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
Moses & Greater Riches (Hebrews 11:24-26) – Pastor Patrick Hines Sermon
Hebrews 11:24 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, 25 choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the temporary pleasures of sin, 26 considering the *reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward.
▶️Pastor Patrick Hines has recently had a brand new book published, called, “Earth’s Foundational History – Part 1: Genesis Chapters 1 Through 5.” (Paperback – May 4, 2023) https://cutt.ly/16RCeZ0
These two books are also available on Amazon. All proceeds go directly to Pastor Hines:
▶️Am I Right With God?: The Gospel, Justification, Saving Faith, Repentance, Assurance, & The New Birth https://cutt.ly/S6RCbuM
▶️Redrawing the Battle Lines: 23 Sermons on Critical Issues Facing the Church https://cutt.ly/m6RCTi0
We subscribe to the Westminster Standards as our doctrinal statement. It consists of the following documents:
The Westminster Confession of Faith The Westminster Larger Catechism The Westminster Shorter Catechism
We also believe that Christian Worship is to be regulated and defined by God’s Word, the Bible.
Our worship services are designed to please and honor the Triune God of the Bible. We place Scripture reading and the preaching of the word of God at the center of worship along with Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These are God’s gifts to His church and ought to always be at the center of Christian worship. We are a congregation that loves to sing God’s praises, recite His Word back to Him, and actively engage in hearing and learning from God’s Word.
We embrace and promote a comprehensive Christian world and life view.
There is no area of life which is not under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It is to God and His law which all people, including governments and civil rulers, will answer. The Word of God embraces and informs the way we view marriage, the family, children, education, politics, worship, law, government, war, the church, missions, evangelism, and worship. In the world today there is a battle of opposing worldviews. There are basically only two positions: God’s Word and man’s ideas. We stand positively for Biblical truth and negatively against man’s ideas which are opposed to Biblical truth.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only hope for mankind.
Because all men fall short of obeying God’s law, all men everywhere are in need of divine grace and salvation from God. This salvation is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ who died for sinners, was buried, rose again, and is alive today seated at God the Father’s right hand.
We Worship God Together as Families.
We offer nursery during the morning worship service for newborns and infants but encourage people to keep as many of their children as they can with them for morning worship. The audio of the service is in the nursery via speakers. There is also a crying room with a video screen and audio of the sermon. We offer Sunday school classes for all ages, but worship together as families. We do not offer “children’s” church.
All who profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and are members of an evangelical church are cordially invited to participate with us in the Lord’s Supper.
The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.Exodus 7:5
The ungodly world is hard to teach. Egypt does not know Jehovah and therefore dares to set up its idols and even ventures to ask, “Who is the Lord?” Yet the Lord means to break proud hearts, whether they will or not. When His judgments thunder over their heads, darken their skies, destroy their harvests, and slay their sons, they begin to discern somewhat of Jehovah’s power. There will yet be such things done in the earth as shall bring skeptics to their knees. Let us not be dismayed because of their blasphemies, for the Lord can take care of His own name, and He will do so in a very effectual manner.
The salvation of His own people was another potent means of making Egypt know that the God of Israel was Jehovah, the living and true God. No Israelite died by any one of the ten plagues. None of the chosen seed were drowned in the Red Sea. Even so, the salvation of the elect and the sure glorification of all true believers will make the most obstinate of God’s enemies acknowledge that Jehovah, He is the God.
Oh, that His convincing power would go forth by His Holy Spirit in the preaching of the gospel, till all nations shall bow at the name of Jesus and call Him Lord!
“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 1:6-7
Day by day God is quietly changing me Molding me, making me Sometimes breaking me
Loving me, leading me Guiding me, strengthening me Testing me in the fire-purified Will I come forth as gold?
Part of the work God does to grow us and change us is by testing through various trials.
On the other hand, some of the changing work He does in our lives is quiet and gentle as He asks us to willingly bend our hearts to the work He is doing.
But, some of the changing work won’t be accomplished without the testing trials. Whether He is quietly working on us – or purifying us in the fire, the same result will be produced and that result will be a genuine faith deeply grounded in our hearts.
I have been through both as I am sure most of us would also admit has been the case in our lives. We have been through the challenging trials and at other times we have seen a more subtle work of change take place in our hearts, yet both were learning times when God showed us how to trust Him through a season of change.
I am thankful that God loves me enough to change me, and as I undergo this changing work He does in me, He is also giving me a glimpse of what I can become. And this is how I know I want to be all He made me to be.
Isaiah 64:8 “But now, O LORD, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and all we are the work of Your hand.”
“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Savior, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope; “ 1 Timothy 1:1 (KJV)
One of the greatest things the gospel of Jesus Christ gives to us is hope, especially when we are going through difficult times or loss.
The hope of the gospel is a blessed hope, uniquely tied to the resurrection of Christ from the dead and His return. This hope is much different than wishful thinking, positive thinking, or religious thinking that is not based upon the Word of God. When someone says, “I hope so” it is because there is uncertainty in what may happen. The hope that is ours in Jesus is a certainty, a reality, and a testimony.
Our hope is based upon historical fact, upon Biblical promises, upon the assurance of the Holy Spirit, upon the character of God, and upon a great cloud of witnesses who have given witness to the truth. Jesus is our hope of eternal life, of our home in heaven, of His return, of His coming kingdom, and of His reign and rule as Lord of all.
When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace; In every high and stormy gale, My anchor holds within the veil. His oath, His covenant, His blood, Support me in the whelming flood; When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay. -Edward Mote
Melania Trump: Tucker Carlson would be ‘powerful’ as VP on ticket Unless there’s a political earthquake of continent-rattling proportions in the GOP in the next few months, it appears President Donald Trump is on a path to be the party’s 2024 nominee. And while that’s not final, nor is any potential candidate for vice president, a powerful voice now has sounded off. A report from Axios, while using language mostly adopted by leftists, does reveal that a source confirmed Melania Trump has expressed an opinion about the possibilities of the ticket.
FBI’s targeting of Catholics, pro-lifers exposed by House GOP A new report issued Monday by the House Weaponization Subcommittee claims that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) “abused its counterterrorism tools” in order to target Catholics and pro-life supporters “as potential domestic terrorists.”
Trump makes bold prediction about Biden; warns president is surrounded by ‘evil’ people President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination in 2024, recently predicted that President Joe Biden would not be the Democrat Party’s nominee for president next year and warned Biden is surrounded by “evil” people. President Trump doesn’t think Joe Biden will make it to the Election as the Democrat nominee:
Ben & Jerry’s official posts justification of Hamas massacre Ben & Jerry’s board chair attacks Israel over war in Gaza with tweet supporting Hamas; believes Congress is corrupt after passing resolution equating anti-Zionism to antisemitism.
As Gaza breaks down, Hamas rulers hide underground A slow and growing stream of condemnation is heard in the Strip after Hamas steals humanitarian aid including fuel leaving displaced Gazan’s without solutions. But the images that were released on Thursday, showing large numbers of men, some who had surrendered to the troops and others who were captured, sitting stiped of their clothes on the ground under Israeli troop’s guard. The military’s aggressive maneuvers have succeeded in eliminating Hamas’s military capabilities, where battles were fought.
Humans must be accountable for AI in war, Air Force secretary says “You don’t enforce laws against machines; you enforce them against people,” Kendall told a Reagan Forum audience. Frank Kendall dismissed the notion “of the rogue robot that goes out there and runs around and shoots everything in sight indiscriminately,” highlighting the fact that AI technologies — particularly those deployed on the battlefields of the future — will be governed by some level of human oversight.
Gold Bars Discovered in House of Democratic Senator Are Connected to Armed Robbery, Gold bars found in the search of the home of Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey in September have been documented as the property of a Menendez co-defendant that was stolen during a 2023 armed robbery then recovered, according to news reports. The documentation provides a direct link between the gold, Menendez and a man accused of bribing him, an NBC legal analyst said.
IDF destroys tunnel shafts, eliminates terrorists as intense battles rage in Gaza The Israeli military killed senior Hamas intelligence operatives in a strike on a central command center. The IDF 188th Brigade, in collaboration with the Yahalom elite combat engineering unit, destroyed seven tunnel shafts, eliminated several terrorists, and seized a large cache of ammunition and explosives in northern Gaza on Thursday. the Israeli Air Force acted on precise intelligence to kill Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a senior Hamas military intelligence operative
Hamas Terrorists May be Surrendering in Large Numbers to Israeli Forces: Reports “Hamas fighters surrendering here in seemingly large numbers,” wrote defense analyst Jonathan Schanzer on X/Twitter. “This is a good sign, if the trend continues. Questioning them will also lead to more intelligence that could also help bring a speedier end to this phase of the war.”
World Leaders Mark Hanukkah as Antisemitism Spikes Worldwide Amid Gaza War World leaders on Thursday observed the first night of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, expressing solidarity with their Jewish communities amid a global surge in antisemitism since Hamas’ mass slaughter of Jews during its Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel. Olaf Scholz became the first German chancellor to light the massive menorah in front of Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate.
Ben-Gvir: Nukhba terrorists should be held underground in minimal conditions National Security Minister Itamir Ben-Gvir instructed X to utilize an underground prison wing, which has been out of use for an extended period of time, to house Nukhba prisoners in. Nukhba is considered to be an elite naval force of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades in the Hamas terrorist organization. Ben-Gvir insisted that Commissioner of Prison Services Katy Perry imprison the terrorists detained in the underground wing where the conditions of the prisoners would be minimal.
Netanyahu threatens to turn ‘Beirut into Gaza’ after Israeli murdered in Hezbollah attack Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah not to escalate a simmering conflict with Israel, hinting that the IDF could respond with a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. “If Hezbollah decides to open an all-out war, then with its own hands it will turn Beirut and southern Lebanon, which are not far from here, into Gaza and Khan Yunis,”
Tachles with Aviel – “We are all Hamas!” For Marwan, as probably for the majority of Palestinians, the Palestinian Nazi massacre is an Israeli fantasy. Everything I show him is fake from his point of view. I told him to speak to Mansour Abbas, leader of the Arab political party Ra’am, who had seen the horror reel of Hamas clips put together by the IDF. Abbas himself said that the images were horrific, and that what he saw was not human and had nothing to do with Islam. But no, he doesn’t want that. Marwan believes Hamas and not the evidence.
After watching footage of Hamas atrocities, US urban warfare expert shocked by seeing ‘such joy’ terrorists had in their acts American urban warfare expert John Spencer, who leads the Modern War Institute’s Department of Urban Warfare Studies, expressed his shock over the acts of Hamas terrorists after watching a film of the atrocities. Spencer stressed that despite the horrific images of the massacre when a large number of terrorists invaded Israel and brutally massacred over 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, it was important to document the crimes so that they would not be forgotten in the future. “No one should want to see it, but the horrors of that day should never be forgotten,” “I’ve seen my share of evil firsthand around the world in wars. I’ve seen heinous cruelty/dehumanization/ mutilations. I’ve looked evil men in the eye. But I’ve never seen so many evil men (hundreds, thousands) show such joy in committing their acts,”
Israeli soldiers find massive Hamas weapons depot near school in northern Gaza Strip The cache was discovered by soldiers of the 460th Brigade’s battlegroup in the heart of a civilian area near a school and a hospital. “We are in the heart of a residential neighborhood, you can also see the area of the schools next to me,” Lt.- Col. Tomer, commander of the force that found the weapons, said in a video showing the find while pointing to buildings behind him. “This is further proof of the cynical use of the residents of the Gaza Strip as a human shield by the terrorist organization Hamas,”
OSIRIS-APEX prepares for 1st close solar encounter on way to asteroid Apophis If it all works out as planned, the timing would be perfect. The space rock, as wide as the Empire State Building, is expected to then glide within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of Earth, the closest any cosmic object of that size has gotten to our planet. (NASA has ruled out any threat from the space rock to Earth for at least a century. You may be able to, however, glance at Apophis for a few hours on the night of April 13, 2029.)
Over 100 House Dems refuse to vote for resolution condemning antisemitism Over a 100 Democratic members of the House of Representatives refused to vote for a resolution condemning antisemitism on Tuesday. Thirteen Democrats voted “no,” while dozens of others either voted “present” or did not vote on the passage of H. Res. 894,
Very strong M7.1 earthquake hits Vanuatu A very strong earthquake registered by the USGS as M7.1 hit Vanuatu at 12:56 UTC (23:56 LT) on December 7, 2023. The agency is reporting a depth of 48.4 km (30 miles). EMSC is reporting M6.9 at a depth of 32 km (20 miles).
Intense hailstorm hits Menorca, Spain A sudden and intense hailstorm struck Menorca, Spain, on Tuesday morning, December 5, 2023, particularly affecting Mahon. The storm, not forecasted by Aemet, delivered heavy rainfall, with Mahon receiving 24 mm (0.95 inches) in just 15 minutes.
Strong atmospheric river drops record rainfall in the Pacific Northwest, U.S. A powerful atmospheric river has brought record-breaking rainfall to Washington and Oregon, causing widespread flooding and two fatalities as of December 5. The National Weather Service forecasts the storms to continue until December 7. Notable impacts include record river levels, such as the Stillaguamish River reaching a historic 6.50 m (21.34 feet), and extensive property damage across both states.
San Antonio Operating ‘Secret Migrant Camp’ With Taxpayer Funds. Hundreds of newly arrived migrants have been living in a “secret migrant camp” at San Antonio Airport in Texas for more than half a year, according to reports, which found the existence of the facility was kept hidden from local officials in the area despite taxpayers funding its operation.
Evasion and Half-Truths: The Dangerous Western Response to this Holiday Season’s Looming Islamic Threat The deliberate omissions, particularly their failure to address the religious motivation of terrorists, by FBI Director Christopher Wray and EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, place America and Europe in grave danger, revealing limited readiness to combat Islamic terrorism and underlining the peril of ignoring its roots for diplomacy, emphasizing society’s vulnerability to unaddressed sources, specifically Islam.
Israeli FM accuses UN head of backing Hamas after he uses rare clause to urge truce ..Eli Cohen said Guterres’ call for a ceasefire in the two-month war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 atrocities in southern Israel, “constitutes support” for the Palestinian terror organization and was “an endorsement of the murder of the elderly, the abduction of babies, and the rape of women.”
Why Are So Many Celebrities Suddenly Becoming Christians? In recent months, a number of high profile individuals have made headlines by deciding to give their lives to Christ. So exactly what in the world is going on here? Is this the beginning of a new trend? Ultimately, I believe that these high profile conversions to Christianity are just a very small portion of a much larger picture.
Pastor John Kilpatrick Just Issued An Ominous Prophetic Warning About What Is Coming That You Must Hear For only the third time in his 53 year ministry, Pastor John Kilpatrick has issued an urgent prophetic warning to the public. The first warning came just before 9/11, the second warning came just before the COVID pandemic, and now this new warning is the third one. Kilpatrick has ominously declared that “the land is going to manifest the sins that are proliferating” in our nation. He says that there will be problems with “earthquakes”, “volcanoes” and “the weather”.
The White House Goes Rogue: Secret Surveillance Program Breaks All the Laws …it was recently revealed that the White House, relying on a set of privacy loopholes, has been sidestepping the Fourth Amendment by paying AT&T to allow federal, state, and local law enforcement to access—without a warrant—the phone records of Americans who are not suspected of a crime.
“You Are Not Alone”: Christians United for Israel Raises $3 Million and Counting Christians United for Israel (CUFI) has launched a “You Are Not Alone” campaign in New York, Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas to support Israel in its fight against the Hamas terrorist death cult and campus-bred anti-Jewish bigotry.
Indian police crack down on sex-selective abortion ‘racket’ killing unborn girls Indian police arrested a doctor and his assistant late last month, the most recent in a string of arrests after law enforcement cracked down on a sex-selective abortion “racket” to illegally identify and kill unwanted baby girls. The practice is common in Asia, where a strong cultural preference for boys has led to the slaughter of millions of preborn little girls.
HARD PROOF! “13 Million Worldwide & 675,000 Americans Murdered” with Cold Calculation by Covid Killshots Well, we can offer this video for further corroboration: HARD PROOF OF A HIGHLY ORGANIZED, LONG PLANNED & GLOBAL COVID ‘VACCINE’ GENOCIDE. Let’s not forget this little data point about the vaccine-created neuralace which is designed to be connected to the future IoT: COVID VACCINE & 5G BINARY WEAPON SYSTEM: It’s much more dangerous than anyone knows.
Ireland’s “Hate Speech Bill” is a grotesque abuse of State power that will affect freedom of speech worldwide “Ireland’s “Hate Speech Bill” or The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 is a radical update to Irish hate crime law. It is a blueprint for authoritarianism, threatening jail time for the possession of memes and even reversing Ireland’s constitutionally guaranteed presumption of innocence – you are presumed guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.”
“The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.” —James Madison (1788)
Fellow Patriots, on this day in 1941, a day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed Congress with his “day of infamy” address, and Congress officially declared war on Japan. —Mark Alexander
Congress has been buffeted by a rash of announced departures, but certain Swamp creatures keep hanging on.
Douglas Andrews
With apologies to Dick Nixon, we won’t have Kevin McCarthy to kick around anymore. Nor, as of last count, 37 other members of Congress.
Nixon, a Californian like McCarthy, made that self-referential comment to the assembled press back in 1962 just after having lost the Golden State’s 1962 gubernatorial contest to Democrat Pat Brown. It had been a tough stretch for Nixon, who two years earlier had lost the presidential election to a younger, more handsome, more charismatic John F. Kennedy. That one-two electoral punch was enough to chase Nixon from politics, at least for a few years.
Likewise, it’s been a tough stretch for McCarthy, who two months ago became the first House speaker ever to be ousted from the post — in this case, by a vote of strange bedfellows: every Democrat and just eight members of his own party. And Wednesday, clearly still stinging from the way he was dumped, he announced his retirement from Congress.
“I have decided to depart the House at the end of this year to serve America in new ways,” McCarthy said. “I know my work is only getting started.”
Alas, McCarthy should’ve waited another year before “getting started” on his post-congressional career. By leaving office a year early, he’s setting the stage for a special election in California, though it likely won’t be held until next summer. That’ll leave the seat vacant, and it’ll leave the GOP with no margin for error. “It’s one thing to quit to take another public office, or for dire health reasons,” writes National Review’s Dan McLaughlin, who called McCarthy’s early exit “a shabby thing to do.”
As we mentioned earlier, McCarthy isn’t the only one skedaddling from the Swamp. North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry, who served as interim speaker between McCarthy and Johnson, announced Tuesday that he won’t seek reelection. But at least McHenry will finish out the remainder of his term.
To his credit, McCarthy’s retirement announcement was upbeat, and it contained no animosity toward his fellow Republicans. The same couldn’t be said for his GOP nemesis and the leader of the Gang of Eight that ousted him. Florida Congressman and Freedom Caucus member Matt Gaetz had a one-word reaction to McCarthy’s announcement, and it wasn’t even a real word. “McLeavin’.”
But while Gaetz was doing his best Billy “White Shoes” Johnson and serving as the poster boy for the pettiness of our politics, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was counting votes. “Now in 2024,” she posted, “we will have a 1 seat majority in the House of Representatives. Congratulations Freedom Caucus … I can assure you Republican voters didn’t give us the majority to crash the ship.”
Greene is certainly right about the GOP’s razor-thin majority, but she’s wrong to criticize the Freedom Caucus. The process of finding a new speaker was messy and at times embarrassing, but the result of McCarthy’s ouster was an unequivocal improvement: the election as speaker of the far more conservative Mike Johnson.
Why the mass exodus, which now numbers seven senators and 31 representatives? It’s hard to say, but Washington seems broken, seems like a thankless grind. McHenry disagrees:
There has been a great deal of handwringing and ink spilled about the future of this institution because some — like me — have decided to leave. Those concerns are exaggerated. I’ve seen a lot of change over 20 years. I truly feel this institution is on the verge of the next great turn. Whether its 1974, 1994, or 2010, we’ve seen the House evolve over time. Evolutions are often lumpy and disjointed but at each stage, new leaders emerge. There are many smart and capable members who remain, and others are on their way. I’m confident the House is in good hands.
McCarthy’s assessment seems more mixed. As he noted in a Wall Street Journal farewell, “It often seems that the more Washington does, the worse America gets.” Who can argue with this? And yet what an awful admission for a former House speaker to make. McCarthy was, after all, as responsible as anyone for what went on in Washington in recent years.
And yet all isn’t lost, at least not in the former speaker’s eyes. “The most reliable solution to what ails America is before our eyes,” he said: “everyday men and women who are raising families, showing up for work, volunteering, and pursuing the American Dream with passion and purpose.”
One more credit to McCarthy: He knew when to get out. Unlike a rusty old pug who keeps climbing back into the ring for one more brain-scrambling beatdown, McCarthy is leaving at the top of his cognitive game. Sadly, we can’t say the same thing for Joe Biden, or Nancy Pelosi, or Mitch McConnell, or Dianne Feinstein, may she rest in peace.
Columnist Henry Olsen, one of the sharpest of political observers, notes that McCarthy now joins his fellow “young guns” — former Speaker Paul Ryan and former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor — on the outside well before their time. “Their failure to create the GOP of their dreams,” he writes, “would be cautionary enough. Combined with the continuing failure of the Republicans who unseated them to construct a durable, governing alternative, it’s a tale of how a party that loses touch with its voters can wander aimlessly for years.”
McCarthy, as is his nature, refuses to be so dour. As he said in closing: “I agree with President Reagan’s observation that ‘all great change in America starts at the dinner table.’ Despite the best attempts by special interest groups and the news media to divide us, I have seen the goodness of the American people. They are what will ultimately uphold the enduring values of our great nation. We all have a role to play in that effort.”
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Please support The Patriot Fund today to help push us toward the finish line. From all of us here, thank you for your ongoing support. Truly, our work is not possible without you! —Christy Chesterton, Director of Advancement
Hunter Biden indicted, November jobs numbers hold steady, Gutless Gavin cancels tree-lighting ceremony, and more.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
Hunter Biden indicted in California: Who knew hookers and blow could be so costly? Nine new tax charges, three of them felonies, have been brought against Hunter Biden in California, where he’s been living large and where he allegedly engaged in a four-year scheme to evade at least $1.4 million in federal taxes for the tax years 2016 through 2019. According to the indictment, “Rather than pay his taxes, the defendant spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle,” including “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature.” Consider: Hunter Biden allegedly took out some $1.6 million in ATM withdrawals and spent $683,000 on “payments to various women,” $397,000 on clothing and accessories, $237,000 on health, beauty, and pharmacy products, and $188,000 on adult entertainment. So much for the tax bailout Hunter got from big-shot Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris, a sum the New York Post says amounted to more than $2 million. What are the odds that Pops ultimately pardons his wastrel son? Pretty good, we’d say, but Biden-buddy prosecutor David Weiss can’t be trusted. Recall that Weiss’s original sweetheart plea deal for Hunter blew up in his face when IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler came forward. Also consider that this indictment actually helps Hunter because it allows him to plead the Fifth instead of being forced to testify before Republican James Comer’s House Oversight Committee. In that respect, the indictment also helps shield his dad from exposure. Republicans, of course, should be careful what they wish for, as the first son’s legal troubles might force the eminently beatable Joe Biden not to run in 2024.
November jobs numbers hold steady as job openings tumble: In November, 199,000 non-farm jobs were added, slightly besting the expected 190,000. November also showed an increase to October’s 150,000 gains. Headline unemployment came in at 3.7%, below the anticipated 3.9%. Monthly wages also rose by 0.4%, better than the estimated 0.3%. The hot jobs market appears to be cooling off, however, as the number of job openings in October fell unexpectedly by 6.6% to 8.7 million openings, the lowest level in over two years.
$132 billion and counting: Joe Biden is Santa Claus — at least that’s what he wants voters to think. That’s why, regardless of the time of year, his administration so far has approved $132 billion in student loan debt cancellation, including another $4.8 billion announced this week. This taxpayer-funded giveaway — from people who did not take out legitimate loans to people who did — was struck down by the Supreme Court last summer. Biden waited a couple of weeks before enacting a workaround. House Republicans on Thursday passed a bill to stop him. It won’t go anywhere in the Senate, and Biden would veto if it did, but the point has been made. Biden now says, “I won’t back down from using every tool at our disposal to get student loan borrowers the relief they need to reach their dreams.” It’s not the government’s job to steal from some people in order to give to others, but the injustice of it all is that Republicans fighting against Biden’s lawlessness are the ones who will be labeled the Grinch.
UPenn president costs school a $100M donation: Stone Ridge Asset Management founder and CEO Ross Stevens, an alum of the University of Pennsylvania, has expressed his disgust with UPenn President Liz Magill for her failure to unequivocally condemn anti-Semitic speech. Following Magill’s testimony before the House on Tuesday in which she refused to agree that calls for Jewish genocide violated the school’s code of conduct against bullying and harassment, Stevens withdrew a $100 million donation to his alma mater. His action comes on the heels of Pennsylvania Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro publicly blasting Magill’s comments as “absolutely shameful” because “it should not be hard to condemn genocide.” Following Shapiro’s comments, UPenn’s board of trustees held an “emergency meeting” on Thursday. Given Shapiro’s comments and Stevens pulling funding, it will come as no surprise if Magill suddenly decides to spend more time with her family. Furthermore, on Thursday the House Education and Workforce Committee announced it will investigate Harvard, MIT, and UPenn over their apparent failures to address rampant anti-Semitism on their campuses.
Foreign governments are getting your push notifications: If you think those visual alerts and audible dings that regularly show up on your cellphone are your own business and no one else’s, you might want to think again. Foreign governments are requesting these notifications from Google and Apple, and these two Big Tech firms have until now been forbidden from communicating that reality to their customers. In a letter to corrupt Attorney General Merrick Garland, Oregon Democrat Senator Ron Wyden urged the DOJ “to permit Apple and Google to inform their customers and the general public about demands for smartphone app notification records.” As Reuters reports: “Apple said that Wyden’s letter gave them the opening they needed to share more details with the public about how governments monitored push notifications. ‘In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information,’ the company said in a statement. ‘Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests.’” Better late than never, we suppose, but why on earth was our government allowing foreign governments to spy on American citizens without their knowledge?
Anti-gun NY runs out Remington: America’s oldest firearms manufacturer Remington Arms will be closing up shop in the Empire State. New York Republican Representative Elise Stefanik was unequivocal in assigning blame: “It is because of New York Democrats’ unconstitutional gun grab policies that the oldest gun manufacturer in the country has been run out of the state.” She’s not wrong. There’s also the lawsuit raised by the families of the Sandy Hook mass murder victims against Remington, seeking to hold the firearm manufacturer culpable. After filing bankruptcy twice, Remington settled the lawsuit for $73 million. And with anti-Second Amendment hostility growing in New York, Remington’s solution for survival was to move out and expand its manufacturing facilities in Georgia, a state that still embraces the Second Amendment.
Gutless Gavin cancels tree-lighting ceremony: ‘Tis the season to be cowardly — at least in California, where Governor Gavin Newsom just canceled Sacramento’s 92nd annual tree-lighting ceremony due to fears of being scolded by pro-Hamas rabble. “Governor Newsom decided to cancel the tree-lighting ceremony rather than face the public that is enraged by his shameful silence on the genocide in Gaza,” said Yassar Dahbour of the Sacramento Regional Coalition for Palestinian Rights. In fairness to Newsom, he’s not canceling the traditional Christmas ceremony entirely; he’s just holding this particular tree-lighting event virtually, like he did with California’s schools when he kowtowed to the teachers unions during COVID. “As the governor that kept kids on Zoom school for longer than any other state in the nation, we shouldn’t really be surprised that he wanted to move this to a virtual tree lighting ceremony,” mocked California GOP Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson. We should note, though, that California isn’t alone in cowing to the pro-Hamas hordes. Similar protests have also disrupted tree-lighting ceremonies in the other gutless and increasingly Godless blue enclaves of New York, Massachusetts, and Michigan.
California budget bust: Thanks to hundreds of thousands having left and many continuing to flee the Golden State over the last few years, California’s government is now staring at a growing budget crisis as it faces a record $68 billion budget deficit. “Severe revenue decline” is the cause — or, to put it another way, there are fewer people in the state paying taxes. According to IRS data, California lost $18 billion in tax revenue in 2020, and it lost $29 billion the following year. And in tax-heavy California, that revenue loss has helped cause the budget deficit to balloon from $14.3 billion in June to over $54 billion. California’s deficit problem has grown so big that the Democrats who run the state may have to do what is anathema to Democrats — cut government spending. The state’s Legislative Analysis Office (LAO) recommends both spending some of the state’s $24 billion in cash reserves and also spending less on schools and community colleges.
Biden strategically delays a menthol cigarette ban: Never let it be said that Joe Biden put public health before political considerations. Recall, for example, that his Food and Drug Administration announced its intention to ban menthol cigarettes way back in April 2021. Strange, though: The ban never went into effect. Why not? Because menthol cigarettes are enjoyed disproportionally by blacks, and Democrats are afraid that such a ban might anger blacks enough to keep them from dutifully voting for Democrats. As America’s best newspaper, the UK Daily Mail, reports: “The Biden administration is punting on a final rule for a ban on menthol cigarettes, amid political pushback and warnings the move could anger black voters who have been drifting away from the president in polling. The administration is expected to announce the rule will be finalized in March. That would be another delay, after an expected August rollout got put off until January.” March, eh? What are the odds that the ban gets kicked down the road once again, to some date just after Tuesday, November 5?
Headlines
House Republicans file Biden impeachment inquiry resolution, setting up vote for next week (Washington Examiner)
Three reasons Republicans could lose their House majority before 2024 (Washington Examiner)
South Carolina hopes Disney divestment sparks wave of states to combat woke agenda (Washington Times)
Abortion legal in Wisconsin as judge strikes down 19th-century law (Washington Examiner) | Wisconsin governor vetoes Help Not Harm Act protecting children from gender transitions (Washington Stand)
Dem school board president sworn in on sexually explicit books (Washington Stand)
California retailers without “gender neutral” section for kids face fines up to $500 under new state law (Daily Wire)
70% of VW workers in Tennessee have not signed UAW representation cards (National Review)
Humor: Study finds over three million accidents per year caused by driver trying to retrieve Chick-fil-A waffle fry lost in seat crack (Babylon Bee)
The National Defense Authorization Act strikes against some leftist priorities, but not all of them.
Nate Jackson
If you don’t vote for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), you don’t support the military.
That’s the message from each political party to the other one every time military funding is up for a vote in Congress. The good old Washington game, however, is to lard up such bills with pork or other measures that no one can oppose without being labeled anti-military. Sometimes that game is played in reverse — things are left out of the bill that ought to be in it, and all for political reasons.
Take abortion, for example. After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision last year, Democrats greatly ramped up their politicization of abortion. It has worked far too well, leading to defeats of Republicans and either the passage of abortion protections or the defeat of pro-life measures in several states. Whipping up anger among women over “reproductive rights” is an effective motivator come election time.
Part of the politicization came when Joe “The Good Catholic” Biden, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, decided to scrap his decades-long defense of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits using federal tax dollars for abortion, in favor of violating the law by providing money for abortion services for military personnel. The number of military women availing themselves of this has been quite few, but that’s immaterial to the illegal policy itself.
Until this week, Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville had for 10 months blocked military promotions from Senate confirmation until the Biden administration reversed the policy.
Unfortunately, Tuberville stood almost entirely alone. In fact, behind his back, some Republican senators were working on a compromise NDAA that did nothing to rein in Biden’s policy. Biden threatened to veto a House version of the bill that did explicitly prohibit it. This week, a conference version of the $900 billion bill between the two chambers eliminated key provisions from the House version, though it did keep some other important ones.
The abortion controversy is primarily a political game that benefits Democrats. But it does illustrate the incoherence of their position because women are not the same as or always interchangeable with men. After certain elective activities, it’s hard for women to remain active and effective in a military role of any sort when they’re pregnant, especially later term. Democrats thus argue rather grotesquely that military readiness requires taxpayer-funded abortion.
Another dark irony: Many if not most military recruits come from military families. That’s harder when you’re literally killing the next generation of recruits.
There is a fair bit of good news, however, in terms of what Republicans may secure as part of the NDAA.
While recruiting and readiness are also suffering because of woke initiatives in the military, the compromise NDAA does include some Republican measures to fight against such things. “I fought hard to ensure that DoD does not spend any funds on drag queen shows and children’s drag queen story hours,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI). House Republicans also said the bill “prohibits funds for any DoD advisory committee dealing with race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or social justice.”
According to the New York Post, “The text specifically calls for eliminating the Pentagon’s DEI chief position and requiring Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to ‘assess and validate the need for every position in the DEI bureaucracy.’”
Furthermore, House Republicans said the bill “prohibits DoD from contracting with NewsGuard Technologies or similar advertising firms that blacklist conservative news sources.” Such government collusion with Leftmedia “fact-checkers” is disgraceful and should be stopped.
So should the leftist focus on climate change as supposedly the biggest national security threat. House Republicans added that the bill “blocks the DoD from requiring defense contractors to document the impact their weapons systems have on greenhouse gas emissions and submit plans to reduce emissions.”
Finally, the bill also works to rectify the damage done by Biden’s COVID vaccine mandate. The Army already sent out a letter to many discharged soldiers offering a mea culpa of sorts. House Republicans add to that, saying they secured protection for “current servicemembers” and “a path back to service for the 8,000 servicemembers discharged for failing to take the COVID-19 vaccine,” as well as restoration of retirement benefits for discharged troops.
The Pentagon should focus a lot less on the left-wing politics of diversity, equity, and inclusion, critical race theory, and killing unborn babies. Instead, the NDAA should provide for what the military needs — good pay for our warriors (it includes a 5.2% raise) and funding for more ammunition, more planes, more ships, more equipment, and more ability to focus on winning wars. That is, after all, the entire purpose of America’s Armed Forces.
Detransitioners’ stories are turning into lawsuits that may bring down the whole gender house of cards.
Emmy Griffin
What happens when gender-confused children who have been persuaded either by the Internet, their schools, their psychologists, or their physicians that they are transgender discover in their late teens or early 20s that they were lied to? That they cannot change their gender and, in fact, they prefer their biological gender to the facsimile they came up with for themselves?
We are starting to see a litany of these older teens and adults coming forward with their testimonies, and they are going after the medical industry that led them down the veritable garden path. They are called “detransitioners” and they are the “lucky” ones.
“Gender affirmation” treatment and the medications and surgeries that go with it are big business. As The Daily Wire reported last year: “The industry surrounding transgender surgeries is expected to reach $5 billion by the end of the decade. According to a recent report from Grand View Research, the sector saw a $1.9 billion valuation last year and is forecast to expand at a compound annual growth rate of more than 11% through 2030.”
To provide Big Medicine with the cover needed to keep raking in the dough, transgenderism was adopted by the cultural Marxists and progressive feminists (but we repeat ourselves). Transgenderism became part of the intersectional coalition and therefore a protected political class. Soon no one was allowed to question the movement, and medical professionals bolstered by the LGBTQ activists began their experiments on young girls and began to manipulate their parents.
Some of these detransitioned young women who are coming forward with lawsuits were put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones after their first visit to the mental healthcare provider. One was only 12 when they started messing with her body chemistry.
Chloe Cole, the first of these brave women to come forward and sue her abusers in the medical profession, was convinced to do a double mastectomy at 15 years of age. Since her lawsuit, a dozen more people have come forward to sue the unethical physicians and mental health professionals who took advantage of their fragile state and youthful ignorance, convincing them to harm their bodies.
Hitting Big Medicine right in the pocketbook might prove the key to knocking the whole castle down. The Washington Times, paraphrasing one of the lawyers representing three detransitioners, wrote that “the medical community would one day look back on medicalized gender transitions with the same contrition as lobotomies and the overprescription of opioids.”
LBGTQ activists love to claim that the number of detransitioners is relatively small, though the studies they use to back up these claims only follow “trans”-identifying patients for a year after their treatments have started. Larger studies like those conducted in Europe (no shock there) found that many regret their choices and, even more frightening, their suicidality does not diminish even after all the “affirmation.” Some studies even found that as many as 20% of people who decide they are the opposite gender detransition. That number may become even higher as other women hear about their peers’ disillusionment with transgenderism and that ideology.
The Rainbow Mafia, left-wing media, progressive politicians, and leftists abhor the existence of detransitioners. These brave souls (mostly women at this point) are living proof that gender ideology is a big fat lie. Their abusers are aided and abetted by activists, media, and politicians, and they deserve better than that. As National Review so aptly notes, “Detransitioners now deserve advocates whom they never had during their gender-identity crises.”
Detransitioners deserve justice. Those of us with voices and platforms need to elevate their plight and put an end to the madness that is gender ideology. Because in the interim, young children — many of them girls — are heading down the same horrible path.
The only thing leftists hate more than Elon Musk is free speech.
Brian Mark Weber
There was a time when social media platforms Twitter and Facebook seemed to be the new town square — a virtual environment where people could bypass the Leftmedia and debate important issues without censorship or cancel culture.
It didn’t last long.
Soon those same platforms were being used to filter out unpopular ideas and manipulate information. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg showed his true colors when he spent nearly half a billion dollars to buy the 2020 presidential election. And as long as Twitter pushed a leftist narrative and canceled alternative views, no corporations or Democrat politicians had any complaints.
But when Elon Musk bought Twitter, later rebranding it X, and pledged to restore its original intent of free speech, the Left lost control of the narrative and the digital town square found itself under attack. A recent development on that battlefield is that of big corporations pulling their advertising money from X, ostensibly to punish Musk for his comments about the Anti-Defamation League — a left-wing Jewish civil rights organization — and for allegedly allowing hate speech on the platform.
The incident began on November 15 when an X user posted: “To the cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the internet and posting ‘Hitler was right’: You got something you want to say? Why don’t you say it to our faces.”
To which another X user replied that Jewish communities “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” further noting that “western Jewish populations” are finally realizing that “those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.”
Musk responded to that reply by posting “You have said the actual truth” and calling out companies like the Anti-Defamation League for their allegedly unjust attacks on the “majority of the West.” Later, Musk explained that he wasn’t referring to all Jewish people, but that he mainly took issue with the anti-Western ideology of the ADL.
It was too late.
Some major advertisers, including Walmart, Disney, Apple, and IBM, decided to stop advertising on X. Why? Did they have a collective attack of conscience, or were they cowed into submission by the speech-suppressing Left?
Appearing recently at The New York Times Dealbook Summit, Musk said during an interview that the boycott of X could kill the platform. At least, he said, “The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company.”
He also told Disney CEO Bob Iger to have unnatural relations with himself. “Go f*** yourself,” Musk said. “Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience, that’s how I feel. Don’t advertise.”
As for Walmart’s decision to stop advertising on the platform, it had nothing to do with Musk’s harsh words. According to MSNBC, “While Walmart went public with the pullout on Friday, Joe Benarroch, head of operations at X, said the company has not advertised on the platform since October.” Apparently, the company didn’t like the way its ads on X have performed.
The Wall Street Journal adds, “Around the same time, left-leaning watchdog group Media Matters reported that X placed ads for certain companies next to posts supporting Nazis.” As we reported, that Media Matters claim was deeply dubious, and Musk vowed a “thermonuclear lawsuit” in response.
According to that federal lawsuit, Media Matters selectively picked X posts known to be made by those with extremist views in an effort to smear Musk as a defender of Nazi propaganda and, more importantly, to scare away advertisers.
It’s certainly interesting how the collective Left has bent over backward to defend Hamas terrorists as freedom fighters while accusing influencers like Musk of anti-Semitism. But if any leftists truly care about standing up for Israel, they ought to be consistent about it. For example, a recent survey reveals that the platform where you’re most likely to find hateful or anti-Semitic language isn’t X. Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram and the ChiCom spyware known as TikTok are worse.
More disturbing is a bombshell that landed in the middle of this battle on Thursday. “Calling Facebook and Instagram breeding grounds for predators who target and exploit children, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez is suing the world’s largest social media company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg,” reports The Santa Fe New Mexican.
As the New Mexican continues, “The 227-page civil lawsuit filed in state First Judicial District Court late Tuesday alleges Meta Platforms Inc. ‘directs harmful and inappropriate material’ at teens and preteens and allows adult predators to have unfettered access to them, leading to grooming and solicitation.”
If that’s not a good reason for companies to pull their advertising from Facebook and Instagram, nothing is. But it’s doubtful that these woke corporations — Disney, Apple, Walmart, and their ilk — are bothered by child sex trafficking when they’re obsessed with X, with Elon Musk, and with free speech.
Why do Democrats only focus on less than 1% of murders nationwide?
Mark Alexander
There was a lot of political “gun violence” rhetoric this week from Joe Biden and his Leftmedia publicists regarding the record number of “mass shooting” cases this year. It was all a disgraceful charade using the blood of innocents to promote the Democrat Party’s perennial gun control narrative.
To that end, Biden and his cadres were focused on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus, where a former college professor with an MBA from Duke University launched a high-profile attack targeting staff at Lee Business School. The assailant killed three people and wounded at least one other person before being killed by police. According to reports, the 67-year-old assailant had applied for work with UNLV’s Lee School but had been rejected. Notably, the lockdown response to the attack continued for hours after the Las Vegas PD announced the assailant had been killed, sowing a lot of additional fear and angst. Officials also informed a ground stop of all flights at Las Vegas International Airport, a shutdown similar to the recent Thanksgiving Day closure of Buffalo International Airport after a false report of a “terrorist attack” at the Niagara Falls bridge.
The assailant’s former East Coast students indicated he was obsessed with “sin city” and devoted many of his lectures on his sordid activities there. The assailant also had a fascination with serial killers, having claimed he used his genius MENSA skills to solve the Zodiac killer case. He claimed on his social media pages to be “a total crackpot” — apparently a deadly crackpot. Astoundingly, and typical of asinine tone-deaf posts by major social media platforms, the UNLV assailant’s LinkedIn page noted, “In memory of [XXXXXXXXXX] — This account has been memorialized as a tribute to [XXXXXXXXXX’s] professional legacy.” Isn’t that special. (That page has now been removed.)
Predictably, none of the victims were overlooked by Biden for their usefulness as fodder for his political agenda. Biden issued his standard “gun violence” statement: “This is not normal, and we can never let it become normal. For all the action we have taken since I’ve been President, the epidemic of gun violence we face demands that we do even more. But we cannot do more without Congress. Republican lawmakers must join with Democrats in Congress to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, pass a national red flag law, enact universal background checks, require the safe storage of guns, and advance other commonsense measures that will help stem the tide of gun violence.”
Actually, none of those legislative measures would have stopped any of these three attacks — and no so-called “assault weapons” were used. Fact is, rifles and shotguns of any type combined are used in less than 3% of all homicides, but Biden never lets facts get in the way of his political agenda.
Moreover, what actually happened when Biden took office is that he and his Demos unleashed a record surge of violence nationwide, which continues largely unabated. But they now ubiquitously and falsely label the murderous contagion they seeded “gun violence” and focus exclusively on the rare high-profile “mass shootings,” which account for only a tiny fraction of the 26,000 homicides in the U.S. last year.
Democrats are very deliberate about only focusing on the infrequent high-profile attacks because they can’t escape responsibility for the vast majority of murders on their degraded urban poverty plantations. They want to avoid at all costs the “inconvenient truth” about race and violence, which is the direct result of failed Democrat social programs.
Likewise, the three latest murder scenes were not overlooked by The Washington Post either, which, like Biden and his Demos, pays no attention to the epidemic of black-on-black murders plaguing our nation. According to the Post, the most recent attacks “set a grim U.S. record.” The Post, which uses a reputable database of “mass shootings” and defines such as when “four or more victims were killed,” claims that in 2022, the previous record was 36 incidents, but the Texas and Washington cases this week push the 2023 total to 38. (Yes, you can ignore those fake news numbers being propagated by some leftist media outlets claiming there were almost 600 mass shootings this year.)
WaPo noted the total death toll from 2023 “mass shootings” was 197 — out of what will likely be more than 25,000 murders this year. Again, a fraction of 1% — so why do Democrats only focus on less than 1% of murders nationwide? (Rhetorical question.)
The answer is that because 99% of murders in the U.S. are not the result of mass attacks, those deaths aren’t useful for the Democrats’ gun control narrative, which they use to invoke emotional reaction from mostly wealthy white suburban women, who form the Demos’ largest constituency.
Of course, Demos are intentionally using these events to foment fear.
Kamala Harris chimed in with this erroneous assertion: “Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children throughout our nation.” If by “children” she means gang- and drug-associated murders of those under age 21, then yes.
The fear and angst Demos intentionally create is taking a toll on Americans’ mental health. Psychological researcher Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson observes: “Watching it time and time again on your phone or on the headlines can really impact you in ways that I don’t think we knew before to be as impactful. It’s so ‘in our face’ all the time and we have access to so much footage, so many pictures, so many videos, so many accounts that we’re ingesting it in ways that’s really unhealthy for us.” The result for many mothers is an irrational fear that their children will be shot.
That is precisely the fear that Democrats want to perpetuate in order to advance their gun control agenda.
Frankly, I am shocked that the number of mass murders is not much higher. In a country of 330 million people with a culture that ignores the rising generation of sociopathic murderers — countless thugs in violent urban centers who are completely saturated with violence to the point of glorifying it — it is fortunate that the incidence of mass murder is not 10 times higher.
Further, as noted crime researcher John Lott reports, “[The Democrats’] ‘guns first’ approach ignores a basic fact — over 92% of violent crimes in America do not involve firearms.”
Arguably, the only thing keeping the number of murders and assaults from being much higher is that about 40% of households — roughly 125 million Americans — are legal and responsible gun owners and have a means of self-defense.
Finally, as I have suggested previously, before we ban guns, Demos should ban alcohol. Alcohol abuse is far more deadly than firearm abuse.
More than 140,000 people died from alcohol abuse last year — that’s SEVEN times the number of homicides associated with firearms. Drunk drivers are responsible for 28 deaths per day. And notably, it is estimated that alcohol is also a key factor in at least30% of homicides involving a firearm. (Include illegal drug use and that number jumps to about 60%.)
If Democrats are serious about homicides, they should outlaw alcohol. Problem is, the vast majority of alcohol users possess and use it legally and responsibly. Likewise, the vast majority of firearm owners possess and use them legally and responsibly. Enacting a prohibition on firearms is tantamount to enacting a prohibition on alcohol. In both cases, only law-abiding users obey the laws, while lawless users don’t.
Will Hamas Steal Christmas? — After pro-Palestinian protesters glued themselves to the street during Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, it’s not as absurd as it sounds.
A Possible New Pandemic? — Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, discusses concerns over a possible new pandemic.
Busted! — The Justice Department drops a bombshell on Joe Biden as his son Hunter is charged with multiple felonies and misdemeanors related to unpaid taxes.
House Censures Jamaal Bowman — AOC and the rest of the “Squad” of radical leftist Democrat lawmakers cry racism over Bowman getting punished for illegally pulling the fire alarm.
“I wanted to play lacrosse, but you had to choose between lacrosse and football.” —President Joe Biden (“Archmere Academy (Biden’s high school) didn’t have a boy’s lacrosse team until 1993, 32 years after he graduated.” —Zach Parkinson)
Faux Pas
“I know everybody’s frustrated, even though, you know, like I said, we’ve made great progress compared to where we were… But there’s still a lot that’s not being taken care of.” —Joe Biden
The BIG Lies I
“Extreme Republicans are playing chicken with our national security, holding Ukraine’s funding hostage to their extreme partisan border policies.” —Joe Biden
“What a gift this is to Putin to watch what is happening here. And I really hope we can move beyond the politics of the day, be honest that the president has asked for real border security, and let’s get on with it.” —Office of Management & Budget Director Shalanda Young
“Republicans in Congress [are] willing to give Putin a gift. The greatest gift that Putin could hope for. That’s what we’re seeing. And so they are playing chicken with our national security … and history will remember them harshly.” —White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
“Republicans talk about immigration reform. They talk about border security. The president, you know, on day one … put forth an immigration policy. … It’s been three years and they have not been moving forward in good faith. They have not been trying to get to a solution in good faith. … We want to find real solutions.” —Karine Jean-Pierre
“We have been taking this very seriously in trying to deal with this border security issue.” —Karine Jean-Pierre
“As the president said, he’s all about border security.” —National Security Council spokesman John Kirby
“We share a sense of [border] urgency, so act on that.” —John Kirby
“He’s done everything he can to keep people safe, in stark contract with the Republicans who are calling for a Muslim ban, throwing our allies under the bus, praising terrorists.” —Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Quinten Faulk
The BIG Lies II
“We have had some historic progress here, right? When you think about the 14 million jobs that have been created … when you think about what the president walked into — an economy that was in a tailspin and getting that back on its feet. So the president wants to continue to do that — continue to lower costs for Americans, continue to make sure that this economy is working for all.” —Karine Jean-Pierre
“We are seeing lowering costs as we’re going into the holiday season.” —Karine Jean-Pierre
“It’s extremely important that we help Americans draw that contrast between what is happening in the economy and the president. It’s extremely important that we continue to tout inflation numbers as they continue to drop. … Joe Biden has created 14 million jobs. … It’s really important to remind the American people where they were four years ago before Joe Biden took office.” —Quinten Faulk
“I’m concerned that we need to continue to [be] better about messaging to voters what we have done to help create jobs, to tackle inflation. … We have a lot to be proud of. President Biden has been the leader on getting all this done.” —Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA)
Belly Laughs of the Day
“[Republicans] don’t understand foreign policy, and Joe Biden is the only person running for president of the United States that has the wisdom and experience to bring people to the table to get deals done.” —Quinten Faulk
“When it comes to what’s going on in the Middle East, Joe Biden from day one has approached this not as a politician but as commander-in-chief… But this is also a clinic in leadership.” —Quinten Faulk
Lack of Self-Awareness Award
“Biden is not … going to a podium as president of the United States saying that he’s going to … use the government to go after his political enemies.” —Quinten Faulk
Useful idiot
“From college students to those in the workplace, I’m getting the calls of people being pushed to silence — being bullied, some people weaponizing anti-Semitism in a way to silence voices. … Americans have a right to speak up. … We have to be able to make sure that as we look at all these forms of hate, that it is not being weaponized in a way to silence voices like myself and … many of the voices that are here.” —Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
Insight
“The difficulty of the two-state solution is shown by the experience of Hamas. Gaza was made quasi-independent by [former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon in order to test the possibility of a two-state solution. … It has become so much worse in the last two years than it [was] in 2005. So, the two-state solution doesn’t guarantee that what we saw in the last weeks won’t happen again.” —former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (1923-2023) with the last word on Hamas
And Last…
“Use the wrong pronoun? Harvard will come after you with everything it has. Join a mob and call for genocide against the Jews? Harvard’s president said she ‘embraces that’ as free expression. What a disgrace.” —Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR)
Hunter Biden was indicted in California on a number of tax charges after pleading not guilty to federal gun charges earlier this year. On “FOX & Friends” Friday, former Whitewater deputy counsel Sol Wisenberg argued the indictment is “devastating” for President Biden’s son and will be a “vindication” of the IRS whistleblowers.
In 2019, members of Congress began decorating the outside of their offices in the Longworth House Office Building — sparking a new annual competition.
“A well-intentioned, yet neighborly holiday one-upmanship ensued and has now escalated into an all out arms race, for which it appears there will be no detente,” local station WUSA 9 reported in 2021.
“We like poking fun at everybody,” Collins said of the decor.
Other decorations included a cutout of Mariah Carey saying all she wants for Christmas is to pass 12 appropriations bills, a bag of coal for Hamas, presents for Joe Biden’s pseudonyms Robert Peters and Robin Ware from Xi Jinping, snowflakes with the names of liberals on them, Santa holding his “naughty list” that included Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and much more.
I didn’t know whether to put a star or an angel on top this year, so went with both. pic.twitter.com/4YbIAKhbnS
Rep. Collins is not the only one using the festive competition to troll the left.
As the Gateway Pundit previously reported, Arizona Rep. Eli Crane upset Democrat House staffers with his border-themed Christmas decor.
The decor features a snowy brick wall, cute little elves, snowflakes, and festive colored signs reading “BORDER PATROL ELVES ONLY” and “HAVE DOCUMENTS READY.”
A staffer for Democrat Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva posted on X, “Normally Longworth 2nd floor Christmas decorations are a bipartisan and amiable contest. Rep. Eli Crane’s office has the most insensitive, charged and insulting Christmas decor I’ve ever seen in my 5 years on Capitol Hill.”
Normally Longworth 2nd floor Christmas decorations are a bipartisan and amiable contest.
Rep. Eli Crane’s office has the most insensitive, charged and insulting Christmas decor I’ve ever seen in my 5 years on Capitol Hill. pic.twitter.com/6NmYz6ERAc
New York Democrat Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s staffer Andrew Heineman chimed in, “Make that 8 years for me. I’ve never seen a GOP office on the 2nd floor do this.”
Make that 8 years for me. I’ve never seen a GOP office on the 2nd floor do this. https://t.co/w0LdKsrlfx
Rep. Crane discussed the decorations during an appearance on Fox Business last week.
“I just want to say thanks to my staff for doing such a great job with the decorations,” Crane said. “The bottom line I wish that Democrats and their staff were as triggered about all the families and Americans that are having their lives and their families destroyed by fentanyl, MS-13 gang members coming over that southern border and you know the 1.7 million gotaways, 250 individuals on the terror watch list, you can go on and on but what are they concerned about?”
“What triggers them guys are Christmas decorations,” Crane continued. “I’m very proud to be pro-border security, pro-wall and it goes to show how backwards this town is and it’s not a town made up of representatives that actually represents the people of this country and their safety.
U.S. — Hunter Biden is being charged on 9 counts of evading taxes on his international bribery schemes, according to an indictment filed in Los Angeles on Thursday.
“The President’s son made millions on foreign bribes and used the money for illegal drugs and underage sex trafficking. That’s all well and good, but then he failed to pay his taxes,” said a spokesperson for the DOJ. “Keeping money that is due to the government is the most heinous of all crimes and should be dealt with swiftly and without mercy.”
Official sources confirmed that Hunter became wealthy by exchanging national secrets and special favors to America’s enemies in exchange for crack and underage sex-slave money, in addition to wiring money to President Joe Biden. Unfortunately, he did this without keeping perfect tax records, making him the lowest of criminals.
“Rest assured, this horrific act will not go without a slight fine and scolding from the judge,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. “This man must be brought to justice.”
At publishing time, President Biden had claimed to have no knowledge of the case or of this man named “Hunter.”
Here is a comprehensive list of the only instances it is acceptable for men to shed a tear.
Hunter Biden was hit with a 9-count indictment filed in the Central District of California: Tax evasion, failure to file/pay taxes, and false/fraudulent tax return.
The new indictment was handed down by Special Counsel David Weiss after a sweetheart plea deal on tax charges fell apart over the summer.
David Weiss’s investigation into Hunter Biden is ongoing.
The indictment details a “four-year scheme” to avoid the $1.4+ million tax obligations he owed between 2016 and 2019 and to file false returns.
“Between 2016 and October 15, 2020, the Defendant individually received more than $7 million in total gross income. This included in excess of $1.5 million in 2016, $2.3 million in 2017, $2.1 million in 2018, $1 million in 2019 and approximately $188,000 from January through October 15, 2020. In addition, from January through October 15, 2020, the Defendant received approximately $1.2 million in financial support to fund his extravagant lifestyle,” according to the indictment reviewed by The Gateway Pundit.
The indictment details Hunter Biden’s lavish lifestyle, drug use, and addiction to prostitutes.
“Between 2016 and October 15, 2020, the Defendant spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes,” the indictment read.
The indictment revealed (screenshot below) Hunter Biden was spending millions of dollars on hookers, drugs/rehab, ‘adult entertainment,’ fancy restaurants etc.
According to the indictment, Hunter Biden spent $683,121 on ‘various women.’
screen image of indictment reviewed by this reporter
If convicted, Hunter Biden faces up to 17 years in prison.
Will Scharf, a former federal prosecutor, said Hunter Biden is in a lot of trouble.
“With the sweetheart deal previously offered to him now off the table, Hunter is in an awful lot of trouble,” Will Scharf said.
“He is facing four counts of willfully failing to pay his taxes for tax years 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, and two counts of failing to file a tax return for tax years 2017 and 2018, all in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7203,” he said.
Hunter Biden went to great lengths to hide his money by chalking up fake business expenses.
“He is also charged with one count of tax evasion and two counts of filing false and fraudulent tax forms for tax year 2018, in violation of § 7201 and § 7206, for chalking up hundreds of thousands of dollars of fake business expenses. These fake expenses included payments for: hotel rooms that he turned into crack dens, payoffs for his girlfriends, strippers, escorts, luxury cars, a sex club membership, porn sites. He also tried to claim his daughter’s law school tuition as business-related legal expenses. He tried to hide income, and made numerous false statements under penalty of perjury,” Will Scharf said.
Will Scharf said Hunter Biden should spend at least 4 to 5 years in prison.
“If he were to go to trial and be convicted of all of these counts, based on my calculations, the advisory federal sentencing guidelines range for him could easily reach 4–5 years’ imprisonment. Even if he were to plead guilty to these counts, his guidelines range sentence would likely be around 3 years. That is a lot of prison time for the son of a sitting president,” he said.
I have reviewed the new Hunter Biden indictment. As a former federal prosecutor, and someone who has followed the Hunter saga quite closely for years, here are my initial reactions:
(1) Hunter is in a lot of trouble.
With the sweetheart deal previously offered to him now off…
President Joe Biden kicks off a three-day, star-studded fundraising trip in California on Friday that a top campaign official boasted will rake in a record amount of cash for the president’s 2024 reelection effort.
Music superstar Taylor Swift deserves pity. But she also deserves love, for she is nothing more than a pitiable sinner like the rest of us.
On Wednesday, Time Magazine announced that it had named Swift 2023’s “Person of the Year.”
Also on Wednesday, conservative commentator Jon Root posted a 12-second clip from the music video for Swift’s song “You Need to Calm Down,” which depicted two men kissing in what appeared to be a marriage ceremony, followed seconds later by a close-up of five stereotypical “hillbillies” — one wore a cowboy hat, another wore a tank top with an American flag — angrily looking on in protest.
Swift used those “hillbillies,” of course, as stand-ins for anyone who holds the Christian view of marriage.
The song’s lyrics made that clear: “Why are you mad? When you could be GLAAD? Sunshine on the street at the parade, but you would rather be in the Dark Ages.”
“Here’s a quick reminder of what Taylor Swift thinks about Christians …,” Root posted.
The full video for “You Need to Calm Down” amplified the anti-Christian and “pride” themes. In fact, the video concluded with that precise message.
“Let’s show our pride by demanding that, on a national level, our laws truly treat all of our citizens equally,” the message said.
As for “Person of the Year,” we should not begin by confusing that award with a moral endorsement. After all, Swift now shares that honor with the likes of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
Time’s annual acknowledgement merely gauges perceived influence. It recognizes those whom former Time Managing Editor Walter Isaacson called “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse.”
How exactly Swift “affected” lives or “embodied” the year reveals much about the modern world.
For instance, in a lengthy article explaining the choice of Swift, Time’s Sam Lansky — the article’s author — employed telling language.
Swift’s impact, we are told, is “without a contemporary precedent.”
“She deploys the most efficient medium of the day — the pop song — to tell her story,” Lansky wrote. “Yet over time, she has harnessed the power of the media, both traditional and new, to create something wholly unique — a narrative world, in which her music is just one piece in an interactive, shape-shifting story. Swift is that story’s architect and hero, protagonist and narrator.”
She has become her own story’s “architect and hero” in a way that lacks “contemporary precedent.” So why do fans flock to her shows?
Well, if you traveled to a city in which Swift held a concert, you “made a pilgrimage.”
In fact, Lansky recalled attending one such concert in Santa Clara, California, “in a stadium with nearly 70,000 other people having a religious experience.”
And to what end, are these pilgrimages and religious experiences?
“She’s modeling radical self-acceptance on the world’s largest stage, giving the audience a space to revisit their own joy or pain, once dismissed or forgotten,” Lansky wrote.
To an untutored listener but careful reader, this sounds a good deal like worship of self.
And the bulk of Lansky’s article focused on precisely that — her story, her feelings, her.
To the Christian — or, frankly, to anyone who has contemplated the nature of the universe — an obvious question arises: Really? Is that all? She tells her story, models “radical self-acceptance,” and this amounts to a “religious experience?”
No wonder Swift has embraced “pride.” No wonder she denigrates the Christian view of marriage. If she took that view seriously, then she would have to consider its source, and that would lead her to something infinitely greater than herself.
In that sense, she commands our pity.
But we must not allow that pity to become a source of mistaken pride in ourselves. Swift has, in the words of Paul, “conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2). For all the times we have done likewise, we need God’s forgiveness.
In the meantime, God commands us to love Swift — and the millions of confused people who think as she does — the same way we love ourselves.
Attorney Sam Dewey joined ‘FOX & Friends First’ to discuss the timing of the new criminal charges Hunter Biden faces and what could connect his alleged crimes to his father. #FOXNews
We’ve seen a lot of craziness at the U.S. Capitol these last few years, from the events of January 6 to Senator John Fetterman (D-Penn.) becoming more based than 95% of the Republican Party. But one demonic day of testimony this week may have reached a crescendo of crazy.
Three presidents of once-renowned institutions of higher learning testified under oath on Capitol Hill their combined refusal to denounce calls for the genocide of Jews. Meanwhile, just down the hall, a woman was testifying it was the duty of her fellow women to learn to lose gracefully to men impersonating women, who are stealing their opportunities and usurping their locker rooms.
And hell was belly-laughing at us the entire time.
This is not exactly the stuff of a shining city on a hill. It’s more like secretions from a deep, dark pit. According to legend, Benjamin Franklin said the framers of our Constitution were giving us a “republic — if you can keep it.” It’s becoming painfully — and tragically — obvious that we can’t.
Let’s rip the band-aid off this festering wound, shall we?
The American Revolution was driven by a belief that only God is God and the king is not. That requires also recognizing that we, the people, aren’t God, either.
I saw a quote a while back that the problem with the American church is that no one wants to arrest or kill its pastors any more. Yet I’m not sure how many of our suburban mega-palaces that claim to preach Christ are really any form of threat to the spirit of the age whatsoever. That doesn’t mean they’re all heretics, but it does mean that they have practiced a form of theological reductionism that makes “drag queen story hour is a blessing of liberty” as likely a worldview outcome as anything else.
What kind of moral destiny can we possibly have when serious discipleship seems to happen only by accident?
Ridley Scott’s new “Napoleon” film depicts the more than 41,000 people who were imprisoned by Robespierre during the Reign of Terror. That doesn’t even count the thousands of people — mostly royalty or church officials — who were sent to the guillotine. But then, after tearing down the statue of the Virgin Mary in the Cathedral of Notre Dame and putting up a statue of the goddess of reason instead, the French revolutionaries were toppled in fairly short historical order because they had become even worse than the regime they replaced.
The state as god versus vox populi was a schizophrenic bloodbath. How’s that for a moral destiny? Two sides who think they have nothing in common with each other to the point of death but who are identical in the area that matters most.
They each lacked a reverential fear of God.
On the right these days, we are fond of reminding the left that the state is not God. But we need to remember that neither is the mob. Being driven by polls of reactionary masses is no more righteous than being mired in a swamp of faceless bureaucrats. For each, in their own unique way, is made up of the same kind of people.
Sinners. Because that’s what each of us is.
The scriptures say, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The fear spoken of here is of the reverential variety, not the cowering kind. Jesus speaks to this at the end of the parable of the talents. In response to a servant who took the talent given to him and, out of cowering fear of failure, did nothing with it, Christ proclaims, “Depart from me, you wicked servant, into the den of iniquity.”
Instead, what the servant was supposed to fear was wasting the opportunity to maximize the talent bestowed upon him by the talent-giver. That talent was given for a reason. It was meant to be exploited. It was meant to befulfilled. Thus, it would be a sin not to do so. For in wasting such a gift from your master, you have declared yourself to be nothing less than an ingrate – which the dictionary defines as “an ungrateful person.”
We are here.
But we didn’t have to be. Our revolt against the king was driven neither by “power to the people” nor a “people’s revolution.” It was driven by a belief that only God is God and the king is not. That requires also recognizing that we, the people, aren’t God, either, by the way.
However, while the left was turning its collective back on God, many of us on the right took Him for granted. We pursued seekers harder than Him. We chased after dueling idols of believing God can only work through selling out to a political party that hates us or that God wouldn’t want us to get our hands dirty with politics at all. We sought cultural relevancy rather than transformation. We even tried to be nicer than God, and now we have a woke pope and a Southern Baptist Convention full of soft woke pastors. Defeat is legion.
There is a way out. In the final book of the Bible, Christ shows us the way: “Repent and return to doing the works you did at first.”
And then He warns us what will happen if we do not: “I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.”Last one out, turn out the lights.
Neo-con Fox News host Brian Kilmeade was no match for GOP Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy during a heated Fox and Friends interview that the network cut short on Thursday morning.
Jim Hoft reported that Ramasewamy smoked the competition at the GOP debate Wednesday night. His most prominent victim was former Neo-con UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, which rattled the corporate media.
During the interview on Fox and Friends, co-host Lawrence Jones questioned Ramaswamy regarding his multiple attacks on Haley, which Ramaswamy calmed and concisely answered. But things took a turn when Kilmeade jumped in.
Kilmeade could be heard grumbling in a hot mic that Ramaswamy’s policy on Ukraine and Russia is “just ridiculous.” Ramaswamy wants a peace deal between the two nations with consequences for both should either one break it. This does not sit well with Neo-cons who want a forever war to enrich the military-industrial complex.
After learning that Ramaswamy could hear him, the globalist Fox News host began his interrogation.
“Hey, Vivek, are you comfortable with Russia taking as much of Ukraine as they want? Are you comfortable pulling all our aid out? And do you really believe that Vladimir Putin will agree not to have an alliance with China?”
WATCH (The Ramaswamy-Kilmeade segment starts at roughly the five-minute mark):
Ramaswamy replied that it was important for America to play “hardball” and ensure Russia faces “serious consequences” if they break the deal. Kilmeade interrupted and loudly asked, “Like what!”
The GOP candidate calmly replied that we need a “maximum pressure” campaign, which he has detailed on his website. He made clear that the war “doesn’t advance U.S. interests” and that we need to focus on the Russia-China alliance instead.
This trigged Kilmeade further.
“Yes it does, if you give up Eastern Europe– it is in our interest!” said Kilmeade, nearly yelling. “You can’t keep Russia from China!”
Ramaswamy then pointed out that current U.S. policy is driving Russia and China closer together. He noted there are “kinks in the armor” in the relationship America can exploit, like Russia sending weapons to India and Vietnam, two of China’s adversaries.
“This is our opportunity,” Ramaswamy said. “Nixon did this in 1972. And Brian, respectfully, people like you said Nixon couldn’t do it.”
Kilmeade then changed the subject and seemingly accused Ramaswamy of appeasement.
“Vivek, are you comfortable giving up Eastern Europe? Because, you know, they’re already taking Moldova, already making moves on the Baltic, they’re taking more and more pieces of Georgia, and all we’ve done is sit there and send blankets and MREs and we got an invasion.”
Vivek issued a response that caused the audience behind him to erupt in applause.
“Because we have no idea how Ukraine has spent $200 billion of our money. We’re forking over more taxpayer money so some Ukrainian kleptocrat can buy a bigger house. That’s corrupt and I’m not going to stand for that.”
Kilmeade then made the laughable statement that “Ukrainians are the best fighters in the world.”
Next, Ramaswamy called Ukraine out for their numerous assassinations prompting Kilmeade to call him “naive.”
“So naive, you give up Ukraine then in two years you’d be criticizing Joe Biden for giving up Ukraine,” Kilmeade said.
Ramaswamy replied:
“You wanna call me naive? I actually understand what the heck I’m talking about here!”
The two continued their nasty debate, with Ramaswamy revealing Tucker Carlson’s explosive report that Lloyd Austin threatened to send American troops to Ukraine if more aid packages were not appropriated.
Kilmeade cluelessly responded by telling Ramaswamy to “pay attention,” failing to understand the irony in his statement.
Kilmeade then tried to cut the segment short while Ramaswamy was still talking before Jones saved the Fox News host and abruptly shut Vivek down.
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