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 of Joseph he said, Blessed of the Lord be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath.Deuteronomy 33:13
We may be rich in such things as Joseph obtained, and we may have them in a higher sense. Oh, for “the precious things of heaven”!
Power with God and the manifestation of power from God are most precious. We would enjoy the peace of God, the joy of the Lord, the glory of our God. The benediction of the three divine Persons in love, and grace, and fellowship we prize beyond the most fine gold. The things of earth are as nothing in preciousness compared with the things in heaven.
“The dew.” How precious is this! How we pray and praise when we have the dew! What refreshing, what growth, what perfume, what life there is in us when the dew is about. Above all things else, as plants of the Lord’s own right hand planting, we need the dew of His Holy Spirit.
“The deep that coucheth beneath.” Surely this refers to that unseen ocean underground which supplies all the fresh springs which make glad the earth. Oh, to tap the eternal fountains! This is an unspeakable boon; let no believer rest till he possesses it. The all-sufficiency of Jehovah is ours forever. Let us resort to it now.
Is doctrine irrelevant to the Christian life? Many people thought so in J. Gresham Machen’s day, just as many do now. Today, Stephen Nichols shows how Machen underscored the necessity of knowing the true message of Christianity.
Hamas: We want permanent war with Israel All my enemies whisper together against me, imagining the worst for me. Psalms 41:8 Hamas has no interest in governing Gaza but wants a never-ending war with Israel, members of the terrorist group told The New York Times in a feature piece published on Wednesday. “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us,” Taher el-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser, told the U.S.-based newspaper.
Journalists with Hamas terrorists: Watchdog questions international media’s presence at October 7 massacre scenes Reuters, AP, CNN and NYT photojournalists arrived at border alongside Hamas terrorists, documenting murder of Israeli civilians, lynching of soldier and kidnappings to Gaza; HonestReporting questions whether they coordinated with Hamas and whether their employers had foreknowledge of the attack. “What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators?”
80 years ago they gassed us, now they gaslight us so they can do it again many of the leading antisemites are trying to gaslight (or should I say “gazalight”) the Jews and all other decent people by claiming they really mean something nicer when they chant slogans that have only one meaning, which is not very nice at all. Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, perhaps the leading antisemite in the US Congress, insists that “From the river to the sea”
Top Hamas official: ‘Battle is to wake up the world, not to improve Gaza conditions’ Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s top leadership body, in an interview with the New York Times, explained that the terror organization’s October 7th surprise attack and massacre in southern Israel was necessary to “change the entire equation and not just have a clash.”
Today’s anti-Israel protests are based on Hitleresque lies Jew Hatred is not a new phenomenon. It is ancient and never seems to die a permanent death. The hysterical demonstrations are not new either. Hitler perfected a strategy which kept German crowds riled up from the 1930s until the shocking murders of six million Jews burst into the open in 1945 at the end of World War II. Hitleresque strategies included refusals to admit any wrong, a detailed set of lies about Jewish motives and character, and a depth of narcissistic racial prejudice that deformed the thinking of once-rational people.
Israel downing Houthi missile is first instance of space warfare The Arrow system was developed by Israel Aerospace Industries in conjunction with the Israeli and US defense establishments. According to a report in the UK’s Daily Telegraph, the missile was intercepted outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Lavrov Says West Pushing Middle East Region To Brink Of A “Big War” Russia at the start of a week wherein Israel’s military says it’s fighting “in the heart” of Gaza City has accused the West of pushing the Middle East towards major war. To the north of Israel, Hezbollah has continued rocket and artillery attacks. The US meanwhile has positioned no less than two carrier strike groups and a nuclear-powered submarine in regional waters, which officials say is a message to Iran.
Used Vehicle Prices Record Largest Maximum Drawdown In History Auto research firm Cox Automotive – the owner of the closely followed Manheim price index – published new data this week for October that shows wholesale used-vehicle prices continue to slide and have reached the lowest levels since April 2021. the Manheim price index has “extended its maximum drawdown to -18%, which is largest in index’s history.”
US Attacks Eastern Syria In 2nd Round Of Major Strikes On ‘Iran-Linked’ Militants The US has just confirmed it conducted a second round of major airstrikes in Syria since the Gaza war began, which the Pentagon has described as retaliation for a recent series of attacks by “Iran-linked” militias against US troops in the country’s east:
Israeli Troops Fighting “In The Heart” Of Gaza City, Hamas Leader Surrounded In A Bunker Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant issued a Tuesday battlefield update announcing that for the first time Israeli troops are “in the heart” of Gaza City. He further said the IDF now has Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar surrounded in a bunker. He noted that fighting is happening in residential areas.
Biden Briefed On China’s Plans For First Military Base In The Middle East China is reportedly seeking to establish a permanent military base in the Middle East for the first time, which Washington will certainly see as a significant ‘challenge’ – also given the planned base would be in the Arab Gulf region, where the US also has major bases, as in the case of the Navy Central Command installations in Qatar and Bahrain.
Netanyahu Rejects Biden Phone Request For 3-Day Pause In Gaza War As IDF “Tightens The Noose” Biden in a phone call this week urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to implement a three-day pause in fighting. This was revealed by multiple sources to Axios Tuesday, and Biden’s request appears to have been rejected, given the call took place Monday and Israel has since reaffirmed there will be no truce until the hostages held by Hamas are released. the IDF is fighting “in the heart” of Gaza City and is “tightening the noose” around Hamas.
Pope Francis asks thousands of children to chant ‘nature is our future’ at Vatican event Welcoming thousands of children to the Vatican on Monday, Pope Francis fielded selected questions and heavily focused on imparting his support for “climate change” talking points to them. Francis punctuated the meeting, and his answers, with repeatable slogans for the children to chant along with him. “Let’s say it all together, slowly, without shouting, ‘to destroy the Earth is to destroy us.’”
Ohio enshrines abortion into its constitution, becoming one of the nation’s most pro-abortion states Ohio’s radical ballot measure to enshrine abortion into the state constitution passed by a wide margin on Tuesday despite strong opposition from pro-life advocates. The passage of Ohio’s Issue 1 makes the Buckeye State one of the most pro-abortion in the country alongside left-wing strongholds like California and Vermont … making Ohio one of the most dangerous places in the U.S. for preborn babies.
IDF Soldiers pray in Ancient Gaza Synagogue Rabbi Michael Freund, head of Shavei Israel, tweeted an uplifting announcement: “Wow! For the first time in decades, #Israeli soldiers prayed in the ancient synagogue in #Gaza which was built in the 6th century and where a beautiful mosaic floor depicting King David was unearthed years ago. #Jews have returned to Gaza!!” The ancient synagogue of Gaza was built in 508 …
Very strong and shallow M7.2 earthquake hits Banda Sea, Indonesia A very strong earthquake registered by the BMKG as M7.2hit Banda Sea, Indonesia at 04:52 UTC (11:52 LT) on November 8, 2023, at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles). The USGS registered M6.9 and M7.1 at 04:52 and 04:53 UTC, both at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles).
Shallow M5.3 earthquake hits near Mentone, western Texas A shallow earthquake registered by the USGS as M5.3 hit near Mentone, western Texas at 10:27 UTC (04:27 LT) on November 8, 2023. The agency is reporting a depth of 7 km (4.3 miles).
Shallow M6.8 earthquake hits Banda Sea, Indonesia A strong and shallow earthquake registered by the BMKG as M6.8 hit Banda Sea, Indonesia at 13:02 UTC on November 8, 2023, at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles). This is most likely the aftershock of M7.2 quake that hit the same region at 04:52 UTC today.
Photographers Without Borders: AP & Reuters Pictures of Hamas Atrocities Raise Ethical Questions On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions.
Cameroon archbishop: Marriage is between a man and a woman, anything else is ‘witchcraft’ Cameroon Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Bemenda, one of the bishops on the ordinary council overseeing the process for the Synod on Synodality, said the African bishops who took part in the synod last month in Rome insisted strongly on the Church’s teaching on marriage as “a union between a man and a woman.” The archbishop decried anything that departs from that teaching as “witchcraft.”
A Foreshadowing Of What’s To Come: Signs That Indicate Jesus’ Return Is Drawing Near When we read the headlines, it is not hard to see that our world is on a downward slide. Political tensions, natural disasters, and disease outbreaks are escalating. More and more professed believers seem to be falling away from the faith. It has caused many people to wonder whether these events are part of biblical prophecy.
Israel, Gog, And The Monster To The North Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Bible. This is the one book that dares to predict the future not once, not twice, but hundreds of times with 100% accuracy. The Bible tells us in the last days, certain things are going to happen, and friends, we’re seeing those things happen before our very eyes.
“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.” —James Madison (1788)
Fellow Patriots, on this day in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, followed by the precipitous disintegration of the tyrannical Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Two years earlier on June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan declared at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” —Mark Alexander
The Left’s successful lies on abortion are hurting Republicans on the larger political scale.
Emmy Griffin
Ohio has counted its votes for the infamous Issue 1, an act that enshrines in the Ohio constitution abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, and Ohioans voted yes. What a tragedy.
In 2020, Ohio went more than eight points for former President Donald Trump. So it’s not exactly a purple state. Yet Tuesday night’s vote wasn’t even close. Pro-life dissenters lost by 12+ points.
Ohio wasn’t the only red-leaning state to have the abortion issue hurt them on election night. Kentucky and Virginia did as well. Well-liked Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin wants to pass a 15-week abortion ban, but Virginians voted blue and flipped the state House and maintained their hold on the state Senate. Deep-red Kentucky reelected Governor Andy Beshear to a second term over his opponent, Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Beshear is a Democrat and also pro-abortion.
As much as we are loathe to admit it, pro-life positions on the ballot seem to be losers for Republicans. Which prompts the question: Why? For those of us who are ardent pro-life supporters, there are several hurdles that need to be overcome in the quest to end that particular practice. The biggest obstacle is left-wing lies about what being pro-life means and what abortion actually is.
Lefty Lies: “Stay Out of My Bedroom.” “My Body, My Choice.”
This particular combination of slogans at once embodies the libertarian distaste of government control and the liberals’ notion of bodily autonomy. And they are both misleading.
The “stay out of my bedroom” sentiment is laughable when colored by the stark truth of what abortion is — killing an innocent and completely helpless human. Murder is something the government is against, ergo it is against the law to kill someone. So why is it suddenly acceptable to murder just because the victims are at their smallest stages of development? It’s also interesting to note that the same people who want the government out of their bedroom are many of the same people who want the government to dedicate whole months to what they do in the bedroom (e.g. Pride Month) along with all the other LGBTQ+ liturgical days of forced celebration.
“My body, my choice” is a false premise. It implies a mother has a right to murder her unborn child simply because that child resides in her body. Leftists push the lie that if abortion were limited or abolished, mothers wouldn’t have a choice, i.e. no bodily autonomy. For most of these women, that choice happens before conception — before they jump into bed with someone to create that life.
Granted, in the cases of rape or incest, which by definition are coercion or force, that particular choice is taken away. Yet according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion group, rape and incest make up just 1% of all abortion cases.
There are several other lies employed by the Left, but these are the ones most often heard.
The Left’s View of Abortion Is, in Fact, Radical
This is perhaps the biggest pro-abortion boon of the whole debate. As much as Democrats try to deny that they support abortion up till birth, their every action and even party statement supports it. It’s absolutely radical to allow abortion at any point through all nine months of pregnancy. To put this in perspective, most Western countries only allow abortion through 20 weeks of pregnancy, give or take. The U.S. is one of seven countries that allows abortions past 20 weeks gestation. The other countries are Canada, China, Netherlands, North Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam. Note how many of those countries are oppressive communist regimes. It’s not a group we should be proud to be a part of.
In Virginia, Youngkin wants to pass a 15-week abortion ban. Fifteen weeks is pretty far along as it is, but not enough according to the Democrats. Twenty weeks is halfway through a pregnancy, and even that is not good enough for them.
As a mother of a 22-week unborn baby, abortion at this stage is unjustifiable. Babies this age have survived birth and are thriving; my cousin’s son is one of them. It’s also impossible to deny the humanity and life of the little human inside. They are wiggling, hiccuping, hitting and kicking, and responding to light and sounds. This is a life.
Lack of Republican Unity
Just like the clown show that Republicans enacted by unseating Kevin McCarthy before eventually choosing a new speaker of the House, Republicans are far from unified. Republicans become the catch-all party for a variety of ideological perspectives, particularly since the Democrats are increasingly radical. Abortion is no different, as Republicans hold a variety of positions on the pro-life question. Those who do support the pro-life cause tend to do an inadequate job of articulating the issue. As political pundit Matt Walsh put it:
Before you tell me that the pro-life message is a political loser, answer me this: how many Republican candidates fought back hard and effectively on this issue, actively went after the Left, ran ads attacking their opponent for supporting the dismemberment of fully developed infants (which nearly every Democrat does), and actually countered the Left’s pro-abortion narrative with a strong and affirmative pro-life narrative? It seems to me that the pro-life message is being blamed in races where the pro-life message was never even articulated.
Has anyone ran an ad saying “Here’s what happens in a third trimester abortion. My opponent supports this”? This is the most basic strategy and I’m not aware of anyone who has even attempted it. The strategy is simple: go on offense and tell the truth.
Fox News’s Kayleigh McEnany articulates this sentiment another way, saying: “Every ballot initiative, post-Dobbs, has been a loss for the pro-life movement. As a party, we must not just be a pro-baby party. That’s a great thing. We must also be a pro-mother party. We need a national strategy.”
Republicans also often neglect to show compassion toward the mother and help her feel more supported. Support is something a huge number of these desperate women are seeking. That’s hard to demonstrate on the campaign trail but not impossible.
Pro-life Republicans have an uphill battle in the continued fight for life. However, it is one that we can and should win. It may not happen now — it make take another 50 years just like overturning Roe v. Wade — but it is a battle worth fighting. These mothers and their children are worth it.
There were plenty of zingers and disagreements in last night’s Republican presidential debate.
Nate Jackson
The leading elephant still wasn’t in the room last night, but there was another Republican presidential debate among those who hope to become either the chief alternative to Donald Trump or his running mate.
The stage was reduced to just five contenders — in order of national polling average, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson failed to make the stage, and former Vice President Mike Pence recently dropped out. Fewer candidates made for a better debate, and we hope the next debate features fewer still.
As usual, there were plenty of fireworks as candidates went after opponents. We’ll hit on that a bit, while focusing on a couple of the biggest issues.
If you didn’t know that Haley and Ramaswamy deeply dislike each other, you do now. In a heated exchange over policy regarding China and social media data during which Ramaswamy went after Haley’s daughter as a TikTok user, she called him “just scum.” Ramaswamy, who tends toward what some characterize as isolationist, slammed the more hawkish Haley as “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels.” They’re “five-inch heels,” retorted Haley, and “they’re not for a fashion statement, they’re for ammunition.”
But let’s face it — there’s little substantive policy differences among these five candidates. The real contest is over tactical differences or disagreements about emphasis, and about personality.
Some policy differences, however, are substantive. Much of the debate focused on foreign policy because, well, the world is kind of a wreck right now under the feckless leadership of Joe Biden. And the disagreement largely centered on Ukraine. Haley and Christie want to stand firm or even ramp up our aid for the country in the face of Russian aggression. Ramaswamy is highly skeptical of such aid, while DeSantis and Scott seemed somewhere in the middle.
Ramaswamy raised some eyebrows by insulting Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. “Ukraine is not a paragon of democracy,” he said. “It has celebrated a Nazi in its ranks — a comedian in cargo pants, the man called Zelensky — doing it in their own ranks.” If you follow the news, you knew — and his campaign quickly clarified — that Ramaswamy meant to refer to the former SS officer applauded by the Canadian Parliament in the presence of Zelensky, who is Jewish. Even so, one of Vladimir Putin’s key propaganda points is that he’s just fighting Nazis in Ukraine. Of course, an old Soviet KGB guy would say that.
GOP advocates of aiding Ukraine don’t pretend that the country is a model of anything. The reason to help is not rewarding good behavior but advancing strategic U.S. interests.
As for domestic policy, abortion led the way. Our Emmy Griffin covers strategy considerations today after Tuesday’s disappointing election results, and the candidates on stage last night delved into it as well. All five are pro-life, and all five want to work against the culture of death. How best to do that is, as always, the crux of the debate.
Scott wants a “15-week national limit” on abortion. Haley wants to “focus on how to save as many babies as we can,” but she doesn’t want to promise something that can’t be delivered “when we don’t even have the votes in the Senate.” Christie took the federalist position that it should be up to the states, not Congress.
What we wish Republicans would emphasize is that we’re one of just seven nations in the world — including the communist utopias of China, Vietnam, and North Korea — that allow elective abortion after 20 weeks. To ban it after even some of our European allies do is hardly extreme. DeSantis, who signed a six-week ban in Florida, perhaps came closest by slamming Democrats for refusing to “identify the point at which there should be any protection all the way up until birth.”
That is extreme, and Republicans simply must improve at explaining their own position in contrast with the Democrats’ bloodlust.
If anyone is wondering, Trump once described himself as “very pro-choice” before running for president, when he became what he calls the “most pro-life president ever.” He could take credit for appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who helped rightly overturn Roe v. Wade, but he mostly doesn’t. Instead, he seems to argue that Republicans are losing because they’re being too pro-life.
Of course, what Trump says at any given moment isn’t nearly as important as that it’s him saying it.
For people who don’t believe Trump should simply be coronated, it’s frustrating to see him skip yet another GOP debate in favor of a simultaneous event to compete for attention. Yet it seems to be a brilliant political calculation. Trump has decided that his vast polling lead means he doesn’t have to bother giving the other candidates the time of day. And until poll respondents say otherwise, why would he change?
The real test will come when voters start casting primary ballots. Is Trump’s support really as strong as it seems? Will a thinning field of challengers help one rise to truly present a threat to Trump?
Subpoenas for the Biden Crime Family, Hamas billionaires living it up, pro-life activist sues DOJ, and more.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
Subpoenas for the Biden Crime Family: The Israel-Hamas war may have given Joe Biden a brief respite from the constitutionally prescribed oversight of House Republicans, but that respite is officially over. Earlier this week, we noted Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s efforts to connect the dots from the Communist Chinese to Joe Biden’s bank account, and now, as promised, the chairman has issued a blizzard of subpoenas for the Biden Crime Family. As the New York Post reports, Comer’s committee is now “demanding closed-door testimony from President Biden’s son Hunter and brother James as part of the GOP impeachment inquiry into the family’s foreign business dealings.” In addition to these two, subpoenas were sent to Biden family associate Rob Walker in addition to requesting voluntary testimony from James Biden’s wife Sara, Hunter Biden’s ex-girlfriend and sister-in-law Hallie Biden, and his current wife Melissa Cohen, in addition to former Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski. Time will tell whether compelling them to testify will result in a series of substantive questions followed by a broken record of Fifth Amendment invocations, but even that spectacle would be instructive. “The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes,” said Chairman Comer. “Now, the House Oversight Committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence.”
Hamas states its priorities: Any dullards who still believe that Israel can work with Hamas to hammer out a lasting peace were disabused of that quaint notion recently. From the river to the sea, Hamas is both warlike and genocidal, and it’s not interested in superfluities such as food, water, and electricity for its people. Just ask its leadership. “Hamas’s goal is not to run Gaza and to bring it water and electricity and such,” said Khalil al-Hayya, who serves in Hamas’s top leadership body. “Hamas, the Qassam, and the resistance woke the world up from its deep sleep and showed that this issue must remain on the table.” In case that language is unclear, al-Hayya added that Hamas didn’t massacre all those Israeli men, women, and children in an effort to bring peace. Nor did it do so to “improve” the plight of the more than two million Gazans whom it rules. No, no, said al-Hayya: “It did not seek to improve the situation in Gaza. This battle is to completely overthrow the situation.” Al-Hayya didn’t come right out and say which “situation” he and his fellow genocidalists are seeking to overthrow, but we think it has something to do with Hamas’s charter; something about wiping out the Jews “from the river to the sea.”
Hamas billionaires living it up: Demonstrating that they view the Palestinians living in squalor in Gaza as little other than human shields for their anti-Israel jihad, Hamas’s top leaders won’t even deign to live amongst them. Instead, the top three leaders of Hamas spend their days living like kings in Qatar in lavish luxury, staying in five-star hotels and villas. The three Hamas leaders — Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzuk, and Khaled Mashal — have an estimated combined wealth of $11 billion. Meanwhile, people living in the Gaza Strip are subject to abject poverty, as the millions in international humanitarian aid tellingly never seems to get to those who most need it. Qatar, a U.S. ally, has justified housing and protecting Hamas leaders for years under the dubious claim that it was doing so to turn the terrorist group into “a responsible governing power.” However, after Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, Republican Representative Andy Ogles introduced a bill that would strip Qatar of its U.S. ally status if it does not end this terrorist-harboring charade and expel these Hamas leaders.
Democrats: Let Hamas come here: Speaking of Hamas, the question that has been bandied about after Israel launched its war to eliminate the threat of Hamas permanently is what to do with the refugees from Gaza. The fact of the matter is that none of the surrounding Arab countries want these Palestinians who are in fact Arabs. It’s one of the primary reasons this conflict with Israel has continued unresolved for decades. Well, now leading Democrats including Senator Dick Durbin and Representative Pramila Jayapal are calling for Palestinians to be afforded “Temporary Protected Status” in order to be brought into the U.S. Durbin and Jayapal have begun circulating a letter urging the Biden administration “to designate the Palestinian territories for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and/or authorize Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) for Palestinians present in the United States.” The letter further states, “In light of [the] ongoing armed conflict, Palestinians already in the United States should not be forced to return to the Palestinian territories.” Evidently, Democrats have forgotten who our actually ally in the region is, or that jihadists could be posting as “refugees.” The humanitarian effort should be focused on getting other Arab nations in the region, like Qatar, which has long expressed support for the Palestinians, to step up and take in these refugees with whom they share a common culture and religious faith.
The “End the Occupation” occupiers: Yesterday, Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on free speech and anti-Semitism on college campuses. Given recent events — given that incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault of Jews have increased by 388% — it seemed a worthwhile topic. Sadly, it didn’t take long for the pro-Hamas crowd, the “end the occupation” crowd, to disrupt and occupy the proceedings. As The Daily Signal’s Tyler O’Neil reports, immediately after Jordan swore in the witnesses, “a protester shot up, holding a sign reading ‘Pro-Palestine [doesn’t equal] antisemitism.’ The protester shouted something about ‘genocide,’ adding, ‘Over 10,000 people have been killed, and you’re trying to silence the free speech of students.’” We wonder: Was this dude charged, as hundreds of J6 protesters were, with disrupting an official government proceeding? Somehow, we doubt it. Another protester then went to bat for recently censuredpro-Hamas Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, claiming that her colleagues were trying to silence her. That’s not true, of course. Tlaib is free to speak her mind, free to flaunt her bigotry, free to chant “from the river to the sea,” but that doesn’t mean she’s free from the consequences of such speech.
Good news: Pro-life activist sues DOJ: Mark Houck is a pro-life activist whom the Biden administration sent an FBI SWAT team to arrest at his home following an altercation near a Planned Parenthood abortion mill back in 2021. The Biden administration charged Houck with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, though a jury acquitted him in January. Now, Houck has filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department, seeking $1.1 million in restitution from the DOJ for conducting “a faulty investigation” and using “excessive force.” As the lawsuit states, “These government agents intentionally sought to assault Mr. Houck and deprive him of his Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force to arrest him on non-violent charges when he had not threatened law enforcement, did not own a gun, and had offered to turn himself into authorities if indicted.” Houck states the reason for his lawsuit is “to hold the DOJ and the FBI accountable for their investigative and law enforcement officers’ tortious conduct against him.” Hear hear!
Biden brings back the Cold War: One of the many benefits of the Biden presidency has been a return to normalcy, a return to a more peaceful and less turbulent time. We see the results everywhere: in Afghanistan, in Ukraine, in Israel. And we’re starting to see the Biden touch at work in the relationship between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, the U.S. and Russia. Two days ago, for example, the Russians withdrew from a landmark treaty that limited certain categories of conventional armed forces in Europe. Soon thereafter, the U.S. and its NATO allies responded in kind, also suspending their participation in the treaty. The goal of the accord had been to keep countries from massing their forces on mutual borders and to thereby reduce the likelihood of war. So much for that. Joe Biden’s weakness is again proving provocative. As The Wall Street Journal reports: “Suspending participation in the treaty — which continued to be implemented as the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union dissolved — will give the U.S. more flexibility in deploying forces on NATO’s northern and southern flanks, including in Romania and Bulgaria near Ukraine. It also enables Ukraine’s Western allies to avoid sharing information on the deployment of their forces with nations close to Russia.” So you see, Joe Biden has returned us to normalcy, returned us to a Cold War that Ronald Reagan had long ago won.
FERC warns of heat and power shortfalls: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently issued a warning to New England that if a planned shutting down of a major natural gas terminal goes forward, it could lead to a situation where millions living in the region find themselves suddenly losing heat and power in the dead of winter. FERC joined with independent watchdog North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) in issuing “serious concerns” about outages. “Increased reliance on non-natural gas generators” means that, “should those expectations [of new renewable energy systems] not materialize as anticipated, ensuring reliability and affordability could become challenging in the face of a significant winter event.” At issue is the future of the Everett Marine Terminal, which is the largest natural gas pipeline terminal in New England. The power grid restructuring to favor renewable energy in the name of combating climate change has effectively made LNG power generation unprofitable. A company called Constellation operates the LNG terminal as well as a natural-gas-fired power plant it slated for retirement, as the company determined back in 2020 that it saw no “path to continue commercial electric generation” at the plant. Once again, the issue for renewable energy is reliability, a problem that fossil-fuel-based power solves.
Headlines
Ending 40-year hiatus, GOP wins a city council seat in the Bronx (New York Times)
Republicans call on Ronna McDaniel to resign following Tuesday’s elections (Breitbart)
Hillary Clinton compares Trump to Hitler while warning he could win again (Fox News)
Minnesota Supreme Court dismisses “insurrection clause” challenge and allows Trump on primary ballot (AP)
Mainstream outlets had photographers embedded with Hamas as terror attack unfolded (Daily Wire)
U.S. drone shot down by Yemen’s Houthi rebels (AP) | U.S. launches airstrike on site in Syria in response to attacks by Iranian-backed militias (AP)
Nashville police say seven individuals on “administrative assignment” amid probe into leaked images from Covenant school shooter’s manifesto (Daily Wire)
New HHS policy permits employees to “wear clothing,” “use bathrooms” based on gender identity (Fox News)
New woke children’s book released: “In My Daddy’s Belly” (MRCTV)
Satire: Republican Party checks into rehab for addiction to losing (Babylon Bee)
A new report reveals the lengths to which the Democrats and their allies went to censor conservatives prior to the 2020 presidential election.
Douglas Andrews
No wonder they want us to move on. We haven’t yet uncovered the totality of the crime.
If the Democrats taught us anything since 2020, it’s that there’s more than one way to steal an election. One way is to simply stuff phony ballots into unmonitored collection boxes — a practice conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza investigated in his film “2000 Mules,” a practice the Democrats recently employed with remarkable brazenness in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Other methods are more subtle, though — such as claiming that special circumstances require a circumvention of the Article II constitutional process for changing a state’s election laws, thereby making it easier to vote by mail, and thereby making it easier to cheat. This is what happened in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — all states won by Donald Trump in 2016, and all states that flipped to Joe Biden in 2020. There goes your presidential election.
Another method is to control the flow of information so as to deny the voting public a complete picture of the candidates and the issues. And this is where the Democrats really excelled. As we’ve noted numerous times, the collusion between the FBI and Big Tech to censor the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story in the crucial days just prior to the 2020 election was a decisive piece of election-rigginginterference.
What we’re just now learning, though, is the extent to which the Democrats and their deep-state apparatus censored conservative voices during the 2020 campaign season. As we noted yesterday, a 103-page interim report submitted by the House Judiciary Committee revealed that the Department of Homeland Security helped create a “disinformation” group at Stanford University prior to the 2020 election. The group, laughably dubbed the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), colluded with DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Big Tech companies to suppress and censor online speech.
As Congressman Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, noted earlier this week on Fox News: “The censorship industrial complex was bigger than we thought. It wasn’t just Big Government working with Big Tech to limit your tweets and posts on Facebook. It was Big Government, Big University, and Big Tech all working together to limit speech, and it was disproportionately targeting conservatives.”
Which entities were guilty of censorship? The usual suspects: Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. That’s some pretty massive outreach, no? As for who was censored or otherwise suppressed, the report, titled “The Weaponization of ‘Disinformation’ Pseudo-Experts and Bureaucrats: How the Federal Government Partnered with Universities to Censor Americans’ Political Speech,” listed some two dozen prominent conservative voices, including Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Sean Hannity, Mollie Hemingway, Harmeet Dhillon, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, Jack Posobiec, Tom Fitton, James O’Keefe, Sean Davis, Dave Rubin, and Paul Sperry. It also included at least three current members of Congress: North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, and Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. As for news outlets, the conservative news site Newsmax was censored, as were the conservative satirists at The Babylon Bee.
Oh, and they censored Donald Trump, a sitting U.S. president who happened to be running for reelection.
The report contains correspondences between members of the EIP and CISA, which show how “the federal government and universities pressured social media companies to censor true information, jokes, and political opinions.” The report described the EIP as a “consortium of ‘disinformation’ academics led by Stanford University’s Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) that worked directly with the Department of Homeland Security and the Global Engagement Center, a multi-agency entity housed within the State Department, to monitor and censor Americans’ online speech in advance of the 2020 presidential election.”
What this latest bombshell report demonstrates is the degree to which Washington has been involved in censoring and controlling Americans’ online speech. That’s not a questionable legal call; it’s a blatant violation of their First Amendment rights.
It’s also electoral theft. Plain and simple.
As our Nate Jackson wrote back in July in the wake of a damning court decision against government collusion and censorship, “Today’s Democrats are no longer liberals; they’re authoritarian leftists who cheer on censorship of ideas they don’t like, and their virtual army of ‘fact-checkers’ and social media moderators happily do their bidding.”
Indeed they are. And they have plenty of help. As the report notes in its epilogue: “It is no surprise that Stanford University attempted to refuse to turn over documents responsive to the Committee’s subpoena: they reveal that the EIP was not a non-partisan ‘school project’ comprised of students and researchers interested in combatting misinformation online. Instead, from start to finish, the EIP operation worked directly with the federal government and disproportionally targeted conservative-oriented speech.”
The investigation isn’t done yet. As the report concludes, “To better inform legislative efforts to end government censorship and protect Americans’ rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, the Committee and Select Subcommittee will continue to investigate the extent of CISA’s and other Executive Branch agencies’ interactions with social media platforms and third parties, including those used to facilitate censorship by proxy.”
Here, it’s worth remembering the one word that describes the Left’s incessant urge to silence its opposition: fear. After all, they wouldn’t need to censor us if they weren’t afraid of losing the arguments.
Latest PodcastPopCon #21: Peterson Academy and the Rise of Alternative EducationThomas, Sterling, and Andrew tackle the state of education, why alternatives like Peterson Academy are emerging, and what alternative education might signal to employers in the future.
Predictably, the race huckster still cried “racism” after being faced with an investigation into potentially nefarious behavior.
Thomas Gallatin
For race hucksters, any potential challenge to their narrative is simply more evidence of the racism they claim to be fighting to expose. It’s quite the convenient tactic, as it leaves no room for genuine factual examination and critique of the race hucksters’ assertions.
A couple of months back, we noted a story originally published in the Boston Globe, no right-wing publication, that the woke “anti-racism” author/activist Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research (CAR) at Boston University was in apparent financial trouble. Kendi’s grift operation was begun just three years ago and during that time generated some $50 million in donations. For all that “investment,” its staff produced almost nothing in the way of signifiant research.
Maybe that’s why nearly half of CAR’s staff was laid off.
After the news generated much public buzz, the university launched an internal investigation into CAR. It wasn’t long before the school completed at least a portion of its investigation into Kendi’s program and — surprise — determined that there was no financial misconduct.
What is known is that the program’s model has been changed to a fellowship-based program with half the staff.
Now comes a massive irony.
According to reporting from The College Fix, among those recently laid off from the program were “four black employees, four Hispanics, two Indians, one Asian, and one Middle Eastern employee.” Remember, Kendi’s own “anti-racist” worldview is that “a racist policy yields racial disparities,” while “an anti-racist policy reduces or eliminates racial disparities.”
Furthermore, in his book How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi wrote, “A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups.”
Obviously, neither of Kendi’s claims are definitive markers for racism. Instead, what they do demonstrate is Kendi wrapping Marxist disparity ideology with race in order to dismiss individual initiative, choice, and effort as the primary determinative factor for the existence of disparities within a free market capitalist system.
To put it another way, wherever disparities naturally and by necessity arise thanks to the free choices of individuals, Kendi in turn claims racism. For Kendi, individual freedom is racism.
Back to Boston University’s now partially completed investigation. Kendi took the findings and cried racism. “If you know my scholarship, then you know I am hardly surprised about the mass circulation of racist ideas about the corrupt Black leader who needs to be surveilled and investigated,” Kendi posted on X. “What happened demonstrates just how much CAR is needed — and needs to be supported. I am glad this is behind us so we can get back to work.”
It’s not surprising that BU would arrive at its conclusion. It was BU, after all, that brought in Kendi during the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd as if to virtue signal the university’s commitment to fight systemic racism. It would be a bad look for BU to admit that Kendi is a race huckster.
So, while Kendi has continued to enjoy the fruit of his “anti-racism” grievance game, others who were initially hired by CAR and are now laid off aren’t having so much luck.
In a front-page text box, USA Today warned this account is a “creator of, and a force multiplier for, right-wing outrage.”
Tim Graham
They still call their national newspaper “USA Today,” but on some days, the front page looks more like “LGBTQIA Today.”
On Oct. 6, the bold top headline was “When Libs of TikTok posts, threats increasingly follow.” The author is Will Carless, whose beat is “extremism.” Beware, that beat is almost always just “right-wing extremism.” That’s how they define the wildly successful Twitter account of Libs of TikTok, operated by Chaya Raichik.
In a front-page text box, USA Today warned this account is a “creator of, and a force multiplier for, right-wing outrage.” It’s a “hive of conservative politicians, media personalities and far-right online influencers.” With badly disguised propaganda like this story, that can be reversed: USA Today is a creator of, and a force multiplier for, left-wing outrage. Carless came to the “hive” of McPaper from the far-left Center for Investigative Reporting.
This new Carless front-pager spread to an entire inside page. It began with a list of alleged bomb threats and public ridicule of drag-queen events and hospitals performing mutilations, which they call “gender-affirming care.” Then they blamed Libs of TikTok.
“In almost every case, the perpetrator of the threat is unknown, and Chaya Raichik, the far-right influencer who runs Libs of TikTok, says she opposes violence, and that because there have been almost no arrests, there’s no proof the threats come from her followers,” Carless admitted.
But he warned of a “clear pattern:”: “USA Today has confirmed dozens of bomb threats, death threats and other harassment after Libs of TikTok’s posts since February 2022.” Based on what? “Exclusive new research from the progressive analysis group Media Matters for America.”
So USA Today is partnering with a passionate LGBT advocacy group, not unlike the media’s public alliance with the censorship group GLAAD. The method is the same: suggest that anyone and everyone who spreads information resisting their revolution is an extremist that spurs violence. It’s meant to ruin reputations and intimidate people into silence.
Anyone who calls in a bomb threat to anyone, even if they have no intention of acting on it, is committing a crime. That’s why they’re usually anonymous. But sometimes bomb threats are faked by the “victims,” just like Jussie Smollett faked a late-night beating by Trump fans. “Extremism” reporters like Carless are hot to find the “far-right” threats and ignore the behavior of their side.
Speaking of extremism, Carless used experts like MMFA’s Ari Drennen, who recently tweeted, “homeschooling should be illegal. Too many parents use it to abuse their children, keeping them ignorant and easy to control.” Wow. That’s just like The Washington Post, which once described right-wing Christians in a 1993 front-page article as “largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command.”
Carless also quoted Alejandra Caraballo, “a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic.” He noted Caraballo was “openly critical” of Raichik, but not that Caraballo is a radical “trans woman.” Last month, Caraballo attacked Elon Musk after headlines vanished in Twitter posts.
“Elon Musk was arrested after being found in the street in a ketamine induced fugue state,” she messaged. That was a lie. Then came a much worse lie: a retweet of another account claiming “evidence showing Elon Musk is a pedophile mounting quickly.”
Chaya Raichik tweeted, “This is the person that the media cites as an ‘online safety expert’.” Musk tweeted emojis that Caraballo was “bat [guano] crazy.” That context might have balanced the USA Today story a tad.
Carless let Raichik defend herself, but nothing about this article was balanced or fair. It was designed to shame and degrade any resistance to the “LGBTQIA Today” agenda.
Editors Note: Alexander’s Veterans Day “Black Hawk Down” Profile of Valor column Wednesday did not include comment links. If you would like to comment, please use the link at the bottom of the column here.
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Editor’s Note: Each week we receive hundreds of comments and correspondences — and we read every one of them. Click here for a few thought-provoking comments about specific articles. The views expressed therein don’t necessarily reflect those of The Patriot Post.
The Men vs. Women Problem — The guys from Triggernometry discuss the problem of the movement to empathize with men, which seeks to pit men against women.
Hillary Likens a 2024 Trump Win to Hitler’s Election — Failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton likened a hypothetical 2024 presidential election win for Donald Trump to the election of Adolf Hitler.
“This is a time that we need wisdom and experience. We need a steady hand in foreign policy. We need a steady hand in economic policy. And that’s what Joe Biden is bringing to the table every single day.” —Deputy Biden Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks
“That is correct.” —DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas when asked, “The situation at the border, you’re saying, is not a disaster?”
Cognitive Dissonance
“No.” —Alejandro Mayorkas when asked, “Do you believe that a border wall is part of the answer?” (“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States.” —Mayorkas in October)
The BIG Lies
“Our administration has pursued a comprehensive strategy to manage this unprecedented migration. Our strategy includes expanded lawful pathways for migration, strengthened consequences for unlawful entry at the border, removing a record number of individuals found to be ineligible for protection under the law, and increased partnership cross the region to curb irregular migration.” —Alejandro Mayorkas
“The president has done everything that he can on his own to try to figure out how do we deal with what’s going on at the border.” —White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
Non Compos Mentis
“Look, I — I’ve sorta, kinda seen the reporting here and there. I think it was from last week. … I’m just not going to go into specifics on that particular thing.” —Karine Jean-Pierre when asked: “A lot of videos of individuals who have been tearing down signs … of Israelis presently being held hostage in Gaza. There have been some tense confrontations that have taken place there. Is the White House’s view that these actions should be condemned … or that that’s a form of peaceful protest?”
“We don’t necessarily have to be tit-for-tat every single time. We are incredibly strategic about when we decide to take kinetic action.” —Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh when asked about Iran’s repeated attacks on our troops and bases
“[Donald Trump’s] the one who made [women’s] lives a living and breathing hell. He’s the one who made women bleed out outside of operating rooms where they could have been saved. … Why in the world do we have 10-year old girls who were raped by illegal immigrants having to flee the state, having to run for their lives to get an abortion? … Because of the Supreme Court. … Because the buying of the United States Supreme Court that Donald Trump did.” —MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough
“Hitler was duly elected right? And so, all of a sudden, somebody with those tendencies, the dictatorial, authoritarian tendencies, would be like, ‘Oh, OK, we’re going to shut this down, we’re going to throw these people in jail,’ and they didn’t usually telegraph that. Trump is telling us what he intends to do.” —Hillary Clinton
Braying Jennies
“This [Rashida Tlaib censure] resolution is an attack… I spent all weekend in Michigan, this last weekend, talking to all the communities about the meaning of this phrase [‘from the river to the sea’], and there are very strong feelings on all sides. And it’s very clear that people interpret words in different ways.” —Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D-MI)
“The Palestinian movement will continue for liberation!” —Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN)
Village Idiot
“We don’t know what [Hamas] did do. … They are absolutely legally and morally bound to resist the occupation since 1967. It’s an obligation. … The thing was thrown out of all proportion by the Israelis making up stories about beheading babies. … Whether it was a false flag operation or not … we don’t know if we will ever get much of the real story. … They’re calling it their 9/11. What the hell happened on the American 9/11? Nobody knows.” —singer-songwriter Roger Waters
Political Futures
“[Ronna] McDaniel is a loser. There is no way around it and no other conclusion to draw here. She is a loser who was handpicked by Trump to run the RNC and who Trump has continued to endorse, including earlier this year when McDaniel was reelected to her position. McDaniel, like Trump, has overseen election loss after election loss, and yet she is still allowed to remain in her job and run the GOP into the ground.” —Zachary Faria
“The loss in Ohio may mean life is a losing issue. If so, we deserve to lose as a nation. But I think it more likely means Republicans were ill prepared for a post Roe reality they never thought would actually come, and we are fumbling at the goal line now because we have no coherent policy or strategy.” —Jeremy Boreing
“Before you tell me that the pro-life message is a political loser, answer me this: how many Republican candidates fought back hard and effectively on this issue, actively went after the Left, ran ads attacking their opponent for supporting the dismemberment of fully developed infants (which nearly every Democrat does), and actually countered the Left’s pro-abortion narrative with a strong and affirmative pro-life narrative? It seems to me that the pro-life message is being blamed in races where the pro-life message was never even articulated. Has anyone ran an ad saying ‘Here’s what happens in a third trimester abortion. My opponent supports this’? This is the most basic strategy and I’m not aware of anyone who has even attempted it. The strategy is simple: go on offense and tell the truth.” —Matt Walsh
“Every ballot initiative, post-Dobbs, has been a loss for the pro-life movement. As a party, we must not just be a pro-baby party. That’s a great thing. We must also be a pro-mother party. We need a national strategy.” —Kayleigh McEnany
Photojournalist Hassan Eslaiah has been filing images of the conflict since October 7 for western outlets including AP and CNN. Photos show him posing with Hamas leaders.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, joins ‘Jesse Watters Primetime’ to discuss Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s visit to Ukraine and his new book ‘Unwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America.’
Mark Spitznagel of Universa Investments.Universa Investments
A “Black Swan” investor says there’s a huge debt bubble and the Fed’s policies will end in disaster.
Universa’s Mark Spitznagel views Treasuries as a “hopeful haven” that offers limited protection.
Spitznagel said that portfolio diversification can be more harmful than helpful to investors.
The boss of a “Black Swan” fund has sounded the alarm on the biggest debt bubble in history, and warned the Federal Reserve‘s efforts to shore up markets and stave off recessions have paved the way for a far worse disaster in the future.
Mark Spitznagel is the founder and chief of Universa Investments, which specializes in protection against extreme and unpredictable “tail risks” in markets. He dismissed Treasuries as a haven asset, and cautioned investors that diversifying their portfolios can do more harm than good during a recent Yahoo Finance interview.
Here are Spitznagel’s 10 best quotes, lightly edited for length and clarity:
1. “We are in the biggest credit bubble in human history. I don’t think that should be a controversial statement.”
2. “Monetary policy is the most destructive force in the global economy. It’s taken a natural, healthy, homeostatic process of crashes, bankruptcy, recession, and it’s turned it into something that is dangerous and destructive. This is what they’ve done in trying to eliminate recessions and crashes. They’ve created this tinderbox, right? We’re living in a tinderbox time bomb.”
3. “Treasuries are not a safe haven, they’re very much a hopeful haven. They have their place. I think that they’re pretty cheap right now, frankly, so I don’t want to trash them too much. But as a strategic risk mitigation strategy, they just don’t address the non-linear nature of risk.”
4. “Risk mitigation can end up being the costliest thing we do as investors. It’s usually the cure that’s worse than the disease.”
5. “You need to think of risk mitigation not as protecting yourself from the markets, but more than anything else, protecting yourself from yourself. The markets make us do really stupid things. We just need to set up our portfolio to protect us from that.”
6. “We face this problem as investors, I call it the great dilemma of risk. If you take too much risk, it costs you over time. If you take too little risk, it costs you over time.”
7. “I’m the most bearish guy you’re ever going to meet. But we could all agree that in the next 20 years, if you could make one trade right now, it’s probably buy the S&P, right? Despite what’s going on and how expensive it is today. So we know that mitigating risk really isn’t about where we think the world is going to be.”
8. “As a business, we protect against very large losses. That’s what we’re there for. It’s not just because they’re scary. It’s not just because they’re large. It’s not just because they make headlines. It’s because, mathematically, they’re what matters. The little losses don’t matter, it’s the big ones.” (Spitznagel pointed out that it takes a 100% gain to erase a 50% loss on an investment, and a large loss can weigh heavily on compound growth over time.)
9. “Diversification has been called by great luminaries like Dalio, ‘the Holy Grail of investing.’ That is a lie. That is not the Holy Grail of investing. Peter Lynch appropriately calls it ‘deworsifying’ portfolios. It is actually the cure that is worse than the disease.”
10. “It’s easy to pick on 60/40 now because bonds have just been destroyed, right? So I’m not going to kick them while they’re down. But I would have said this four or five years ago. When diversification — ‘deworsification’ — gets a win, maybe you lose less in a crash, it’s like a Pyrrhic victory, because you end up paying for it in the recovery. It’s a double-edged sword, right? You’ll get cut by it.” (Spitznagel’s point was that diversifying a portfolio can limit its losses, but it can also significantly constrain upside.)
That’s the only way one can describe today’s 30Y auction, which many expected could be challenging after a mediocre 3Y and a subpar 10Y auction earlier this year, but nobody expected… this.
The bond priced at a high yield of 4.769%, which was below last month’s 4.837%, and just shy of the April 2010 high. But more importantly, it tailed the When Issued by a whopping 5.3bps, which was… well… terrible, because as shown in the chart below, this was the biggest tail on record (going back to 2016).
The bid to cover was just as bad: at 2.236 it was the lowest since Dec 2021.
The internals were even worse as foreign bidders (Indirects) tumbled from 65.1% to 60.1%, the lowest since Nov 2021, and with Directs taking down only 15.2%, banks (Dealers) were forced to step up and take the balance, or a whopping 24.7%, the highest since Nov 2021.
This is a big warning flag because every time we have seen a surge in Dealer takedowns, some sort of Fed intervention – QE or otherwise – has usually followed and we doubt this time will be different.
The market reaction to the catastrophic 30Y auction was immediately, sparking a swift and painful response across markets with bonds and stocks hammered lower and the dollar spiking.
Treasury yields – as you would expect – exploded higher, with 30Y Yields back up to pre-payrolls levels…
But the entire curve is higher in yields…
Stocks tanked…
Regional bank stocks tumbled…
The dollar ripped back up to pre-payrolls levels…
Finally, we note that this ugly auction comes as Treasury Liquidity is evaporating dramatically…
What is the significance of the term “occupation”?
A key concept in Hamas’ ideology is “occupation”. In the discussion offered here, I am not going to offer insights into international law. My concern is with the ideology of occupation.
“Occupation” is a term meant to delegitimise Israel. It implies that Israel is an alien military force occupying the region. From an Islamist perspective, it is in reality the non-Islamic character of Israel that makes this illegitimate.
Much of the Middle East was Arabised as a result of conquest and occupation by Muslims, a dominance which continues to this day, and has caused great suffering, even in the past few centuries, to the surviving indigenous conquered peoples, who have included Copts, Greeks, Yazidis, Syrians, Armenians and Assyrians.
From an Islamic perspective, the conquest of the Middle East by Muslims was a good thing. The word used in Arabic for these conquests is futuh, which means ‘opening’ and implies liberation. In most cases, Islamic imperial conquest (and occupation) was final and permanent. Down through history, Islamic ideology has been very keen on occupation, so long as it is Muslims doing the occupying.
For centuries the province of Syria, which included the region referred to as Palestine, was under Ottoman military occupation, but this did not cause Palestinian jihadi “resistance” movements to proliferate, aiming to establish a “free Palestine”. This shows that it is not military occupation in itself that is today’s sticking point, but the fact that Israel is a non-Muslim, Jewish-majority state.
The heart of the objection to the existence of Israel is that Jews are in the majority, ruling over Muslims, and Muslims are no longer in charge. This perspective is reflected very clearly in the Hamas Charter. It was also reflected in statements made by Palestinian Arab leaders back in the 1930s, that they could accept a minority of Jews in Palestine, but never a majority: the Jews should never be in a position to rule.
What were the Oslo Accords?
The Oslo Accords, signed in September 1993, were a process ostensibly designed to move the Israeli-Palestinian relationship towards a two-state solution. For Israel, they promised to provide greater security for its citizens, and for the Palestinians, they promised greater autonomy in managing their own affairs. The departure of the Israeli army from Gaza was one of the outcomes of the Oslo Accords.
However, from Israel’s perspective, the Oslo Accords turned out to be a complete failure, because Israeli deaths due to terror attacks increased almost tenfold after the Accords were signed.
It is clear that the Palestinian leaders regarded the Oslo Accords as but a milestone along a road to the eventual elimination of Israel. Yassir Arafat, who had signed off on the Accords on behalf of Palestinians, told a Muslim audience in South Africa six months later that the Accords were a ruse. He referred to how Muhammad had deceived the Meccans by entering a treaty with them and then breaking it.
Another PLO official, Faisal Husseini, in his last interview in 2001, called the Accords a “Trojan Horse”, a “temporary procedure, or a step towards something bigger”. He described the Intifada [the Palestinian uprising of 2000] as “the coming down out of the horse.”
Recently pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas protestors have been chanting, “From the river to the sea” and “Khaybar! Khaybar!” What do these chants mean?
These are very well-known, even famous chants.
In Arabic, this is a rhyming chant which expresses an intention to liberate all land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. This includes all of present-day Israel. This chant is code for “Israel must be destroyed.” How must it be destroyed? By destroying its people. The October 7 massacre was intended as a foretaste of what this would be like. This is a genocidal chant.
Other protestors have been heard chanting “Khaybar, Khaybar ya Yahud, jaish Muhammad sa ya ‘ud “Remember Khaybar, O Jews, Muhammad’s army will return!” This is a warning to Jews that, just as Muhammad’s army conquered the Jews of the Khaybar Oasis in Arabia (c. 628 CE), subjecting them to occupation and forcing them to pay an annual tribute to the Muslims of 50% of their harvest, so Muslims will once again conquer and rule over Jews in Palestine. This chant ties the idea of Palestinian “resistance” to an age-old narrative of the origins of Islam.
Why haven’t Palestinian refugees been settled somewhere, as has happened with millions of other refugees in modern times?
During the past century, vast numbers of civilian refugees have been resettled. Examples are the millions of Germans who fled Eastern Europe after World War II; the millions of Hindus and Muslims who were displaced at the time of the partition of India; the 400,000 displaced Karelians who were resettled in Finland after the Winter War with the Soviet Union; the 1.5 million Greeks whose ancestors had lived in Asia Minor for thousands of years but were expelled in 1922 by the Turks; the 400,000 Turks who were expelled from Greece and resettled in Turkey in a population exchange at that time; and the almost one million Jews who fled or were expelled from Muslim countries after the declaration of Israel in 1948. None of these multitudes are kept by the United Nations in permanent refugee camps.
Imagine what a mess Europe would be in today if the ten million or more Germans who were driven out of Eastern Europe after WWII had all been kept in refugee camps on the eastern borders of Germany with Poland and Czechia, waiting for their “right of return” to be granted, and inspired by a genocidal hatred towards the peoples who now occupy the lands where they used to live. And imagine if the United Nations had spent billions sustaining these camps, for generations.
The situation of the Palestinians as refugees is like this. With the exception of Jordan, surrounding Arab countries may accept them as guest workers, but they have not offered them integration as citizens. Even Jordan, which does count many Palestinians among its citizens, will take no more, certainly not since the Black September Jordanian Civil War of 1970-71, in which the Palestinian Liberation Organization tried to assassinate the king and overthrow the Jordanian monarchy. PLO fighters were eventually driven into southern Lebanon. (Black September points to another reason why Arab nations are unwilling to welcome Palestinians: they fear the political instability they could bring: better that this be directed against Israel.)
The Arab nations have forced the Palestinians to become a permanent refugee people, and this in spite of Pan-Arab ideology, which considers Arabs to be one people. This has been for the purpose of opposing Israel. This is not motivated by compassion for the Palestinians. It has been a cruel and damaging policy, locking generations into ‘refugee’ status.
Democrats claim election fraud is a myth. But videos don’t lie.
Roll the tapes:
On Nov. 1, Connecticut Judge William Clark overturned the results of the Bridgeport mayoral primary, calling video evidence of potential fraud “shocking.” Wanda Geter-Pataky, the vice chair of the Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee, appears to have been caught on video stuffing handfuls of ballots into a drop box outside City Hall.
On Oct. 25, in Paterson, New Jersey, the sitting president of the City Council, Alex Mendez, was charged with personally collecting large numbers of mail-in ballots in his district, destroying ballots that did not favor him and replacing them with ballots that falsely chose him. New Jersey’s Attorney General Matthew Platkin states that Mendez “personally observed from his wife’s vehicle as a large, heavy bag, completely filled with ballots, was emptied into the Haledon postal box prior to the election.”
On Nov. 2, in Springfield, Massachusetts, mayoral candidate Justin Hurst was nailed by city election officials for allegedly buying votes during early voting. Videotape shows individuals being dropped off in black Suburbans and Expeditions, and entering City Hall to vote. When they exited, a man “takes out what appears to be a large bundle of cash” and peels off a bill for each individual, according to an affidavit by election commissioner Gladys Oyola-Lopez.
In one week, election fraudsters were busted in three major Northeastern cities.
Cheating is a Cakewalk, and It’s All Around Us
Leftist organizations such as the Brennan Center for Justice and the League of Women Voters claim voter fraud is a “phantom” and “extremely rare.” Don’t buy it. The evidence is all around us.
Cheating is a cakewalk because of accommodations pushed by Democrats, including universal mail-in voting and unmanned drop boxes.
Now is the time to scrutinize the 2023 races and plug the obvious gaps. Cheating should not determine the outcome in the highly consequential 2024 national election.
Now is the time to scrutinize the 2023 races and plug the obvious gaps. Cheating should not determine the outcome in the highly consequential 2024 national election.
In Bridgeport’s 2023 mayoral primary, Democratic candidate John Gomes was ahead, until he got crushed late in the process when absentee votes favoring incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim were counted.
One Bridgeport pol described the use of absentee ballots there as “an art form.” That “art form” may partially explain how Ganim, who was Bridgeport’s mayor from 1991 to 2003 — before serving seven years in federal prison for racketeering, extortion, filing false tax returns, and other crimes — was able to stage a comeback upon his release from prison and win election in 2015 and 2019.
In Connecticut, Democrats are singing one song: Fraud is “unique to Bridgeport” and isn’t a problem elsewhere. Wrong.
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Last year, John Mallozzi, then chairman of the Democratic Party in Stamford, was convicted of forgery and making false statements related to absentee ballots. His ruse was uncovered when a voter named on a fraudulent absentee ballot actually showed up at the polls.
Connecticut Republican legislators are pushing to improve voting security. Rep. Doug Dubitsky, a Republican, says “this exact same thing could be happening in every single municipality in this state.” But Democrats who control both houses of the state legislature and all statewide offices refuse to tighten voting procedures.
Democrats Oppose Safeguards to Voting
That’s not hard to explain. In statewide races, including for governor or president, Republicans historically have been ahead until the absentee ballots in the Democrat-controlled cities in Connecticut are tallied.
Across the nation, Republicans are pressing state legislatures to eliminate drop boxes and bar third parties from collecting huge numbers of completed ballots — a practice called “harvesting.” Republicans also want to use software to match the signature on the mail-in ballot to the signature on the voter registration form.
Democrats almost universally oppose these safeguards, calling them “voter suppression.” “Cheating suppression” is more like it.
America Has One Year to Get Smart
Perceptions of unfairness are corrosive. At a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing in June, polls were cited showing 37% of Democratic-leaning voters and 71% of Republican-leaning voters doubt the honesty of elections.
Most European countries require voters to show up in person, unless they are out of the country or disabled. These countries tried mail-in voting and eliminated it in the face of widespread fraud.
Americans need to get smart. Convenience shouldn’t take priority over security. Before you board a plane, you have to wait in line while your carry-ons are inspected. It’s inconvenient but worth it.
Same is true for voting. When you turn on the TV on election night to watch the returns, you want to know the results are honest, whether your candidate wins or not.
America has one year to get the job done.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at http://www.creators.com.
Antisemitism around the world has risen to constitute an “existential threat” in the thirty-four days since Hamas slaughtered 1,300 Israeli civilians and wounded more than 3,300. Antisemitism in the US had already escalated last year to the highest recorded level. Now CNNreports that a “new wave of antisemitism threatens to rock an already unstable world.”
At the same time, we must not forget the Palestinian civilians who are suffering in Gaza: at this writing, the Hamas-controlled health ministry reports more than 10,569 Palestinians have been killed since the invasion, including 4,324 children. The New York Timesreports this morning that tens of thousands are fleeing the northern Gaza Strip. And we must remember the more than 242 soldiers and civilians who are being held hostage.
I’ve been responding nearly every day since October 7 to this unfolding tragedy and consider it one of the hinge points of recent history. Today, I want to take a step back to ask a hard question: Why does God allow such innocent suffering?
This is how I have reasoned my way through this dilemma over the years:
One: God created us to love our Lord and our neighbor (Matthew 22:37–39). However, love requires a choice. No one can force us to love someone.
Two: Thus, God gave us freedom of will. He knew that we would misuse this freedom before he gave it, but he considered our freedom to love him and each other worth the death of his Son (Revelation 13:8; John 3:16).
Three: When we misuse our free will, the consequences are not God’s fault but ours. When I was a seminary philosophy professor, my students sometimes complained that my tests were too difficult. However, those who studied diligently made an A on the tests and in my class. When students chose not to study, by contrast, the consequences were not my fault.
Four: If God prevents the consequences of misused freedom, we are not truly free. If I am on a diet but choose to order a pizza and the delivery person brings me celery sticks, my freedom was apparent but not real. If chess players can retract every move they make that turns out to be disadvantageous to them, the game cannot be played.
Five: If God intervenes occasionally to prevent such consequences, we will ask why he does not do so every time. If we insist that he must prevent all terrorism, we will next want him to prevent all murder. Then all crime. Then all deceit, then all adultery, then all lust, and so on.
So far, so good. I understand logically why God must allow horrific atrocities as the price of our free will without which we cannot fulfill our created purpose.
But there’s a very large but . . .
We’re back to our problem
The problem with my reasoning is that God does sometimes prevent the consequences of misused freedom. He allowed Herod to execute James (Acts 12:1–2), but he sent his angel to keep Herod from executing Peter (vv. 3–11). If Peter, why not James?
He allowed Egyptian pharaohs to enslave the Jews for four hundred years, but then he sent Moses to lead them through the Red Sea to freedom. If then, why not four centuries earlier?
So, we’re back to our problem. Since God is omnipotent, he could have prevented Hamas from slaughtering Jews. Since he is omniscient, he knew about their plot before it unfolded. Since he is omnibenevolent, he must want only their best, which would obviously preclude beheading babies, massacring families, and taking hundreds of people hostage. Since he sometimes intervenes to protect the innocent from the sins of the guilty, he could have done so on October 7.
And yet, he did not.
We can substitute any other group of innocent victims in today’s discussion. The Palestinians in Gaza being used by Hamas as human shields are an obvious example. The Uyghurs being brutally repressed by China are another. The 1,403 teens and children killed in gun violence so far this year in the US are yet another.
You undoubtedly have examples in your own life of times you have been victimized by the sins of others. I have my own as well.
“When darkness seems to hide his face”
Today’s conversation leaves us with two choices.
One: We can refuse to trust God because we do not understand why he sometimes protects innocent victims but sometimes does not. We can characterize him as arbitrary and thus unworthy of our faith and devotion.
Where would this leave us? We will miss the wisdom he grants to those who follow his omniscient guidance, the power he bestows to those who seek his omnipotent care, and the “abundant” life Jesus died to give us (John 10:10). By boycotting his providential provision, we grieve our Father but we also impoverish ourselves and everyone we influence.
Two: We can choose to trust in God though we do not understand the ways he sometimes responds to innocent suffering. We can place our Father in the same category as others we trust though they sometimes disappoint us (which is everyone we trust).
God assures us that one day we will understand what we do not understand today (1 Corinthians 13:12). In the meantime, the more painful our suffering and thus the less we understand why God allows it, the more we need to trust it to his compassionate care.
The British pastor and hymnwriter Edward Mote testified:
When darkness seems to hide his face, I rest on his unchanging grace; In every high and stormy gale My anchor holds within the vale. On Christ, the solid rock, I stand; All other ground is sinking sand, All other ground is sinking sand.
According to popular thinking, our planet is headed for a global catastrophe. In this deep dive, we look at 10 reasons to seriously doubt climate alarmism.
“We are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes.” — Greta Thunberg, climate activist
“The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, U.S. Congresswoman
“To avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis, we have nine years left.” — John Kerry, former U.S. Secretary of State
“We’re going to pass the point of no return within the next eight to ten years.” — Joe Biden, 46th U.S. President
The belief that humanity has only around a decade left before we trigger a climate catastrophe is now deeply embedded in popular culture. But is it true?
Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg was the first to popularise the idea that the year 2030 represents an existential ‘cliff’ for planet earth. She was citing a 2018 Special Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The opening page of that document states, “Global warming is likely to reach 1.5 degrees C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.” Talk of a climate emergency began when activists adopted the earliest date in that range, 2030 — and when they assumed the IPCC prediction was an infallible prophecy, rather than the speculative computer model that it is.
By giving a range of 2030 to 2052, the report’s authors were admitting to a high level of uncertainty. They were definitely not suggesting we have only 12 years left to “save the world”. Prominent climate scientists, including some of the panelists themselves, have cast doubt on the 2030 deadline and the alarmism it has sparked.
A Closer Look at Climate Alarmism
Climate change orthodoxy states that since the 1800s, humans have been the main drivers of climate change through burning ‘fossil fuels’ like coal, oil and gas. Burning these fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that create a blanket around the earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising global temperatures — now to dangerously high levels, or so the story goes.
It is true that since the Industrial Revolution, the atmospheric concentration of one greenhouse gas in particular — carbon dioxide (CO2) — has risen by over 50% (from 280 ppm in 1750 to 421 ppm in 2022).
But leaping to the belief that a global catastrophe is therefore just around the corner is an extreme position. Unfortunately, it is also now the mainstream position, at least in the West’s most powerful institutions. It is prompting teenagers to suffer from ‘climate anxiety’ and young adults to forgo having children for fear of what the future holds.
No side of this debate has a monopoly on care for the environment. The majority of people, regardless of their thoughts on climate change, want to promote human flourishing while minimising negative impacts on the environment. Both sides want future generations to inherit a healthy planet.
Christians especially have a vested interest in caring for the earth. We believe that nature has intrinsic value because God made it and owns it (Genesis 1:1, Psalm 24:1). When God created the first humans, he put them in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it (Genesis 2:15). He extended this mandate to all people and to all creation, making humans the caretakers of the planet (Genesis 1:26, Psalm 8:6).
The greatest commandment Jesus gave was to love God and to love our neighbours (Matthew 22:37-40). We are to do everything to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31), which includes how we use the earth and its resources. Loving our neighbours entails caring for the environment upon which our neighbours depend for their survival.
However, Christians are mistaken when they think the only way to be good caretakers of earth is to embrace the climate alarmism promoted by the media, politicians and universities. Climate alarmism might be wildly popular, but like so many fads, its wild popularity is why it deserves to be questioned.
Consider ten reasons to question climate alarmism.
1. The Uncertainties
If all citizens, governments and nations — including the world’s poorest — are to make drastic lifestyle changes to avert an imminent ‘climate disaster’, we had better be fairly certain that a climate disaster is actually on its way.
In fact, we are far from certain. Climate panic is confounded by a swathe of uncertainties.
Firstly, if humans suddenly stopped emitting CO2, there is no certainty that CO2 levels would stop rising. Why? Humans only contribute a fraction — approximately 5% — of all CO2 to earth’s atmosphere. The rest comes from volcanoes, oceans, plants, animals and decaying plant matter.
Second, if CO2 levels stopped rising, there is no certainty that greenhouse gas levels on the whole would stop rising. CO2 is responsible for only 10% of the overall greenhouse effect (and it comprises only 0.04% of earth’s atmosphere). The major player among greenhouse gases is actually water vapour, over which humans have almost no influence, except at a local level.
Third, if greenhouse gas levels stopped rising, there is no certainty that global temperatures would stop rising. The earth’s average temperature has risen and fallen many times in the past. It was warmer during Jesus’ lifetime, cooler when the Anglo-Saxons overran Britain, warmer again in the late Medieval era, and cooler again just before Industrialisation. During the Medieval Warm Period, for example, vineyards were common across northern England, Greenland was much greener (hence the name), and farmers spread into Russia’s northern regions.
In short, the climate has always changed without help or hindrance from humans.
It is very possible that natural forces are largely responsible for the recent global warming we are seeing. The climate models popular today largely neglect these natural forces and cannot explain the warmings and coolings that happened before the Industrial Revolution.
Even since the Industrial Revolution, the causal link between greenhouse gas emissions and global temperature is far from certain. About half of the warming since then took place before cars and planes were invented, and when industrial production was insignificant and CO2 levels were fairly constant. Conversely, CO2 emissions soared during the post-War economic boom (1940-1970) even as global temperatures dropped for the same four decades running.
2. The Benefits of CO2
Consider another uncertainty: even if CO2 levels were to keep rising at their current trajectory, there is no certainty earth would suffer as a result.
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is a beneficial, naturally-occurring, colourless, odourless, non-toxic trace gas. More importantly, CO2 is fundamental for all life on earth. It is what every living creature exhales; it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis; and it forms the basis of the planetary food chain. If CO2 levels in earth’s atmosphere were to drop by just a small amount, all plants would die, causing oxygen levels to plummet and all animal life to go extinct. That would be catastrophic climate change!
Climate alarmism has made it fashionable to label CO2 a ‘pollutant’. Humans do emit pollutants, including carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and other toxic gases that combine to form smog and poison the air. But to lump CO2 with those toxins and call it a pollutant is a betrayal of science, language and reason. Pollution kills, but CO2 causes life on earth to thrive.
As already stated, the concentration of CO2 in earth’s atmosphere is currently around 421 ppm (parts per million). In the past, that figure was up to 15 times higher. Today, commercial greenhouses inject CO2 to achieve levels of between 1,000 ppm and 1,500 ppm for optimum plant growth.
3. Earth is Greening
The role of CO2 as plant food is not just theoretical. As CO2 levels have risen, earth has been getting greener.
Over the last 35 years, quarter to half of earth’s vegetated lands have shown significant greening, according to a study published in Nature and publicised by NASA. The growth, measured as an increase in leaves on plants and trees, is equivalent in area to two times the continental United States. Researchers credit 70% of the recorded greening to carbon dioxide fertilisation.
A warmer, greener planet is a more fertile and more inhabitable planet. The record of history also bears this out. Previous coolings have led to famine, social disruption and depopulation. Conversely, a warmer planet has meant more prosperous times for humanity, including increased longevity, longer growing seasons, higher crop yields, population growth and wealth accumulation.
4. Failed Predictions
Most who accept climate alarmism are unaware that climate scientists and the media have been making doomsday climate predictions for well over a century. That so many ‘Chicken Little’ predictions have fallen flat is now omitted from public discourse, but it is a matter of history.
The apocalyptic predictions made include global famine, mass extinctions, a hole in the ozone layer, acid rain, island nations disappearing below the sea, melting polar ice caps, and many other catastrophes that have failed to materialise.
Consider just a selection of them.
In 1981, a NASA scientist predicted global warming of “almost unprecedented magnitude” over the next century that would melt swathes of Antarctica and cause a rise in sea level of up to 6 metres. In fact, in the last quarter century, sea levels have risen less than 8 cm.
In 1987, a U.C. Berkley professor who later served in the Obama administration predicted that a billion people could die from famines due to climate change. He reaffirmed his prediction two decades later. In fact, today the world produces enough food to feed everyone, and although hunger and undernourishment persist, these metrics have plummeted for decades running.
In 2001, the IPCC predicted that milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms. Around the same time, one senior climate scientist at the University of East Anglia forecast that within a few years, winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event,” saying, “children just aren’t going to know what snow is”. In fact, since 1967 snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has grown, with above average snow coverage for almost every year of the 2010s.
Also in 2001, the IPCC predicted that climate change would lead to prolonged fire seasons, more days with severe burning conditions, increased lightning activity and therefore more fires and larger areas burned. In fact, the global area of land burned each year declined by 24% between 1998 and 2015.
In 2005, experts from the World Conservation Union predicted a polar bear population decline of 30% over the next 35 to 50 years. In fact, over the following decade, the estimated polar bear population rose by around 18%.
In 2007, environmentalist Tim Flannery predicted that Sydney and Brisbane would soon run out of water, stating, “even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems”. In fact, in 2022, Australia’s east coast saw record-breaking rain, overflowing reservoirs and flooding rivers.
In 2010, a team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that “the U.S. Southeast and the Bahamas will be pounded by more very intense hurricanes in the coming decades due to global warming,” and that the strongest hurricanes may double in frequency. In fact, after 40 years of global warming, no increase in hurricanes has been detected. Significantly, deaths from natural disasters in general have declined by over 90% in the last hundred years.
In 2012, a report was published predicting doom for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), spawning mass media coverage. It claimed that “coral cover in the central and southern regions of the GBR is likely to decline to 5–10% by 2022” and that “the future of the GBR therefore depends on decisive action”. Headlines as recently as 2020 declared, “Half of the Great Barrier Reef’s corals have been killed by climate change”. In fact, in 2022, the Australian Institute of Marine Science reported that two thirds of the reef is showing record levels of coral cover, with 40% more coverage than the historical maximum in 1986.
Indeed, the IPCC has used over 100 climate models to predict future temperatures. In almost every case, the models have seriously over-predicted global surface temperatures in response to rising CO2.
If so many climate doomsday predictions by leading scientists have been wrong in the past, how will future generations judge the predictions of today?
5. A False Consensus
The claim has long circulated that 97% of climate scientists agree humans are heating up the planet to concerning levels. A detailed analysis of that claim found it to be severely exaggerated.
Among those who disagree are more than 1,600 scientists and professionals who have signed the World Climate Declaration, stating that there is no climate emergency. Likewise, the Global Warming Petition Project has been signed by over 31,000 American scientists — including 9,000 with PhDs — who reject climate alarmism.
Although plenty of dissent does exist in the scientific community, one thing is certain: disagreement is no longer acceptable. Today, if you argue that CO2 is good for the planet, that nature is largely responsible for global warming, or that climate predictions rely on inadequate modelling, you are demonised as a ‘climate denier’. Even activists and climate scientists who change their minds after a closer look at the data are smeared with this label. Most western governments and private companies refuse to hire scientists who reject climate orthodoxy.
Patrick Moore, who co-founded Greenpeace but has since left the organisation, agrees. He now states unequivocally that “climate alarmism is groupthink” — which he defines as “mindless adherence to a narrative” and “the enemy of science”. Former New Scientist editor Nigel Calder has likewise lamented that, “The whole global warming business has become like a religion, and people who disagree are called heretics. I’m a heretic.”
Other high-profile climate dissenters include Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, Australian geologist Ian Plimer, American physicist Will Happer, Japanese scientist Kiminori Itoh, the late physicist Freeman Dyson, and many, many more.
Though these scientists are eminently qualified, they are ostracised as apostates for having the ‘wrong opinion’ on climate science, and their professional achievements are considered null and void. They are automatically rendered non-experts. Worse, their views are often censored in the scientific community, the legacy press and on social media, allowing little room for robust debate.
Thus, when climate alarmists say there is consensus on the issue and that “the science is settled”, it is a false consensus, only made possible by silencing those who disagree.
Even if a genuine consensus on climate change did exist, scientific truth is not discovered by consensus. The ‘argument from consensus’ is a logical fallacy, and one that has hindered science at various turns through history. The Ptolemaic model of the solar system was the scientific consensus for 1,500 years, for instance, but it was wrong. Spontaneous generation, Haeckel’s recapitulation theory, Einstein’s static universe and the existence of the planet Vulcan are other examples of consensus ‘science’ that was later found to be false.
Rather than claiming there is a consensus on climate change, it would be more accurate to say climate science has been captured by a ruling paradigm. That doesn’t make the theory of manmade climate change false — but it certainly doesn’t make it true either.
6. The Political Agenda
Climate science has also been captured by a political agenda.
Climate alarmism has spawned a $1.5 trillian dollar industry — much of it taxpayer-funded — that depends for its existence on ‘dangerous manmade climate change’ being true. To put it more bluntly, tens of thousands of taxpayer-funded jobs now hinge on the perpetuation of climate panic. Fear of a coming catastrophe keeps the money flowing to the climate industrial complex.
Driving this agenda are globalist bodies like the World Economic Forum and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which present themselves as neutral and purely interested in the science. In truth, they are political organisations run by political apparatchiks and driven by a political agenda.
Under their influence, groupthink has become as big a problem for politicians as it has for scientists. Politicians no longer dare voice any scepticism toward climate change orthodoxy. In politics, the complexities of climate science are swept aside by pithy catchphrases that prioritise election-day success over truth and accuracy. At best, it is very difficult to separate the climate science from the politics, creating a hostile environment for sound public policy.
The politicisation of climate science has, in turn, led to the corruption of climate science. It is no secret that funding is the lifeblood of science, and that by and large, politicians and bureaucrats hold the purse strings. For the best chance of having a grant approved, advancing one’s career, or getting published, scientists must now echo the politically correct view of climate change.
According to Patrick Moore, the environmental movement has morphed into a political movement: “They are primarily focused on creating narratives, stories, that are designed to instil fear and guilt into the public so the public will send them money.” Illustrating what this looks like on the ground, Nigel Calder explained:
If I wanted to do research on, shall we say, the squirrels of Sussex… I would write my grant application, saying, “I want to investigate the nut-gathering behaviour of squirrels with special reference to the effects of global warming”, and that way I get my money. If I forget to mention global warming, I might not get my money.
7. Fraud and Manipulation
An unfortunate outcome of Christianity’s decline across the West is a marked increase of dishonesty and fraud in research. The field of climate science is no exception.
Just weeks before the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, thousands of emails between climate scientists at East Anglia University were leaked online, exposing a scandal known as ‘Climategate’. Though the legacy press hosed down the debacle, in the emails was proof that scientists had deliberately tampered with tree ring data to fit prior assumptions about historic global temperatures.
Soon afterwards, the infamous ‘hockey stick’ graph — a highly-influential graphic that was an icon for climate alarmists — was also exposed as fraudulent. Produced by a team led by Michael Mann of Penn State University, the graph displayed layers of data to reconstruct the last thousand years of earth’s temperature. But it had been fudged: Mann had cherry-picked data to ‘erase’ the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age from the temperature record. Mann later lost a court case over the matter and refused to pay the court-ordered costs — yet was still awarded the 2019 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement!
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has also been exposed for deleting high temperatures from past records. In one instance, the BOM erased Australia’s hottest day — 125°F (51.7°C) at Bourke on 3 January 1909 — claiming that it was an anomaly since neighbouring stations did not register similar temperatures. Yet nearby Brewarrina recorded 123°F (50.6°C) for the same day. The Bureau also erased Australia’s second hottest day, where 51.1°C (124°F) was recorded at White Cliffs on 12 January, 1939. The BOM fudged the figures when digitising historic temperature records, but was exposed by then-Liberal MP Craig Kelly who searched the handwritten archives. In fact, the BOM has adjusted all historical temperature records (an adjustment they call ACORN-SAT) to support the warming narrative.
Similar fraud has taken place in the United States. In advance of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a paper that altered historic climate data, eliminating a two-decade “climate change hiatus” that had been a bugbear for climate alarmists. The paper’s authors were eventually found out for their dishonesty. NASA has been credibly accused of similar data manipulation to support the case for CO₂-driven global warming.
It is an unfortunate fact that the public remains largely unaware of the climate data that has been fraudulently produced and that is still used in shaping public policy today.
8. The Harms of Hysteria
Over the last three decades, even as the global population has almost doubled, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has fallen from 38% to less than 9%. This incredible progress has been made possible through the generation of wealth by free markets that have had access to cheap, reliable electricity. Increased crop yields from fertilisers made with fossil fuels have also been immensely helpful in this task.
Climate alarmists have romantic notions of a world powered by ‘renewables’ but their favoured technologies cannot produce the utopia they long for. Better termed ‘unreliables’, wind and solar power are intermittent, only producing power about 10–30% of the time for most of the year. Their limitations are natural, not technological: no amount of innovation will make the sun shine longer or the wind blow more consistently. The only solution is to cover more landmass with wind and solar farms, which, like any farm, means clearing vast tracts of wildlife. Wind turbines also regularly kill big birds and represent one of the greatest threats to endangered big bird species.
Despite these realities, climate alarmists now demand a shut-down of reliable electricity. In the words of Greta Thunberg, “Just reducing emissions is not enough. Our greenhouse gas emissions has to stop… Zero in 2050 means nothing if high emissions continues even for a few years.” The predictable result of such climate hysteria will be de-growth and deindustrialisation.
There are no current examples of low-energy societies providing a decent living standard for their citizens, though a team of European researchers created a realistic model of what it would look like. They found that, in order to “save the planet from catastrophic climate change”, Americans would have to cut their energy use by over 90%, share a 60m2 house between four people, and fly only once every three years.
If that sounds ominous, those most harmed by climate hysteria will actually be the poorest of the poor. “The rich countries can afford to engage in some zealous experimentation with other forms of energy,” says African economist James Shikwati. “But for us, we are still at the stage of survival.”
Shikwati laments those who are “keen to kill the African dream”, explaining that “the African dream is to develop”. He warns, “We are being told, ‘don’t touch your resources, don’t touch your oil, don’t touch your coal’. That is suicide.” Shikwati recognises there is no way Africa can be industrialised with unreliable energy: “I don’t see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry, how a solar panel is going to power maybe some railway train network. It might work maybe to power a small transistor radio.”
Those who sow fear of a climate catastrophe actually prevent vital industrial progress in the developing world. In countries too poor to develop, this perpetuates the burning of dung and wood for energy, which endangers the poor and pollutes the environment. In fact, lifting the poorest out of poverty as quickly as possible — which requires reliable energy — will deliver the best outcome for them and for the environment. As Bjørn Lomborg writes:
The cleanest places are not the poorest countries, but the richer economies that have cleaned up their act. As societies become richer, individuals can afford to stop worrying about food and sanitation, and to start worrying about the environment.
Much harm has been done and will be done by climate hysteria. Conversely, according to former Ronald Reagan adviser Thomas Gale Moore, “The optimal way to deal with potential climate change is not to embark on a futile attempt to prevent it but to promote growth and prosperity so that people will have the resources to deal with it.”
9. The Hypocrisy
The greatest tell that climate alarmism is overhyped is the hypocrisy of its loudest proponents.
The World Economic Forum (WEC) claims one of its principle aims is to “limit global temperature rise and stave off disaster”. Yet at their 2022 annual summit in Davos, WEC delegates shunned Switzerland’s railway network and instead flew on 1,040 private jets to the alpine resort town. In doing so, they belched out the same amount of CO2 as 350,000 petrol cars would have over the same weeklong period.
President Joe Biden’s climate czar John Kerry emitted 325 metric tons of CO2 through private jet travel in just his first 18 months in the role. In 2019, he flew by private jet to Iceland to receive the Arctic Circle award for his work on climate change, and defended the decision as “the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle”.
Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates’ latest book is called How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, in which he warns that humans must reach zero emissions within 30 years to avoid a catastrophe. Gates owns not one but at least four private jets, and calls the collection his ‘guilty pleasure’.
At Davos in 2023, Al Gore claimed that climate change is “boiling the oceans”, causing “rain bombs” and will create one billion climate refugees. Gore’s hype is hard to believe, given that he lives in a 20-room Tennessee mansion that uses up to 34 times the energy of an average American home. He justifies his lifestyle by buying carbon credits to offset his ‘carbon footprint’ — from companies in which he is heavily invested and that have profited handsomely from his alarmist activism.
Celebrities are some of the biggest climate hypocrites. Director Steven Spielberg calls global warming a “scientific reality” that “terrified” him. But in just two months during 2022, his private jet burned more than $116,000 in fuel and emitted 180 tons of carbon dioxide. Just two days after Prince Harry wrote on Instagram that “every choice, every footprint, every action makes a difference” in saving the planet, he and Meghan Markle took a private jet to Ibiza — and then a week later to the French Riviera. Taylor Swift has called climate change one of the “horrific situations” plaguing the world. But her private jet, which she regularly lends out to friends, emitted 1,200 times the average person’s total annual emissions. According to an analysis by Yard, that makes Swift the worst ‘emission offender’ among celebrity jet-owners, whose average carbon emissions are at least 480 times that of the average person.
Some of the biggest climate activists continue buying waterfront mansions with huge ‘carbon footprints’ along coastlines they claim are disappearing under the ocean. Among them are Bill and Melinda Gates, Barack and Michelle Obama (whose Martha’s Vineyard property is pictured below), John Kerry, Al Gore and Tim Flannery. Too many to number, climate hypocrites prophesy disaster, guilting ordinary people into downsizing their lives, all the while enjoying immense wealth that will protect them from any such sacrifice.
They do not deserve to be taken seriously until they start practicing what they preach.
10. A Rival Worldview
Greta Thunberg has declared, “The climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fuelled it. We need to dismantle them all.” While Greta doesn’t speak for all climate activists, the view she expressed is increasingly mainstream. Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore identified this trend many years ago:
World Communism failed, the [Berlin] wall came down, and a lot of peaceniks and political activists moved into the environmental movement, bringing their neo-Marxism with them. [They] learned to use green language in a very clever way to cloak agendas that actually have more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation than they do anything with ecology or science.
IPCC panelists like German economist Ottmar Edenhofer have stated, “we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy”. According to Edenhofer, “One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
At best, it is increasingly difficult to separate climate alarmism from neo-Marxism. At worst, far from being motivated by Christian concerns for the environment, today’s climate alarmism springs from an ideology deeply hostile to Christianity. Sadly, many young and naive Christians are being seduced into a movement that will do little for the planet but will almost certainly shipwreck their faith.
Australian cultural commentator Martyn Iles identifies climate alarmism as a “fully integrated ideology” that seeks to displace Christianity in a post-Christian world:
When you scratch below the surface, this is not merely about climate change. This is an entire worldview. It has its own theory of human rights, of justice, of the nation state, of immigration, of humanity, of democracy, of good and evil… It is an anti-West, anti-capitalist system… Climate change alarmism is one of the many suits of clothes that is being worn in the modern West by Marxism.
Like all millenarian religions, climate alarmism preaches impending catastrophe if certain radical changes are not made, and a strict moral code offering a path to ‘salvation’. But it denies central tenets of the Christian faith. Climate alarmists view humans as a mere cog in the machine of nature, rather than as creatures uniquely made in the image of God with authority and care over other created things (Psalm 8:3-8). In the worst instances, activists like David Attenborough have described humans as a “plague on the earth”. Some even call for depopulation. Either way, most climate activists also proudly support policies that encourage sterility and depopulation, including abortion to birth, euthanasia and child transgenderism.
Perhaps the most subtle tenet of Christianity denied by climate alarmists is that God is sovereign over his creation. After the greatest natural catastrophe the world has ever seen — the global flood of Noah’s day — God promised, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). Christians can have confidence that God designed the climate to be broadly stable, and that there is only one apocalypse to herald: the glorious return of Jesus Christ.
There is No Cause For Panic
Belief in a coming climate catastrophism will doubtless be with us for years to come, but it is a house of cards. There is no ‘climate emergency’ and no cause for panic.
Debate remains over the role humans play in shaping earth’s climate, what changes the climate will undergo into the future, and how the planet and humanity will adapt to those changes. Without question, we have a responsibility to care for the environment, curtail pollution and preserve our planet for future generations.
But waiting for impending doom will only disappoint and disillusion — and radical action to try to avert it will likely do more damage than good.
Far better to apply the words of Scripture: “Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.” (Psalm 37:3).
While the world’s attention is focused on the war raging between Israel and Hamas, the military confrontation between the United States and Hezbollah is heating up. Since the Hamas attacks on 7 October and the subsequent retaliation by Israel, U.S. military bases and outposts in Syria and Iraq are facing daily attacks with rocket, missiles and mortars. I learned today from someone who regularly visits Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland that the wards are filling up with U.S. military personnel wounded in recent attacks on those bases.
The White House and the Department of Defense are working actively to suppress this information, apparently out of fear that the American public will recoil at news of the losses and step up pressure for the United States to get out of Iraq and Syria.
Hezbollah leader Nasrallah was very clear in his sermon a week ago (Friday) that if the United States attacks Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria that Hezbollah will retaliate. The New York Post just reported that U.S. combat aircraft hit an Iranian weapons storage base in Syria:
US warplanes struck a weapons storage facility used by Iran and its proxies in eastern Syria shortly after Tehran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone.
In a statement, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the strike was in response to more than three dozen attacks on American military sites across Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17. . . .
The Biden administration has vowed not to get in direct combat on Israel’s behalf, but US forces remain in the region on a counter-ISIS mission, while the Pentagon dispatched two aircraft carrier strike groups to the eastern Mediterranean following Hamas’ savage Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that killed more than 1,400 people — including at least 33 Americans.
This was not a strategic blow to Iran and Hezbollah. It is a tit-for-tat strike that is certain to inspire Iran and Hezbollah to escalate attacks on U.S. bases in Syria and Iraq and to conduct more strikes on Israeli positions in northern Israel. The combat between the United States and Hezbollah is escalating and there is no sign that either side is prepared to backdown. Nasrallah is set to give a new sermon on Saturday and is expected to address the recent attacks on Hezbollah and civilians in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, the war is raging in Gaza, with both Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) claiming successes. Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, is keeping a running list of Israel’s KIAs since October 7. You can see the list here.
Israel has a clear advantage in tanks and air power. Hamas has the advantage of fighting on its home turf. I think it will be weeks before we know the true story of the losses incurred in this horror.
Israel is facing mounting international diplomatic pressure, including from the Biden Administration. All of the BRICS nations, with the exception of India, are condemning Israel’s indiscriminate bombing as a war crime and calling for a ceasefire. Netanyahu, so far, is refusing to back off.
With anti-Semitism in America hitting unprecedented heights in the wake of Israel’s war with Hamas, one of House’s longest-sitting Republican foreign policy leaders says the Democratic Party is fomenting Jew-hatred from the halls of Congress.
If it would not cause scandal or confusion among other Catholics, ‘a transsexual, even one who has undergone hormone treatment and gender reassignment surgery, may receive baptism under the same conditions as other faithful,’ said a document from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The Roman Catholic Church, started by the Roman Empire on or around 325 AD, has for the past 1,700 years claimed to be the only ‘authorized representative of Jesus Christ’ on this Earth. A mighty big claim to say the least. But leaving that aside for just a moment, you will take note of the fact that just about everything they stand for goes against what is revealed to us in the pages of the Holy Bible. Such is the case with the latest edict of Pope Francis as he continues to create his affirming church.
“For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.” Acts 20:29-31 (KJB)
If Jesus were walking the Earth in His earthly ministry today, He absolutely would minister to the LGBTQ+ people including the transgender and the transsexuals. He would tell them that their sin, like all sin, needs to be repented of, and He would invite them to trust in Him as their Saviour. But He wouldn’t for one second confirm anyone in the sins of the LGBTQ+ Movement, He would compare what they were doing to Sodom and Gomorrah who were destroyed for doing such things. The Roman Catholic Church is a lot of things, but being the church started by Jesus Church is not something they can claim.
Vatican: Trans persons can be baptized as Catholics, serve as godparents
FROM THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER: The document, signed Oct. 31 by Pope Francis and by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the dicastery, was posted in Italian on the office’s website Nov. 8. A note published with it said the document was a response to a letter submitted in July by Bishop José Negri of Santo Amaro, Brazil, “containing some questions about the possible participation in baptism and weddings by transexual persons and homo-affective persons.”
The questions about weddings involved whether trans persons or other LGBTQ+ persons could be witnesses at a Catholic wedding. The response to both questions was that “there is nothing in current universal canonical legislation that prohibits” either from serving as a witness at a Catholic marriage.
Responses to the questions about baptism were longer, more nuanced and urged pastoral prudence to minister to the people in question, safeguard the sacrament and prevent scandal.
Whether deciding to baptize a person or to permit him or her to serve as a godparent, “due pastoral prudence demands that every situation be wisely pondered, in order to safeguard the sacrament of baptism and especially its reception, which is a precious good to be protected, since it is necessary for salvation,” the document said.
Special care must be taken, it said, when “there are doubts about the objective moral situation in which the person finds him- or herself, or about his or her subjective dispositions toward grace.”
The church teaches that when baptism is received without repentance for serious sins, it said, he or she receives the “sacramental character” but not “sanctifying grace.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Vatican’s note said, affirms that “this configuration to Christ and to the Church, brought about by the Spirit, is indelible, it remains forever in the Christian as a positive disposition for grace, a promise and guarantee of divine protection, and as a vocation to divine worship and to the service of the Church.” READ MORE
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