to defer to what makes Biden comfortable on his team,” Warren said when asked by a Boston Public Radio interview if Harris should be Biden’s running mate in 2024.
“I’ve known Kamala for a long time. I like Kamala. I knew her back when she was an attorney general and I was still teaching, and we worked on the housing crisis together, so we go way back. But they need — they have to be a team, and my sense is they are — I don’t mean that by suggesting I think there are any problems. I think they are.”
Warren attempted to call Harris twice to apologize for her comments, according to CNN, but the vice president has not returned her calls.
Warren later tried to correct record, arguing that she was always in full support of Harris.
“I fully support the president’s and vice president’s reelection together and never intended to imply otherwise,” Warren told GBH News.
“They’re a terrific team with a strong record of delivering for working families.”
Maria Zakharova: “At least consider Seymour Hersh’s reporting, not anonymous red herrings.”
“Western media has been inundated with stories claiming the terrorist attack against the Nord Stream pipeline was conducted by a ‘pro Ukrainian group’, not by Russia”, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated in response to Seymour Hersh’s latest article on the Nord Stream Cover-Up.
“Who allows such leaks to flood the media?”, Zakharova asked on Telegram. “The answer is: Those who do not want a real investigation, and who want to distract from the facts by any means possible. Instead of such leaks, the Western regimes involved should respond to official requests from the Russian side and, at least take the results of Seymour Hersh’s investigative journalism into consideration, rather than distracting from them with anonymous red herrings.”
At a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-California) asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken whether he could “assure the world that no agency of the US government blew up those pipelines or facilitated that.”
“Yes, I can” Blinken answered.
Blinken assures the U.S. Congress that no U.S. government agency is responsible for the Nord Stream pipeline bombings. pic.twitter.com/dU1ghHZ11i
In response, the Russian Embassy in Washington charged the US government is “obstructing efforts to investigate the sabotage of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines” in a statement Thursday, RT reports.
“We have to remind that statements by US officials, who have repeatedly resorted to deceit and disinformation, including at international fora, are not trustworthy,” the embassy said.
US explanations do not “withstand criticism,” the Embassy said, “above all due to their lack of transparency and blocking access for (pipeline owner) Gazprom to determine the circumstances of the sabotage.”
“We consistently and persistently call for the launch of an impartial and transparent international investigation into the attacks against the Nord Stream pipelines. However, the United States, along with a narrow group of like-minded states, vehemently oppose such efforts,” the Russian Embassy stated.
The UN Security Council will vote on a draft resolution submitted by Russia about investigating last year’s sabotage attacks against the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines on March 27, Russia’s UN mission said on Thursday.
“The vote will take place on March 27 at 10 pm,” TASS reported.
A senior Kremlin official indicated this week that any effort to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin would amount to an act of war and warrant a blizzard of missile strikes.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, made the threat repeatedly in response to the International Criminal Court’s issuance of an arrest warrant for Putin last week for war crimes.
The arrest warrant
The ICC issued warrants of arrest on March 17 for Putin and for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Russian president’s commissioner for children’s rights. Both individuals are accused of the war crime of unlawfully deporting children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation and are believed to bear individual criminal responsibility.
ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan suggested that these acts “demonstrate an intention to permanently remove these children from their own country.”
One hundred twenty-three countries have signed on to the Rome Statute and are therefore legally bound to implement the decisions of the ICC, based in the the Hague in the Netherlands.
The U.S., China, India, and Russia are not among the ICC’s 123 member states.
In addition to not being party to the Rome Statute, the U.S. has a Bush-era law on the books authorizing the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the Hague.
Ireland, among the nations obliged to enforce the warrant, has confirmed that it would arrest the Russian president in the unlikely event he sets foot on the island. Canada and Germany similarly welcomed the ICC’s decision.
Not all signatories will respect the warrant, however. While his nation signed the statute in 1999, Hungarian Cabinet Minister Gergely Gulyas indicated that the arrest warrant is not binding in his nation.
The ICC’s decision to indict Putin came nearly one year after the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution condemning Putin as a war criminal.
Reuters reported that the resolution, introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), implored the ICC to follow suit.
Sudan’s former President Omar al-Bashir and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi were the only other leaders indicted by the ICC while still in power.
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, suggested on Twitter that Putin’s status as an accused war criminal means there will be no further negotiations with the current Russian elite; no return of the Russian Federation to world politics in its prewar status; and no lifting of sanctions so long as the “face of Putin” represents Russia.
Threats
In a video posted to Telegram on Wednesday, Medvedev said, “Let’s imagine — obviously this situation which will never be realized — but nevertheless let’s imagine that it was realized: The current head of the nuclear state went to a territory, say Germany, and was arrested,” reported DW.
“What would that be? It would be a declaration of war on the Russian Federation,” said Medvedev. “And, in that case, all our assets — all our missiles etc. — would fly to the Bundestag, to the chancellor’s office.”
Medvedev issued a similar threat on Twitter Friday, stating Putin’s arrest in Germany, for instance, would be “casus belli, the unequivocal declaration of war against the Russian Federation! In that case, Russia would be forced to attack Berlin, and its means of destruction will rain on the Bundestag, the Chancellery, the Ministry of Defense and other key centres of decision-making. Mr. Scholz has picked himself a truly great team! Poor Germans …”
None
— (@)
Days earlier, Medvedev intimated that the Hague could be on the receiving end of hypersonic missiles should the Russian president be arrested.
“I’m afraid, gentlemen, everyone is answerable to God and missiles,” the security official wrote on Telegram. “It’s quite possible to imagine how a hypersonic Oniks fired from a Russian warship in the North Sea strikes the court building in the Hague. It can’t be shot down, I’m afraid.”
The ICC condemned Medvedev’s threats, stating, “The Presidency of the Assembly regrets these attempts to hinder international efforts to ensure accountability for acts that are prohibited under general international law.”
DW reported that Russia has opened its own criminal investigation into the ICC’s Karim Khan. Putin’s Investigative Committee alleges Khan possibly ran afoul of Russian law, accusing an innocent person of a crime and “preparing an attack on a representative of a foreign state enjoying international protection, in order to complicate international relations.”
“And the magnitude of that negativity increases over time. What does that mean, folks? It literally means that the people who received that vaccine were more likely to contract COVID-19 after seven months than the people who did not. That is a fact.” – Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo
(Mary Dowling – Independent Sentinel) New Zealand’s 2020 Excess Diseases
DATA from the New Zealand Ministry of Health revealed a 103 percent increase in hospitalizations among 12 disease categories measured in 2021 following the mRNA rollout. Read the article here. This calls into serious question the safety of medical interventions such as mRNA vaccines….
They penetrate the cell wall and re-program activity in the cell cytoplasm. There is relatively little COVID in 2020, so how do you pin it on “long COVID.”
The UK Where Almost No One in Parliament Is Listening
In the UK, MP Andrew Bridgen again attempted to capture the attention of the House of Commons about severe injury and death following Covid vaccination. View article →
AOC is on the House floor flailing around like a chicken again, this time over a Republican-sponsored bill that would -gasp- give parents more of a say in their children’s education. Specifically:
Depleted uranium shells promised to Kiev by the UK would “cause irreparable harm” to soldiers and civilians alike, Moscow claimed
The potential use of British-supplied depleted uranium shells by Ukraine would have a devastating impact on the country’s economy and population, lasting for centuries to come, the Russian Defense Ministry warned on Friday.
Speaking at a briefing, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who is in charge of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Forces, issued a scathing criticism of the UK’s plans to support Kiev with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium.
He noted that such munitions have only ever been deployed in combat by NATO countries, most notably during the Iraq War, when the US used at least 300 tons of depleted uranium.
“As a result, the radiation situation in the [Iraqi] city of Fallujah was much worse than in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear bombings by the United States,” Kirillov stated, recalling that Fallujah had been dubbed “the second Chernobyl,” while the local population suffered from a skyrocketing number of cancer cases.
The West is well aware of the consequences of using such weapons, the general stressed. Even though it “will cause irreparable harm” to the health of Ukrainian troops and civilians, “NATO countries, in particular the UK, express a readiness to supply this type of weapon to the Kiev regime,” Kirillov stated.
He warned that the use of the munitions will contaminate farmland. “In addition to infecting its own population, this will cause tremendous economic damage to the agro-industrial complex of Ukraine… reducing any export of agricultural produce from Ukrainian territory for many decades, if not centuries to come,” the general said.
The UK’s plans to send depleted uranium shells to Ukraine for use with Challenger 2 battle tanks were first unveiled on Monday, prompting an outcry from the Russian Foreign Ministry, which called the move a sign of “absolute recklessness, irresponsibility and impunity” on the part of London and Washington.
While the US has said it does not plan to support Ukraine with such ammunition, it shrugged off Russian concerns over the matter, describing depleted uranium shells as “a commonplace type of munition” which has “been in use for decades.”
Podcaster Joe Rogan spoke with mixed martial artist Jorge Masvidal about the Biden family’s scandals being ignored by the same political establishment targeting former President Trump Wednesday.
“Capital markets stop panicking when officials start panicking” – Michael Hartnett
Here comes the panic.
Bloomberg just reported that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen – who was singlehandedly responsible for stoking and restarting the bank crisis on Wednesday which until that day was easing back, with her comments that nobody in charge was even talking about a uniform deposit insurance, let alone working on one – will convene the heads of top US financial regulators Friday morning for a previously unscheduled meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council.
The meeting will be closed to the public, the Treasury Department said in a statement. The Treasury didn’t say what time the meeting would begin, and it wasn’t immediately clear whether the council would issue a statement following the meeting.
The step comes as regulators continue efforts to instill calm in financial markets and among bank depositors following the recent failure of two mid-sized lenders in the US and the near-collapse of banking giant Credit Suisse Group AG before its government-brokered takeover by rival UBS Group AG.
FSOC’s members include the heads of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and several other regulatory agencies. It has little legal authority but serves as a coordinating forum. Here is a list of the full members:
The Council’s voting members are:
The Secretary of the Treasury who serves as the Chairperson of the Council;
“And the magnitude of that negativity increases over time. What does that mean, folks? It literally means that the people who received that vaccine were more likely to contract COVID-19 after seven months than the people who did not. That is a fact.” – Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo
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