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
The video “Deliverance From Deliverance Ministries” with me, @jimcosman2 and @piratechristian is posted to my YouTube channel. I think we just threw a big rock in the deliverance pond. May God use it to deliver people out of the deliverance deception.
The epistles of 2 and 3 John are the shortest books in the New Testament, but they are no less relevant for that. These letters from the apostle John to a congregation he pastored and to a friend he held dear bear his characteristic emphasis on faithfulness to the truth, which reveals itself through a love that is expressed by obedience to the Lord’s commands.
In this study, Alistair Begg explores the ongoing relevance of these ancient letters. They remind us of our need to continue walking in the truth and to be on guard against false teachers who would sow confusion. Those who follow Christ are faithful to His teaching. As Christ reigns in their hearts, they show love to others in practical and meaningful ways, and they bear testimony to Him by their lives.
No one is excluded from the judgment that sin deserves, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Today, W. Robert Godfrey opens the book of Romans to depict the universal need of saving grace in Christ.
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.Matthew 11:28
We who are saved find rest in Jesus. Those who are not saved will receive rest if they come to Him, for here He promises to “give” it. Nothing can be freer than a gift; let us gladly accept what He gladly gives. You are not to buy it, nor to borrow it, but to receive it as a gift. You labor under the lash of ambition, covetousness, lust, or anxiety: He will set you free from this iron bondage and give you rest. You are “laden,” yes, “heavy laden” with sin, fear, care, remorse, fear of death; but if you come to Him He will unload you. He carried the crushing mass of our sin that we might no longer carry it. He made Himself the great Burden-bearer, that every laden one might cease from bowing down under the enormous pressure.
Jesus gives rest. It is so. Will you believe it? Will you put it to the test? Will you do so at once? Come to Jesus by quitting every other hope, by thinking of Him, believing God’s testimony about Him, and trusting everything with Him. If you thus come to Him the rest which He will give you will be deep, safe, holy, and everlasting. He gives a rest which develops into heaven, and He gives it this day to all who come to Him.
“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.” Romans 8:38 (NLT)
Life is messy and unpredictable.
When I first surrendered my life to Christ back in the summer of 2009, I was under the impression that life would become neat and predictable. God, however, never promises us a life free from bumps and bruises. What He does promise is that He will always be with us and that nothing will ever separate us from His Love.
Yet, like Peter, we so easily allow ourselves to become distracted by the waves and the wind. Focusing on the messiness of life, we entertain fears and lies instead of turning our eyes towards His promises. Nevertheless, God never leaves us in our distracted and lost state.
A.W. Tozer said it best,
“We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts.”
Like a ray of light piercing the dark depths of the ocean; God reminds us with His word that nothing can separate us from His Love. He pours out His grace and mercy upon our lives, takes away our fears, silences our worries, and heals our pain with this simple reminder:
“I am with you. I love you. Follow me.”
Heavenly Father, thank You for not leaving us abandoned like orphans. Lead us Lord. Hold our hands and our hearts close to You as we travel this journey with You, in Jesus name, amen.
“How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” Isaiah 30:19-21
Many of us are very good at what I call the ‘What-if‘ Game. “What if the situation turns out this way? What if it goes that way?” We plot and we plan. We play the options over and over again in our heads, rehearse what we will say and think of all the possible ways the others involved might react. We might even be confident in our ability to sway other people to our way of thinking in order to get what we want.
The Israelites fell into this trap. When their enemies came, the Israelites ran. It seemed the sensible thing to do. They counted on their ability to run faster than their enemies. The prophet Isaiah warned that if they relied on their own abilities instead of on God’s, they would not be able to outrun the enemy.
God told them through Isaiah that rest and reliance on Him were the answers to their problems. The moment they turned to God and confessed their need for Him was the moment He spoke.
King David wrote, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” (Psalm 20:7) The Israelites didn’t have to be stronger or smarter. They just had to listen to their Creator. God’s protection and guidance was theirs and is ours today if we will be still, resist the urge to figure it out ourselves, and instead wait for the Teacher’s voice.
Lord, help me resist the desire to rely on my own wisdom and abilities. Give me your peace in every situation and give me the strength to wait on your instruction. Amen.
Be conscious of where your mind goes today. If you find yourself playing the ‘What-if’ Game, direct your thoughts back to God and His Word. To help you do that, you could put the following verse on your phone or write it down somewhere handy:
“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” Psalm 20:7
Are Living In The End Times? 40% Of U.S. Adults Believe We Are Not too long ago, I was speaking in El Paso, Texas. I was sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for my ride when I heard a young woman working the front desk ask her coworker if she thought God was coming back soon. Obviously, hearing a question like that caught my attention. She did not know who I was or why I was there, but I turned and faced her and asked her, “Do you think He is?” She answered, “With all that is happening in the world, I think He has to be coming back soon.”
French ex-PM in ‘Jewish control conspiracy’ storm A former French prime minister was bitterly criticised this week by a Jewish community leader for apparently implying that Jews control cultural life and the media in both the US and France.
‘Hezbollah prepared for invasion, only a matter of time’ researchers say Tal Beeri, head of the research department at “Alma,” has been closely monitoring terrorist organizations in Lebanon for years and spearheaded the research for the position paper. He emphasizes that the crucial question within the Shiite terrorist organization is not whether to launch an attack on the Galilee with its forces but rather when to do so. According to Beeri’s assessment, on October 7, Hezbollah was on the verge of deciding to execute its longstanding plan.
Repeating Mantras Won’t Bring Peace Nobody likes to admit that they’ve changed their views on an important subject, even if something contradicts those views. It’s more satisfying to look radically consistent no matter what. After the massacre of October 7, I’ve been wondering how traditional Israeli peaceniks would react, given the unprecedented assault on the very idea of peaceful co-existence with a Jewish state. Would this gross violation of civilized norms bring sobriety to the civilized dreamers of peace?
Sinwar: ‘Oct. 7th was just a rehearsal’ Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter was “just a rehearsal,” the Islamist group’s leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar threatened on Thursday, in his first public statement since the terrorist organization massacred more than a thousand people in Israel. “The leaders of the occupation [Israel] should know, Oct. 7 was just a rehearsal,” stated Sinwar, according to the Maariv newspaper.
Israel and the US consider repeating the mistakes of the past The biggest obstacle to peace in the Middle East at this point is the short-sighted incompetence of Western leaders. America has a history of stopping Israel just short of actually defeating its enemies.
How the IDF will resume its fighting when the order is given Air power, tank and artillery shells, D9s and infantry fire are all part of the resumption of war.The Israel Defense Force is using the current pause in operations, in place since Nov. 24, to enhance readiness, learn from recent battle experiences and develop future operational plans.
New study at Gezer site proves Biblical accounts of David and Solomon This was the purpose of the forced labor which Shlomo imposed: It was to build the House of Hashem, his own palace, the Millo, and the wall of Yerushalayim, and [to fortify] Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. I Kings 9:15 A new radiocarbon study of an important archaeological site seems to have made a significant step towards ending a scientific debate and establishing that the Biblical accounts of King David and King Solomon were historically accurate.
Members of Knesset, Evangelical Christians and Jewish leaders gather for Day of Prayer and Support for Israel On Wednesday morning, a group of Knesset members, Evangelical Christians and Jewish leaders gathered at the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem to pray for the nation, the citizens, Israel Defense Forces and the hostages. The Day of Prayer and Support for Israel was hosted by the Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast team, at the request of Knesset Member Tatiana Mazarsky of the Yesh Atid party.
Hamas ‘wanted to sacrifice thousands of children so Israel can take the blame,’ says son of Hamas co-founder Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, urged Israel on Tuesday to set a clear time limit for the Islamist terror organization to release all remaining Israeli and international hostages held in the Gaza Strip. Yousef, who has become a vocal opponent of Hamas, even urged Israel to kill Hamas leaders, including his own father, if the terror organization does not release the hostages.
TERROR SHOOTING AT ENTRANCE TO JERUSALEM – 3 killed, 11 wounded, 2 terrorists eliminated At around 7:38 a.m. on Thursday morning, two terrorists opened fire at a bus stop near the Western entrance of Jerusalem. A 24-year-old woman and a 73-year-old man, evacuated from the scene of the attack, were killed in the attack. At least 11 other people were injured in the shooting. an armed Israeli civilian and a soldier engaged the terrorists and were joined by Israeli security forces arriving at the scene, killing the two terrorists. The soldier had been on 12-hour temporary leave from Gaza to visit his family and was on his way to rejoin his unit when the shooting took place.
Horn of Africa floods displace more than two million More than two million people across the Horn of Africa have been forced from their homes by torrential rains and floods, according to an AFP tally compiled Thursday from government and UN figures.
Netanyahu ends meeting with Blinken, says Israel has ‘sworn to destroy Hamas’ “I told him we have sworn, and I have sworn, to destroy Hamas. Nothing will stop us,” he says, reiterating that the war in Gaza will continue until Israel frees all its hostages, vanquishes Hamas and guarantees that no similar threat will ever be posed again from Gaza.
Iran unveils its newest hypersonic missile Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) unveiled the nation’s cutting-edge hypersonic missile at a ceremony in Tehran attended by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday, local media reported.
We Are Witnessing An Avalanche Of Branch Closings As U.S. Banks Desperately Try To Stay Alive If you do things the right way, in the long run you will get positive results. But if you do things the wrong way, in the long run you will get negative results. Our banks are the beating heart of our entire economy, and unfortunately they have been doing things the wrong way for a long time. As a result, the entire system is being greatly shaken.
Ohio’s Pediatric Pneumonia Spike Similar to China’s …Warren County Health District (WCHD) officials in Ohio announced an “extremely high” 142 pediatric cases of pneumonia since August. They noted that, “Not only is this above the county average, it also meets the Ohio Department of Health definition of an outbreak.” The average age for the recorded cases of pediatric pneumonia is eight years old, and the outbreak has spread through multiple school districts, according to the WCHD.
REPORT: Pilot And Airline Crew Member On Separate Flights Incapacitated Within One Week According to The Aviation Herald, the airline industry has experienced two additional incapacitations this month. The two reported incidents took place within six days of each other. The first incident occurred on November 20th, while the second happened on November 26th.
Illegal Border Crossers Given GPS Coordinates to Enter Texas As illegal aliens continue to flood the southwest border, it has been revealed that these foreign nationals are provided with GPS coordinates that enable them to gather at specific locations on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande to cross en masse.
Mayor Adams “Defunds the Police” — and More — to Pay for MIGRANT Services Could you imagine telling your kids that you weren’t going to have money for home security, their schoolbooks, or grandma’s meals because you want to support some squatters who invaded your property? This is analogous to what’s now happening in New York City, where left-wing Mayor Eric Adams has announced budget cuts to pay for the “migrant crisis.” This includes slashing Gotham’s police force to 29,000 cops — the lowest level since the mid ’90s. Note here that police morale is already low in the wake of Black Lives Matter-movement-oriented attacks on law enforcement.
Russia’s supreme court bans ‘international LGBT movement’ Russia’s Supreme Court on Thursday approved a ban on what authorities call an “international LGBT public movement,” the independent Mediazona news outlet reported, a move that activists warn could effectively put all LGBT Russians at risk of criminal prosecution.
Exorcist warns against attending Taylor Swift concerts due to witchcraft As pop singer Taylor Swift continues her “Eras Tour” around the globe, some fans have raised concerns about a song that she performs during concerts. An American exorcist priest has issued a warning that such concerns are valid, saying that part of Swift’s performance imitates witchcraft and may draw demons at concert venues.
Survey: Palestinians Overwhelmingly Support Hamas and Islamic Jihad Contrary to claims from some on the left in the debate surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict, support for the Islamic terrorist group remains high in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, even weeks after the brutal massacre on October 7. The atrocities of that day, including rape, kidnapping, and torture of infants, also garner significant support among Muslims.
Philippines notifies WHO it rejects the amendments to International Health Regulations “in toto” On Tuesday, the House of Representatives (“HOR”) of the Republic of the Philippines passed a resolution to reject the World Health Organisation’s (“WHO’s”) amendments to the International Health Regulations (“IHR”) adopted by the World Health Assembly (“WHA”) on 27 May 2022. Additionally, the resolution rejected proposed amendments that are “currently being negotiated in secret” by the WHA and due for adoption by member states in May 2024.
“The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors.” —Thomas Jefferson (1775)
Fellow Patriots, on this day in 1965, thousands of refugees from Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba began arriving in the U.S. via airlift. Today’s Democrats — like California’s Gavin Newsom — seem to think America would be better off looking like Cuba. —Mark Alexander
In a one-sided affair, the Florida governor pounded his California counterpart with one inconvenient truth after another.
Douglas Andrews
Last night, Ron DeSantis saved his best for first.
When Fox News host Sean Hannity kicked off “The Great Red vs. Blue State Debate” in Alpharetta, Georgia, by noting the migration of folks from California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom’s state to the Republican governor’s Florida, DeSantis told a story: “I was talking to a fellow who had made the move from California to Florida. And he was telling me that Florida was much better governed, safer, better budget, lower taxes, all this stuff, and then he paused, and he said, ‘By the way, I’m Gavin Newsom’s father-in-law.’”
True story.
It was a riveting start for DeSantis, and his campaign needed it. Nationally, he trails Donald Trump in the RealClearPolitics average by a whopping 48 points, 62 to 14. His numbers are better in Iowa, where he trails 47 to 17, but they’re worse in New Hampshire, where he finds himself in fourth place behind former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Trump-hating former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
In addition to a campaign boost, there was also the possibility that a good debate performance would put additional pressure on Trump to enter the fray and engage in direct debate with his fellow Republicans. To this point, the voters haven’t punished Trump politically for his decision to steer clear of the debates, and that decision has been self-reinforcing.
As for the California Democrat, “Newsom has to be good, but he can’t be too good,” said Fox News’s Jesse Waters. What he meant was that a good performance by Newsom would show that he’s ready to be the Democrats’ standard-bearer in 2028, but a too-good performance would result in a “Draft Gavin” movement and would create a nasty rift within the party. The longer we go, the more it seems Democrats are stuck with Biden unless he bows out.
But what could be a stronger repudiation of Newsom’s policies and leadership than the historic flow of citizens out of the state he governs? While DeSantis’s Florida has gained 454,000 new residents in the past two years, Newsom’s California has lost 750,000. Folks are voting with their feet, and they’re voting against progressivism and in favor of conservatism.
After noting his serendipitous encounter with Newsom’s in-law, DeSantis recalled his time at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado and how he was struck by the state’s beauty. “You almost have to try to mess California up,” he said. “And that’s what Gavin Newsom has done since he’s been governor. He’s the first governor to ever lose population. They actually at one point ran out of U-Hauls in the state of California because so many people were leaving.”
Newsom dodged the question about out-migration. Then he dodged it again. Moving on.
“Let’s talk a little bit about Bidenomics because I’m happy to take that on right now,” Newsom said. And then he engaged in what would be an oft-repeated pattern for the night: lie after lie after lie. “Fourteen million jobs, 10 times more than the last three Republican presidents combined,” he said.
Here, Newsom is dialing into the Democrat base, which is chock-full of low-information voters. And low-information voters are likely to accept Newsom’s lie damned lie statistic without considering that the only reason our nation has experienced job growth during the Biden administration is due to the historic job loss created by COVID-19 shutdowns.
DeSantis noted that Florida’s unemployment rate is 2.8%, while California’s is second-worst in the nation at 4.8%, a full 60% higher than Florida’s rate. “What California represents,” said DeSantis, “is the Biden-Harris agenda on steroids. … [Biden and Harris] would love nothing more than to get four more years so they can take the California model nationally. That’ll be disastrous for working people.”
On the topic of immigration, Newsom had the worst of hands. After all, how can anyone defend Biden’s record on the border? The best Newsom could do, in the face of the Biden administration’s repeated assertions that the border is closed, was to claim that the administration “put out a plan on day one, and the Republicans haven’t touched it.”
Hannity pointed out that thousands of illegals from across the Middle East and South Asia were found at our southern border in fiscal years 2021 and 2022, including 6,386 from Afghanistan, 3,153 from Egypt, and 659 from Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. He then asked whether this posed “a clear and present danger” to our national security. Newsom dodged the question, while DeSantis grimly noted, “There will be, unfortunately, a terrorist attack at some point, that we’ll be able to trace back to our southern border.”
The violent crime rate is nearly twice as high in California as it is in Florida, with the former well above the national average and the latter well below the national average. “People are leaving California in droves,” said DeSantis, “largely because public safety has collapsed.” He noted that Newsom’s state “has basically legalized retail theft,” then he hit him with a devastating zinger: “Gavin Newsom was mayor of San Francisco. So he took the San Francisco model and turned that into a template for California’s collapse. Now the Left wants take the California model and use that as a template for America’s collapse.”
When the topic came to Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, DeSantis pulled out a prop: a page from a book of cartoon pornography called Gender Queer. He noted that the book has been rightly yanked out of schools in Florida but not in California. In response, Newsom said DeSantis was engaged in “a cultural purge,” adding: “We don’t teach that. … This is a ginned-up, made-up issue to divide this country. … This is part of the culture war, the weaponization of grievance. … He’s criminalizing teachers and criminalizing librarians.”
Here, DeSantis became more animated than at any time during the evening: “Your minor child,” he said, “can go to California without your knowledge or without your consent, and get hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and a sex-change operation — all without you knowing or consenting. … When you’re bringing people from out of state to go around their parents backs and get life-altering surgeries, that is radical, that is extreme, that is an assault on parents’ rights.”
Powerful stuff.
Hannity asked Newsom if there should be any restrictions at all on abortion, and he refused to answer. Instead, he said DeSantis, who supports a six-week fetal heartbeat abortion ban in Florida, has the “the most extreme anti-abortion agenda” in the nation.
DeSantis reminded the audience that Newsom wouldn’t answer the question about whether he’d place any restrictions on abortion, that he wouldn’t offer any protections for an unborn baby who has a heartbeat, who can feel pain, who is viable outside the womb. And Newsom says DeSantis’s position is extreme?
Toward the end of the debate, DeSantis pulled out one more prop: a brown-pixelated map plotting the exact location of, get this, all the human feces that’s to be found on the streets of San Francisco — a plot map that he noted only gets cleaned up when the Communist Chinese come to town. Another haymaker for which Newsom had no answer. It’s worth a look.
Were it a prize fight, the ref would’ve stopped it on cuts.
Finally, in response to DeSantis’s claim that Biden is in no condition to run for reelection — and his repeated assertions that Newsom is running a shadow campaign for president — the California governor responded as if he’d been prepping for it: “There’s one thing, in closing, we have in common, and that is that neither of us will be the nominee of his party in 2024.”
We’ll see about that.
Former Trump press secretary and Fox News commentator Kayleigh McEnany called DeSantis the clear winner, noting that Newsom’s task was nearly impossible due to “the rotting pile of facts” before him. Jason Chaffetz concurred with McEnany on DeSantis’s strong performance, predicting that he’d see a rise in the polls as a result.
We’re not so sure. While we agree that DeSantis won the debate and won it handily, we think that was always the expectation. Newsom is slick and slippery, but McEnany was right about the monumental nature of the task at hand. He not only had to defend California, he had to defend Joe Biden. Talk about a tall order.
Ron DeSantis won last night’s debate because, as Fox News’s Will Cain put it, “he had reality on his side.” But, again, a significant share of low-information voters will be impressed by Gavin Newsom’s spit and polish, even if most of what he was ladling out was preposterous.
Ultimately, it might be that Newsom’s vanity caused him to fall into one of the most clever traps in debate history. Sean Hannity befriended him and encouraged him over a period of months to debate a Republican who not only has the facts on his side but who also does his homework.
Want more proof DeSantis won? The Washington Post home page didn’t say a word about the debate, even though it was the most important and most talked-about political event in weeks.
So Ron DeSantis notched a unanimous win, a resounding win. But will it cause voters in Iowa or anywhere else to give him another look versus Donald Trump? That’s a far heavier lift. And time is running out.
Joe Biden is caught between the actually reasonable Chuck Schumer and the unhinged Rashida Tlaib.
Nate Jackson
Imagine being a Democrat right now. On one side of your party, you have generally decent people who support Israel. On the other, you have some unhinged and very vocal loons who back the genocidal Nazis of Hamas, which has Chuck Schumer beside himself. Joe Biden is caught in the middle, which adversely affects events on the ground in Israel and Gaza.
To those events, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced this morning that Hamas had “violated” the ceasefire and “did not live up to its duty to release all the kidnapped women today,” so the Israeli military resumed airstrikes in Gaza. At least 110 hostages have been returned, while an estimated 137 remain held by the jihadists. Hamas claims some hostages have been killed by Israeli bombings, though if that’s true, it’s undoubtedly because Hamas used them as shields, putting them in harm’s way to create casualties just as they do with their own civilian population.
“We are going to fight Hamas till we prevail,” Netanyahu said, “no matter how long it takes.”
Where’s Joe Biden and his administration in all this?
On Tuesday, whoever posts on social media for the 81-year-old president declared: “To continue down the path of terror, violence, killing, and war is to give Hamas what they seek. We can’t do that.” So, what, Israel fighting back is giving in to Hamas? Israel should permanently quit the fight because continuing is to behave like Hamas?
On Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he’d given Israel a warning: “I made clear that before Israel resumed major military operations, it must put in place humanitarian civilian protection plans that minimize further casualties of innocent Palestinians.” Again, that’s much harder given Hamas’s use of civilians. Blinken said the U.S. still supports Israel, but that support is contingent on “compliance with international humanitarian law.”
The administration is even demanding safe zones where Palestinian civilians can avoid combat areas. As analyst Noah Rothman put it, “If the White House has issued a similar call on Hamas’s terrorist fighters to limit their activities to the areas in which Israelis are conducting combat operations, we haven’t heard about it.”
Meanwhile, our Emmy Griffin and Douglas Andrews have given heart-wrenching accounts of how Hamas, not Israel, has been violating international humanitarian law.
That Team Biden continues to feel the need to instead lecture the good guys shows how far off base the Democrat base is.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is beginning to understand that alarming reality. In a moving and impassioned speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, the nation’s highest-ranking Jewish official unloaded on his left flank for “the rise of anti-Semitism in America.”
Being a Democrat, Schumer couldn’t give this speech without the obligatory lecture about all the haters supposedly occupying the Right, too. For example, he reiterated the falsehood about Donald Trump’s supposed “Muslim ban.”
Still, we can’t believe we’re saying this, but we wholeheartedly agree with the bulk of Schumer’s speech. Here’s the most important excerpt:
The solidarity that Jewish Americans initially received from many of our fellow citizens was quickly drowned out by other voices.
While the dead bodies of Jewish Israelis were still warm, while hundreds of Jewish Israelis were being carried as hostages back to Hamas tunnels under Gaza, Jewish Americans were alarmed to see some of our fellow citizens characterize a brutal terrorist attack as justified because of the actions of the Israeli government.
A vicious, bloodcurdling, premeditated massacre of innocent men, women, children, the elderly — justified!
Even worse, in some cases, people even celebrated what happened, describing it as the deserved fate of quote “colonizers” and calling for quote “glory to the martyrs” who carried out these heinous attacks.
Many of the people who have expressed these sentiments in America aren’t neo-Nazis, or card-carrying Klan members, or Islamist extremists. They are in many cases people that most liberal Jewish Americans felt previously were their ideological fellow travelers.
Schumer condemned the ignorant parroting of Hamas’s genocidal “from the river to the sea” chant, which represents the “intention to eliminate Jewish people not only from Israel but from every corner of the Earth.” He didn’t go so far as to name a fellow elected Democrat, but Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib is guilty of this.
He rebuked leftists who argue that Jews have “become the ‘oppressors’” and rushed to “blame the attack on the past actions of the Israeli government.” He didn’t say so, but the allegation he’s rebutting is Marxist critical race theory. He did, however, implicitly criticize the American education system (controlled by Democrats) because young people “don’t have a full understanding of [Jewish] history.”
The senator was also clear about Hamas’s culpability for civilian casualties. “By committing such heinous atrocities on October 7th before sneaking back into their tunnels underneath hospitals and refugee camps in Gaza,” he said, “Hamas has knowingly invited an immense civilian toll during this war, exploiting the double standard that so much of the world applies to Israel.” Indeed, there’s a reason the Gaza Health Ministry deliberately does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.
As for those anti-Semitic but ideological fellow travelers he spoke of, they are the reason for a disconcerting truth, as articulated in a lengthy column by analyst Caroline Glick: “Biden is the primary obstacle to Israeli victory.”
After Hamas murdered 1,200 innocent Israelis on October 7 and the Biden administration began speaking of support for Israel, Biden’s poll numbers have fallen, likely because of the pro-Palestinian folks in Democrat ranks. Thus, he and his team have tempered their rhetoric with the kinds of warnings Blinken gave to Netanyahu.
The administration pushed hard to delay the initial Israeli response and then quickly pleaded for a ceasefire and every possible extension. The release of hostages is certainly welcome, but resuming that war now, much less actually destroying Hamas, will be even more difficult for the Israel Defense Forces.
Space doesn’t permit here, but a big part of the reason for the difficulty for Israel is the convoluted web of Hamas. First of all, “The notion that the Palestinians are a peace-loving people who should not be conflated with Hamas is laughable,” argues jihad expert Andrew McCarthy. “Hamas is less a ruler than a reflection of the Palestinians.” Worse, he says: “Hamas is not Israel’s main opponent. It is, instead, a proxy of Iran.” Iran, in turn, enjoys support from Turkey and Qatar, both ostensible U.S. allies, and from Democrats like Joe Biden and Barack Obama before him.
Chuck Schumer was right to denounce the anti-Semitic Left. But just as important is the fact that Joe Biden is hardly a friend of Israel because he’s beholden to the radical extremists who hold sway in the Democrat Party.
The silence from women’s rights organizations is deafening.
Emmy Griffin
The violence against Israeli women on and since October 7 has gotten little to no outrage from feminists and advocates for women’s rights across the globe. Rape being used as a weapon of war seems like the sort of thing they ought to be fighting against. In fact, it is an act explicitly condemned in the Geneva Conventions as a war crime.
Why the silence here?
Well, there is a spirit of denialism on the progressive wing of the Left that allows for moral blindness on the grounds of a racial Marxist worldview. This blindness causes its acolytes to profess that any and all atrocities committed against Israel (a supposed colonizer) are justified because of moral equivalence and because the Palestinians are more racially oppressed due to their darker skin. Not only is this thinking highly racist in and of itself, but there is an entire branch of the Jewish people that is African (i.e., black). Morality based on the oppressor vs. oppressed model is always going to be a setup for horrors to be justified in its name. It’s merely racism with another face.
So on the grounds of decolonization and racial Marxism, the pro-Hamasnics both before, during, and after the attacks — even with video and medical evidence widely available — actively justify the crimes against Israeli women on October 7.
Even if the pro-Hamas supporters can no longer claim that Israel made it up, they still say that Israel deserved it because it’s Israel’s fault the Palestinians are trying to eradicate them from the face of the earth. In other words, Israel’s skirt was too short and she was asking for it.
Even United Nations Women representative Sarah Hendricks refused to condemn the Hamas rapes of Israeli women. She had an opportunity to condemn these rapes, but she notoriously avoided the question posed to her by CNN anchor Bianna Golodryga. Hendrix said instead: “Indeed. UN Women always supports impartial, independent investigations into any serious allegations of gender-based or sexual violence. And within the UN family, these investigations are led by the officer of the High Commissioner of Human Rights.”
Her answer implies that the UN will only believe women when the UN investigates the allegations itself. The UN is woefully inadequate in temperament and stance to conduct such measures, as Hendricks’s response proves yet again. There is lots of evidence that UN-funded schools and other UN resources have been used by the Hamas terrorists to foster the culture of anti-Jew hate so prominent in Gaza. The UN’s lackluster and even sometimes pro-Hamas responses shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. Pro-Jewish groups have been making the point with the slogan, “#MeToo Unless You’re a Jew.”
As this author has pointed out in other stories regarding the #MeToo movement in the U.S., women’s advocates are very selective on who they will believe and who they will support. It’s not about justice for these activists (though for some it may have been originally); it’s about wielding rape as a useful political weapon. Some Jewish-American celebrities are finding that out the hard way.
Mayim Bialik of “Jeopardy!” and “The Big Bang Theory” fame calls out women’s organizations for their silence on the rapes. In a social media post, the actress wrote:
There has been an abhorrent and conspicuous absence of women’s organizations around the world unequivocally condemning the systematic rape and torture of women on October 7 by Hamas. Brutal gang rapes, sexual torture, and murder of fetuses happened — period. Where are the “BELIEVE THEM” voices? These crimes against women were in many cases documented by the terrorists themselves and broadcast for the world to see. Those of us who have fought for women’s rights and have sought to shout from the rooftops when women’s bodies are being used in war for the sadistic pleasure of perpetrators are astounded at how the world has been silent surrounding this. The UN (U.N. Women — the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women) took 50 days to express “alarm”… First Lady of Israel Michal Herzog and Sheryl Sandberg have been trying to draw attention to this. Progressive feminists of the world: where are you?
They are where they have been for years now — only waiting for rapes (or accusations of rape) that benefit progressive leftist causes.
The overall selective silence on rapes if the perpetrator is an immigrant or has brown skin but the victim is white has been a problem particularly in Europe for a long time now. Europe has embraced the anti-West dictates of the World Economic Forum by trying to import a globalist culture, and what has happened in the cultural battle playing out is the abuse and rape of European women on an excessive scale. The cultural dissonance is largely based in religion. Those who are from Muslim countries and are followers of the Quran believe that non-Muslim women are their sex slaves by right — or women’s enslavement is at least condoned by the precepts of their prophet Muhammed.
Furthermore, progressivism is helping to shield this evil. For fear of being called “racist,” cops and victims are silenced. In fact, the oppressor/oppressed dynamic is at play again with people who defend these (largely immigrant) men by saying nonsense like women’s bodies are a “a means of releasing frustration and anger” because of the difficulties of being an immigrant in a Western country. Yes, that is an actual justification used by a German psychologist defending a rape gang that violated a 15-year-old German girl in a park.
Here is where one sees the evil fruits of the racial Marxism that has infiltrated the ideology of modern Western leftists. It has warped them so much that they are blind to the actual evil that is committed right in front of them.
Sadly, it is moments like the October 7 massacre in Israel where the hollowness of progressive leftism is exposed. The Left says it is against anti-Semitism, and yet there is an ever-growing faction of homegrown leftist Hamas supporters actively hurting and attacking the Jewish population around the world. The Left says it is for protecting and believing all women, but really it only protects and believes women whose skin color denotes her as a viable member of a racial victim class or is useful to their agenda in another way if she is white. One would presume that women, and specifically feminists, would have gotten a clue that their support of the progressive mantras “believe all women” or “support all women” were merely words when leftists started pushing men identifying as women into their protected spaces.
When there is such blindness morally, it is going to take a great awakening of the soul before the woke actually wake up.
We’re in big trouble as a nation when able-bodied young people are unwilling to serve in the military.
Brian Mark Weber
America’s status as a superpower has gone unchallenged for decades, thanks in large part to the young people who volunteer to serve in its Armed Forces. It’s a testament to their belief in America and its values that so many men and women leave jobs, families, and college to serve their country.
But lately we’ve seen a disturbing trend that’s affecting our nation’s military readiness.
“All branches of the armed forces have in recent years struggled to meet their recruitment targets,” Newsweek reports, adding that it suggests “a growing apathy towards a career of military service.”
Newsweek continues: “In 2023, the Army and Air Force fell short of their respective goals by around 10,000 recruits, while the Navy was under by 6,000. Since 1987, the number of active-duty personnel has fallen by 39 percent. Experts say that such shortfalls are worrisome in an increasingly volatile global picture with American leadership unsure when it will next have to bring its full military force to bear.”
Taking a closer look at the numbers, Newsweek cited an Echelon Insights poll in which 72% of likely voters said they’d be unwilling to serve in the Armed Forces if our country entered a major military conflict, while just 21% indicated they would serve.
Another survey of 1,000 likely voters by J.L. Partners found more troubling numbers. For example, less than half of Democrats would fight for our country (vs. 80% of Republicans who would) and only 51% in the 18- to 29-age bracket would volunteer, which was the lowest percentage of all age groups — and the age group the branches need most.
This is a dramatic reversal. Gallup, for example, noted the following: “Public perceptions of the U.S. military have fluctuated dramatically over the past five decades. The aftermaths of the Gulf War and 9/11 were followed by resounding upticks in confidence in the military. The latter of these surges ushered in an era of elevated confidence lasting nearly two decades. Now that the U.S. has completely withdrawn from both Iraq and Afghanistan, the two most significant military legacies of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., confidence in the military has continued to decline among the public.”
It should come as no surprise that young people aren’t lining up at recruitment centers.
For years, pop culture, social media, and college professors have brainwashed our youngest minds into thinking America was built on racism, colonialism, and sexism. No wonder it’s hard to find an 18-year-old ready to risk it all. Why would he fight to save something he doesn’t believe in? Now, the shameful retreat in Afghanistan, the U.S. government’s persecution of warriors who refused to get the COVID vaccine, and the politicization of our Armed Forces — all of these have turned a lot of otherwise willing young people against military service.
In fact, a poll by The Heritage Foundation found that nearly seven in 10 active-duty members believe the military has become too political, and an equal number would discourage their children from joining the military.
This is grim news for military readiness, but it’s not all gloom and doom. There are brave, selfless young Patriots who are still willing to give up everything to serve their country. As we noted yesterday, Utah State quarterback Levi Williams announced that he’s forgoing his senior season on the gridiron to enlist in the U.S. military and train to be a Navy SEAL. “I love football and it’s so great,” Williams said. “But I knew that, eventually, it was going to come to an end. I just want to be in a spot where I can protect this great country where we get to play football with the freedom to do that. I think this is the best country in the world. So I’d like to keep it that way and protect it as long as I can.”
Our military should be putting its time and energy into recruiting men like Williams, not waving the rainbow flag or rolling out the red carpet for transgender youth. No one denies the important role women play in our military today, but our forces need strong, patriotic young men ready to fight, and those men now feel alienated by the Armed Forces.
As our own Douglas Andrews wrote last year: “These are the ones who’ve trained and fought and bled and died for our country since before its inception. It’s a brotherhood whose members couldn’t give a rip about each other’s skin color, but that doesn’t readily cotton to wokeness and weirdness and sexual deviance and pronoun proscriptions.”
Maybe, just maybe, the military is starting to get it. They’ve already invited back some of the very soldiers whom they kicked to the curb because they refused to get the experimental COVID jab.
It’s a start. And now it’s time for the military to stop playing politics. It’s time to focus their attention on the very demographic they’ve alienated for too long. Our national security demands it.
Sleazy SCOTUS subpoena game, Sandra Day O’Connor dies, adios George Santos, and more.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
The Democrats’ sleazy SCOTUS subpoena game: If you can’t beat ‘em, haul ’em into court. That’s clearly the plan of the Democrat Party, which simply can’t abide by the Supreme Court’s 5-3-1 conservative majority and its check on Big Government progressivism. Indeed, the Court is all that’s stood between the Democrats and their extraconstitutional agenda, and it must therefore be delegitimized. Despite Republicans’ best efforts, the latest example of this came yesterday from Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, when he issued subpoenas for Harlan Crow, an old friend of Justice Clarence Thomas, and Leonard Leo, the former Federalist Society vice president and the architect of former President Donald Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees. As the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page puts it: “In a rush of rule-breaking at the end of a meeting, Mr. Durbin moved to bluster through subpoenas for two friends of Supreme Court Justices on a partisan vote. This is part of a Democratic political campaign to portray the High Court as a trinket bought by billionaires. There’s no evidence, of course, that any of the conservative justices are on the take, but that’s not the point of this shameful and unprecedented harassment. As the Journal’s editors conclude, “The point isn’t to accomplish anything. It’s to blow smoke to harm the Supreme Court.”
Sandra Day O’Connor dies at 93: An American original and a judicial trailblazer, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor passed away this morning in Phoenix, Arizona, at age 93. The cause, according to the Supreme Court’s Office of Public Information, was “complications related to advanced dementia, probably Alzheimer’s, and a respiratory illness.” Those of a certain age will remember O’Connor’s appointment by Ronald Reagan in 1981, when she became the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court. As Reagan said upon his nomination of her, “She is truly a person for all seasons, possessing those unique qualities of temperament, fairness, intellectual capacity, and devotion to the public good which have characterized the 101 brethren who have preceded her.” She served until 2006 and was, along with Justice Anthony Kennedy, a consistent swing vote in many of the court’s 5-4 decisions. As Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement: “A daughter of the American Southwest, Sandra Day O’Connor blazed a historic trail as our nation’s first female justice. She met that challenge with undaunted determination, indisputable ability, and engaging candor. We at the Supreme Court mourn the loss of a beloved colleague, a fiercely independent defender of the rule of law, and an eloquent advocate for civics education. And we celebrate her enduring legacy as a true public servant and patriot.” Rest in peace, Madame Justice.
Adios, George Santos: New York Republican George Santos has been ousted from the House of Representatives, which just held an expulsion vote on the Long Island congressman. The final vote was 311 to 114. It’s the ninth expulsion vote in House history and the six successful one. A two-thirds majority was needed — around 290 votes — and Santos’s colleagues made that number with room to spare. As the New York Post reports: “Santos, 35, had been mired in controversy since his 2022 election. He has admitted fabricating much of his biography, and federal prosecutors accuse him of laundering campaign funds and defrauding donors. Santos has pleaded not guilty to those charges.” The Post adds, “A bipartisan congressional investigation last month found that he charged almost $4,000 for spa treatments, including Botox, to his congressional campaign account.” GOP members from swing districts wanted desperately to defenestrate Santos, as they rightly saw him as an embarrassment and a threat to their reelection. Now they’ve gotten their wish. And the Republicans’ ultra-slim majority just got even slimmer.
Texas loses fence fight: On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Alia Moses lifted a block raised by Texas against federal immigration authorities from removing razor wire placed on private land along the border with Mexico. Texas had placed the wire with landowners’ permission in an effort to stem the flow of illegal aliens into the state. Moses noted the “utter failure” of the Biden administration to prevent illegal entry in the U.S., but she reasoned that Texas’s motion to block the feds from removing the razor wire on the claim that doing so was illegal would not prevail in court. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton voiced his “disappointment that the federal government’s blatant and disturbing efforts to subvert law and order at our State’s border with Mexico will be allowed to continue,” but he also promised to appeal the ruling.
Pfizer sued over misleading vax claims: Speaking of the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton was busy on Thursday, as he also announced a lawsuit the Lone Star State filed against the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. According to Paxton, Pfizer is guilty of violating the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act by engaging in “false, deceptive, and misleading acts and practices by making unsupported claims” regarding its COVID vaccine. The Texas AG charged that Pfizer made “highly misleading” statements by claiming that its vaccine was 95% effective against COVID. The AG’s office said, “Pfizer created the false impression that its vaccine provided a substantially greater amount of protection against COVID-19 infection than what it afforded in reality,” and the company pursued a “continuous and widespread campaign” to uphold this false perception with the public. Furthermore, this “deceptive conduct was reinforced and extended by Pfizer’s efforts to censor persons who sought to disseminate truthful information that would undermine its ongoing deception.” To be clear, Paxton is charging Pfizer with over-selling the efficacy of its vaccine; he is not claiming that the vaccine is dangerous.
More companies dump college degree requirement: A college degree just ain’t what it used to be. That appears to be the conclusion that nearly half of American companies have come to. Walmart, IBM, Bank of America, and Google recently announced that they were dropping their Bachelor’s degree requirement for many of their job positions. They’re not alone. According to a survey from intelligent.com, companies are increasingly dropping their Bachelor’s requirement for jobs, with 55% of the 800 U.S. companies surveyed noting that they have already eliminated college degree requirements. What companies have begun doing instead is developing their own apprenticeship programs, as Accenture first did back in 2016, through which it has hired 1,200 of its employees, 80% of whom did not have a Bachelor’s degree. As Accenture North America CEO Jimmy Etheredge explained, “A person’s educational credentials are not the only indicators of success, so we advanced our approach to hiring to focus on skills, experiences and potential.” Indeed, gaining real-world work experience and developing skills are as important if not more so for companies looking to hire competent employees, especially when they anticipate further developing their particular skills via apprenticeship training.
Did Biden boot “Bidenomics”? Anybody else notice that neither Joe Biden nor his surrogates have used the term “Bidenomics” lately? Heck, it seems like only yesterday when he was, ahem, barnstorming the country and crowing about what a swell economy we have and blustering about how, like Barack Obama did with “ObamaCare,” he was going to lean into this pejorative and wield it weapon-like against his critics. A funny thing happened on the way to this rehabilitation, though: The people refused to buy it. Having used the word “Bidenomics” more than 100 times to promote the splendidness of the American economy in recent months, NBC News reports that Scranton Joe hasn’t uttered the word once in all his public remarks since November 1, when, in a speech in Minnesota, he likened Bidenomics to — get this — “the American Dream.” As for who had the deciding vote in whether to jettison the term from Biden’s Big Book of Branding, we might look no further than South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, who was instrumental in getting Biden elected in the first place. “I don’t like it, either,” said Clyburn. In any case, it’s still the economy, stupid, so Team Biden’s focus group is no doubt already brainstorming a suitable replacement word.
Judge blocks TikTok ban: Montana’s ban on TikTok was slated to go into effect a month from today. However, because the ban ostensibly “infringes on the constitutional rights of users,” according to U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, the January 1 implementation of it won’t be happening. Amazingly, “TikTok lawyers say national security concerns raised by the state are not backed by solid evidence, a point that the judge appeared to agree with in his 48-page ruling,” the Washington Examiner reports, adding: “The legality of the law will be considered further at a bench trial that has not yet been scheduled, but for now, TikTok will remain available in the state.” Montana attorney general spokeswoman Austin Knudsen noted, “The judge indicated several times that the analysis could change as the case proceeds and the state has the opportunity to present a full factual record.” That full factual record is twofold: First, the Communist Chinese-owned social media company harvests Americans’ data, which absolutely is a national security concern. Second, a TikTok ban doesn’t violate the First Amendment.
Carjacking the FBI: In an incident that pointedly demonstrates just how bad crime has gotten in America’s largest cities, an FBI employee was the latest victim of a carjacking in downtown Washington, DC. The incident occurred in the middle of the afternoon just a couple blocks away from Lincoln Park where dozens of children were playing. DC has recorded over 900 carjackings this year alone. The problem is that while the rates for these and other violent crimes have been spiking, the criminal conviction rates have dropped. Furthermore, in the case of DC carjackings, the majority of these crimes are being committed by juveniles, setting themselves up for a life of crime at earlier and earlier ages. This is part of the negative social ramifications of the breakdown of the nuclear family, and more specifically the dearth of fathers in the home. This is not just a crime problem; it’s a culture problem.
Headlines
Mastermind behind 10/7 Hamas terror attack: That “was just a rehearsal” (Daily Wire)
Karine Jean-Pierre storms out of White House press briefing when pressed by African reporter (Fox News)
Illegal immigrant charged after allegedly shooting two sisters in the head in their Texas home (Daily Wire)
Rand Paul performs Heimlich maneuver on choking Joni Ernst (Fox News)
U.S. reveals date of first moon return in 51 years — with one key difference (Washington Examiner)
Policy:Cosmopolitan‘s unintentional, unironic reminder that abortion is Satanic (Daily Signal)
Humor: Newsom-DeSantis debate sponsored by U-Haul (Babylon Bee)
The cultural elite who disdain the accumulation of wealth and diplomacy in the self-interest of nations will abhor both Charlie Munger and Henry Kissinger.
Erick Erickson
Charlie Munger and Henry Kissinger are dead. Munger died 34 days before his 100th year. Kissinger crossed into his 100th year in May of this year. Both are generational lights, one in business and the other in statecraft. Their deaths are a reminder that even the greatest among us cannot escape the veil of eternity.
Munger’s legacy is less complex. He served as Warren Buffet’s right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway. Munger convinced Buffet to change his investment style, which led to a 60-year partnership and billions of dollars in wealth creation. Munger, known for his quick wit and unwavering work ethic, was working just days before his death.
Munger convinced Buffet to, in Buffet’s words, “Forget what you know about buying fair businesses at wonderful prices; instead, buy wonderful businesses at fair prices.” The quotable Munger would let Buffet be the face of Berkshire Hathaway and the voice, but behind the scenes was known to talk at length, mentor many and grow wealth. He was unashamed of it. He saw wealth as a means of independence.
Kissinger is more complicated. The ghouls rushed out within minutes of the announcement of his death to denounce him and metaphorically drag his body. Many an atheist suddenly championed a belief in hell upon hearing of Kissinger’s death. Reality is more complicated than the Left’s religious aversion to national interest, and Kissinger always embraced the national interest.
Kissinger advised every American president going back to John F. Kennedy — a quarter of the presidents. Former President Barack Obama, a progressive mentored by a communist, disdained Kissinger in large part because Kissinger helped build a post-World War order that put the United States on top. To progressives like Obama and those now championing Palestinian terrorists as victims of colonization, a world dominated by the United States is an oppressed world where some are oppressors, and some are oppressed.
In a sane world, Munger and Kissinger together would be praised. The business community will praise Munger. Diplomats will praise Kissinger. But the cultural elite who disdain the accumulation of wealth and diplomacy in the self-interest of nations will abhor both.
The reality is that the world is better off because of both men. Kissinger, in the chaotic world ushered in after World War II, sought to assert American interests on the world stage. He made deals with dictators and helped overthrow regimes that backed the Soviets. Kissinger helped reinvigorate the Monroe Doctrine during an era of Soviet expansion and negotiated an American relationship with China to counter the Soviets.
Kissinger is vilified by the Left not because he committed war crimes, as they claim, but because he successfully advanced American interests against communists and structured a world wherein the United States could put the Soviet Union on the ash heap of history.
Munger provided ample examples of common sense in convoluted markets — advising that money is made in the waiting, not the buying and selling. His strategy was to buy and hold and find value. He and Buffett have outperformed the markets through patience and a willingness to try to figure out what they did not know. But by being a successful capitalist who grew wealth, the Left would have us believe Munger was greedy. His success, like Kissinger’s on the nation’s behalf, must be devalued.
Both men were realists. They saw the world as it is and sought to make it better. Today, we are surrounded by weak-minded whiners who confront a world as they want it to be instead of as it is. Business titans foist ESG standards on the free market, degrading the performance of companies through woke values. Diplomats think making kissy-face with terrorist regimes like the mullahs of Iran can win peace. They value themselves more than those around them and have convinced themselves of their superiority.
All of us will die. But it is sad to lose a Munger or a Kissinger when so many of the younger elite who replace them chose to learn nothing from them, are convinced they know better and will leave the world worse than they found it. We need more Charlie Mungers and Henry Kissingers and fewer Larry Finks and Antony Blinkens.
Schumer Decries Alarming Rise in Anti-Semitism in U.S. — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the nation’s highest-ranking Jewish elected official, described the recent spike in anti-Semitic incidents as a “crisis” and a “five-alarm fire that must be extinguished.”
Hamas Convicts Celebrate Release With Calls for Jewish Blood — Israeli child hostages are greeted with hugs and prayers; Hamas convicts celebrate their release with calls for Jewish blood. Despite mainstream media reports suggesting otherwise, there would appear to be a significant difference between the two sides in this conflict.
Gavin Newsom Can’t Tell the Truth — Newsom is back to spreading lies on X. A particular post about a Tennessee law against indecent exposure was especially egregious.
Humor: Biden’s Long-Lost Western! — President Biden keeps referencing an old John Wayne movie with the quote, “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.” The trailer for the movie has finally been found.
“Let me be clear to any corporation that hasn’t brought their prices back down even as inflation has come down: It’s time to stop the price gouging. Give American consumers a break.” —President Joe Biden
“We shouldn’t assume or expect that people are automatically gonna give credit where credit is due if we don’t remind folks how these things came about.” —Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
The BIG Lies
“The [Hunter Biden] laptop, so to speak … that was published in the New York Post was actually a hard drive that the New York Post admitted here was not authenticated as real. It was not the laptop the FBI had. … Hard drives could be manipulated by Rudy Giuliani or Russia … there is actual evidence of it.” —Congressman Dan Goldman (D-NY)
“There’s not a scintilla of evidence that Republicans have produced to show that President Joe Biden has engaged in wrongdoing, an impeachable offense, or in any way has broken the law. Why? Because there is no evidence that exist to implicate President Joe Biden in anything nefarious.” —House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)
Belly Laughs of the Day
“President Biden is a good man. He’s a good and decent and hardworking man, and that’s been his entire life in public service.” —Hakeem Jeffries
“We’re about the bread and butter of governing. We’re not about the chaos, we’re not about the drama, we’re not about the partisan politics. We’re about getting stuff done.” —Pete Buttigieg
Hot Air
“We’re burrowing into our own graves. I’m so unhappy that you don’t understand how imperative the [climate] situation is. We’re dying, man. Your children are going to have difficulty living. Do you understand that? … Much sooner than we expected, we’re going to die.” —actor William Shatner
Observations
“I’d wager that even Hamas did not anticipate the ease with which they could drum up support for their position that the slaughter of innocents in the most horrific ways imaginable is somehow ‘justified’ as a mechanism for obtaining their purported political objectives. They are profiting from the ignorance of the American public and the widespread antisemitism that has taken root here, especially among so-called intellectuals and on college campuses.” —Laura Hollis
“Politicians run on promises to solve the country’s problems, but once in office, double down on the policies that caused the problems in the first place. Why? Is it about money? I don’t think so. I think it is far more fundamental than greed. Proclaiming a belief in objective standards of right and wrong is unpopular. It is an acknowledgement that there are principles that supersede our own wants and decisions. This is anathema in an era when people are told that everyone can decide for themselves what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ ‘true’ and ‘false.’ This is nothing more than setting ourselves up as God.” —Laura Hollis
“An objective moral order is scientifically rooted in the nature of human beings and therefore necessary for human society to flourish. Like all demonstrable scientific laws, it is immutable. You can decide you ‘don’t believe in’ gravity, but if you throw yourself off a building, you’ll be dead nevertheless. Similarly, decisions to reward — or at least, not to sanction — those who engage in bad behavior have terribly unpleasant results, including punishing those who do not.” —Laura Hollis
“Morality based on the oppressor vs. oppressed model is always going to be a setup for horrors to be justified in its name. It’s merely racism with another face.” —Emmy Griffin
Political Futures
“It feels like DeSantis went before the Republican primary electorate and said, ‘Hey, I may not be the most lively and charismatic personality, but I can deliver you some things you’ve been forced to do without for a long time: consistent conservative philosophy, competence in governing, and an attention to the details of policy.’ And the Republican primary electorate listened to that offer and said, ‘Nah, we’ll pass. We’ve got a guy who already lost to Joe Biden, now facing four criminal indictments, and we’re feeling really good about his odds!’” —Jim Geraghty
INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.
I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President’s performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.
Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.
But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what’s worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.
Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department “treatment” or interpretations.
The Hamas “death cult” relies on “useful Western idiots” to support the Palestinian cause, which has “fused with the leftwing DEI industry,” according to world-renowned military historian and professor Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, who notes that pro-Palestinian protests and support for Hamas in the U.S. has alienated many Americans and will all but ensure a tough conservative president in 2024.
According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the rate of suicides by firearm experienced an 11 percent increase between 2019 and 2022
The first time I encountered Rosaria Butterfield was through her book Secrets of an Unlkmely Convert. That book was enlightening and it was refreshing and incredible to hear her “unlikely” conversion story.
This book covers, as you would guess, five lies that people believe these days that are filled with anti-Christian thinking, propaganda, and ideologies. Those lies are: homosexuality is normal; being a spiritual person is kinder than being a biblical Christian; feminism is good for the world and the church; transgenderism is a normal; and modesty is an outdated burden that serves male dominance and holds women back.
Butterfield begins with a punch to the ribs:
We foolishly believed that we could reinvent our calling as men and women, defy God’s pattern and purpose for the sexes, and somehow reap God’s blessing. God’s plan for men and women, the creation ordinance, is first found in Genesis 1. And it is central—not peripheral—to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
From the get-go, Butterfield makes it known that the world has abandoned the principles of Genesis 1, beginning with what God’s plan is for males and females, and connecting that with the gospel itself—which is right.
She went on:
When we level creational differences between men and women, foolishly thinking that there is no vital difference between men and women, we disobey God. The disunity of our day reflects God’s cutting down to size the tower of gender and sexual confusion that we have foolishly built.
Regarding the second lie—“being a spiritual person is kinder than being a biblical Christian”—she comments:
Unbiblical spirituality welcomes people exactly as they are or, at least, makes this promise. This is a religion that elevates being a “good” person over giving your life to Christ.
There are several issues she holds nothing back on, including the topic of “gay Christians.”
She observes:
“Gay Christians” (an oxymoron if there ever was one) teach that you can’t repent of who you are, how you feel, or even what you desire. They believe that homosexual orientation is morally neutral, separate from one’s sin nature, cannot be repented of, and rarely changes over a person’s lifetime. This is a lie.
In the end, she does a wonderful job of exposing the culture’s lies that have been believed upon by so many, while pointing to the hope of the gospel; for that is the only answer to these lies.
Get this book!
I was given this book for free by the publisher in exchanged for an honest review.
15% of people living in the country were not born there, which could increase to 17.3% if Biden is reelected, the report said
The percentage of Americans born outside the country has reached an all-time high of 15%, immigration-focused think tank the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) revealed on Thursday. The conservative group’s report cited US Census Bureau data collected last month showing that 49.5 million US residents were foreign-born – an all-time record.
The foreign-born population of the US has increased by 4.5 million since President Joe Biden took office in 2021, a number that the think tank noted is larger than the population of 25 US states. More than half of that increase was estimated to consist of illegal immigrants by CIS.
Biden has presided over an unprecedented surge in immigration, both illegal and legitimate, with the foreign-born population growing by 137,000 per month since his inauguration, the data shows. Under former President Donald Trump, 42,000 foreigners entered the US every month prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, while his predecessor Barack Obama saw 68,000 immigrate monthly.
The percentage of Americans born outside the US in 2023 is three times what it was in 1970 and the actual number has increased fivefold, census data reveals. This level exceeds even the foreign-born population recorded from 1890 to 1910, when immigrants were flocking to the country to settle the frontier and claim their share of the American dream. Those years’ censuses saw immigrant populations approach – but not quite reach – the 15% figure, topping out at 14.8% and 14.7%, respectively.
The last three years have so altered the country’s demographic composition that current Census Bureau population projections are obsolete. It had calculated that the US population would not reach 15% foreign-born until 2033. The CIS report blamed what it called Biden’s lax border enforcement policies for the unprecedented surge in largely illegal immigration, and warned that if the Democrat is reelected and current trends continue, 58.9 million immigrants will call the US home by December 2028, comprising a never-before-seen 17.3% of the US population and irrevocably changing the nation’s character.
The majority of recent arrivals – 63% – come from Latin America, according to the think tank’s analysis, with Central America alone accounting for 21% of the growth. Latin Americans comprised 53.5% of the total immigrant population of the US as of November 2023. Sub-Saharan Africa came in a distant second as a region of origin, accounting for just 11% of the new arrivals, while East Asia claimed 10%.
US Customs and Border Protection reported a record 2.47 million encounters with illegal aliens at the Mexican border this year, on top of 240,000 Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan nationals who entered legally under President Biden’s parole system and another 43,000 migrants who used the agency’s phone app to apply for asylum.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) used Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s own father-in-law to land a knockout punch in the opening minutes of their Fox News debate.
Citing data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the first question that moderator Sean Hannity asked focused on the droves of people leaving California and the influx of Americans moving to Florida. The data shows that California lost approximately 750,000 people in 2021-2022, while Florida gained approximately 450,000 residents over that same time period.
When Newsom twice refused to address the question — choosing, instead, to attack DeSantis — the Florida governor whipped out a stinging anecdote.
“I’ve talked to a lot of the people who have moved from California to Florida, and we never used to get people from California to Florida,” DeSantis began. “Why would you leave California? It’s got the best weather —”
So I was talking to a fella who had made the move from California to Florida, and he was telling me that Florida is much better governed, safer, better budget, lower taxes, all this stuff. He’s really happy with the quality of life, and then he paused and he said, “You know, by the way, I’m Gavin Newsom’s father-in-law.” So we do count Gavin’s in-laws as some of the people that have fled California and come to the state of Florida.
“People understand quality of life matters. They understand Florida is doing it right,” DeSantis explained.
It’s true. DeSantis is doing something right in Florida, and it’s why he won re-election in a landslide 20-point victory last year.
DeSantis torches Newsom with jaw-dropping line about father-in-law http://www.youtube.com
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