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
We will not—and cannot—hold ourselves fast. We are too prone to wander, as the old hymn laments. We are too quick to be distracted by the fleeting pleasures of this world. We are too easily pulled away by the cares of society, the opinions of peers, the criticisms of careless critics.
But we weren’t meant to hold ourselves fast. We weren’t created to keep it together on our own. In fact, it’s when we attempt to do that that shows our glaring need for a Savior. And not just a Savior who saves, but a Savior who keeps—who holds us fast.
It’s during our good days that we forget who holds us fast. Our poor days—the days of prevalent sin and relentless temptation—that we must look up and see our God, the One who holds us fast. The God, our God, who holds us up when we can’t seem to figure it out. The One who reassures us of His love, which is a driving force to keep us on the path of righteousness, the sanctified life, the road to glorification in the end.
Christian, you can’t hold yourself fast. It’s foolish to even try. To try is to reveal we think we can live the Christian life apart from the sovereign power and grace of God. How silly. But God does hold us fast—and does so sovereignly and perfectly.
Here’s the plan: Keep striving, by His grace, to be like Christ while Christ keeps you fast. Don’t look back, only upward.
“And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.” – 1 Thessalonians 2:13
Paul praises God that the Thessalonians received his preaching as the Word of God and he could say that because he saw evidence of the Word bearing fruit among them. The Word of God was at work in their lives.
How do we receive the Word when it comes to us from the pulpit each Lord’s Day again? The preached Word comes to us through the human agency of preachers, but it is God Himself speaking to us and every time we hear Him, He demands a response. Isaiah reminds us that the Word never returns empty or void; it will accomplish the purpose for which God has sent it (Isaiah 55:11).
God’s purpose in preaching is to call men and women out of darkness, into His marvellous light. Our souls are rescued for all eternity through the preaching of the Word. It is the instrument of the Holy Spirit to create faith in the hearts of God’s elect, but because the Word “works”, it can also have a devastating effect. The preached Word softens the heart of the child of God, but it also further hardens the heart of him who refuses to hear and respond in faith and repentance. That lays a tremendous burden upon preachers, but no less does it place an obligation upon the pew sitter.
The Thessalonians could be at ease; they received the gospel with joy. How about us? How about you? What is your attitude toward the preached Word on Sundays?
Suggestions for prayer
Ask God to open your heart to joyfully, gratefully receive His Word. Thank Him for regenerating your heart, enabling you to respond favourably to the preached Word.
Rev. Mark Zylstra is an emeritus minister of the United Reformed Churches in North America. He and his wife Corrie, live in Smithville ON and their home church is Wellandport, ON URC. Get this devotional delivered directly to your phone each day via our RP App. It is also available in print, for purchase, at NTGDevotional.com.
In seasons of doubt or discouragement, how do we know our faith is secure? In John 6, Jesus spoke of the vast wonder of saving faith, declaring Himself to be “the bread of life.” Whoever comes to Him and believes in Him, He said, will not hunger or thirst, nor will they ever be cast out. Examining these remarkable and reassuring words, Alistair Begg reminds us that our salvation is grounded in the
Thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee.Deuteronomy 33:29
That archenemy, the devil, is a liar from the beginning; but he is so very plausible that, like mother Eve, we are led to believe him. Yet in our experience we shall prove him a liar.
He says that we shall fall from grace, dishonor our profession, and perish with the doom of apostates; but, trusting in the Lord Jesus, we shall hold on our way and prove that Jesus loses none whom His Father gave Him. He tells us that our bread will fail, and we shall starve with our children; yet the Feeder of the ravens has not forgotten us yet, and He will never do so, but will prepare us a table in the presence of our enemies.
He whispers that the Lord will not deliver us Out of the trial which is looming in the distance, and he threatens that the last ounce will break the camel’s back. What a liar he is! For the Lord will never leave us or forsake us. “Let him deliver him now!” cries the false fiend: but the Lord will silence him by coming to our rescue.
He takes great delight in telling us that death will prove too much for us. “How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?” But there also he shall prove a liar unto us, and we shall pass through the river singing psalms of glory.
“You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You.” Isaiah 26:3
Almost everyone I know wants more peace in their lives. Many people that I know are desperately hoping and grasping for what seems altogether impossible in their present situations. They don’t see solutions but just maybe they can find some peace.
If there is a remedy for finding peace in our turmoil-filled lives, it will happen when we see our Holy God as He is, Almighty, all powerful, all-knowing, wholly Sovereign.
We will not learn how to free ourselves of anxiety – until we learn to give Him our worries and believe He will never forsake us no matter what is going on, according to the promise of Deuteronomy 31:6,
“Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.”
Most worry develops because we cannot fix our problems. We can’t make things happen and we can’t make things stop. When we choose to trust, worry loses its fierce grip from our nervous wringing hands.
We will have peace when we believe the same God who parted seas, loosed prison chains, and used marching men shouting and blowing trumpets to topple a city wall, is the same God who never leaves us in our hour of need. This same God will walk with us in the difficult trials of our lives.
We will have peace when we believe with assured confidence He will carry our burdens and carry us, too. He will take us through, always walking beside us. He is all the help we will ever need. This is why we can find peace when we make the significant choice to trust the Lord.
If you have never walked in a relationship with Christ you can start today by committing and submitting your llife to him. You can start this with a simple prayer:
Lord, thank You for dying so we can be set free from all of guilt and sin — no matter how big or small. Your blood has erased all of our sin. Thank You so much! Lord Jesus, I want to know you personally. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life to you and ask you to come in as my Savior and Lord. Take control of my life. Thank you for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Make me the kind of person you want me to be. Amen
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”— Matthew 6:25
Worries are many, and they all seem to trouble our hearts around bill time or tax time, don’t they? Jesus reminded us that life is more than food, clothes, or money. The real question is whether we can live like life is more than food, clothes, and money! We are easily deceived, like Esau, who sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. Let’s not sell out what is precious to us for the allure of what will most likely end in difficulty and entanglements. So much of what the world pursues ? and the devil tempts us to pursue ? doesn’t have eternal value.
Generous Father, banish fear and selfishness from my heart. I know you have already provided the most incredible gift of all time, Jesus. Please help me pursue you and your will, not the things that choke your presence out of my life and distract me from what is eternal. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.
400 earthquakes recorded under Mount St. Helens since mid-July Scientist says small quakes signal volcano is ‘recharging. About 400 earthquakes have rumbled under Mount St. Helens since mid-July, the largest chain of shakes since the volcano finished erupting in 2008
Strange moon of asteroid Dinkinesh is weirder than thought after NASA probe finds ‘contact binary’ This image shows the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) as NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft departed the system. From this perspective, the satellite is revealed to be a contact binary, the first time a contact binary has been seen orbiting another asteroid. “It is puzzling, to say the least,” the Southwest Research Institute’s Hal Levison, principal investigator for Lucy, said in the statement. “I would have never expected a system that looks like this.
Brain Imaging Identifies Biomarkers Of Mental Illness Research and treatment of psychiatric disorders are stymied by a lack of biomarkers – objective biological or physiological markers that can help diagnose, track, predict, and treat diseases. In a new study, researchers use a very large dataset to identify predictive brain imaging-based biomarkers of mental illness in adolescents. … psychiatric disorders such as depression have been diagnosed based on symptoms according to subjective assessments. The identification of biomarkers to aid in diagnosis and treatment selection would greatly advance treatments.
15 Reasons Liberal US Jews Shouldn’t Be Shocked by Fellow Leftists’ Siding With Hamas Left-wing American Jews feel betrayed by the Left. It’s a Left that remains anti-Israel even after the greatest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and even though most Palestinians and their supporters explicitly call for the destruction of the Jewish state: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Democrats’ Evolving Defense Means Biden Impeachment Closing In, GOP Congressman Says Democrats’ evolving defense of President Joe Biden and his family’s business activities speaks volumes about where the congressional investigation that is now an impeachment inquiry is going, says Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga. “If the evidence wasn’t legitimate evidence, they would still be at their very first position,” Clyde, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Wednesday. “But they are not because the evidence has refuted their position. It’s going to refute their position all the way to the point of legitimate articles of impeachment.”
Concealed Foreign Money to US Universities Linked to Campus Antisemitism, Erosion of Liberal Norms: Report “Over the last decade, institutions of higher education across the United States of America received billions of dollars from foreign donors that were not reported to the US Department of Education, as required,” said the report, titled “The Corruption of the American Mind.” “In its totality, these findings described how a lack of transparency in funding reporting occurred in tandem with antidemocratic norms and antisemitism across American institutions of higher education.”
Turkish, Iranian Presidents Unite in Condemnation of Israel, Western Countries The leaders of Turkey and Iran underlined their support for the Hamas terrorist organization on Wednesday, launching bitter attacks against both Israel and its Western allies on the sidelines of a summit meeting in Uzbekistan. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi made their comments while attending the meeting in Tashkent of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), which brings together Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and other nations in central Asia.
Israel demands action after journalists reportedly joined Hamas massacre The media watchdog HonestReporting published an investigative report late on Wednesday showing that journalists from leading news outlets, including The New York Times, AP, Reuters and CNN, joined Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip on October 7 to document the horrific events with their cameras.
Mossad, CIA chiefs in talks with Qatari PM for 3-day Gaza ceasefire With calls for a humanitarian pause or a temporary ceasefire growing around the world, mediators are said to be closing on an agreement for a three-day ceasefire and expansion of humanitarian aid permitted into Gaza, in exchange for the release of some of the roughly 240 hostages still held by Hamas. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that claims an agreement had already been reached are nothing more than “idle rumors.”
Israel, US separately strike Iranian proxies in Syria Separate Israeli and US airstrikes in Syria targeted Iranian proxies on Wednesday night, according to Syrian media and the Pentagon. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that Israel had struck Hezbollah facilities near Damascus, as well as a Syrian air defense site. Israeli officials did not confirm the attacks.
The time for peace is not now If the world forces Israel into making concessions for peace, Iran and Hamas will declare victory. Israel has not quite been given the green light to wipe out Hamas. I would say a flashing orange light. Israel’s allies have said: Yes, we support your efforts to kill Hamas, but do it the “right way.” Do it in a way that lays the foundation for a “two-state solution.”
Oversight committee subpoenas Biden family members The subpoena comes after mounting evidence suggests that President Joe Biden may have directly benefited from the overseas dealings under investigation. Pointing to released bank records and testimony from IRS whistleblowers and Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s business associate, Comer says the Biden family and associates received more than $24 million that was
California set for significant precipitation as atmospheric river develops An evolving storm system off the California coast, forecasted to develop into at least one atmospheric river, is set to deliver substantial rainfall and snowfall across the West Coast starting this weekend. With the Northeast Pacific Ocean as the stage, the interaction of several low-pressure systems is predicted to have a significant impact, particularly from November 14 to 17, as per the Atmospheric River Reconnaissance field campaign.
1,400 earthquakes rattling Iceland’s Blue Lagoon in just 24 hours sends tourists packing Iceland’s famed Blue Lagoon has temporarily closed after 1,400 earthquakes in just 24 hours rattled the nerves of resort guests. The wellness spa resort is based around a lagoon of geothermal heated seawater which harnesses the power of the nearby Fagradalsfjall volcanic complex.
Terrorists and Saboteurs Are Surging into America A caravan of some 7,000 people, one of the largest ever, is now making its way to the U.S. During the last few weeks, Rubin has been reporting on this mass movement of humanity as it surges toward America.
Breaking the Bank: The Unprecedented Bank Outages Sweeping America – A Winter of Financial Discontent As a chilling economic winter descends, America’s once unassailable financial fortresses are under siege by a series of catastrophic bank outages and failures, leaving millions of customers stranded in a digital wasteland, bereft of access to their hard-earned money. The country stands on the precipice of a banking calamity, the likes of which we have never witnessed, and with every passing day, the anger and panic amongst Americans grow.
Catholic Church Allows Trannies To Be Baptized The Vatican announced that transgender people can be baptized in the Catholic Church, witnesses at religious weddings, and become godparents on Wednesday, representing the continued liberalization of the Christian denomination under Pope Francis‘s premiership.
AstraZeneca’s COVID Vaccine Was ‘Defective’, Lawsuit Claims AstraZeneca is facing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit in the English High Court following claims that the pharmaceutical giant’s COVID-19 vaccine caused serious injuries and even death to those who received it.
U.S. Inching Towards World War III While Biden Administration Hides U.S. Casualties 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.
New Zealand medicine regulator extends provisional authorisation for Pfizer covid mRNA injection for two years Medsafe, the New Zealand Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority, announced last week that it had renewed Pfizer’s provisional consent to distribute its covid “vaccines” in New Zealand for another two years. Meanwhile, as Dr. Guy Hatchard highlights, pressure is growing on the New Zealand government and the medical establishment to act responsibly to inform the public of risks, end vaccine promotion and repudiate the proposed WHO international health preparedness accord.
“We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is however, the prostituted companion of liberty, and somehow or other, we know not how, its efficient auxiliary.” —Fisher Ames (1807)
Fellow Patriots, on this day in 1775, the U.S. Marine Corps was created by the Continental Congress. And on this day in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicated the Marine Corps Memorial, depicting the famous flag-raising on Iwo Jima, in Arlington, Virginia. Tomorrow is also Veterans Day, though the federal observance is today. We’re grateful today and every day for these American Patriots. —Mark Alexander
The embittered battle-ax was back on “The View,” warning us about the dangers of Adolf Trump.
Douglas Andrews
Like a canker sore, she keeps coming back.
It’s hard to know for sure, but perhaps what’s animating Hillary Clinton is that she’s come to the same realization that Brit Hume has. “The thing the Democrat Party and its allies face now,” said Fox News’s éminence grise, “is the fact that for tens of millions of Americans, life was unmistakably better when Donald Trump was president.”
This is undeniably true, and from any number of observable metrics: inflation, gas prices, stock market performance, illegal immigration, military readiness, war, crime, you name it. Donald Trump’s “America First” policies were good for the country and good for its people.
It’s also true that Joe Biden has made a miserable mess of things, and yet he’s running for reelection. Taken together, and as recent polling has shown, the Democrats face the very real prospect of a second term for Trump.
And it’s driving Hillary nuts. So much so that she showed up on “The View” to make a thoughtful and ingenious comparison that we don’t think has ever been made before, except maybe once: Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. As National Review’s Kyle Smith noted some six years ago, “I can’t emphasize enough how fresh, how novel, how utterly without precedent this Hitler-Trump comparison is.”
When one thinks about it, the similarities are downright chilling. Hitler started a world war that killed more than 50 million people, and Trump kept the peace. Hitler invaded Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia, and Trump didn’t invade any countries. Hitler gave us the “Final Solution,” killing six million Jews in the process, and Trump gave us the Abraham Accords.
Eerie, isn’t it?
As for Hillary, she was introduced by Whoopi Goldberg. She then gave a doctrinaire Democrat’s assessment of Tuesday’s election results, nodded knowingly when cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin called Trump “an existential threat to this country,” and defended Biden by saying, “Look at the alternative.”
At that point, Joy Behar weighed in: “You know, this country has a lot of problems, and the main one is named Donald Trump. Okay, I can’t personally believe that this loser has so many people that still think that he could make a decent president.” Clearly, Behar needs to get out more. She reminds us of longtime New York Times theater critic Pauline Kael, who, upon learning that Richard Nixon had whipped George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election, betrayed the elitist bubble that many leftists live in: “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”
But then Behar really stepped in it: “By the way, you know, Mrs. Clinton did win the popular vote. I continue to believe that you won. I don’t care what they say.”
Whoa, Joy! Come again with that election denialism?
After saying that she refuses to even contemplate Trump’s return to the White House, how such an event would be “the end of our country as we know it,” she went full Godwin on her dim-witted panelists and their equally dim-witted audience: “Hitler was duly elected, right? And so, all of a sudden, somebody with those tendencies, those dictatorial, authoritarian tendencies would be like, ‘Oh, okay, we’re gonna shut this down, we’re gonna throw these people in jail.’ And, and, they didn’t usually telegraph that. Trump is telling us what he intends to do. Take him at his word. The man means to throw people in jail who disagree with him, shut down legitimate press outlets, do what he can to literally undermine the rule of law and our country’s values.”
Uh-huh. Trump is “telling us” that he’s going to shut things down and throw folks in the clink and undermine Rule of Law. Remind us again which party is trying to throw which candidate in jail with four indictments on 91 charges.
We think Hillary is projecting. Or maybe she’s still bitter after all these years because she got caught measuring the drapes. Or maybe it’s a bit of both. As for playing the Hitler card, Hillary insulted both Trump and the Jewish people — Trump because he has Jewish grandchildren, and because he resolutely moved our embassy in Israel to its rightful place in Jerusalem, and because his administration architected the Abraham Accords; and Jews everywhere because Hitler comparisons are odious on their face.
As for Behar the Trumpian Election Denier, the show’s producers got to her during the break and told her that she needed to walk back her comment. Which she then dutifully did, lying through her teeth and looking as though she was chewing glass while doing so.
All in all, just another day among the ditzes on “The View.”
Not only did these freelance photojournalists cross an ethical line, it prompts more questions about major news outlets’ credibility and morality.
Emmy Griffin
“Stringers” is the colloquial term for freelance photojournalists. They are often employed by multiple media news outlets but are still bound to the journalistic ethics and rules when obtaining and selling their photos. These types of photographers are essential, particularly in locations that are not domestic, to aid in coverage of breaking news.
However, stringers employed by American-based mainstream media (MSM) companies such as Reuters, the Associated Press, The New York Times, and CNN appeared to have crossed that ethical line. They were present, documenting the attack from start to finish, and potentially participating in the October 7 massacre in Israel. They crossed the border illegally into Israel, and many were not wearing any gear that identified them as members of the press.
The journalistic watchdog group that uncovered this duplicity is called Honest Reporting. It discovered that these photojournalists were not only linked to these news outlets but seemed to be in collusion or at least embedded with the Hamas terrorists during the attack. Honest Reporting reasoned:
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? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically.
When the article broke, the biggest question on many people’s minds was: Did these American news outlets have advanced knowledge of the attack? All the MSM outlets have unequivocally denied having advanced knowledge.
While this may well be true, these outlets did pay for these freelancers’ photos and gave them photo credits on their sites. They have since faced calls, particularly from Israel, to distance themselves from the photographers in question. CNN has severed ties with one of the photographers, Hassan Eslaiah. This photojournalist had done work for the AP as well. On October 7, Eslaiah had a lot of questionable photos uploaded, such as of Hamas breeching the Israeli border, and most infamously this one of him posing with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, one of the orchestrators of the massacre.
The MSM have always had a certain slant when covering the Israel/Hamas war. They tend to report Hamas as the victims when it was Hamas that attacked Israel, hides behind civilians to protect themselves, steals from their people to live lives of luxury in Qatar, and openly calls for the eradication of the Jews. The New York Times’s biased reporting on behalf of the terrorists has already gotten it in trouble.
Now to the wisdom of using “freelance journalists” based in Gaza. This is a fraught proposition from the start. These Palestinian journalists are likely either a part of Hamas or are controlled by the terror group. They have no real journalistic freedom, and using them as “reliable” sources is foolish.
The MSM are full of fools, of course. Hamas happily uses these journalists as intermediaries to play games with Western media, which turn around and paint this inaccurate picture of the oppressed/oppressor dynamic to justify atrocities. The MSM are dedicated to the moral equivocation narrative, and because they have become narrative-driven rather than fact-driven, they are the West’s biggest traitors.
Why this MSM insistence on moral equivalence, particularly in light of all the clear evidence of Hamas being the agents of genocidal evil against Israeli Jews? There is not a short or easy answer to that. Part of the answer has to do with the departure from Judeo-Christian-based morality and the move toward leftist notions of moral relativism and Marxist teachings of racial oppression. Other parts of the answer have to do with what journalism has become: narrative-driven. Reporters’ blindness to their own hypocrisy and betrayal of journalistic values have led them to this pass.
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro asks the biggest question of all: “Would journalistic outlets like the AP and Reuters use stringers associated with white supremacist groups in order to take pictures at Charlottesville? Or are they only willing to use stringers who associate openly with terrorists and voice their support for Hitler, so long as they’re Islamic radicals? What moral responsibility do the AP and Reuters and their like bear for printing the propaganda of Hamas and its minions?”
These MSM outfits have little to no public trust as it is. Most Americans, according to a New York Times/Siena poll, believe that the MSM are a “major threat” to democracy. This sentiment is probably more reinforced after the pitiful coverage of the Israel/Hamas war. The MSM are actively spreading propaganda in aid of the terrorists attacking the only democratic nation in the Middle East.
They are despicable, and this is just the latest nail in their morally corrupt coffin.
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Joe Manchin is out, Israel agrees to “humanitarian pauses,” Hamas screening brawl, and more.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
Manchin is out: In a video released Thursday on X, West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin announced that he would not seek reelection in 2024. “I’ve made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for reelection to the United States Senate,” Manchin stated. However, it appears that Manchin is not ready to hang up his political spurs just yet, as he added, “But what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there’s an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.” Manchin’s announcement comes as little surprise given the fact that he faced an uphill battle to retain his seat, with recent polling showing him trailing Republican challenger and current Mountain State Governor Jim Justice by double digits. As hinted above, Manchin may be contemplating a third-party presidential run, as several months ago he teamed up with Republican and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman to speak at a No Labels town hall event. Meanwhile, this likely solidifies a Senate seat for Republicans in the 2024 election, which already has Democrats defending 20 seats (arguably 23 with three “independents”) to Republicans’ 11 seats.
Israel agrees to “humanitarian pauses”: “The fighting continues against the Hamas enemy, the Hamas terrorists,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, “but in specific locations for a given period, a few hours here, a few hours there, we want to facilitate a safe passage of civilians away from the zone of fighting. And we’re doing that.” Not surprisingly, Joe Biden took credit for the mini ceasefires, which began yesterday and which would ostensibly allow Gaza civilians to flee southward. “It’s critical, absolutely vital,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, “that humanitarian supplies and assistance are expanded in the areas where people are moving, in this case, southern Gaza.” This is all well and good for the Biden administration, which is seeking to placate the pro-Hamas wing of the Democrat Party and keep Arab American voters from defecting ahead of the 2024 elections. But, as Netanyahu stressed, “The fighting continues and there will be no cease-fire without the release of our hostages.”
Another ridiculously stupid “fact-check”: What a miserable life a “fact-checker” must lead. Imagine waking up every morning and realizing that your job is to masquerade as a truth-teller while knowing in your heart that you’re nothing more than a partisan hack and a liar to boot. During Wednesday’s Republican debate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was commenting on the Biden administration’s inept response to Hamas’s hostage-taking in Israel: “Biden’s neglect has been atrocious,” he said. “We had Floridians that were over there after the attack. He left them stranded; they couldn’t get flights out. So I scrambled resources in Florida. I sent planes over to Israel and I brought back over 700 people to safety.” That’s good stuff, governor, but not according to the “fact-checkers” at NBC News, who rate this claim as only “half true.” Apparently, DeSantis didn’t personally pilot any of the planes, nor did he personally script every last detail of the operation. Instead, he did what successful leaders always do: He deliberated, he decided, and he delegated. But that’s the difference between a can-do governor and a can’t-do partisan. “There’s no half truth here,” posted DeSantis Press Secretary Jeremy Redfern. “He sent planes to Israel, and he brought back over 700 people.” Clearly, someone needs to fact-check these “fact-checkers.”
Prices are higher, but inflation is … not? In one sense, you’ve got to hand it to Leftmedia propagandists — they’ve been handed a turnip and are trying to convince the American public that it’s actually an ice cream cone. That turnip is Joe Biden’s dismal economy, created primarily by his administration’s massive spending policies that sent inflation skyrocketing to 40-year highs. And, of course, with high inflation comes higher prices on everything because the value of the dollar is sinking. It’s Economics 101. Attempting to deny or spin away from this reality, Vox’s Emily Stone wrote an article effectively lamenting that people don’t recognize that the economy is actually pretty good because they’re living in 2023 but want 2019 prices. Talk about gaslighting. Americans judge a good economy by seeing their bank accounts growing and not shrinking, seeing their buying power increasing and not decreasing. In short, a good economy is when expenses for living decrease relative to earnings. Inflation is a hidden tax that robs Americans of their wealth, as it continuously eats away at the value of their savings and buying power. Whatever leftists do to take the onus off of Joe Biden and Democrats is simply false.
Conspiracies and Pelosi’s attacker: Weird doings at the trial of lifelong leftist David DePape, 43, who just over a year ago attacked 83-year-old Paul Pelosi in his San Francisco home with a hammer. “Where’s Nancy?” DePape apparently demanded of Pelosi before the cops arrived; when they did, he wrested the hammer from Pelosi’s grip and bludgeoned him. Why did he do it? According to DePape’s defense attorney, he “truly believed he was trying to save the world from a secret cabal of high-profile pedophiles.” Apparently, the homeless, nudist, drug-addled, anti-Semitic, BLM-supporting Berkeleyite is actually a QAnon conspiracy theorist who, according to his defense team, took to the Internet and became aware that “the ‘liberal ruling class’ spread lies and abused children.” We’re not sure where this is headed, but we suspect DePape’s defense team thinks their best chance is to paint Pelosi’s assailant as a fringy right-winger rather than the lifelong leftist that he always has been. “Journalism,” quipped David Burge of IowaHawk some years ago, “is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.” And nowhere is that sentiment more spot-on than with the reporting around David DePape and Paul Pelosi.
Hamas screening brawl: The images and the footage are deeply disturbing, but Israeli actress Gal Gadot believes they must be seen — which is why she organized a private screening in Los Angeles Wednesday evening of “Bearing Witness to the October 7 Massacre,” a 43-minute compilation of videos shot by Hamas terrorists themselves. The footage, which was taken during their barbaric attack on the men, women, and children of Israel, shows “graphic images of murder and destruction, including children being shot and killed in their pajamas.” We understand the need for journalists to view and thereby attest to such grisly footage, but we’re not sure why anyone else would want to. Of course, we’re not a Hollywood “elite.” The screening took place at the Museum of Tolerance, where, ironically, a show of pro-Hamas intolerance erupted outside the theater shortly afterward. As National Review reports: “One hour after the event was over, a small group of demonstrators returned to the same location. Those demonstrators became involved in a physical fight [before officers] returned to the area and peace was restored.” As journalist Eve Barlow, who saw the film, posted: “Tonight I bore witness. … Outside the [theater], a violent pro-Palestine mob’s chants could be heard in the theater. They can’t drown out the truth.”
Is population decline coming? The lie of global overpopulation, a concept made popular by the 1968 book The Population Bomb by Stanford biology professor Paul Ehrlich and his wife Anne, has deceived generations of Westerners into thinking that “too many people” is an existential threat to humanity and the planet. The reality is the exact opposite. Fewer people results in greater deprivation of resources rather than exploitation of them. The threat facing much of the developed world is depopulation. The U.S. Census Bureau released its estimates for the nation’s population, and the report predicts that by the year 2080 the U.S. population will have peaked, and by 2100, for the first time in American history, the population will be in decline. The Census Bureau projects that without a “high-immigration scenario,” the U.S. population will decline to 319 million by 2100. Today’s current U.S. population is over 340 million. The impact of our current ballooning national debt on a shrinking population will become even more acute, as we’ll have an aging population with fewer working-age people to tax to pay for it.
The result of COVID vax mandates: This is why government mandates are dangerous. On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of parents opting out of giving their children routine childhood vaccines has reached an all-time high. In the 2022-2023 school year, 3% of children going into kindergarten were granted vaccine exemptions by their states, the highest on record. Across the country, 40 states saw childhood vaccine exemption rates rise, and in 10 of those states the exemptions rose above 5%. “There is a rising distrust in the health care system,” observed Dr. Amna Husain, a pediatrician and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics. The rates of childhood vaccine exemptions, er, shot up over the last three years — prior to 2020, just two states had exemption rates over 5%. Can anyone guess the reason? The obvious culprit is the federal government’s draconian response to the COVID pandemic and the decision to mandate a novel COVID vaccine for the American public as the only solution, while at the same time waging a smear and censorship campaign against any medical professionals who dared to raise objections or even questions. By choosing to make the response to the pandemic a political issue, Washington is most at fault for sowing the distrust.
Headlines
Democrats’ plan to issue subpoenas in Supreme Court ethics probe hits roadblock (NBC News) | Dems vow to continue probe into wealthy donors’ ties to Thomas, Alito after GOP stalls subpoenas (National Review)
Third GOP debate draws fewer than seven million viewers on NBC (The Hill)
The Supreme Court appears willing to restrict the Second Amendment rights of a specific group of citizens.
Brian Mark Weber
Much to the dismay of the rapacious Left, the right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in our Constitution. And with a conservative edge on the Supreme Court, we’ve seen a more friendly attitude about the Second Amendment in recent years.
In 2022, for example, the Court ruled 6-3 in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen that law-abiding citizens have a right to carry a gun outside of their homes for purposes of self-defense and don’t need special permission from the government to do so. However, the ruling did not eliminate a state’s prerogative in licensing firearms, so the liberal outcry claiming the Court turned America into the Wild West is an exaggeration.
As our own Nate Jackson wrote at the time: “After the Court’s 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller ruling held that the Second Amendment has always been an individual right, and after its 2010 McDonald v. City of Chicago decision held that the Fourteenth Amendment means it ‘is fully applicable to the States,’ many states and cities nonetheless continued to chip away wherever they thought they could get away with it. Lower-court judges too often let them.”
In his commonsense opinion in Bruen, Justice Clarence Thomas reminded the Court, and gun-grabbing leftists everywhere, that we don’t need the government’s permission to defend ourselves. Indeed, self-defense is the first civil right.
Thomas’s approach to understanding the Constitution is refreshing: He looks at the wording of the document itself, reviews the debates surrounding the passage of the amendment, and then looks to see if other laws existed at the time of our founding and in 1868, when the Bill of Rights was deemed applicable to the states.
This is in stark contrast to how leftist justices look at the Second Amendment — by discarding historical precedents and original intent in favor of whatever they think the Constitution ought to mean.
Currently, the Supreme Court is reviewing the case of United States v. Rahimi, raising the important question about whether it’s constitutional to take away the Second Amendment right of people who’ve had protective orders issued against them.
According to The Wall Street Journal: “The Supreme Court’s ruling could have broader implications. The federal law challenged by [Zackey] Rahimi has other provisions that disarm other categories of Americans, including — call it the Hunter Biden clause — anyone ‘who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.’ When appeals courts go looking for historical analogues, how close to an exact fit is needed? Bruen was a landmark, but lower courts and legislators could use another guidepost from the Justices.”
At least according to a couple of Leftmedia outlets, even the conservative justices seem ready to acknowledge that convicted felons and citizens with a history of violence shouldn’t be allowed to possess firearms. As The Washington Post puts it, “Justices on both sides of the court’s ideological divide seem to think the Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from restricting firearm possession among individuals who are found to be a danger.”
As The New York Times reports, the Court’s conservative justices seem ready “to accept that a judicial finding of dangerousness in the context of domestic violence proceedings was sufficient to support a federal law making it a crime for people subject to [protective] orders to possess guns — even if there was no measure from the founding era precisely like the one at issue in the case.”
Indeed, during oral arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts grimly noted that “guns and domestic abuse are a deadly combination.” He continued: “As this Court has said, all too often, the only difference between a battered woman and a dead woman is the presence of a gun. Armed abusers also pose grave danger to police officers responding to domestic violence calls and to the public at large, as Zackey Rahimi’s own conduct shows. To address that acute threat, Congress and 48 states and territories temporarily disarm individuals subject to domestic violence protective orders.”
We can’t say we’re surprised. Red flag laws and similar measures do seem to have broad public support because no one wants a dangerously unstable person to have a gun. Yet most people don’t understand the threat to due process rights these laws present in practice.
However, the good news is that, thanks to the Court’s solid conservative majority, the Second Amendment is broadly secure — for now — even if this case goes the way it seems to be headed. The justices made it clear in Bruen, McDonald, and Heller that the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms is a critical part of the Constitution.
Bloated government plays a huge role, of course, but so does the increasing girth of Americans.
Nate Jackson
Stop us if you’ve heard this before: Health insurance premiums are rising rapidly.
Thanks to Bidenomics, of course, prices for pretty much everything are rising rapidly. (The economic geniuses over at Vox tell us “The problem isn’t inflation. It’s prices.”)
Headline inflation is up 3.7% year over year and rising again after gradually easing from a painful high of 9.1%. Even that, however, masks reality: Since Joe Biden took office, his policies have yielded a cumulative inflation rate of more than 17%. And the year-over-year numbers are worse for something federal law since 2010 mandates that everyone purchase — health insurance.
“Average annual health insurance premiums in 2023 are $8,435 for single coverage and $23,968 for family coverage,” reports the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). “These average premiums each increased 7% in 2023. The average family premium has increased 22% since 2018 and 47% since 2013.” And if you’re wondering, “Over the last ten years, the growth in the average premium for family coverage far outpaced inflation (47% vs. 30%).”
We in our humble shop can attest to higher increases than that, sometimes reaching 30% in a single year for high-deductible HSA plans. We’re paying a lot more for less insurance as a result of ObamaCare.
And we’re hardly alone. “More than half of working-age Americans said they’ve struggled to afford care this year,” Axios reported last month. Skyrocketing insurance premiums and big medical bills are “forcing them to forgo or delay needed care.” More from Axios paints a bleak picture:
Almost 40% of adults reported skipping or putting off health care in the past year because they couldn’t afford it. Of this group, 57% said their health worsened as a result.
About 3 in 10 adults said health care costs made it harder to pay for food and utilities, regardless of their coverage status.
That’s not exactly what Barack Obama promised when he was hawking the — ahem — Affordable Care Act. In fact, he promised that premiums would get significantly cheaper.
Tellingly, Obama’s oft-repeated promise that “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it” was named PolitifFact’s “Lie of the Year” in 2013, the year ObamaCare went into effect and killed a bunch of health insurance plans. When you mandate that everyone buy a product, it’s going to be harder, if not impossible, to deliver that same product for a decent price — just as ObamaCare opponents had been warning all along.
That isn’t to say insurance companies or healthcare providers are innocent victims here. Indeed, the greatest irony of ObamaCare might be that Democrats “hated” Big Health so much that, according to researchers John Goodman and Beverly Gossage: “ObamaCare has been pouring about $60 billion a year in new money into the healthcare system. All that spending is lining the pockets of insurance companies, hospitals and some doctors — although it doesn’t appear that there has been any overall increase in the amount of healthcare being delivered.”
Meanwhile, Democrats and Joe Biden have added expensive subsidies and regulations on top of ObamaCare, realizing exactly the kind of bloated growth we also warned about more than a decade ago. “Federal subsidies for insurance premiums amount to $91 billion this year,” notes Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute.
Another early warning that’s come to fruition: Republicans would never repeal a new major entitlement. Even with unified control in Washington from 2017 to 2019, Republicans couldn’t muster the votes or willpower to save the country from this awful law. They’re not even pretending to try anymore, either.
Just this week, The Wall Street Journal featured a news article titled “Why Republicans Abandoned Their Fight to Repeal Obamacare.” The story explains the headline — virtually no Republican is even talking about repealing the law anymore. Perhaps that’s because of a KFF poll cited by the Journal: “Initially unpopular after its passage in 2010, the health law is now viewed favorably by some 60% of Americans.” That is mind-numbing given the cost increases we’ve highlighted, to say nothing of the constitutional problems that even the Supreme Court got wrong, but that’s an ill-informed electorate and Big Government for you.
Finally, a note of warning and, we hope, encouragement to all of us. Americans are going to pay more for insurance because we’re less healthy than we used to be. According to CDC date reported a couple of months ago, 22 states in 2022 had at least 35% of adults who were obese. When ObamaCare went into effect 10 years ago, that wasn’t true of any state. Heavier people are going to suffer more from health problems like heart disease and diabetes, which in turn will make insuring people more expensive.
The good news is that there’s something all of us can do about that.
As weak as Joe Biden is, if Republicans are divided, he (or his heir apparent) gets a cake walk back into the White House.
Laura Hollis
Another election, another round of recriminations.
I have ZERO confidence that the Republican Party will heed anything I say here, since they don’t listen to the dozens (or hundreds) of other better-known commentators making similar points. But as proof of the triumph of hope over experience, here goes:
No. 1: Ronna McDaniel has to go. How many embarrassing electoral defeats does the party have to endure before this woman is replaced? It was astonishing that McDaniel was reelected in January of this year to a fourth term as Republican National Committee chair on the heels of midterm elections that were, if not disastrous, then inexcusably disappointing for Republicans in what should have been a banner year.
At the January meeting, McDaniel said, “We heard you, grassroots. We know … [W]ith us united and all of us joining together, the Democrats are going to hear us in 2024.”
Oh, I see — just not in 2023?
And as for “hearing the grassroots,” on April 15, Scott Presler — who has become the Johnny Appleseed of Republican voter registration in state after state — asked McDaniel the following on X (formerly Twitter):
“I know that President Biden has an ‘army of influencers,’ who are dedicated to reaching the youth. Is there any plan to have an alternative team for the GOP? I’d also like to make the humble suggestion that you do a Twitter space. Thank you for listening.”
Every day since (207 days in a row at this writing), Presler has politely reposted his request for a response.
Crickets.
No. 2: You can’t win back in elections what you concede in the culture. Ohioans voted this week to amend the state’s constitution to create an unlimited right to abortion. The amendment also effectively removes parental rights over their minor children’s sexuality and gender identification, as well as their underage daughters’ ability to abort without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
In an X post that has received 685,000 views, author Mike Cernovich wrote, “Americans love abortion.” Actually, no. Americans don’t “love abortion.” What they do seem to love, however, is a culture saturated with irresponsible sex.
So many of our country’s problems are directly attributable to the “sexual revolution”: the breakdown of the family, single motherhood, child poverty and academic underachievement, crime, the explosion of sexually transmitted diseases in American teenagers (not to mention a host of other related emotional and psychological disorders).
It would be better for women, men, children and society at large if we valued human beings and respected sexuality as the precious and powerful gift it is within the context of a committed marriage, and not as mere entertainment, the natural consequences of which (children) are either treated as unwanted and expendable, or for which the biological parents are hopelessly unprepared.
But we are unwilling to engage on that issue. And in a culture where sex is treated as recreation, abortion becomes the inevitable escape valve.
Simple as that.
No. 3: Election integrity matters more than ever. If Republicans want a message to drive home in 2024 and thereafter, this is a big one.
On Tuesday, every single voting machine in Northampton County, Pennsylvania had to be shut down when voters noticed that the machines were “flipping votes.” This, the public was told, was a “coding” error.
How many times do we have to see this movie? If the machines can be “coded” to change votes, that’s a problem.
In addition to the ease with which electronic voting can be manipulated, we have the very real prospect of noncitizens voting. Eight million people are believed to have entered the U.S. illegally since Biden took office. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia require no photo identification to vote. Add to that the recent proliferation of mail-in voting and ballot harvesting, and you have the very real prospect of people who have no right to vote casting ballots in U.S. elections.
What we need is mandatory voter identification, a return to paper ballots, in-person voting, and to make Election Day an annual national holiday.
No. 4: Trump is a symptom, not a cause. Gleeful Democrats, irascible Never-Trumpers and recent converts to the Anybody-But-Trump faction are all pointing to former President Donald Trump as the primary reason for the GOP losing what should be winnable elections. Trump’s endorsements aren’t pulling his candidates over the finish line, the story goes, and he alienates centrists, moderates and independents. Trump is fracturing the Republican Party, they say.
The fractures are there, alright, but Trump didn’t create them. After years — nay, decades — of mouthing conservative platitudes only to capitulate to the Left when elected, the “grassroots” no longer believes anyone from the Republican “establishment,” and words like “bipartisanship” are signals for “we’ll back down at the first sign of pressure.”
If you really want Trump out and someone else in, find a candidate who is unafraid to oppose the hardcore Left, infuriate Democrats, thumb his (or her) nose at the media and stand up for ordinary Americans against the weaponized apparatus of the Deep State.
Easy-peasy, right?
No. 5: The GOP needs to unite behind a candidate. Spend some time on social media and you’ll see that Never-Trumpers can’t stand the MAGA movement; DeSantis fans relentlessly mock Trump supporters and Trump supporters accuse Ron DeSantis of being a globalist shill. Vivek Ramaswamy says the right things, but he was once nominated to be a World Economic Forum “Young Global Leader,” so he must be one of Klaus Schwab’s budding little environazis. Nikki Haley is viewed by the Trump base as a sellout.
As weak as Joe Biden is, if Republicans are divided, he (or his heir apparent) gets a cake walk back into the White House. And that is a consequence no one on the Right wants.
‘I Object’ — Sen. Tommy Tuberville blocks a huge list of military promotions on the Senate floor as he holds the line against the Biden administration’s illegal use of taxpayer dollars to facilitate abortions in the U.S. military.
Prison for a Meme? — Tucker Carlson interviewed Douglass Mackey, the man who operated the Twitter account “Ricky Vaughn” and was sentenced to prison for a meme.
“Mrs. Clinton did win the popular vote. I continue to believe that you won. I don’t care what they say.” —”The View” co-host Joy Behar
The BIG Lies
“Wages are actually going up. … Median household wealth has grown by 37% since the pandemic, meaning people are better off — 37% better off.” —President Joe Biden (“Real wages are down by 3.2% since Biden took office and middle-class households have lost, on average, more than $33,000 in real wealth in the past year alone.” —RNC)
“If folks wanna push for a two state, go for it. But guess what? … Netanyahu’s current government is not supporting that. He’s literally said it to us over and over again: He doesn’t wanna coexist with Palestinians.” —Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
Friendly Fire
“I am embarrassed for those Democrats who voted to censure their own colleague.” —Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)
Non Sequitur
“I remember being on the ground during the Ferguson uprising. And I remember not knowing what to do with tear gas. … And I remember one day a delegation of folks from Palestine showed up and taught us what to do. … But if I just traveled a mile away, there was no tear gas. … And it was just like people going on with their day. Well that’s what’s happening right now.” —Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-MO)
For the Record
“The correct impulse in reaction to October 7 is to ‘never forget.’ The opponents of the kidnapped posters, less than a month after the enormity and before the toll and consequences of the attack are fully known, insist to the contrary, ‘Please, don’t remind us.’” —Rich Lowry
Veep Thoughts
“I got some words! I got the vocabulary, and my pronunciation is perfect! Ha ha ha ha.” —Vice President Kamala Harris
Observations
“In one of the more astonishing statistics from Tuesday night, a whopping 24% of self-described ‘white evangelical or born-again Christians’ supported Ohio’s Issue 1, which not only puts the Buckeyes on par with California’s abortion extremism but gives the green light to minor transgender surgery — without parental consent. We’re expecting voters to act with moral clarity when the church won’t even speak to it.” —Suzanne Bowdey
“Advocates of same-sex marriage suffered a string of 32 losses at the ballot box before succeeding for the first time, in the bluest of states, in 2012. We disagreed with their objective, and both sides are more entrenched on the abortion issue, but their success serves as a reminder that a string of defeats at the ballot box is no reason to believe a cause is lost.” —National Review
“Those who are pro-life need to do a better job of portraying the other side as the real radicals. They mostly oppose any restrictions on abortion.” —Cal Thomas
Political Futures
“To chart a path back to the presidency, Trump must … work to become a different person, one who seeks unity rather than division. … To truly become presidential, Trump must rise above the urge for revenge and name-calling. The United States deserves leaders who can prioritize the greater good over personal vendettas, and Trump needs to rise above and be the type of leader his detractors don’t think he’s capable of being.” —Armstrong Williams
“The thing the Democrat Party and its allies face now is the fact that for tens of millions of Americans life was unmistakably better when Donald Trump was president.” —Brit Hume
And Last…
“There are only one or two things going on here. Either you’re not qualified to manage a Costco food court, or you believe in open borders. And I think it’s the latter.” —Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
On Thursday’s “The Record With Greta Van Susteren,” Israel Defense Forces Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus says certain journalists are under Hamas control, and they only report what Hamas allows. Watch NEWSMAX, an independent news network with a conservative perspective, available in 100M+ U.S. homes.
The whole ideologies of Bolshevism and Maoism rested on a condemnation of the masses and their old world and identities to convert them into the ‘new man’ of socialism.
But first, we will experience World War III and economic collapse
As our attention has been swayed toward the Middle East and war in Israel, the globalists are moving at breakneck speed toward their dream of establishing a truly digital society in which all human beings are tagged, tracked and graded for everything they do.
It was reported this week that the United Nations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and partners of the Rockefeller Foundation are launching a campaign to accelerate digital ID, digital payments, and data sharing rollouts in 50 countries by 2028, all under the umbrella of digital public infrastructure (DPI). (source).. They call it the “50-in-5 Agenda.” Isn’t that cute? I guess the term “Great Reset” is already wearing thin on people so they had to come up with a slick new moniker.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has announced plans to rollout “digital IDs” worldwide by the year 2030, and they will be mandatory for people who wish to participate in society, say Reclaim the Net, who advocate for free speech and individual liberty online,
It appears the European Union will be one of the more aggressive governmental bodies to move in the direction of digitizing its citizens. Once this is accomplished, the next step will be the digital currency and then a full-on social credit scoring system. China is the model for this.
The European Parliament and Member States have just reached an agreement on the introduction of digital identity, a Dutch MEP reported on November 8 in a post to X.
“I just left the room where we had negotiations about the digital identity—and I have bad news,” announced Dutch Member of the European Parliament Rob Roos on Wednesday.
Once this digital identifier is in place the next step will be a CBDC, or central bank digital currency. In the Great Reset, aka New World Order, the dual digitization of currency and human bodies always go together.
And Roos said that is exactly the plan in Europe.
On X, in a November 8 post that included a video, he wrote:
“BREAKING: Very bad news. The European Parliament and Member States just reached an agreement on introducing the Digital Identity, #eID. Directly afterwards, #EU Commissioner Breton said: “Now that we have a Digital Identity Wallet, we have to put something in it…”, suggesting a connection between #CBDC and eID. They ignored all the privacy experts and security specialists. They’re pushing it all through. I am not optimistic. But it is not too late yet. Parliament still has to vote about this. Let your MEP know that you oppose the Digital Identity and that you want your MEP to vote against it!”
🚨 BREAKING: Very bad news. The European Parliament and Member States just reached an agreement on introducing the Digital Identity, #eID.
Directly afterwards, #EU Commissioner Breton said: "Now that we have a Digital Identity Wallet, we have to put something in it…",… pic.twitter.com/SVC5exas9b
Dutch journalist Marc van der Vegt stated in a post to X: “The Citizens of the member states have to vote about this, period. In the Dutch Parliament a large majority was against the eID. But still it has been signed in Brussels by one of our ministers.”
Pressure will also increase on the United States to join the global digital system. I reported in April that a bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate that, if passed, would require all Americans to have a digital ID in order to function in society. In my opinion, the U.S. citizenry is not yet ready to go down this path of full digitization, although we are already part way down that path. Biometric facial scans are already being done at many U.S. airports, requiring a face scan before you can board an international flight. But I believe it will take a couple of more years of crushing inflation and a bloody World War III experience, at which point Americans will beg their lawmakers for any measure promising them a return to peace and economic normalcy. This is when you will see the full scope of digitization unfold, with mandates similar to what we saw with the vax only more intense.
But digitization will happen much faster in Europe because they have that extra layer of bureaucracy at the regional level which is able to bypass national resistance.
If we have trouble getting our state and national legislators to represent our interests, how much easier would it be for some hack even further removed from us at some regional or global Capitol to ignore our concerns? That’s already the case in Europe with the E.U.
The drive to digitize humanity and make us into obedient slaves is ultimately part of the United Nations-driven, WHO-driven, WEF-driven, Satanic beast system that, when fully mature, will be the fulfillment of Revelation 13. At some point, a global government will be established and nobody will be able to buy or sell, work a job, have a bank account, receive any healthcare, collect any government assistance (yes, that includes Social Security), etc., without submitting to the beast system. This will involve a digital marking.
The mark will likely not be visible like many Christians steeped in “Left Behind” messaging expect. Do not be deceived. This will be a digital mark invisible to the naked eye but easily detected by today’s scanning technology so that the system knows who it owns and who it doesn’t. Those it owns will be recognized by artificial intelligence and admitted into stores, government facilities, medical offices, etc., both online and brick and mortar locations. Those it doesn’t recognize will be blocked from entry, whether it be websites or physical stores.
In my opinion, it’s reasonable to believe that those of us who refuse the digital marking — and thus refuse to be owned as digital slaves of the system — will be able to live relatively unscathed for awhile in some type of off-grid communities that will spring up and perhaps even thrive. As more people realize that it’s possible to live quite happily and free outside the system, that’s when you will see the powers that be start to go on the offensive and try to shut them down.
Remember this: While Satan has his mark, the one and only Creator God and his Son Jesus Christ also have marked their followers. Which one will you choose? The Satanic mark will seem like the safe way to go and all of those people who follow the herd mentality of modern groupthink will take it. Few will even question it. This successful herding of the sheep was proven for the globalists during their test run in 2020 and 2021. Very few were willing to sacrifice a job or their social standing in order to go against the herd.
We have seen over the past month that Americans, Canadians and Europeans are willing to get out in the streets in large numbers to protest what they believe is the destruction of Palestinian freedoms and self determination. But how many of those same Westerners were willing to rally for their own freedoms when they were being tossed to the curb wholesale during the plandemic?
The only mark I will accept will be that of the only true Redeemer of souls I know, Jesus Christ. Now is the time to get right with God, trust in Him and Him only for your well-being, and get into a mindset of non-compliance with the world system, which is quickly becoming the Beast System of Revelation 13. This will take a lot of mental, physical and spiritual preparation.
Pfizer has funnelled a whopping $12 million dollars into the bank account of CNN host Anderson Cooper as part of a deal to promote the company’s toxic mRNA jabs to the American public.
According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., very few people are aware of the fact that Cooper gets the majority of his CNN pay-check from Pfizer.
80 percent of Cooper’s $12 million annual salary, roughly $10 million, comes directly from Pfizer, according to RFK. Jr.
“Anderson Cooper has a $12 million a year annual salary,” Kennedy revealed during the segment. “Well, $10 million of that is coming from Pfizer.”
“So, his boss is not CNN. His boss is Pfizer. And they’re unashamed about it. They’re unabashed about it. They say on his program ‘brought to you by Pfizer.’ Of course, he’s not going to tell you the truth about Pfizer’s product. He’s going to try to sell it to you. He’s going to try to scare the hell out of you saying ‘if you don’t take this, you’re going to die.'”
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Napoleon
It should be no mystery to anyone that Biden is not in charge. He is incapable of being in command of anything. While Biden eats ice cream and lounges at the beach, Obama is calling the shots. Many of the usual suspects are in their positions as they were during the anti-America Obama years, especially Susan Rice.
At some point if you max out all your credit cards, the lenders will stop sending you new ones. When that happens, not only does the spending spree end, you either have to pay off your debt, or you have to declare bankruptcy if you’re unable to pay.
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., reacts to subpoenaing Hunter Biden, James Biden, Rob Walker for testimony amid the House’s impeachment inquiry on ‘Hannity.’ #foxnews #hannity
R. Scott Clark joins the hosts of White Horse Inn to take a look at the ways in which consumerism and market values have influenced contemporary Christian thought and practice. This program was recorded before a live audience in Oceanside, CA.
Editor’s note: This audio was originally published by the White Horse Inn in May 2008.
He began the video by asking us to remember when the senator accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of funding China’s Wuhan virus lab. Fauci replied, “Senator Paul, you do not know what you’re talking about.”
Stossel says the media loved it. Vanity Fair smirked, “Fauci Once Again Forced to Basically Call Rand Paul a Sniveling Moron.” He then notes that the magazine changed its view and admitted, “In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan … Paul might have been onto something.”
What about the idea that the virus came from a lab leak? At the time, this was portrayed as a conspiracy theory. Now you have the FBI, the Department of Energy, and many others accepting the idea that the laboratory was the source.
Rand Paul reminds us, “Three people in the Wuhan lab got sick with a virus of unknown origin in November of 2019.” Also, the Wuhan lab is 1,000 kilometers away from where bats live.
The funding for gain of function research went to EcoHealth Alliance, run by zoologist Peter Daszak. Before the pandemic, he bragged about combining coronaviruses in Wuhan. Once the pandemic broke out, he was less eager to talk about these experiments.
John Stossel observed, “The media is weirdly un-curious about this.” Rand Paul responded that, “We have a disease that killed maybe 16 million people, and they’re not curious as to how we got it?”
I know you may not have time to read the book, but it’s worth a few minutes of your time to watch the video of the Covid deception.
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