There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
And he said, Certainly I will be with thee.Exodus 3:12
Of course, if the Lord sent Moses on an errand, He would not let him go alone. The tremendous risk which it would involve and the great power it would require would render it ridiculous for God to send a poor lone Hebrew to confront the mightiest king in all the world and then leave him to himself. It could not be imagined that a wise God would match poor Moses with Pharaoh and the enormous forces of Egypt. Hence He says, “Certainly I will be with thee,” as if it were out of the question that He would send him alone.
In my case, also, the same rule will hold good. If I go upon the Lord’s errand with a simple reliance upon His power and a single eye to His glory, it is certain that He will be with me. His sending me binds Him to back me up. Is not this enough? What more can I want? If all the angels and arch-angels were with me. I might fail; but if He is with me, I must succeed. Only let me take care that I act worthily toward this promise. Let me not go timidly, halfheartedly, carelessly, presumptuously. What manner of person ought he to be who has God with him! In such company it behoveth me to play the man and, like Moses, go in unto Pharaoh without fear.
“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” 1 Thessalonians 5:11
My son invited a friend over for dinner a while back. I could see why he considered him a good friend. He was friendly, polite, and considerate. I learned something about his struggles and hardships. Our son pointed out he was talented and full of potential.
But I noticed a hint of negativity as I talked to him more. He grumbled about his school, his work, and even his friendships. I tried to inject some hope and encouragement into the conversation, but he didn’t feel like listening.
God doesn’t want us listening to the voice of doom that often bounces around in our heads and says things like, “I just don’t have the talent, education, or drive to make it.” In 1 Thessalonians, Apostle Paul tells us to build each other up.
Jesus is our example of how to boost others up and offer hope. He certainly wants us to exhibit these traits in our lives. He’s always ready to give us a dose of encouragement, offer us a new beginning, and tell us he remembers our sins no more and gives us all the resources we need to obey him each day.
As followers of Christ, we should make every effort to build confidence in others and serve as a source of encouragement by reminding them of who they are in Christ. We all need reassurance and for someone to pick us up. Let us work to prevent the echoes of doom from blocking out the gentle voices of those who care, and especially our Lord’s reassuring voice of hope and possibilities.
Lord, I am grateful for your outpouring of grace and loving encouragement. Let us be a sign of this gift we have received from you that we offer those around us the hope and support they need in times of disappointment and despair. Amen.
“You have shown me the path to life, and you make me glad by being near to me. Sitting at your right side, I will always be joyful.” Psalm 16:11(CEV)
Today, I have some important choices to make. God has graciously given me the next 24 hours and He has promised to be near and show me my path. What will my day be like?
Asking three questions to jump-start a new day can help us focus.
1. What will I DO today with God beside me?
Whether in the workplace, a seniors home, parenting, or in relationships what can we do that will be God-honoring. A word of encouragement, hugging a child, a right ethical decision, or a listening ear can all be pleasing to God.
2. What will I SAY today with God beside me?
In the next 24 hours the words that come out of our mouths can be an effective example as a servant of Jesus Christ. Words can destroy or build up, say a lie or tell the truth, and can heal or hurt. God is there to help.
3. What will I THINK about today with God beside me?
Our brains are a mighty search engine. Asking God to help us fill our minds with good and pure thoughts will help us make positive choices today for now and in the future.
Our Father in Heaven, thank you for the next 24 hours. We are asking for guidance in what we do, say, and think. Thank you for walking beside us and showing us the path of life. We are so grateful for the fact that You love to be near us. That makes us joyful. Help us as we continue to walk all the 24 hours that You give us. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Thought: As you go throughout your day think of ways to be Jesus to others. What encouraging words can you say? When negative thoughts enter your mind, fill them with thoughts of God. With God beside you, look for ways to be His servant.
Are we Living the Gog U’Magog War? This is not business as usual. Though Israel has fought many small wars against Hamas, everyone understands that the current war is different. After Hamas slaughtered 1,200 innocent Israelis on October 7, nations throughout the world immediately felt the reverberations. This is a war with global implications, pitting Jews and Christians, the people of the Bible, against Muslims and secular progressives, who reject the Bible and all that it stands for.
Bay Area tech layoffs pass grim milestone with new Qualcomm job cuts Qualcomm has revealed plans to chop scores of jobs in the Bay Area, cutbacks that have brought the region’s tech layoffs to a grim economic benchmark. …During 2022 and so far in 2023, tech companies have revealed plans to eliminate more than 30,000 jobs in the Bay Area, With the new job cuts the Bay Area has now passed a forbidding milestone for tech layoffs.
Judge Slams SEC For “Materially False” Deception In Crypto Case, Threatens To Sanction Agency A federal judge rebuked the Securities and Exchange Commission, and its boss Gary Gensler, over its treatment of a crypto firm, expressing concern the agency had made “materially false and misleading representations” in order to freeze millions of dollars in assets belonging to the project, District Judge Robert Shelby … concluded that the SEC had possibly deceived the court in its description of the facts used to justify the earlier orders, all of which have been prompted by the agency’s relentless – and now apparently illegal – pursuit of anyone acting in the crypto space not as a means of enforcing the law, far from it, but as a personal vendetta by Gensler against a corner of the financial world which his Democratic handlers detest.
King Charles Delivers Highly-Politicised Speech To Support Collectivist Net Zero Project The man is now King, and at COP28 he threw away his irksome politically-neutral constitutional role, wrapped himself in Guardianista pseudoscience, and punched down hard on the poor who will be forced to pay for the collectivist madness that is the Net Zero project. King Charles is no friend of general humanity.
NATO Chief: West Should Brace For More ‘Bad News’ From Ukraine NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg … was asked whether he thinks the situation will worsen for Ukrainian forces in the future, after the counteroffensive has been widely acknowledged as a failure. “We should also be prepared for bad news,” he responded. “Wars develop in phases. But we have to support Ukraine in both good and bad times.”
Pentagon Confirms US Warship, Commercial Ships Under Attack In Red Sea In a significant development, AP News has reported that a US Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and two commercial vessels were targeted in the Red Sea. This incident is part of a growing trend of maritime attacks in the waters of the Middle East, which have been linked to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. a US official told AP that the attack was around Sanaa, Yemen, and said Carney, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, repelled at least one drone during the attack.
Ukraine says two killed, seven injured as Russia shells Kherson Ukrainian officials said two people were killed and seven injured during Russian shelling of the southern region of Kherson that hit a multi-storey residential building in the centre of Kherson city, struck an elderly man in his garage, and damaged two medical facilities on Sunday. Russian troops abandoned Kherson and the western bank of the Dnipro River late last year, but now regularly shell those areas from positions on the eastern bank.
IDF unmasks Hamas’ Shuja’iyya Battalion top brass: ‘Surrender now or share commander’s fate’ IDF Arabic spokesperson Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee on Sunday morning revealed the identities of key figures in Hamas’ Shuja’iyya Battalion, a day after their commander Wissam Farhat was eliminated by Israel, and called on them to surrender or share the same fate. “You are all in our crosshairs. The IDF will operate with tremendous force in the neighborhood to dismantle Hamas’ military infrastructure,” he said in a post shared on multiple social media platforms. “You have two options: Surrender and lay down your weapons – or stay and wait for a fate similar to that of Wissam Farhat and Younes Mushtaha (the squad commander who was eliminated).”
Radical Islamist murders German tourist and injures two in Paris terror attack A terrorist in his 20s fatally stabbed a German tourist with a knife in a popular tourist area not far from the iconic Eiffel Tower in Paris on Saturday evening. Two additional people were wounded during the incident. Local authorities arrested the French-born terrorist who reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great in Arabic) while carrying out the attack.
Netanyahu and Gallant individually vow: ‘Hamas will pay ‘a heavy price’ Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant gave press briefings on Saturday evening. However, in contrast to previous briefings where the two leaders have appeared together, this time they conducted separate briefings.
Israel, Hezbollah trade fire across Israel-Lebanon border for third day Eleven IDF soldiers and one Israeli civilian were wounded by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile on Sunday that struck a vehicle in the Beit Hillel area. IDF artillery hit the source of the fire, while other Hezbollah locations were struck by the air force.
Netanyahu: Palestinian Authority can’t return to Gaza, this isn’t Oslo II Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged not to repeat the mistakes made under the Oslo Accords by allowing the Palestinian Authority to return to Gaza after its military campaign to oust Hamas from that enclave is over. “One thing for sure I am not doing. I am not ready to delude myself to say that the defective act that took place under Oslo through a terrible error” must now take place a second time with the return of a “hostile entity” to Gaza and the West Bank, he told reporters on Saturday night.
Elon Musk counters antisemitism accusation with Hebrew Bible verse Elon Musk,… responded to a defense of him by Michael Eisenberg of Aleph, a Tel Aviv-based VC firm, with a verse from the Hebrew Bible. Proverbs 16:16: “Gaining wisdom is better than obtaining gold, insight is better than silver.”
IDF pummels Hamas in Gaza as war ramps up The IDF announced the killing of Wissam Farhat, commander of Hamas’s Shejaiya battalion, who helped direct the Oct. 7 massacre.
Evolutionists Say “Jurassic World” Might Exist . . . On Another Planet “Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22). Creationists are routinely mocked by evolutionists for believing that mankind once lived with dinosaurs. So I just had to shake my head and chuckle when I read the first line of this article, “A new study argues that a real-life ‘Jurassic World’ could currently exist, just on another planet.” Yes, Romans is right, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”
Private Jets Headed To Global Warming Conference “Literally Frozen On Runway” While world leaders spoke at a ‘global warming’ conference in Dubai, located in the heart of the Arabian Desert, discussing the usual: banning gas stoves, cow farts, and petrol-powered vehicles, a powerful snowstorm grounded all flights at Munich Airport in Germany.
Denver Health administers 1st shots of Ebola vaccines In a milestone moment in the Mile High City, on Nov. 27, Denver Health administered the first live Ebola vaccine for preventative measures to some patients, 9News reported.
Dept. of VA Under Fire for Treating Illegal Aliens While Delaying Care for Veterans A long-standing agreement between the Department of Veterans Affairs and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to process claims for unauthorized migrant medical care is drawing scrutiny from veterans’ advocates, who are concerned that it could jeopardize the agency’s mission of caring for veterans in the midst of an ongoing border crisis and existing complaints about veterans’ care.
UN Palestine exhibition contains ‘grotesque blood libels’ The United Nations headquarters in New York City is hosting an exhibition by the Palestinian Authority which has been accused of spreading blood libels against the State of Israel.
“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.” —Samuel Adams (1775)
Fellow Patriots, on this day in 1996, General Motors began mass producing the EV1, the first time an electric vehicle enjoyed that status. It launched a wild, sweeping revolution in which everyone wanted an electric car. Just kidding. Government has to subsidize and mandate them, and they still sit on dealer lots twice as long as gas vehicles. —Mark Alexander
Now that the bar of conviction has been lowered, plenty of other members might want to watch their backs.
Nate Jackson
“Throw the bums out” is a saying as American as apple pie. And yet we rarely do actually throw them out; we just don’t like the other side’s congressmen from some other districts. So it’s almost humorous to see members of Congress come together in a bipartisan effort to throw out one of their own bums.
George Santos, the lying, cheating representative from New York, was expelled from Congress just before we went to press on Friday. It was only the sixth time that’s ever happened, and the first since 2002. Three of the expelled members were Confederates ousted 150 years ago.
As all the media headlines gleefully blared, Santos is a Republican, and the already slim GOP majority in the House just got slimmer unless a Republican can prevail in a special election in the coming weeks.
What the media quit highlighting some time back, however, is that Santos is also homosexual.
Obviously, it became really inconvenient really quickly to celebrate or even mention that facet of his messed up life when his lies were exposed. On top of being a liar, now he’s also charged with misappropriating campaign funds, defrauding donors, and identify theft — among 23 federal charges in all.
What really sets Santos apart, however, is that no congressman has ever been expelled without either fighting for the Confederacy or being convicted of a crime.
Expulsion under these circumstances sets a precedent that could spell trouble for a couple hundred other shysters in Congress. We couldn’t even count the number who’ve lied about their autobiographies (the presidentdoes that pretty much all the time), defrauded donors with lavish expenses, or made fraudulent campaign promises. What’s the limiting principle for expulsion now?
We’re not the only ones thinking about other candidates for expulsion.
“We have a colleague in the Senate that actually did much more sinister and serious kinds of things: Senator [Bob] Menendez,” opined Senator John “Hoodie” Fetterman. “He needs to go. And if you are going to expel Santos, how can you allow somebody like Menendez to remain in the Senate?” He added that “Menendez is really a senator for Egypt, not New Jersey. I really think he needs to go.”
Menendez has indeed been charged with bribery, but he has not yet been convicted, and the last time a senator was expelled for any reason was the War Between the States. So, paging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
What about a few other select members of Congress? We’re thinking specifically of “Squad” members Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Tlaib has vocally supported “the Palestinians,” and she has ties to Hamas, whose terrorists killed 1,200 Israelis and 33 Americans in October.
Then there’s Representative Jamaal Bowman, the New York Democrat who illegally pulled a fire alarm to obstruct congressional proceedings and worked out a sweetheart deal for a slap on the wrist.
We could go on, but you get the idea.
We opened by joking about the unpopularity of Congress, so we’ll close with that paradox. Well over 90% of incumbents are reelected virtually every election cycle. In fact, Wikipedia has an article dedicated to “Congressional stagnation in the United States.” That’s a remarkable feat for a crew as universally hated as Congress. According to Gallup, Congress’s approval rating in November was 15% — slightly higher than dental work and cockroaches in the kitchen. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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More people are packing, IRS penalties rise, Jussie Smollett loses appeal, and more.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
More people are packing thanks to constitutional carry: “If you want to reduce crime, you have to make it clear that the likely victims of crime will be carrying.” So says John Lott, who, as president of the Crime Prevention Resource Center and the author of the bestselling More Guns, Less Crime, has done more than perhaps any single American to ensure that proponents of the Second Amendment are armed with the facts. Those facts continue to evolve, too, and in an encouraging direction for Liberty. For example, a new study by Lott indicates that more than half of the states now allow constitutional carry — that is, the right of residents to carry a concealed firearm without a permit. He estimates that 8.4% of American adults now have concealed-carry permits. Criminals tend to go where the guns aren’t, but the American people are growing increasingly tired of being at the mercy of those criminals. As The Washington Times reports, “With the addition this year of Alabama, Florida and Nebraska, 27 states now allow concealed carry without a permit.” As Lott notes, “What that means is it’s a lot less costly, a lot less difficult, for people to carry, and that primarily impacts poor people that live in high-crime urban areas,” adding that these lower barriers mean more racial minorities and women are carrying in high-crime urban areas. If his theory holds, this reality should help reduce crime in the places that need it most.
Israel and Hamas: Who knew what and when? One of the realities we pondered nearly two months ago, immediately after the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel, was how the Jewish state and its vaunted intelligence services could have been caught so woefully off guard. It became clear almost immediately that the planning for Hamas’s barbaric attack was both lengthy and detailed. And now we learn, as The New York Times reports: “Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.” As Hot Air’s John Sexton writes: “The whole thing comes down to a failure of imagination and also a too firm belief among senior leaders that Hamas was not interested in attacking. … Israel simultaneously thought too little of Hamas’ capabilities and too much of their good intentions. It’s a dramatic failure which the article compares directly to the US failure to predict 9/11.”
Israeli forces self-limit: One thing that should now be painfully clear to even casual observers of the Israel-Hamas war is that Israel and Hamas aren’t equally armed combatants. Yes, Israel has military superiority, but it also has moral superiority. The two sides returned to hostilities Friday after a week-long pause in the fighting, and that means Israel is once again under withering pressure to refrain from destroying its mortal enemy. The Jew-hating Left claims that Israel is engaged in a “genocide” of the Palestinian people, but, as the New York Post’s Caitlin Doombas asks rather rhetorically, “How, exactly, can the Israel Defense Forces avoid harming civilians when its enemy hides behind innocents, directing its operations from the most sacred of safe spaces — including hospitals — in violation of the international rules of war?” It’s a great question, and even Joe Biden’s flacks seem to appreciate it. Said White House national security spokesman John Kirby yesterday: “In the last 24 hours, [the Israel Defense Forces] have been putting a map online of places where people in Gaza need to avoid and need to go. They have also been doing it with paper and leaflets and that kind of thing.” He continued, “It’s very rare for a modern military to take those kinds of steps, basically telegraphing their punches, before they actually conduct operations.”
House votes to permanently freeze $6 billion in Iranian funds: Better late than never, we suppose, and there’s no telling what Joe Biden and the Democrat-controlled Senate will do, but, as Just the News reports, “House Republicans on Thursday approved legislation to permanently freeze $6 billion in Iranian funds that the Biden administration had agreed to release as part of a hostage exchange with Tehran earlier this year.” The vote was 307-119, which indicates strong bipartisan support and which may paint both the Senate and the president into a corner regarding Iran. The rogue regime’s support for Hamas is well documented, and the fungibility of money means that Biden’s lavish gift could well have been used to launch attacks not just on Israeli forces but American forces too.
IRS penalties rise: Joe Biden’s administration is nickeling and diming Americans at every possible opportunity, be it with the regulatory state costing the average household $14,000 annually, Bidenflation weakening the dollar by nearly 19%, and now via the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS will now charge 8% interest for underpayment of taxes as of October 1. That’s a three percentage point increase in interest charges from just two years ago. So, if you have not paid at least 90% of your taxes before filing, or have less than a $1,000 difference, then the IRS will include an 8% interest penalty on the outstanding taxes. Why is the IRS doing this? Because it’s more money for the federal government’s coffers. Last year alone, the IRS raked in $1.8 billion in underpayment penalties from more than 12 million Americans. So, with Bidenflation weakening the dollar, the IRS is not about to be on the losing end of that fiscal situation.
Texas arrests illegals: On Sunday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that he will soon sign a new law to empower state officers to arrest and detain illegal aliens for illegally entering the state. “The problem is extraordinarily bad,” Abbott explained. “The numbers are high, and that is because Joe Biden continues to lay out the welcome mat, welcoming illegal immigrants into the United States of America.” He added, “That said, what we’ve seen in our numbers in the state of Texas is because of the wall that we have built, because of these razor-wide barriers that we have built, Texas is now no longer the number one illegal entry point.” This new law will effectively make it a state crime for an illegal alien to enter the Lone Star State.
Jussie Smollett loses appeal: Hate crime hoaxing actor Jussie Smollett on Friday lost the appeal of his guilty verdict for staging an infamous hate crime back in the winter of 2019. During his 2021 trial and in the face of evidence and witness testimony that showed otherwise, Smollett maintained that “there was no hoax.” A jury found Smollett guilty on five felony counts of disorderly conduct, for which he was sentenced to 150 days in jail, 30 months probation, ordered to pay $120,106 in restitution for police resources spent on the faux crime, and a $25,000 fine. Following the court’s decision, special prosecutor Dan Webb stated, “As the appellate court noted, Mr. Smollett ‘challenge[d] virtually every aspect of’ the prosecution, and the appellate court correctly rejected each and every one of those challenges.” Smollett’s legal team promised to appeal the decision to the state’s supreme court.
NYC stabbing spree leaves four dead: A man wielding a knife attacked police officers responding to a 911 call and was shot dead by one of the officers. Tragically, the perpetrator was exiting a house where four family members ranging in ages from 11 to 44 had been stabbed to death, while a 61-year-old woman was rushed to the hospital suffering from multiple stab wounds. According to NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, “The weapon that was used to injure the officers [was] a typical kitchen steak knife, and at this time this is the only weapon we recovered.” No motive has yet been established, but one thing is clear: The weapon used in these murders was a knife. Based on Democrats’ anti-Second Amendment logic, the way to “solve” this problem is not to blame the individual who committed these heinous murders but to call for legislation to severely limit if not outright ban the availability and accessibility of common kitchen steak knives.
Headlines
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum drops out of 2024 presidential race (ABC News)
COP28: UN climate talks take aim at food (BBC) | However, 22 countries pledge to triple nuclear capacity in push to cut fossil fuels (New York Times)
House set to hold vote on bill striking down Biden’s EV push (Fox News)
Most Americans name China as our “greatest threat” (Newsweek)
Pending home sales drop to a record low, even worse than during the financial crisis (NBC News)
A Vermont Christian school is suing after being banned from sporting tournaments because it refused to let a male play against girl’s team (Not the Bee)
Policy: The administrative state must be brought under control (Washington Examiner)
Satire: Climate activists’ private planes freeze themselves to runway in powerful protest (Babylon Bee)
Public school children in the Golden State will be taught what media to trust. What could possibly go wrong?
Thomas Gallatin
California Democrats hate free speech because it’s proving to be a hurdle in their crusade to indoctrinate the whole of the state and indeed the entire country into accepting the Left’s political and cultural agendas.
Under the guise of seeking to protect schoolchildren from the threat of “misinformation,” the Democrat-controlled state government recently passed Assembly Bill 873, which Governor Gavin Newsom promptly signed into law.
What this legislation does is “act to add Section 33548 to the Education Code, relating to pupil instruction” on media literacy. The state government is effectively choosing “ethical media” standards to be taught to public school students grades K-12. The curriculum guide includes covering how “the proliferation of online misinformation has posed risks to international peace, interfered with democratic decision-making and threatened public health.”
Gee, we wonder how the Democrats who wrote the law or the Democrat teachers union members who’ll follow it in the classroom will interpret that.
The legislation also presents itself as an effort to protect children from the ills of social media. Its supposed aim is “to ensure that all pupils in California are prepared with media literacy skills necessary to safely, responsibly, and critically consume and use social media and other forms of media.”
But what are these “media literacy skills”? Well, Democrat assembly member Marc Berman, who sponsored the bill, essentially admitted its design is to get students to accept the Democrat Party’s policy agenda items as incontrovertible truth. As Berman put it, “From climate denial to vaccine conspiracy theories to the January 6 attack on our nation’s Capitol, the spread of online misinformation has had global and deadly consequences.”
What this legislation is seeking to do is train up students to accept only Leftmedia sources and narratives as reliable and trustworthy. It’s a blatant effort to bias schoolchildren’s views in favor of the mainstream media, which indoctrinates in the climate cult, suppresses vaccine information, and lies about elections and the January 6 riot, just to name a few.
Opposing so-called misinformation, disinformation, and fake news has become a Democrat hobby horse, and of course the question of who determines what is accurate and trustworthy news is left entirely up to them. It’s an argument to justify infringing on Americans’ First Amendment rights, without blatantly saying as such.
California isn’t the only Democrat-controlled state to engage in such “media literacy” education standards, as New Jersey, Illinois, and Delaware have similar education lessons for public school students. However, no state has been as aggressive as the Golden State.
Teaching the facts, and teaching children how to engage with and think through the facts rather than telling them what to believe, has always been the crux of the issue with educational standards. The basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic were once recognized as foundational building blocks needed to equip students with the skills and tools for them to further develop their ability to access, accumulate, and apply knowledge and information for themselves. That used to be the primary goal of schools.
Increasingly, however, these basic educational building blocks have seemingly become secondary as special interest agendas and policy issues have taken center stage. Teaching students what to think rather than how to think has taken precedence in places like California.
The depth and degree of the government’s efforts to suppress conservative speech are still being uncovered.
Douglas Andrews
If you appreciate free speech in this country, you should appreciate the efforts of a handful of classically liberal journalists who’ve left the Left. Chief among them are Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger.
The latter two of these free-speech fighters were on Capitol Hill last week, testifying at the invitation of House Judiciary Committee Republicans. There, Shellenberger told of U.S. and British military contractors who’ve used disinformation tactics against the American people.
As the Washington Examiner reports: “Shellenberger said the tactics and silencing of people who disagreed with a certain point of view were worse than he had predicted in front of Congress in March. The alleged silencing included censorship on major social media platforms during the 2020 presidential election.”
Shellenberger took to X last week in a lengthy post revealing yet another layer of the Censorship Industrial Complex — this one created in reaction to the UK’s Brexit and Donald Trump’s stunning election in 2016. It reads in part:
A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twitter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance. They describe the activities of an “anti-disinformation” group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTIL, that officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into multiple official projects, including those of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The CTI League documents offer the missing link answers to key questions not addressed in the Twitter Files and Facebook Files. Combined, they offer a comprehensive picture of the birth of the “anti-disinformation” sector, or what we have called the Censorship Industrial Complex.
Perhaps the biggest battle of all between the deep state speech suppressors and the rest of us was the one that played out over the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop. It was a battle that shaped the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. It was also the subject of a telling back-and-forth between Shellenberger and a Democrat congressman.
New York’s Dan Goldman, a Laptop Truther if ever there was one, had this to say about the authenticity of Hunter’s MacBook Pro: “The 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.”
Is there now? That’s strange. We haven’t seen or heard of any such “evidence” that Rudy and Vlady did it. Nor, apparently, has independent journalist and Twitter Files purveyor Michael Shellenberger.
“Are you suggesting,” asked a bemused Shellenberger of Goldman, “that the New York Post could participate in a conspiracy to construct the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop?” Shellenberger is the most compelling of witnesses because it’s clear from the jump that the only ax he has to grind is on behalf of our Constitution’s First Amendment and against government censorship. Using military contractors to employ disinformation tactics against American citizens — Shellenberger says it’s worse than he thought. They created “a handbook” to use against the American people.
The truth is that while the Democrats were accusing Republicans of engaging in a conspiracy theory, it was the Democrats who were engaged in a conspiracy theory — “that Hunter Biden’s laptop had been manipulated by the Russians,” in Shellenberger’s words. “There is zero evidence of that, contrary to what Congressman Goldman said.”
Shellenberger continued: “We saw an effort by existing FBI agents and former FBI officials to spread disinformation about the Hunter Biden laptop and suggest to the American people — say outright to the American people — that it was a Russian hack-and-leak operation. And, of course, President Biden repeated that in the debates, and I think many of us were fooled by that.”
It’s not a stretch to say that the discovery of Hunter Biden’s laptop — and the acknowledgment of its authenticity by all but the deadest of dead-enders — has changed the course of history. Not only has it kept the Biden administration and its allies on the defensive; not only has it plagued the president in the polls; it has also blown the cover off of the Censorship Industrial Complex and its efforts to weaponize the government and its law-enforcement and intelligence services against the people.
Seen in this light, it’s no wonder that Goldman tries so mightily to deny the laptop’s legitimacy. It’s a deep wound to Democrats and a colossal embarrassment to them.
Further, it’s no wonder that the Left has also seized upon the phony “anti-Semitism” of Elon Musk and his X platform as another avenue of attack. The charge is especially toxic now, and it serves the Left’s real purpose — which is the suppression of conservative speech.
As we’ve said before: Leftists wouldn’t need to censor us if they weren’t afraid of losing the argument.
Cosmopolitan magazine says the quiet part out loud.
Emmy Griffin
Cosmopolitan is a publication where junk and trashy topics seem to be the modus operandi. Its meant-to-shock titles for articles and other content have generally been a reflection of the worst parts of American culture for years. Interestingly enough, one of its pieces, published in mid-November, got attention by a larger public audience than it usually enjoys.
This is because of two central aspects that the article deals with — namely, The Satanic Temple’s newer abortion clinic in New Mexico named Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic (a disgusting and evil-minded name), and abortion being an overt Satanic ritual.
The article is explicit and unapologetic in its approach. With regard to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s mother, it gleefully explains that she and her contemporaries only had access to illegal abortions, insinuating that if they had the abortion amenities and freedoms women have today, then perhaps Roe v. Wade wouldn’t have been overturned.
In other words, this lovely article starts off by wishing that Justice Alito’s mother had killed him in the womb — all because he wrote the majority opinion in Dobbs. This bile is from an obvious member of The Party of Tolerance and Love™. Justice Alito has made the correct enemies.
This gross insinuation quickly gets buried by the larger content of the piece discussing the Satanic abortion clinic’s approach to abortions.
Satanists, the article assures us, don’t actually worship Satan; they are just a symbol for a defiance of cultural norms and accepted religious practices. The article seeks to brand The Satanic Temple as the logical and reasonable activist class of the religious community. After all, Satan was the first to rebel against God. Ergo, it is appropriate for him to become the symbol of rebellious activism. Except that worship of Self — which is intrinsic to Satanists — is ultimately Satan worship.
The article then goes on to explain the Satanic abortion ritual that turns Christian words and prayers on their head. The ritual involves a mirror and narrowing down your thoughts to “your intent, your responsibility to you.” The following exercise once you’ve made yourself the center of what is about to happen next is to proclaim that your will be done (a bastardization of the Lord’s Prayer). Then, after the pills are administered to kill the baby, the ritual ends with, “By my body, my blood; by my will, it is done” — a mockery of Jesus’s final words on the cross: “It is finished.”
Not every abortion clinic is as explicit in its display of self-worship and the child as an obvious sacrifice to that self. However, Satanists are saying the quiet part out loud, and Cosmopolitan is amplifying their message: Kill your unborn baby as a ritual to empower yourself, then you will be free. Apply that same undertone to every pro-abortion message, and the veneer of “compassion” and being “loving” toward women and families quickly falls off.
It should be a wake-up call to Christians who have bought into the pro-abortion lies. You are literally on the same side as self-proclaimed Satanists. Perhaps “good Catholics” like President Joe Biden and Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) should reexamine their position in light of this.
In this season of Advent in the Christian liturgical calendar, it is interesting to reflect once again on the promises of the Bible. In the beginning, when Adam and Eve sinned against God and cursed all of creation, God did not leave them without hope. God promised Eve that her “seed” would crush Satan’s head and conquer and restore all that was lost because of the original sin of Adam and Eve.
Mary and her son Jesus — the “seed” of Eve predicted in Genesis 3:15 — was that promised redeemer.
Satan hates mothers, children, and families because they are a reminder, an allegory, to the fact that he has already lost and that his self-worship will not prevail.
Authorities are still searching for three accomplices: Sean Hannity, Ron DeSantis, and a paper map of human poop.
The Babylon Bee
ALPHARETTA, GA — Americans are still reeling this morning after the shocking murder of California Governor Gavin Newsom was captured live on air and broadcast to millions of viewers.
“I’m still shaking,” said one local observer. “He was just there one moment… and in the next moment, he was brutally eviscerated. Torn to pieces. Murdered. I’ll never be able to shake those horrific images from my memory.”
Fox News was roundly criticized for airing the disturbing footage completely uncensored to shocked viewers. “Kids shouldn’t be allowed to see such things,” said one concerned mother whose child walked into the living room while the incident was playing on live television. “My 5-year-old will be scarred for life. He may need counseling. How could Fox News do this?”
Authorities are still searching for three accomplices they say are persons of interest in the cold-blooded slaughter of California’s Governor. Alpharetta’s police chief named the three at-large suspects as Sean Hannity, Ron DeSantis, and a paper map of all the human poop covering San Francisco’s sidewalks.
At publishing time, authorities confirmed the suspects are still on the loose and should be considered extremely dangerous.
Biden’s Senior Moment of the Week (Vol. 71) — Joe Biden started the Christmas season off strong by botching the National Christmas Tree lighting, beginning the countdown before any remarks were given.
DeSantis Mic-Drops on Newsom — “I was talking to a fellow who had made the move from California to Florida. He was telling me that Florida is much better governed, safer, better budget, lower taxes, all this stuff … and then he paused and said ‘Oh, by the way, I’m Gavin Newsom’s father-in-law.’”
BLM Founder Switches Sides — A Rhode Island Black Lives Matter founder says he’s voting for Donald Trump.
“The leaders of the occupation should know, October 7 was just a rehearsal.” —Gaza Strip Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar
Dumb & Dumber
“The images coming out of Gaza are horrific. Netanyahu has resumed his genocidal bombing campaign. We need a permanent ceasefire now. End the apartheid. Free Palestine.” —Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
“[House Speaker] Mike Johnson and what he believes is one of the greatest threats we have today to the United States. … This is a bigger threat than al-Qaida to this country.” —Democrat strategist James Carville
For the Record
“In the aftermath of the Hamas Holocaust of Oct. 7, anything short of complete eradication is inexcusable; no citizen in a first-world country can live with such a genocidal specter constantly looming. Eradication of Hamas is also necessary to deter Hezbollah, a considerably more dangerous foe than Hamas, to say nothing of the regional ‘head of the snake,’ the Iranian regime itself.” —Josh Hammer
“Hamas has every incentive to string out the ‘truce’; the Biden administration, which would like to navigate an off-ramp to the conflict in the face of discontent from the Democratic Party’s Jew-hating progressive base, shares the same incentives. President Joe Biden may publicly claim to support Israel, but his deceitful actions belie his hollow words.” —Josh Hammer
“While the situation today is appalling, creating a three-front Iran-backed terror state on the borders of a nation the size of New Jersey would make things significantly worse. No sane citizenry would sign off on such a suicidal policy. No genuine ally would pressure a friend to do it.” —David Harsanyi
“Palestinians, and their defenders, remain the only people in the world who think they can reset history every time they lose a war of aggression.” —David Harsanyi
“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?” —Brian Mark Weber
Political Futures
“This is going to be, I think, the defining political issue of our time, this sense of taking our country back.” —Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker on the rise of Populist Europe
Friendly Fire
“We have a colleague in the Senate that actually did much more sinister and serious kinds of things. Senator [Bob] Menendez. He needs to go. And if you are going to expel [George] Santos, how can you allow … Menendez to remain in the Senate? … Menendez I think is really a senator for Egypt, not New Jersey.” —Senator John Fetterman (D-PA)
“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. … Where are the ‘BELIEVE THEM’ voices? … Progressive feminists of the world: where are you?” —”Jeopardy!“ co-host Mayim Bialik
“I don’t think there’s any greater risk to America with [Trump] than with Biden. … Nobody was trying to kill us when Trump was president in a way that they’re not now — if anything, there’s more hostility.” —ex-CNN host Chris Cuomo
And Last…
“What I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it. And what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil.” —Elon Musk
FOX News’ Trey Yingst reports the latest on the Israel-Hamas war. The ‘FOX & Friends’ co-hosts discuss the Biden administration’s response to the growing Iranian threat in the Middle East. #FOXNews
Gallup began its survey on media trust in 1972, repeating it in 1974 and 1976. After a long period, the public opinion firm restarted the polls in 1997 and has asked Americans about their confidence level in the mass media – newspapers, TV, and radio – almost every year since then.
Even while in prison — the fanatical fiend killed as many as 15 Palestinians he suspected of treachery, usually with a razor blade or machete
HIS life was saved twice by Israel – but the monster dubbed “The Hamas Bin Laden” repaid his sworn enemy by masterminding the October 7 horror.
Yahya Sinwar, 61, spent 22 years in an Israeli prison for terrorist murder and kidnap plots and spent every second honing his burning hatred for his captors.
His astonishing rise to the top of the Hamas terror tree came despite being sentenced to four life sentences in 1989 for planning the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinians he suspected of working with Israel.
House Speaker Mike Johnson refuses to sit idly and let Democrats attack Christians with bad-faith attacks.
On Friday, Democratic strategist James Carville was speaking with Bill Maher when he offered his perspective on Christians like Johnson: They’re “a bigger threat” than al-Qaeda.
“Mike Johnson and what he believes is one of the greatest threats we have today to the United States,” Carville claimed. “This is a bigger threat than al-Qaeda to this country.”
Carville continued:
And let me tell you something: The speaker of the House, they got probably at least two Supreme Court justices, maybe more, don’t kid yourself. People in the press have no idea who this guy is, how he was formed, what the threat is — and this is a fundamental threat to the United States. It is a fundamental thing. They don’t believe in the Constitution. They’ll tell you that. Mike Johnson himself says, “What is democracy but two wolves and a lamb having lunch?”
That’s what they really, really, really believe. And to say, “Oh, come on, man. It’s just some crazy s***.” No, no. They believe that. And they’re coming and they’ve been doing it forever. They’re funded. They’re funded. They’re relentless and, you know, they probably won’t win for a while but they might. And if they do, the whole country blows a gasket.
Maher actually threw Carville a bone, asking if he was referring to “Christian nationalism,” and Carville responded, “Absolutely.”
However, the way in which Carville pontificated about Johnson indicated that he was speaking about Christianity generally, not any form of nationalism per se. This is an important distinction because Johnson has never said he ascribes to any form of “Christian nationalism.” Quite tellingly, that phrase is only used when the media and Democrats want to attack him.
— (@)
Johnson responded to Carville’s attack on Sunday, exposing the absurdity of his claim.
“It’s twisted and shameful that a leading Democrat strategist says millions of Christians in America are a greater threat than foreign terrorists who murdered more than 3,000 Americans,” Johnson said.
“The Democratic Party should condemn this. But they won’t,” he added.
— (@)
Meanwhile, it’s not true, as Carville claimed, that Johnson does not believe in the Constitution. Johnson, in fact, worked as a constitutional lawyer prior to entering politics.
Johnson has also repeatedly explained that he is not “trying to establish Christianity as the national religion or something.” Instead, he describes himself as a “rule-of-law guy” who respects the “rule of law” and the “law of the land” — even when that law contradicts his Christian faith.
On Monday’s “Newsline,” Trump lawyer Christina Bobb and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi react to the release of records of direct payments to President Joe Biden from China. Watch NEWSMAX, an independent news network with a conservative perspective, available in 100M+ U.S. homes.
Japanese researchers said they found evidence of long-term heart damage in people who received COVID-19 vaccines – including in asymptomatic patients. The findings contradict claims by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that most people who develop myocarditis following COVID-19 vaccines experience symptoms but ‘feel better quickly.’
Close to a quarter of young British people said recently they would be open to banning the Bible if they believed its pages contained “hate speech.”
Whitestone Insights, a polling group, surveyed 2,088 adults in the United Kingdom, asking them if they agreed with the following statement:
Unless the offending parts can be edited out, books containing what some perceive as hate speech should be banned from general sale, including if necessary religious texts such as the Bible.
Twenty-three percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 were most likely to agree with the statement, followed by 17% of those ages 35 to 54, and 13% of those over the age of 55, according to Christian Today.
The survey results come after Dr. Päivi Räsänen, a Finnish politician, emerged victorious from a years-long legal battle after she shared on Twitter — now X — her Bible-based views on sexuality, and God’s design for marriage to be a lifetime union between one man and one woman.
Listen to them on the latest episode of “Quick Start”
Räsänen told CBN Digital she is “grateful and relieved” after having been acquitted of the hate speech charges against her. The Finnish lawmaker had been criminally charged for tweeting a Bible verse.
Lois McLatchie of the Alliance Defending Freedom UK voiced her concerns over the new survey — and pointed to Räsänen as a cautionary tale.
“We may no longer be a majority Christian population here in Britain,” said McLatchie. “That’s even more reason to protect freedom of speech and belief for all.”
In addition to Räsänen’s case, there have been instances of unabashed censorship in the U.K. — including a woman who has been arrested twice for praying silently outside an abortion clinic.
“Censoring one type of belief because it fails to fit with the dominant orthodoxy of our day is no better than imposing the illiberal blasphemy laws of the Middle Ages,” McLatchie said. “We need a robust defense of religious freedom from those who craft our legislation and we need to educate the ‘be kind’ generation on the truly hateful consequences of censorship before this type of thinking creeps further into reality.”
FOX News contributor Joe Concha slammed Cheney for her Trump warning during ‘FOX & Friends First,’ and shared his take on a NY Times article on gender transitions for kids. #FOXNews
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