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
“And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised,” – Hebrews 11:39
Scripture reading: I Corinthians 10:1-13
As Christians, we are not too quick to praise men for their faith. After all, Ephesians 2:8-10 says it is a gift from God. However, I Corinthians 10 mentions that some things are recorded in Scripture to be examples to us. These examples might be to warn us of a complacent faith. For instance, are you living your Christian faith merely out of habit or out of a heartfelt desire to serve and glorify God? There are examples in Scripture to encourage us in our walk with God and we have been seeing these things from Hebrews 11.
The Christian is called to contend for the faith by being faithful and fruitful. By grace, God will reward our good works, both in this life and in the life to come. The danger is to look for God’s commendation in this world alone. Some were commended for their faith, like the martyrs and it resulted in their death. True blessing and commendation from God cannot be measured by the material things and events around us.
Our battle is not against flesh and blood and our reward for faithfulness, by the grace of God, is not made up of gold or silver. Our reward is the true blessing of God, as those who will definitely receive what our gracious God has promised. God is holy and sovereign and yet we are responsible to believe. When you deny yourself and follow Christ, you will be commended for your faith, not from man, but from your heavenly Father.
Suggestions for prayer
Ask for a heartfelt desire to serve and glorify God and that looks ahead to a heavenly reality. Ask for a persevering faith.
Rev. Steve Swets was born and raised in NW Indiana. He graduated from Mid America Reformed Seminary in 2007, and he is currently the minister at Redeemer United Reformed Church in St. John, Indiana. Get this devotional delivered directly to your phone each day via our RP App. It is also available in print, for purchase, at NTGDevotional.com.
This sermon was given by Dr. Tom Ascol on August 7, 2021 at Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, FL and is a part of his sermon series on Romans: The Grace of God in the Gospel.
It shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light.Zechariah 14:7
It is a surprise that it should be so; for all things threaten that at evening time it shall be dark. God is wont to work in a way so much above our fears and beyond our hopes that we are greatly amazed and are led to praise His sovereign grace. No, it shall not be with us as our hearts are prophesying: the dark will not deepen into midnight, but it will on a sudden brighten into day. Never let us despair. In the worst times let us trust in the Lord who turneth the darkness of the shadow of death into the morning. When the tale of bricks is doubled Moses appears, and when tribulation abounds it is nearest its end.
This promise should assist our patience. The light may not fully come till our hopes are quite spent by waiting all day to no purpose. To the wicked the sun goes down while it is yet day: to the righteous the sun rises when it is almost night. May we not with patience wait for that heavenly light, which may be long in coming but is sure to prove itself well worth waiting for?
Come, my soul, take up thy parable and sing unto Him who will bless thee in life and in death, in a manner surpassing all that nature has ever seen when at its best.
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” Psalm 8:3-4
The maiden voyage of our travel trailer looked to be inauspicious, or maybe even disastrous. We had left later than anticipated, not used to getting an RV ready. Now, long after dark, we were pulling uphill in driving rain, buffeted by a strong head wind. Oh, and did I mention that the gas gauge was on empty? We hadn’t yet learned how much fuel our 4Runner would guzzle while towing.
Finally, blessedly, we reached our campground, and after struggling to park in the dark, we grabbed our toothbrushes and headed for the restroom. As we made our way, the clouds began to part and the most amazing night sky I have ever experienced appeared. Maybe it was the dark of the Oregon high desert — or maybe Creator God had put his magnifying glass in the sky — I’ll never know why, but the stars were enormous!
We were lost in darkness but our God showed us his mercy and grace and shone his saving light on us. It was as if our Father was saying, “The journey has been tough, but here’s your reward!”
Have you ever felt puny, lost, and wondered if God could ever find you? Yes, our God is the majestic maker of the Milky Way, but he is also the seeker of our hearts. What an amazing truth! Romans 5:8 tells us: “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Thank him and rejoice in his greatness and love today.
*Majestic God, Heavenly Father, I have never deserved and never will deserve your amazing grace and love to me. Help me rest in that love — as high as the heavens and as close as my heart — every day of my life. In Jesus name, Amen.
The Bible isn’t just a storybook about God, the people of Israel, and a man named Jesus. It is a love letter from God to you.
When Jesus walked on earth He said, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love.” (John 15:9) John wrote it that the crux of the gospel message is a love note.
“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
I encourage you to open your Bible today and look for evidence of God’s all-consuming love for you, like these verses from Romans:
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38, 39)
What are some of your favorite “love notes” from God? Do you live in a way that shows that you believe God loves you with an everlasting love?
Loving Heavenly Father, thank you that You have left me little notes to remind me of how much You love me. Help me to keep reading Your Word so that I will see them and remember.
Thought: Ask God to give you an opportunity to show His love to someone in your world today. When you feel God prompting you, act on it.
Something Awful Is Brewing Iran has begun aggressive war games. Turkey—a supposed NATO ally—pledged publicly to send its troops to Gaza. Putin has invited Hamas and Iran to Moscow for private talks. Netanyahu announces an expansion of Israel’s necessary defense, and the reaction intensifies support for the terrorists—not Israel. In hundreds of major cities, hundreds of thousands of protestors chant slogans supporting the complete elimination of the State of Israel and Jewish people altogether.
Israel sends elite troops into Gaza Strip for ‘long war’ Israel’s forces fought fierce street battles against Hamas in northern Gaza using tanks and infantry, with Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, the chief of the general staff of the Israel Defense Forces, saying his troops had killed “hundreds” of terrorists.
Attacks On US Bases In Syria Continue Unhindered After Pentagon’s Friday Airstrikes Attacks on US military outposts in Iraq and Syria have continued over the weekend. Al-Mayadeen news and other regional outlets have reported that there have been several attacks by Iran-backed militias on Saturday and Sunday. Russian media has also reported on the fresh attacks, calling recent Pentagon airstrikes on Syria an “unsuccessful bid to deter the militias.”
Syria rockets fired toward Golan Heights; IDF strikes Hezbollah targets in Lebanon Hezbollah announced Sunday night that the organization’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, will speak on Friday, November 3, at a ceremony honoring the “martyrs who died on the path to Jerusalem,” a moniker given to the terrorist group’s 48 members who have been killed by Israel so far.
IDF Spokeperson: ‘We will chase Sinwar, until we catch him’ IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari announced on Sunday that Israel intends not only to take down Hamas but also to reach all of the organization’s leaders. “We will chase Yahya Sinwar until we catch him. The population of Gaza already says how Sinwar brought a tragedy on them; he is personally responsible for the collapse of Gaza; he thinks and works like a murderer who proved to the entire world that Hamas is worse than ISIS,” Hagari stated.
Will Israel push through bloody start to actually topple Hamas? Israel is facing its first real test for the invasion of Gaza. This is a moment when the government or the IDF could lapse into an Israeli version of “Vietnam syndrome” which prevented the country from comprehensively dealing with Hamas in every “round” of war since 2008-09. After the US lost the war in Vietnam, including a massive number of soldiers, Washington refused for over 15 years to use ground troops in any significant quantity until the Gulf War of 1991. Since the 1982 First Lebanon War, Israel has generally refrained from any substantial invasions.
Demand for religious Jewish garments surges in IDF as soldiers seek spiritual protection Tzitzit, the traditional fringes or tassels worn by religious Jewish men on four-cornered garments, are in steep demand in the IDF following the outbreak of war on October 7th, with thousand of soldiers who otherwise wouldn’t be considered religious have been requesting tzitzit for spiritual protection. The four-cornered garments serve as a means of fulfilling the biblical commandments found in Numbers 15:37-41 and Deuteronomy 22:12.
Entry to Israelis strictly forbidden’: Antisemitism on the rise in parts of Russia Antisemitic demonstrations and attacks against Jewish institutions are growing across Russia’s north Caucus region, … The attacks included large crowds in the city of Hasbiurt in the Caucasian Republic of Dagestan besieging a hotel where they claimed Israelis were staying.
Amid ongoing cyber warfare, Israeli cyber experts reportedly hack Iranian oil infrastructure “WeRedEvils” is a group of Israeli cyber experts that claimed it hacked into the central management system of Iran’s oil infrastructure over the weekend. While not revealing any specific details, the Israeli hackers argued that they had caused significant damage to critical oil and fuel transport infrastructure used by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which supports and finances Hamas as one of its terror proxies.
As Gaza War progresses, ‘The world is turning against the Jewish state,’ Israeli forces – by sea, air and land – have begun moving deeper into the northern Gaza region, particularly focused on Gaza City, the main center of operations for the Hamas terror operation. On Friday, just a few hours before troops began entering Gaza, Israeli intelligence released conclusive evidence that the main command and control center for the Hamas terror organization is operating under Shifa Hospital, a major hospital facility in Gaza City.
M6.0 earthquake hits off the coast of Vanuatu A strong earthquake registered by the USGS as M6.0 hit off the coast of Vanuatu at 04:32 UTC on October 29, 2023. The agency is reporting a depth of 80 km (50 miles). EMSC is reporting the same magnitude and depth.
Mexican president blasts critics after deadly hurricane The death toll from a devastating hurricane this week in the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco has risen to 39, the government said on Saturday, as President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador accused his opponents of exaggerating the scale of the disaster.
Totalitarianism Needs Endless Lies To Be Seen As The Truth As we rush towards 2024, one doesn’t have to look too far to see our country has gone completely insane with stories all across the internet proving the lunacy we’re now living in as we also are rapidly herded towards World War 3 and what could become ‘nuclear Armageddon’ unfolding overnight.
The Mysterious Tunnels Of Gaza & The Threat Of Urban Warfare The mysterious tunnels of Gaza, which have been dug by Gaza’s militias for close to 40 years, are often hidden beneath buildings, vegetation, and other terrain, posing a threat of urban warfare.
Canada Unleashing The ‘Devil of Diversity’ For Remembrance Day …A directive from on high in Ottawa is messaging chaplains who lead prayers for our War Dead that they will no longer be “allowed” to mention God’s Holy Name when addressing this year’s crowds at cenotaphs, Legion Halls and other gathering places across Canada Any mention of the Creator is out; respect for “spiritual diversity” is in, according to a Canadian Government directive that urges chaplains to ‘adopt a sensitive and inclusive approach’ during ALL public addresses.
Dreadful Things Keep Happening, Because Dreadful People Are in Charge of the World ‘A person would have to be blind to fail to notice that whilst the bullets fly and the blood flows, all manner of legislation scuttles through our various parliaments like thieves in the night, systemically, and inch by inch, stealing our ways of life.’ said Neil Oliver, in his segment of GBNews. While this is an important issue, Neil Oliver, as eloquently as ever explains that dreadful people are in charge of the world and “we’re set at each other’s throats by those who don’t give a damn about any of us.”
When Free Speech ended Many people believed that it was a victory when historian David Irving was sent to prison for questioning the extent of the Holocaust. But ironically, it was a victory for fascism and oppression and it was the beginning of a journey down a very slippery slope.
Israel At War — Week 4 Netanyahu Announces Expanded Ground Operation, ‘This Is Our Second War Of Independence’ IDF Soldiers Raise Israel’s Flag In Northern Gaza For The First Time Since 2005 IDF soldiers who entered the Gaza Strip on Saturday raised the Israeli flag on one of the homes in the area, according to video shared online. A man could be heard in the video saying “three weeks after the horrible crime, soldiers of the 52nd Battalion of the 401st Brigade lift the flag of Israel in the heart of Gaza, along the beach. We will not forget…we will not stop until victory.”
“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)
On this day in Patriot history in 1735, John Adams was born. He served as the first vice president and the second president, but his contributions to America’s founding were so much greater. That includes this profound thought from his 1765 Dissertation on the Cannon and Feudal Law: “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know.” We endeavor to live out that mission for our fellow Americans. —Mark Alexander
The Detroit congresswoman is a product of her largely Middle Eastern congressional district.
Douglas Andrews
Last night at Detroit’s Renaissance Center, the Yeshiva Beth Yehuda school held its annual fundraising dinner. As always, it was a big deal.
As schools go, the Yeshiva far outkicks its coverage, punches way above its weight. For more than a century, the school has been providing Torah-based and secular education to Detroit’s Jewish community, and it doesn’t turn anyone away, regardless of financial means. How important is Yeshiva? This year’s guest speaker, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, is a relative nobody. He joins a list that includes George W. Bush, Laura Bush, Tony Blair, Colin Powell, Nikki Haley, and Jill Biden. In 2020, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden addressed dinner attendees virtually just days before the presidential election. That same year, Benjamin Netanyahu was to attend in person, but had to cancel due to scheduling difficulties.
We mention Yeshiva, and Detroit’s Jewish community, because the school itself is located in the nearby suburb of Southfield, which is part of Michigan’s 12th Congressional District, which is represented by none other than Rashida Tlaib.
Tlaib, you may recall, flies a “Palestinian” flag outside her Capitol Hill office, and she recently came under fire for a hysterical and blood-libelous lie: “Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that.” As we noted shortly after the explosion, it wasn’t an airstrike, it didn’t hit a hospital, it didn’t kill hundreds, and Israel didn’t do it. But other than that, the reporting was accurate. Tlaib, though, has doubled down on her lie, calling for an investigation and noting the Gaza Ministry of Health’s version of events — even though the Gaza Ministry of Health is a propaganda arm of Hamas.
Tlaib’s lie, the failure of the mainstream media to call it a lie, and the morally relativistic rhetoric coming from the United Nations and elsewhere have all helped ignite a wave of anti-Semitic vitriol on college campuses all across the U.S. It’s gotten to the point where Jewish students are fearful of their fellow students.
And it isn’t just Jewish students. An attendee at last night’s Yeshiva dinner had the following observation as he walked into the auditorium: “There’s lots of guys in suits wearing ear pieces; obvious security. Heavy presence compared with past years. My first thought: this is a lot of security for an out-of-state governor. My next thought: this security isn’t here for him; it’s here for me.”
It’s a chilling thought, a thought that’s pretty much unimaginable for us non-Jews. Imagine living in a community whose congressional representative is a sympathizer of an organization that is sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state “from the river to the sea.”
But it’s not just sympathy that Tlaib has for Hamas. Her connections to the terrorist organization go deeper than that. As Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey reports, Tlaib employed Hamas activists and had “extensive fundraising ties” to Hamas supporters. He bases that assessment on a watchdog group’s report, which says, “She employed no less than three Hamas-linked activists to fundraise for her 2018 election campaign, one of whom spent eight months in prison for his alleged connections to Hamas.”
There’s more. As the report details: “Tlaib additionally used a pro-terror Facebook page, PAC-USA, to raise funds for her 2018 Congressional campaign. Tlaib gave the founder of PAC-USA the position of Chairman of the Finance Committee for Rashida Tlaib for Congress.” Additionally, Tlaib in 2015 “co-founded the Detroit-based, anti-American, anti-Israel and pro-terror hate group, Black4Palestine,” which collaborated with members of a U.S.-recognized terrorist organization called the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
As Morrissey wonders:
So where are all of the American news outlets on this story? Perhaps they are working on it now, attempting to confirm Canary Mission’s reporting before repeating the allegations. That might even seem a reasonable step to take, if it weren’t for the fact that American media all chose to regurgitate a Hamas propaganda hoax … without even waiting for sunrise to check the facts. Now we have a credible report linking a sitting member of Congress to the same terrorist activists, and not a peep from the US media? Hmmmm.
Of course, if we want to better understand a particular politician, we should start by studying her district. And Dearborn, one of the main cities within Tlaib’s district, comprises 55% Arab-Americans. Not surprisingly, this literal leader of the Hamas wing of the Democrat Party won reelection easily in 2022 with more than 70% of the vote.
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I have yet to hear Biden condemn the neo-Nazis on our college campuses.
Gary Bauer
I want to revisit the Charlottesville “Big Lie” because it is so telling about who Joe Biden really is.
In 2017, a bunch of morons carrying tiki torches and chanting anti-Semitic slogans marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. Also happening at the same time were demonstrations for and against historic Civil War monuments linked to the Confederacy.
President Donald Trump was peppered with questions about all of this.
Referring to the protests over the Civil War monuments, Trump said, “You also had people that were very fine people on both sides.” And just to be clear, Trump added, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.”
But ever since then, Joe Biden has attacked Donald Trump claiming he called neo-Nazis “very fine people.” Trump LITERALLY, LITERALLY, LITERALLY said the exact opposite.
Multiple left-wing media outlets, including the BBC and CNN, checked the transcript and said Joe Biden is not telling the truth. Sadly, that doesn’t stop him from repeating his lie.
But it’s even deeper than that.
When Biden recounts this lie, he often says that he decided to run for president when he heard Trump call neo-Nazis “very fine people,” which, of course, Trump never said.
I’m bringing this up again, because there are real neo-Nazis right now all throughout America. They are, broadly speaking, supporters of Joe Biden and his political party.
They are the youth on our college campuses chanting calls for the genocide of the Jewish people and destruction of the only Jewish state in the world. They are the millions of immigrants we have imported from Muslim nations in recent decades. Their rabid anti-Semitism would make Hitler proud!
Last week, they projected anti-Semitic slogans, including “Glory to our martyrs,” on the walls of the George Washington University library. They are praising the murderers of Hamas who invaded Israel!
I have yet to hear Biden condemn these actual Nazis.
I have yet to hear him tell our universities to stop empowering them.
I have yet to hear him tell the FBI to stop spying on Catholics and start focusing on these anti-Semitic extremists.
Joe Biden is not a “nice guy.” All this tells what a disgusting and horrible person he really is.
When Glenn Youngkin ran for governor of Virginia in 2021, allies of the Democrat Party paid a group of young men to dress like neo-Nazis and show up with Youngkin signs at his rallies to give the impression that they were Youngkin supporters.
Their willingness to falsely smear the most pro-Israel Americans, your typical conservative, Christian Republican voter, as “semi-fascists” and “Nazis” is beyond the pale. And it tells you everything you need to know about the neo-Marxist left.
Meanwhile, anti-Semitism is growing (here and here) in the party that constantly smears conservatives as “anti-Semitic.”
The former vice president is the first major GOP presidential candidate to leave the primary race.
Nate Jackson
Former Vice President Mike Pence abruptly dropped out of the Republican presidential primary race Saturday, saying, “It’s become clear to me that it’s not my time.” Coming from those of us who actually like Pence, that should have been clear to him before he launched his campaign.
When he announced his bid in June, we wrote, “The former vice president is a fundamentally decent man with all the necessary qualifications for the White House.” We also made a deliberate understatement: “Yet there’s no denying Pence faces a tough road to the GOP presidential nomination.”
When Donald Trump announced his third presidential bid back in November, he instantly became the frontrunner. The reasons for that are obvious: He was the first to announce and is the only former president in the field — not to mention he’s now collecting indictments that only make him stronger. He has an incredibly devoted following, a significant portion of which is made up of Americans who believe that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, and that Trump deserves another shot.
Those Americans largely fault — and in many cases hate — Mike Pence for failing to stop it.
We’ve argued that’s undeserved because Pence did his constitutional duty on January 6, 2021. It’s arguable that Trump himself knew as much, given revelations a couple of months ago that he told Pence at the time, “You’re too honest.”
The two men have been at odds ever since the post-election arguments, which is a shame given all they accomplished together for America. In fact, though, that record of accomplishment as Trump’s right-hand man is the other reason Pence never gained traction — the anti-Trump contingent of the GOP would never forgive him for spending three years and 11 months as a loyal number two to the Bad Orange Man.
Ergo, Pence never had a legitimate path to the nomination.
He did, however, provide a valuable voice at a time of world insecurity brought by Joe Biden. Should America lead the free world, supporting the Ukrainian resistance against Russian aggression? Should America support Israel against the Hamas jihadists who want to wipe it out? Should America reestablish the necessary deterrence to keep China’s world ambitions in check?
Pence gave an unequivocal “yes” at every opportunity. He brought a steadfast message of hawkishness and strength during Biden’s term of feckless and weak “leadership.”
Yet after 20 years in Afghanistan compounded by the embarrassment of Biden’s surrender and retreat, and when our nation is roiled by various troubles including rampant inflation thanks to government overspending, few Americans — including Republicans — seem to have the appetite for spending more money on foreign wars.
Thus, even setting aside the Trump divide, Pence just didn’t have a path to win over a majority of Republicans in a crowded field of Trump alternatives.
Pence didn’t make a specific endorsement as he exited the race, though Trump made an appeal for it. “People are leaving now and they’re all endorsing me,” Trump said of, er, big names like Perry Johnson and Larry Elder. “I don’t know about Mike Pence. He should endorse me. He should endorse me. You know why? Because I had a great successful presidency and he was the vice president. He should endorse me. I chose him, made him vice president, but people in politics can be very disloyal.”
Politicians can indeed be disloyal. Ahem.
Pence did, however, promise to be a team player. “I will never leave the fight for conservative values,” he promised, “and I will never stop fighting to elect principled Republican leaders to every office in the land, so help me God.”
War Powers notification, Scranton Joe’s starvation diet, New York City exports illegals, and more.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
Biden sends War Powers notification to Congress: Call it a shot across the bow from the Biden administration to Iran in the form of retaliatory U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria targeting militia groups affiliated with the Iranian regime. Over the weekend, Joe Biden officially notified Congress via a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Pro Tempore President Patty Murray of the targeted strikes that he ordered earlier and, as The Washington Times reports, vowed to “take further action” should U.S. bases and troops in the region come under additional attack. “I directed the strikes,” said Biden, “in order to protect and defend our personnel, to degrade and disrupt the ongoing series of attacks against the United States and our partners, and to deter Iran and Iran-backed militia groups from conducting or supporting further attacks on United States personnel and facilities.” We suspect these two measures were also intended to gain the attention of Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose recent anti-Israel comments seemed unbecoming for the head of state of a NATO ally.
More prepping for war: As the war between Israel and Hamas threatens to become a broader regional conflict, our government is taking ominous steps. For example, the Commerce Department reported Friday that it stopped issuing export licenses for most civilian firearms and ammo. As Reuters reports, the stoppage is effective for 90 days for all non-governmental users and lists “national security and foreign policy interests” as the reason. Commerce said it will conduct an “urgent review [of] the risk of firearms being diverted to entities or activities that promote regional instability, violate human rights, or fuel criminal activities.” According to Johanna Reeves, a lawyer who specializes in export controls and firearms, the measure covers most guns and ammo that could be bought in a U.S. gun store. Perhaps not surprisingly, Commerce stated in a brief Q&A communication that Israel and Ukraine are exempt from the stoppage, “as well as some other close allies,” perhaps including NATO countries.
Scranton Joe’s starvation diet: We’ve watched with bemusement as Joe Biden runs his reelection campaign by promoting “Bidenomics” as a glorious feature rather than a ruinous bug. While it’s certainly true that, as James Carville once said, “It’s the economy, stupid,” it appears that our nation’s 46th president is taking the “stupid” part literally. Just the News’s John Solomon assesses the devastating impact that Bidenflation has had on our nation’s economic well-being and dubs it the “Bidenomics Boomerang.” We can’t disagree. As the report notes, “The number of Americans suffering from hunger and food insecurity exploded by more than 10 million under President Joe Biden, according to a U.S. Agriculture Department report … that provided fresh evidence of inflation’s impact [on] a basic staple of life.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had a similar take last week when he reacted to the “mirage” of the Q3 GDP report: “Bidenflation is killing the average American’s bottom line, and things will only get worse in the months ahead as credit dries up and gas prices increase even further because of Biden’s anti-energy policies.” As our Nate Jackson quips, “About 35% of Americans might benefit from intermittent fasting, but this is ridiculous.”
Federal office building ghost towns: The Government Accountability Office recently released its survey of two dozen federal agencies’ use of their office buildings this year and found an astounding average vacancy rate of 80%. The agency with the highest office vacancy rate was the Agriculture Department, coming in at 90% empty. None of the agencies surveyed topped 50% occupancy. Ever since the pandemic, telework has effectively become the entrenched practice within much of the federal government. With so many nearly empty and half-filled government office buildings, one would think that office building sharing between different agencies would be a responsible cost-cutting measure. However, as GAO Acting Director David Marroni observed, “One official said their leadership is reluctant to share headquarters space with other agencies because it could lower their perceived standing as a cabinet-level agency.”
GOP candidates vow support for Israel: Even The New York Times suspected it wouldn’t be politics as usual. “When Republican officials, lawmakers and candidates gather in Las Vegas,” the Times reported on Thursday, “they will come together at a moment of unique peril for Israel and, many attendees believe, for American Jewry.” Sure enough, on Saturday in Las Vegas, the Republican Jewish Coalition held its Annual Leadership Summit, and Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, and Doug Burgum were there. As the Times noted, the event has been “a routine stop on the presidential primary trail, an opportunity for would-be presidents to demonstrate their foreign-policy credentials while plying donors with requisite one-liners.” But this year’s event wasn’t that. “Today is too serious a day — too serious a day and too serious a moment for pettiness,” Christie said. Donald Trump seemed serious, rightly noting, as the Washington Examiner reports, “that crooked Joe surrendered my tough sanctions [against Iran] almost immediately,” thereby allowing the country to boost its wealth via oil sales to countries that no longer respect the United States.
Biden denies RFK Jr. a Secret Service detail: Despite a June report from the Secret Service concluding that presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s campaign was at an elevated “risk for adverse attention,” Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security denied his request for Secret Service protection. Kennedy said that after he requested a Secret Service detail, “it went 88 days, and then we got a rejection letter from [DHS Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas.” Well, last week a crazed individual made two attempts to break into Kennedy’s home, proving RFK’s request for protection was no irrational concern. Indeed, Biden’s refusal to oblige appears to be entirely politically motived over Kennedy’s decision to challenge him for the Democrat primary, and then his later decision to run as an independent.
Two NJ Dems charged with election fraud: New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin last week raised new charges of election fraud against two Democrats, Paterson City Council President Alex Mendez and former 2021 Plainfield mayoral candidate Henrilynn Ibezim. The attorney general’s office said: “We allege that Mendez and his associates unlawfully collected ballots and tampered with ballots to give him an unfair edge in the race for the 3rd Ward seat on the Paterson City Council. He then allegedly set about undermining our investigation into his and his campaign workers’ unlawful activities.” In Ibezim’s case, the AG’s office said he “has been charged with election fraud and other crimes after allegedly bringing a trash bag stuffed with nearly 1,000 bogus voter registration applications to the post office to mail them to the Union County Commissioner of Registration.”
Scotland is too white: According to Scotland’s current First Minister Humza Yousaf, the country is too white. Yousaf, who is a Muslim of Pakistani descent, recently went on a tirade on the floor of Parliament, blasting the fact that nearly all the positions of government leadership in the country are held by white individuals. So, in a country whose indigenous people group are by any definition white — indeed, the whitest of white — and currently make up 96% of the population, why would one not expect whites to be the majority reflected in the halls of government? Would Yousaf dare to level the same criticism at Japan for its government leaders being 100% Asian? Or what about the country of his own ethnic origin — would any of Pakistan’s governmental officials be classified as white? What Yousaf expressed is straight-up anti-white racism. The highest government official in Scotland is effectively telling the vast majority of the country that he is opposed to them based on race.
New York City exports illegals: So much for New York City’s boasting about being a “sanctuary city” for illegal aliens. All it takes is a few thousand of the millions who have been streaming through Joe Biden’s de facto open border entering the Big Apple and Democrat city leaders have begun crying uncle. But Mayor Eric Adams’s cries for help have effectively gone ignored. Additionally, the mayor’s appeals that migrants stop coming because NYC has no more room have also landed on deaf ears. “When you are out of room, that means you’re out of room,” Adams recently stated. “There’s no more room. That’s where we are right now.” So, what’s NYC’s solution? Show them the door. NYC has enacted a “reticketing” plan in which illegals are given a plane ticket to somewhere else — anywhere else, it seems, as some have flown as far as Morocco. Some sanctuary.
Assessing the Maine massacre: Robert Card was found dead Friday night, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot, and local residents can now begin to pick up the pieces. “We were sort of in limbo there for 48 hours,” said former Lewiston Mayor Jim Howaniec, “which really isn’t that long of a time, but of course it seemed like 48 years while it was going on.” Now, too, the hand-wringing begins. How, for instance, could a guy who was committed for two weeks this summer for mental health reasons have been allowed access to the weapons he used in last week’s rampage, which killed 18 and wounded 13 others? As the Associated Press reports, Maine officials claim they sent a statewide alert about Card after the U.S. Army told police that he’d been making threats to his Army reserve unit. Apparently, the alert prompted local police to visit Card’s house, but, well, they said he wasn’t home. Police said that while they did increase patrols, there was no specific threat involving the guy who’d told Army staff at Camp Smith that he’d been “hearing voices” and had thoughts about “hurting other soldiers.” It appears that Card legally purchased the rifle he used in the massacre just days before he was hospitalized in mid-July.
Headlines
Hamas is preventing 600 Americans from leaving Gaza, U.S. official says (National Review)
Tattoo artist who became a face of bloody Israeli war beheaded by Hamas terrorists after abduction (New York Post)
Mobs in Russia yelling “Allahu Akbar” hunt down Jews, storm airport after flight from Israel arrives (Daily Wire)
Cornell University sends police to Jewish center after violent, anti-Semitic messages posted online (AP)
GM reaches tentative deal with UAW, ending strikes at Detroit automakers after six weeks (CNBC)
IRS policy allowing surprise visits on taxpayers limited after Judiciary Republicans’ probing (Fox News)
Biden issues sweeping executive order on AI (The Hill)
Woke schools axing kids’ Halloween parties over “inequality” (New York Post)
Disney delays release of live-action “Snow White” after star criticizes “weird” original (National Review)
Federal judge blocks Colorado’s abortion drug reversal ban (Daily Signal)
California’s gun ban allowed to continue by appeals court (Epoch Times)
Worldwide study shows 1 in 4 people are suffering from extreme loneliness (Not the Bee)
Humor: Newsom shows solidarity with Biden by also falling on face in front of world leaders (Babylon Bee)
And American food and lifestyle are making us fatter.
Emmy Griffin
There is no easy way to say this, but the U.S. has an obesity problem, and it seems to be getting worse. It prompts one to ask: Why is it getting worse? And how do we fix it?
The “why” is a varied and complicated answer, but we can start by dissecting the types of food that Americans consume. We are a nation blessed with an abundance of food. We can purchase food literally anywhere, and grocery stores always seem to be stocked. With easy access to all kinds of food, there also come ultra-processed items and additives, which have infiltrated our food supply.
Ultra-processed items include soda, flavored chips, white bread, and sugary breakfast cereals — foods that are more artificial than real and have more calories than nutritional value. According to The Wall Street Journal: “Ultra-processed foods common in the U.S. include artificial additives and highly refined ingredients and are rich in starch, sugar and salt, says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and professor of nutrition and medicine at Tufts University. He points to a study in the European Journal of Nutrition that found that among adults in the U.S., 57% of calories come from ultra-processed food, compared with 12% in Europe.” This is part of the reason that you can come back from an indulgent European vacation and find that you have actually lost weight.
Additives are chemicals that are put into food for multiple purposes including preservation or to enhance the flavor. Additives can be detrimental because they can stimulate the brain, prompting it to want to eat more. The Journal also found another key difference between European food and U.S. food: “About 300 to 400 additives are approved for use in food in the EU, compared with more than 3,000 in the U.S.”
To make matters even more complicated, American school children are being taught wrong things about food portions and what types of foods their bodies need. This started long ago, but more recently The Food Pyramid, which was adopted in 1992 and which many of us grew up with, is scientifically incorrect and was the result of successful lobbying by different food industries. It didn’t really improve much under the 2005 remake in terms of accurately defining foods that the body needs to be healthy.
Sadly, this trend of the food industry having a say in what is “healthy” or not continues to play out in modern-day dietary fads. Big Sugar so demonized fats that for a while Americans were convinced fats were the problem in their diet. Now, the trend tends to label sugar as the main contributor to obesity. While there may be something to that, marketers and the food industry have opened up a whole other industry with sugar alternatives so that they can label food items “sugar free.” These alternatives can be even worse for people.
Our food, despite its abundance, is not necessarily high quality, and Americans are constantly told different messages about what is considered “healthy.” We are sick, tired, and obese, and the food is largely to blame. However, there is another contributing factor to this dilemma. We also have a society that tends to be more sedentary. Part of the problem is that if we aren’t eating food that gives our body energy, we don’t want to get up and move our bodies. And if we don’t get up and move our bodies, we aren’t able to burn off calories. It turns into a vicious cycle. According to a study on the relationship between obesity and average daily steps, on average Americans only take 4,774 steps a day. This translates to just over two miles of walking per day, and that’s not sufficient.
Here we are in 2023, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is posting Adult Obesity Prevalence Maps for the country. From these maps, the New York Post reported: “22 states in 2022 at least 35% of adults were obese — an increase from 19 states in 2021. The CDC noted that 10 years ago, there were no states that had an adult obesity prevalence at or above 35% [emphasis added].”
What happened in the past 10 years to expedite this change? Our cultural priorities have shifted. The 2010s saw more and more cellphones and personal devices, which consequently have made us more prone to stay at home and do nothing. There’s also been a cultural shift away from trying to eat healthy — which arguably pushed too far and spawned an eating disorder debacle — and toward celebrating all body types (i.e., the “body positivity” movement). This essentially greenlighted the switch from restrictive eating to excessive eating, and neither extreme is healthy.
We also have become a society — especially since the COVID lockdowns — that has the convenience of having everything delivered to our houses, including groceries. We no longer have to leave our couches to complete these basic tasks.
Moreover, obesity was labeled a disease in 2013. But obesity generally is a symptom of other diseases. Calling it a disease in and of itself seems to take away the element of personal responsibility that also goes into food choices and exercise.
The “why” of America’s obesity problems is complicated and there isn’t a perfect answer. The “how to fix it” isn’t an easy answer, either. When it comes to combating obesity, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Different bodies find that different combinations of food consumption and exercise lead to a healthy weight. The difficulty is that this takes time, trial and error, and sorting through diet gimmicks and other food industry whoppers to finally find what works.
There are many battles to fight when it comes to getting Americans’ weight problem back under control, but it all starts at the individual level with our food and lifestyle choices.
Democrat House Minority Leader Jeffries labels new Republican House Speaker Johnson an election denier, despite his own record of denialism.
Thomas Gallatin
“The more we learn about the 2016 election the more ILLEGITIMATE it becomes,” New York Democrat Representative Hakeem Jeffries tweeted back in 2018. If Democrats are anything it’s hypocritical, so Jeffries, now the House minority leader, is labeling newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson an “election denier.”
Well, as that old schoolyard saying goes, it takes one to know one. That above tweet wasn’t the only instance of Jeffries publicly questioning Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton. In March 2017, Jeffries referenced Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch in a tweet: “With [the] legitimacy of Trump’s presidential election in doubt, his lifetime appt to Supreme Court can wait.”
But the fact of the matter is, when it comes to questioning election results, Jeffries is just one in a long line of prominent Democrats to, as they say, engage in “election denialism.”
The list of Democrat election deniers includes party leaders like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who back in May 2017 tweeted: “Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts.”
Down in Georgia, twice-failed Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams repeatedly refused to accept that her loss in 2018 to Governor Brian Kemp was on the level. “We had this little election back in 2018,” Abrams stated during an interview in 2019. “And despite the final tally and the inauguration and the situation we find ourselves in, I do have a very affirmative statement to make: We won.” That sounds a lot like denial.
Regarding that gubernatorial result, another Democrat election denier, Kamala Harris, claimed during a speech at an NAACP convention: “Let’s say this loud and clear: Without voter suppression, Stacey Abrams would be the governor of Georgia. Andrew Gillum is the governor of Florida.”
But when it comes to Hillary Clinton, Democrat election denialism rises to another level.
Clinton has never admitted that she was beaten fair and square by Trump in 2016. In 2019, at a speaking event dubbed an “Evening with the Clintons,” she lamented, “You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you.”
As late as 2020, Clinton insisted, “There was a widespread understanding that this election [in 2016] was not on the level,” adding, “We still don’t know what really happened.” She maintained the fiction that Trump was “a puppet of [Vladimir] Putin,” which is the height of denialism given the fact that her own campaign funded and seeded the bogus Russia collusion hoax.
So, in light of all this history of Democrat election denialism, were Johnson’s concerns over the 2020 election any more egregious? The obvious answer is no.
Obvious to anyone who doesn’t rely on the Leftmedia. Johnson was the “architect of the conference’s legal strategy for challenging President Biden’s presidential win in 2020,” reports The Hill. “Johnson took a leading role in spearheading an amicus brief backing a Texas lawsuit contesting the 2020 election results.” That’s it. That’s all Johnson did. Based on that reporting, then, we can only conclude that Johnson’s mistake was to take his concerns to the courts instead of Twitter.
There were a lot of shenanigans surrounding the 2020 election, the most significant of which was that numerous states changed elections laws, sometimes without state legislatures passing actual laws. We’ve long beat the drum about the troublesome ramp-up in bulk mail-in balloting that even Democrats like former President Jimmy Carter contend is insecure and ripe for fraud.
Indeed, anyone who would suggest that the 2020 election was “the most secure in history” — especially while denying the 2016 result — is being disingenuous.
Smearing Johnson with the label of “election denier” is just that — a smear. The bigger election denialism at play is the Democrats and their Leftmedia cohorts continuously asserting, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that whenever a Republican wins, it’s a “threat to democracy.”
Biden Administration Officials Are Clueless — “You’re a senior member of Homeland Security, are you not?” Senator John Kennedy stumps key Biden administration officials about illegal immigration statistics.
Hamas Spokesman Flees Interview — A senior Hamas official stormed out of an interview after a BBC correspondent pressed him on the terror group’s killing of hundreds of civilians in its October 7 attack on Israel.
“If you shoot with an AR-15, let’s say you shoot a deer, you can’t eat it because you basically demolish the animal.” —”The View” co-host Joy Behar
Is the Fix In?
“When the American people are able to take a close look at election time on their options, I think the choice is gonna be clear. … We’re gonna win. Let me just tell you that. We’re gonna win. And I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy. But we will win.” —Vice President Kamala Harris
Leftmedia Lob
“Israel must stop weaponising the Holocaust.” —Stockton University professor Raz Segal
For the Record
“[Biden] often says that he decided to run for president when he heard Trump call neo-Nazis ‘very fine people,’ which, of course, Trump never said. I’m bringing this up again, because there are real neo-Nazis right now all throughout America. They are, broadly speaking, supporters of Joe Biden and his political party. They are the youth on our college campuses chanting calls for the genocide of the Jewish people and destruction of the only Jewish state in the world. They are the millions of immigrants we have imported from Muslim nations in recent decades. Their rabid anti-Semitism would make Hitler proud!” —Gary Bauer
“When the fighting erupted, Egypt sealed its border with Gaza and refused to take refugees from Gaza. There’s a reason for that. Egypt already has a problem with extremists and they don’t need any more coming in from Gaza. In fact, Egypt regularly keeps the Gaza border sealed for security reasons.” —Gary Bauer
Double Standards
“The same Marxist revolutionaries melting down [Robert E.] Lee’s statue are the same people who erect statues of prolific child molesters like Alfred Kinsey.” —The Babylon Bee’s Joel Berry
Leftmedia
“Political observers could say the House Democrats are clearly more disciplined and organized. But it should also be said that these pro-Democrat media outlets create no incentives for publicly rocking the boat. Decisions are kept behind caucus doors, and reporters are ready to hail the results after it’s all over.” —Tim Graham
Re: Immigration
“For years, liberals and globalists have pushed for open-ended migration of people across borders, as if borders are entirely arbitrary (if not outright atavistic) and all cultures and ways of life are interchangeable. As the West grapples with the very radical Muslims it voluntarily imported … it has become obvious that assimilation of huge numbers of non-Western immigrants into Western society is simply not working. … Mass migration was always delusional; all cultures are obviously not equal, let alone interchangeable. Now, given the emboldened forces of jihadism the world over, it has never been more important to turn off the spigot.” —Josh Hammer
“The old immigration once enriched America, but our new version is destroying it.” —Victor Davis Hanson
“Europe is belatedly discovering how unbelievably stupid it was to import millions of people from cultures that despise Western values and which often promote hatred toward the people who have let them in.” —Thomas Sowell
“In America today, right and wrong is no longer collective; it is now individualistic. The progressive left does not generally believe in punishment for hurting others. In some places, that concept has been obliterated. Violent criminals are released time after time. Drug addicts are given tax money to buy more drugs….”
(Bill O’Reilly) On Friday, I did a live show at the Paramount Theater in Huntington, Long Island, in front of a packed house. The theme of the show was an exposition of how the state of New York and much of the country has gone terribly wrong.
My wingman for the show was the most popular morning radio guy in New York City, WABC’s Sid Rosenberg.
In order to understand America’s embrace of fallacious thinking, you have to accept one basic tenet: there is a right and wrong in the world. If you reject that, life becomes a shallow journey of selfishness. View article →
Under the CBP One scheme, foreign nationals with an appointment can cross “legally” to meet US Customs and Border Protection officials, who have approved 99.7% of them for quick releases into America with eligibility for two-year renewable work permits.
Photo: Ukrainan Ministry of Defense / Oleg Palchyk
Russia has mobilized 357,000 new troops and may muster as many as half a million by year’s end as Ukraine struggles to find new fighting forces. Both sides estimate the enemy has lost about 90,000 men since the start of the Ukrainian Spring counteroffensive June 4.
Ukraine’s armed forces have lost more than 90,000 servicemen killed and wounded during the counteroffensive launched June 4 without achieving any significant battlefield successes, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed, speaking at the 10th Beijing Xiangshan Forum.
“Since as recently as 4 June – that is, since the beginning of the widely publicized Ukrainian counteroffensive that has been so generously supported by the West – Kiev has lost more than 90,000 servicemen killed and wounded, about 600 tanks and almost 1,900 armored vehicles of various classes. At the same time, no tactically significant successes have been achieved on the battlefield,” Sergei Shoigu said.
Shoigu accused the US of ignoring Russia’s legitimate security interests, expanding NATO and “forcing” Russia to invade Ukraine.
“Disregarding Russia’s legitimate security rights, the White House has persistently pursued the eastward expansion of the NATO bloc it controls”, Shoigu said. “These aggressive moves have forced us to take countermeasures.”
“The West openly took a course on inflicting a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia in the hybrid war unleashed against us. Ukraine was cynically chosen as a battering ram, and assigned the role of merely expendable material,” Shoigu stated.
Shoigu warned that the Biden Regime’s “steadily escalating conflict with Russia carries the threat of a direct military clash between the nuclear powers, which is fraught with catastrophic consequences”.
“The US and NATO continue to seriously expect that they will be able to undermine Russia’s security and deprive us of the will to resist”, Shoigu noted.
“But the situation in the special military operation zone demonstrates the futility of these plans’, the Russian Minister of Defence said.
Shoigu called claims Russia wants to escalate toward the use of nuclear weapons “absolutely groundless.”
“Russia’s nuclear doctrine has not changed and still provides for the use of nuclear weapons only in two cases: in response to an enemy nuclear strike or if there is a threat to Russia’s existence, even if conventional weapons are used against it,’ Shoigu said.
On Aug. 4, the Russian Ministry of Defence had claimed the Ukrainian armed forces lost over 43,000 soldiers in June-July. Since then, the weekly casualty figures released by the Russian MoD total 46,564, for a total of 89,564, very close to Shoigu’s estimate of 90,000 Ukrainian losses.
Observers, including Col. Douglas MacGregor and Robert F. Kennedy, had claimed Ukraine had lost approx. 350,000 men before the start of the offensive. That would put Ukrainian losses in the war at 440,000 (killed, wounded, captured, and missing).
Russia claims Ukraine lost 5639 men in the last week, October 21-27, alone, the highest losses since Sept. 2-9 (5955).
The Ukraine Ministry of Defense claims that Russia has lost 299,940 men since the start of the invasion Feb. 24. Before the start of the Spring Counteroffensive June 4, the Ukraine Ministry of Defense put Russian losses at 209,470. That would mean Russian losses of 90,470 since June 4.
Russia is now suffering one of the largest losses of equipment and personnel near Avdiivka in 2023.
It is alleged that the Russians have deployed up to 8 brigades in the area of Avdiivka. These units probably suffered some of the worst losses seen in the Russian army in 2023.… pic.twitter.com/daGVOyTSCl
Other sources put the number of Russian casualties much lower. Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed an 8 to 1 casualty ratio in favor of Russia.
Ukrainian estimates put the number of Russian casualties in the bloody attack on the fortress village of Avdiivka at 5,000, while the US says that Russia lost “at least” 125 armoured vehicles and more than a battalion’s worth of equipment.
Other observers anticipate a Russian “counter-counteroffensive” this fall, as military YouTuber History Legends notes after Russia has mobilized 357,000 volunteers. At that rate, Russia can expect another 120,000 new recruits by the end of the head, putting the fresh Russian forces at half a million. That would put total Russian fighting strength at 750,000.
Ukraine has about 200,000 men under arms and has been struggling to find new recruits for the “Meat Grinder.”
Border Patrol agents in the five Texas-based Border Patrol sectors apprehended more than 2.6 million migrants during the past two fiscal years. The number of migrants apprehended during this period exceeds the city of Houston’s population by more than 300,000 people.
CAMBRIDGE, MA — A local university student expressed her own tremendous virtue by proudly announcing she would never have gone along with the rise of the Nazi party in Germany as she walked across campus to attend a “Kill the Jews” rally taking place on the Quad.
“Oh yeah, I would have nipped all that Hitler stuff in the bud,” said Harvard junior Dianna Stephens. “I’m telling you, if I was in Germany back then, I would have never participated in the horrific things the Nazis were doing. Now, which way to the rally where we’re cheering for the entire nation of Israel to be pushed into the sea?”
Stephens was joined by a number of her fellow students who all agreed that none of them would have allowed the evil Nazi ideology to spread in the years prior to World War II. “What the Nazis did was really awful,” said sophomore Allison Davis. “Singling out one ethnic group, blaming them for all the ills of the world, rounding them up, and systematically slaughtering them? How hideous! I could never be a part of that. That’s why today I’m standing with those who want to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth if it’s the last thing they ever do.”
At publishing time, the group of students had promised their generation would never allow the world to be plunged into something like WWII ever again. “It’s up to our generation to keep humanity from repeating the same mistakes of the past,” Stephens said. “Now where were we? Oh yeah–from the river to the sea! From the river to the sea!”
A mother takes her homeschooled children to the public library, only to find it’s changed a lot since she was a kid.
Does “FBI” now stand for “Following Biden’s Instructions”? The FBI is doing backflips to boost Joe Biden’s re-election campaign. Unfortunately, federal courts don’t recognize law enforcement shenanigans as a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
The FBI is categorizing Donald Trump’s supporters as terrorist suspects, according to a new report in Newsweek. The FBI created “a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers,” Newsweek revealed. The FBI is relying on the same counterterrorism methods honed to fight al Qaeda to go after the incumbent president’s political opponents.
Naturally, the latest Washington crusade against extremism has more malarkey than a White House summit. Federal bureaucrats heaved together a bunch of letters to contrive an ominous new acronym for the latest peril to domestic tranquility. The result: AGAAVE—“anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism”—which looks like a typo for a sugar substitute.
Recently, the FBI vastly expanded the supposed AGAAVE peril by broadening suspicion from “furtherance of ideological agendas” to “furtherance of political and/or social agendas.” Anyone who has an agenda different from Team Biden’s could be AGAAVE’d for his own good. The great majority of the FBI’s “current ‘anti-government’ investigations are of Trump supporters,” William Arkin, a highly respected investigative journalist, reported in Newsweek.
The FBI crackdown is following some of the most overheated political rhetoric of our era. Biden has denounced Trump supporters for “semi-fascism.” Biden tweeted last November, “Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country.”
Biden’s Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall declared, “The use of violence to pursue political ends is a profound threat to our public safety and national security…it is a threat to our national identity, our values, our norms, our rule of law—our democracy.” And since Team Biden says that Trump supporters could be violent, suppressing them is the only way to protect “the will of the people” or whatever honorific is used for rigged election results.
In June, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a warning: “Sociopolitical developments—such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence—will almost certainly spur some domestic terrorists to try to engage in violence.” In other words, alleging that there was election fraud in past elections can qualify a person as a terrorist suspect—and justify suppressing their political activity in subsequent elections.
Biden’s FBI views Trump supporters as a deadly threat to democracy, thereby justifying subverting or crippling Trump supporters’ ability to oppose Biden and other Democrats.
The FBI is required to have (or claim to have) solid information before launching a criminal investigation. But the bureau needs almost zero information to open an “assessment.” The FBI conducted more than 5,500 domestic-terrorism “assessments” in 2021, a 10-fold increase since 2017 and a 50-fold increase since 2013. “Assessments are the closest thing to domestic spying that exists in America and generally not talked about by the Bureau,” Arkin noted. The House Weaponization Subcommittee warned that “the FBI appears to be complicit in artificially supporting the Administration’s political narrative” that domestic violent extremism is “the ‘greatest threat’ facing the United States.”
Those assessments could prove perilous because the official demand for terrorists far exceeds the domestic supply. A top federal official told Newsweek last year, “We’ve become too prone to labeling anything we don’t like as extremism, and then any extremist as a terrorist.” “Trespassing plus thought crimes equals terrorism” is the Biden standard for prosecuting January 6 defendants.
FBI whistleblower Steve Friend complained of current FBI leadership, “There is this belief that half the country are domestic terrorists and we can’t have a conversation with them. There is a fundamental belief that unless you are voicing what we agree…you are the enemy.”
Did the Biden administration secretly want Newsweek to vindicate the fears of legions of Trump supporters? Perhaps those “assessments” are repeating a tactic used against Vietnam War protesters: FBI agents were encouraged to conduct frequent interviews with antiwar activists to “enhance the paranoia endemic in such circles” and “get the point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox,” according to an FBI memo from that era.
The more abusive the FBI becomes, the more outraged that Trump supporters sound, thereby justifying further FBI repression. That also makes it easier for Team Biden to portray Trump supporters as public menaces.
Biden’s war on extremism could become a self-fulfilling prophecy that destroys American political legitimacy. An official in the Office of Director of National Intelligence lamented, “So we have the president increasing his own inflammatory rhetoric which leads Donald Trump and the Republicans to do the same”—and the media follow suit. Biden is exempt from official suspicion even when he denounced Republicans as fascists who want to destroy democracy. Yet if Republicans sound equally overheated, Biden’s FBI has pretexts to unleash the hounds.
Is there any limit to the federal entrapment operations designed to spur headlines that make politicians applaud? The latest FBI crackdown echoes a DHS campaign that was leaked to the press in 2021. Federal policymakers launched a “legal work-around” to spy on and potentially entrap Americans who are “perpetuating the ‘narratives’ of concern,” CNN reported. The DHS plan would “allow the department to circumvent [constitutional and legal] limits” on surveillance of private citizens and groups. Federal agencies are prohibited from targeting individuals solely for First Amendment-protected speech and activities. But federal hirelings would be under no such restraint.
Will the FBI’s interventions in the 2024 presidential election be even more brazen than its 2016 and 2020 stunts? Will the agency exploit its “assessments” to recruit knuckleheads to engage in another pre-election Keystone Kops plot to kidnap a governor, as it did in Michigan in 2020?
The FBI has a sordid history of intervening in presidential elections since 1948—if not before. A 1976 Senate report on FBI abuses warned, “The American people need to be assured that never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order.” Unfortunately, Americans may not learn the damning details of another FBI “secret war” until long after the next election.
Ironically, the Biden administration is vilifying anti-government opinions at the same time judges are exposing federal crimes. Federal court decisions in July and September condemned the Biden censorship regime—and those rulings were preceded by Supreme Court decisions striking down President Joe Biden’s student-loan-forgiveness scheme and vaccine mandates.
But Team Biden still presumes anyone who suspects the feds are violating the Constitution is up to no good. In the same way that Biden based his 2020 election campaign on vilifying Charlottesville 2017 protests, so the Biden re-election campaign will vilify anyone who distrusts the feds. Regardless of the outcome, the 2024 election will be another boomtime for cynics.
After two-and-half years of raising the alarm on the wide-open southern border and continually saying that things will get worse, the truth is far worse than even we imagined. The fiscal year 2023 numbers under President Joe Biden have been released and the numbers are astonishing and the failure to secure our nation frightening.
As expected, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), once again, released the numbers at the end of the work week in an attempt to bury the news. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas tried to escape scrutiny by releasing the numbers on a Saturday.
The administration has never done this before. Mayorkas’ attempts to put his head in the sand expose the fact that the administration is well aware that their policy is failing the American people.
It is a policy that began during Biden’s first year in office. That year, the administration had a historic record of illegal immigration. Biden overturned the majority of then-President Donald Trump’s policies within weeks after taking office and within a matter of months, the administration took the most secure border in our lifetime (illegal immigration at a 45-year low), and created a historic, never-been-seen crisis on our border.
A review of total nationwide encounters (TNWE) proves what we have been saying all along: that the administration’s policy is to allow for the flow of illegal migration into our great nation. Let us explain, and for this we are using the TNWE rather than just the southwest border numbers for an obvious reason.
Why? The Biden administration is attempting to hide the massive failure they have allowed to occur at the border. This administration started running massive amounts of illegal aliens through numerous ports of entry, calling these mass migration movements “legal pathways.”
These movements, however, are not legal. The administration’s failures are not just southern border related but Biden officials have also allowed thousands of people to be brought in the U.S. through our nation’s biggest airports. We will not let them hide from the truth so here are the numbers.
In FY20 the Trump administration saw a total of 646,822 total encounters. This number may seem to be high but remember, we ended catch and release, therefore the vast majority were immediately removed.
The first year under Biden we saw more than a 200% increase with 1,956,519 encounters, a historic record. The second year we saw 2,766,582, a new historic record. The latest number released today shows 3,201,144, an even newer historic record, 400% higher than the last year under Trump.
On top of that we also saw a total of 169 aliens arrested who were on the FBI’s terror watch list, also a historic record. The 169 number was higher than the previous six years combined.
The historic records continue in other areas as well. On top of historic illegal immigration and historic number of known or suspected terrorists at the border, we have nearly 1.7 million “known gotaways” since Biden has taken office.
This September 2023 was the highest monthly total of any month ever recorded. In summary, FY21-23 total nationwide encounters stand at approximately 7.9 million and if you add the 1.7 million known gotaways, you are at 9.6 million aliens entering this country under the Biden administration with over a year to go.
There are unknown gotaway numbers, too, which need to be added since not all areas of the border have the technology to capture the image. The number of unknown gotaways could be higher than another million.
The consequences of our nation’s failed border system put every American’s life at risk. It’s a dangerous game that has allowed our adversaries to penetrate our weak border security.
We strongly believe that these numbers are no accident. This crisis is not because of mismanagement or incompetence. It is by design.
The administration’s open borders policy has caused a tsunami of unintended consequences. The growing number of people crossing illegally into the nation has overwhelmed the Border Patrol and it has caused a majority of Border Agents, somewhere between 70-90%, to be pulled off patrol to deal with the humanitarian crisis.
We’ve seen the examples of the Biden administration’s epic failure over the past three years. Anyone who goes to the border can see it if they travel to the major illegal alien crossing points.
It begins in the early morning hours as smugglers move in hundreds of people forcing Border Patrol agents to be pulled from the front lines. They are then moved to process the overcrowded stations, leaving hundreds of miles without a single agent on patrol.
The criminal cartels of Mexico have operational control of our borders, and they decide what crosses and when. They send large groups to overwhelm agents. The lack of security along these major gaps opens the gateway for fentanyl and other narco-trafficking.
These failures are also known to terrorist organizations and adversarial nations. There is a high probability that terrorists have slipped through without being encountered by Border Patrol or other law enforcement agencies.
There are thousands upon thousands of criminals who will not surrender to the patrol and many times evade arrest. The border becomes a sieve for these criminal networks, using the border as a gateway for illegal activity.
There is nothing redeeming about Biden’s open-border policy. The American people are the losers in his scheme of lies. The numbers tell the truth and the stories of victims on both sides of the border should be sufficient to return to Trump era policies.
This should be a bi-partisan issue, so the question remains, what is the purpose for leaving our national security exposed? We need to demand that the Biden administration answer these questions and be held responsible if, or more likely when, our enemies use the border to target the American people.
Thomas Homan formerly served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the Trump administration. He has devoted nearly 34 years of his life to immigration and law enforcement positions. He is one of the founders of Border911.com.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs has criticized Washington’s and NATO’s strategy regarding the Ukrainian conflict and has urged the Biden administration to halt the alliance’s further expansion eastward, arrange fresh negotiations and mend ties with Russia.
There are regular news accounts of children in Gaza being indoctrinated via United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) schools to dehumanize Jews, while portraying Israel as completely lacking in legitimacy. The role this played in the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre may well have been decisive.
IMPACT-se is the leading organization making this terror indoctrination in Gaza and Palestinian Authority schools accessible to English-speaking audiences. You can find examples on their website.
Most Americans I know, when they hear about the brainwashing of Palestinian youth, shake their heads and find it unbelievable that schools would engage in such actions, which are clearly detrimental to students. It is seen as the behavior of backwards third-world nations.
For Jewish Americans, it is even more difficult to accept, as the target of violence caused by this terror-related instruction is invariably Israel.
These same Americans are even more shocked to discover that similar incidents of indoctrination masquerading as education are occurring throughout the U.S.
Ethnic studies curriculums in K-12 schools, especially in California, are presenting as facts extremely defamatory misinformation about the Jewish state. This is not by chance or a case of a biased teacher here or there, but rather an organized effort by ethnic studies advocates nationwide.
The Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium (LESMCC) is leading efforts to impose Critical Race Theory (CRT)-based ethnic studies courses on as many schools as possible in California and around the country. Inherent in LESMCC’s philosophy is that Israel is a racist endeavor, wreaking havoc for Arabs in “Palestine.” Unfortunately, supporters of the LESMCC are finding a large quantity of school districts receptive to their discriminatory propositions.
Are you aware of what public schools are teaching our children about Israel’s current war with the genocidal jihadist terror group Hamas?
We have heard examples of schools throughout the country teaching that there is a moral equivalence between the two sides of the war and that each side is equally at fault. This is an abomination.
California has mandated such ethnic studies as a graduation requirement for high school students and school districts are now starting to build the content for these courses.
Chillingly, many California school districts are introducing ethnic studies by using “whites as colonizer/settler/oppressor” models, with minority students being the victims. They often include Arab Americans as one of these minorities. This does not educate students but indoctrinates them with an ideology.
We know that some schools are taking the next step, teaching that Jews are “white” and Israel is colonizing/oppressing the indigenous Arabs of Palestine. All of this is not only wrong, it gets the facts backwards.
In addition, the University of California (UC) public universities are considering adding an ethnic studies admissions requirement. A letter co-signed by 115 organizations urged UC decision-makers to take a good look at those on the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council who are promoting this new admissions requirement. UC faculty who cannot acknowledge that the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre was terrorism and a crime against humanity, and state that anti-Zionism and the elimination of the Jewish state are core values of their discipline, cannot be trusted to establish state-wide ethnic studies standards for California students.
What will students think about Israel and Jews if this is what they are taught? The next generation doesn’t learn to see the world this way at universities. The brainwashing begins much earlier in their elementary and high schools.
If you’ve heard the messaging at pro-Hamas rallies being held throughout the country, the slanders directed at Israel are identical to what is being taught in these ethnic studies courses: oppressor, settler and colonizer. See, for example, the Santa Ana Unified School District and the Jefferson Union High School District.
The California Education Code requires that instructional materials be accurate, objective and free of bias. Whatever else one thinks of LESMCC, its material is clearly biased, inaccurate and intentionally subjective to the point of being sectarian propaganda. Schools that are offering one-sided anti-Israel content from LESMCC and others are therefore violating California educational codes as well as federal law.
Subjecting children to political biases is wrong, both in Palestinian-controlled territories and in the U.S. It is critical that everyone concerned make themselves aware of ethnic studies courses being taught in K-12 school districts and take action to ensure that anti-Israel lies are not being taught to their or anyone else’s children.
“In America today, right and wrong is no longer collective; it is now individualistic. The progressive left does not generally believe in punishment for hurting others. In some places, that concept has been obliterated. Violent criminals are released time after time. Drug addicts are given tax money to buy more drugs….” 
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