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
“You are the only Bible some unbelievers will ever read, and your life is under scrutiny every day. What do others learn from you? Do they see an accurate picture of your God?”1
“We don’t seek to escape this life by dreaming of heaven. But we do find we can endure this life because of the certainty of heaven. Heaven is eternal. Earth is temporal. Those who fix all their affections of the fleeting things of this world are the real escapists, because they are vainly attempting to avoid facing eternity – by hiding in the fleeting shadows of things that are only transient.”
“According to Scripture, virtually everything that truly qualifies a person for leadership is directly related to character.”
“If we could condense all the truths of Christmas into only three words, these would be the words: ‘God with us.’ We tend to focus our attention at Christmas on the infancy of Christ. The greater truth of the holiday is His deity. More astonishing than a baby in the manger is the truth that this promised baby is the omnipotent Creator of the heavens and the earth!”
“God made all of His creation to give. He made the sun, the moon, the stars, the clouds, the earth, the plants to give. He also designed His supreme creation, man, to give. But fallen man is the most reluctant giver in all of God’s creation.”
“Scripture repeatedly makes clear that heaven is a realm of unsurpassed joy, unfading glory, undiminished bliss, unlimited delights, and unending pleasures. Nothing about it can possibly be boring or humdrum. It will be a perfect existence. We will have unbroken fellowship with all heaven’s inhabitants. Life there will be devoid of any sorrows, cares, tear, fears, or pain.”
“For some reason, we think of doubt and worry as ‘small’ sins. But when a Christian displays unbelief…or an inability to cope with life, he is saying to the world, ‘My God cannot be trusted,’ and that kind of disrespect makes one guilty of a fundamental error, the heinous sin of dishonoring God. That is no small sin.”
“There are basically only two kinds of religion in the world: those based on human achievement and those based on divine accomplishment. One says you can earn your way to heaven; the other says you must trust in Jesus Christ alone.”
“The more you focus on yourself, the more distracted you will be from the proper path. The more you know Him and commune with Him, the more the Spirit will make you like Him. The more you are like Him, the better you will understand His utter sufficiency for all of life’s difficulties. And that is the only way to know real satisfaction.”
“Truth has no degrees or shades. A half-truth is a whole lie, and a white lie is really black.”
“Worship is our innermost being responding with praise for all that God is, through our attitudes, actions, thoughts, and words, based on the truth of God as He has revealed Himself.”
“The Christian life is not adding Jesus to one’s own way of life but renouncing that personal way of life for His and being willing to pay whatever cost that may require.”
“Christians are not left in the world by accident but are placed there on divine assignment from their Lord.”
“God must open the eyes of our understanding before we can truly know and rightly interpret His truth. His truth is available only to those with a regenerate spirit and in whom His Spirit dwells, for only the Spirit can illumine Scripture. Just as the physically blind cannot see the sun, the spiritually blind cannot see the Son. Both lack proper illumination.”
1 All of these quotes are from the following website:
And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one. (Zechariah 14:9)
Blessed prospect! This is no dream of an enthusiast but the declaration of the infallible Word. Jehovah shall be known among all people, and His gracious sway shall be acknowledged by every tribe of man. Today, it is far from being so. Where do any bow before the great King? How much there is of rebellion! What lords many and gods many there are on the earth! Even among professed Christians what diversities of ideas there are about Him and His gospel! One day there shall be one King, one Jehovah, and one name for the living God. O Lord, hasten it! We daily cry, “Thy kingdom come.”
We will not discuss the question as to when this shall be lest we lose the comfort of the certainty that it shall be. So surely as the Holy Ghost spake by His prophets, so surely shall the whole earth be filled with the glory of the Lord. Jesus did not die in vain. The Spirit of God worketh not in vain. The Father’s eternal purposes shall not be frustrated, Here, where Satan triumphed, Jesus shall be crowned, and the Lord God Omnipotent shall reign. Let us go our way to our daily work and warfare made strong in faith.
Leviticus 11:4 — Welcome to the dietary law! Some people differentiate the Mosaic law into three types:
Moral Laws (universal to all people, e.g. Ten Commandments)
Civil Laws (explanations of the moral laws – “what if someone accidentally …”
Ceremonial Laws (laws relating to the Temple, specific to Israel)
CARM.org divides the 613 laws into 34 categories under these three categories; however, the lines do appear arbitrary at times.
A better system for analyzing the law is “dispensationalism” – the idea that God deals with different people in different ways at different times. It also means that God is not fair (“why can’t Joshua eat bacon if Noah could and Peter could?”), but He is just and has a plan! God replaced the 613 commands of the Mosaic Law with over 800 commands for the New Testament believer!
Speaking of bacon – here’s the overview of when people could and could not eat bacon:
Leviticus 11:44 — Even though the Mosaic Law doesn’t apply to our dispensation, the principle of the Ceremonial Law (showing the distinction between clean and unclean) is a picture of the distinction between holy and unholy. While God has removed the division between clean and unclean animals, He has not removed the distinction between holiness and unholiness. We are still required to be holy, because He is holy (Leviticus 20:7, I Peter 1:15-16).
Psalm 38:3 — Do you have no rest in your bones because of sin? A) Be grateful that your Father is rebuking you (Hebrews 12:6), and B) Repent from your sins (I John 1:9).
Proverbs 10:8 — Continuing contrasts between wisdom and foolishness.
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The speed at which time seems to pass by gets faster as we age. Children can hardly wait two months from Reformation day until Christmas – it takes so long! Adults, especially parents of those children, can hardly believe how fast that time flies by! So how long is six years for you? Have you had to wait for something for six years? Some of us have. But have we ever realized that something which just happened to us was six years in the making and we didn’t know anything about it during that time? God often works in our lives in such a way that we had no idea He was at work until, all of a sudden, His blessing breaks like huge drops of grace upon our heads.
Most of God’s covenant people in Judah had no idea that for six years Joash was the king in waiting. He had been hidden away. God sometimes provides grace in ways we don’t immediately see. But He also sometimes uses His “secret agents” to accomplish His plan. I don’t know any covenant parent who named their daughter Jehosheba, but that name would be a badge of honour. This woman was a powerful servant of His for good. Through her courageous action the nation got a great king. God is very wise to sustain us by His grace even when we are unaware.
Suggestions for Prayer
Thank the Lord for His grace given even when we don’t realize it.
Rev. Harold Miller graduated from Mid-America Reformed Seminary in 2001 and has served churches in Wellsburg, Iowa and Kansas City, Missouri before arriving at Oak Lawn, Illinois in 2020. Get this devotional delivered directly to your phone each day via our RP App. It is also available in print, for purchase, at NTGDevotional.com.
Houthis reportedly sink British ship in Red Sea The United Kingdom’s Maritime Trade Operations Agency (UKMTO) reported Monday that the Houthis sunk a ship traveling in the Red Sea, south of the port city of Mukha in Yemen. It is the first time since the start of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza that a crew had to abandon their ship because of the Houthis.
Ancient Judean cistern fills for just 3rd time since 1992 The cistern, located inside a tunnel dated to the 9th century BCE, filled up to a depth of over a meter of water. Additionally, the water flooded the pathway to the well itself, which usually serves hikers for crossings into other parts of the park. The tunnel itself is estimated to date back to the time of the biblical King Ahab
Egyptian FM blasts Hamas, declares it ‘outside of Palestinian consensus’ Shoukry also said “we must give an account of how Hamas gained power in the Gaza Strip and why it received financial support.” Shoukry made these comments at a press conference held at the Munich Security Conference.
Foreign Min. to Brazil Amb.: Tell your president he is a persona non grata in Israel Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz (Likud) on Monday morning called the Brazilian Ambassador Federico Mayer for a reprimand after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva compared Israel to the Nazis.The reprimand took place at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem. tell President Lula that he is a persona non grata in Israel until he apologizes and retracts his statements.”
Arab states want Israel to destroy Hamas Malcolm Hoenlein, … in an expansive interview, … describes support for Israel from a surprising quarter: “Israel obviously made a commitment and remains committed to the destruction of Hamas, but I will tell you that every Arab leader I speak to says to me “decimate them, don’t listen to what we say, because we will pay the price.” If Israel is pressured to do things prematurely, Jordan and Egypt will pay first, and the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Morocco, and others will pay next. Israel will pay a price as well, but I think they will pay a greater price.”
Nearly 10,000 urge Cardinal Dolan to exorcise St. Patrick’s Cathedral after sacrilegious ‘trans’ funeral Within one day, over 9,000 people have signed a petition urging Cardinal Timothy Dolan to exorcise St. Patrick’s Cathedral after a blasphemous funeral of an atheist transgender activist was held in the iconic church last week. The mob staged a supposed funeral service for Cecilia Gentili, a transgender, atheist prostitute during who they eulogized as: “This whore. This great whore.…
Israeli gov’t unanimously rejects ‘diktat’ of international Palestinian State recognition, Knesset to follow suit The declaratory decision was agreed to by all cabinet members, including the more left-leaning National Unity Party ministers like Gadi Eisenkot. “Israel utterly rejects international diktats regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians. A settlement, if it is to be reached, will come about solely through direct negotiations between the parties, without preconditions,” the declaration reads.
Yemen’s Houthis say they attacked two US ships in Gulf of Aden The group was pressed by Iran in October to join Hezbollah and Hamas in initiating attacks on Israel. Yemen’s Houthi militants said on Monday they attacked two US ships, Sea Champion and Navis Fortuna, in the Gulf of Aden. The decision by the Houthis to use unmanned “underwater vessels” presents a new danger.
Deputy Chairman of Hamas in Gaza: Hamas has ‘capabilities in Rafah’ The Deputy Chairman of Hamas in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, acknowledged in an interview with Al Jazeera on Monday that Hamas still had capabilities in Rafah, according to a recap of the interview posted to the Hamas Telegram channel. Al-Qassam Brigades still in Rafah.
US’ Oldest Gunmaker Leaving a Blue State for a Red One Remington began in the blue-collar village of Ilion two centuries ago, and generations have turned out rifles and shotguns at the massive firearms factory in the heart of New York’s Mohawk Valley. Remington is packing it up in upstate New York, heading for more firearm-friendly Georgia
Move over, CRISPR: RNA-editing therapies pick up steam RNA editing is gaining momentum. After decades of basic research into how to manipulate this complex molecule, at least three therapies based on RNA editing have either entered clinical trials or received approval to do so. They are the first to reach this milestone. The launch of human trials signals the growing maturity and acceptance of the field, scientists say. “There’s a much greater understanding of RNA technology,
House Dems Furious After Guest Chaplain Dares to Tell Truth About Liberal America Hell hath no fury like the righteous wrath of God. Second to that, apparently, hell hath no fury like politicians told that, dead in their sin, they will receive that righteous wrath. This, more or less, flew under the radar for the better part of the month of February — until a letter sent to the speaker of the House and signed by 26 House Democrats last week accused Hibbs of being “an ill-qualified hate preacher” who was pushing a “Christian nationalist agenda,”
Storm-hit California faces fresh atmospheric river flood threat The U.S. West Coast faces a fresh round of heavy rainfall and snow this week, as another atmospheric river began slamming California on Sunday — bringing with it the threat of flooding, mudslides and possibly tornadoes. …the Sierra Nevada and Mount Shasta will be impacted by an onslaught of heavy snow on Monday, with new snow likely totaling a few feet through the next couple of days,”
Satellite photos show Egypt building a wall near Gaza Strip as Israeli offensive on Rafah looms Egypt is building a wall and is leveling land near its border with the Gaza Strip ahead of a planned Israeli offensive targeting the border city of Rafah, satellite images analyzed Friday by The Associated Press show. Egypt, which has not publicly acknowledged the construction, repeatedly has warned Israel not to forcibly expel the more than 1 million displaced Palestinians now in Rafah into its territory while Israeli troops battle the militant group Hamas for a fifth month.
Measles cases are surging across England Clusters of measles have been detected across England amid “worryingly” low vaccine uptake in some areas, There have been 521 confirmed cases of measles …
Tropical Storm “Akará” forms off Rio de Janeiro as first TS in South Atlantic since 2019 On February 16, 2024, the Brazilian Navy identified a subtropical depression ESE of Rio de Janeiro, which intensified into Tropical Storm “Akará” by February 19. Akará is the first named tropical storm to develop in the South Atlantic Ocean since Iba in 2019 and the basin’s first named storm in February since Bapo in 2015. The system is expected to continue intensifying but remain well away from Brazil.
Severe thunderstorm hits Sydney, lightning strikes injure 4, set 3 homes on fire, Australia Severe storms hit NSW, Australia on February 19, 2024, causing injuries, transport shutdown, and flash flooding. The storms have resulted in four people injured by a lightning strike, significant transport disruptions, and the ignition of three houses. Sydney recorded up to 57 mm (2.24 inches) of rain, intensifying the risk of flash flooding across the state.
Destructive avalanche hits Afghanistan, leaving at least 25 people dead A destructive snow avalanche mixed with rubble struck the village of Nakre in the Tatin valley, Nugram district of Nuristan Province, overnight on Sunday, February 18, 2024. The disaster resulted in at least 25 fatalities and 8 injuries, with around 20 homes destroyed or heavily damaged.
The Looming Threat of Directed Energy Weapons Imagine the possibilities: a person who is targeted by such a weapon might have a brain aneurysm and die or experience serious complications for the remainder of his life, and the effects would be blamed on a medical occurrence rather than a deliberate attempt at harm with a directed energy weapon.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Satan Club… Teaching Children To Call Evil Good And Good Evil …Satanists are now busy taking their worship of evil into the lives of elementary schoolchildren in the form of Satan Clubs. They advertise these clubs as fun, happy, educational, and full of hope. And the devil? Well, they present him as a great guy — an angel of light.
Elderly UK Couple Ordered to Sell Home to House Migrants An elderly English couple was shocked to receive a letter from their county’s council ordering them to sell their home to house migrants. The North Northamptonshire Council sent a strongly-worded letter to Jose and Ted Saunders in January, claiming their £200,000 home could be subject to compulsory purchase from the government to be used to house young migrant men.
3 Existential Threats That We Are Facing Right Now Which Could Potentially Result In Millions Of Dead Americans In recent years, there has been one enormous crisis after another. We live at a time of major wars, global pestilences and billion-dollar natural disasters. Millions have died over the last several years, and I believe that millions more will die during the years ahead. In fact, there are several existential threats that we are facing right now which could potentially result in millions of dead Americans. I wish that I was exaggerating, but I am not.
Imported African Wars: Eritrean Migrant Riots Turn Western Streets into Battlefields As The Hague and Charlotte grapple with the aftermath of these violent clashes, it’s unmistakably clear that these are not isolated incidents but rather symptomatic of a profound societal attack on Western nations, highlighting deep-rooted upheaval within communities struggling with mass migration and open border challenges.
“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” —George Washington (1789)
Fellow Patriots, on this day in 1942, Lt. Edward “Butch” O’Hare attacked nine Japanese heavy bombers approaching his aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington. He shot down five of them, making him an “Ace in a Day” and the Navy’s first flying ace in World War II. Read the profile of his Medal of Honor here. —Mark Alexander
Subway stations may be lovely and grocery stores cheaper, but that doesn’t make Russia superior to the U.S.
Nate Jackson
“Lining up for food” is “a good thing,” said then-Mayor Bernie Sanders of Burlington, Vermont, in 1985. When you don’t have food lines, he explained, “The rich get the food, and the poor starve to death.” He was talking about socialist-run Nicaragua, but it was spoken like a true Soviet.
Unfortunately, mindless praise for socialist utopias didn’t start or end with Bernie.
Tucker Carlson has done a lot of good in his broadcast career. He’s revealed corruption, rooted out tough stories, and pounded home tough questions. We were among those who were shocked and dismayed when Fox News summarily fired him last year.
Yet Carlson is also human, apt to do wrong or stupid things because that’s just the human condition. His moment in that ignoble pantheon came in relation to his interview with Vladimir Putin.
While in Russia, Carlson created a series of videos about conditions in the country, which he intended to draw contrasts with our own under the bumbling “leadership” of Joe Biden and Democrat mayors around the nation. He said in one of the videos that his job isn’t to make judgments but merely “to ask the question.” The problem is that was perhaps too cute by half.
Before showing footage of a subway station “built by Joseph Stalin 70 years ago,” Carlson marveled at the beautiful architecture and clean condition despite the country being “in the middle of a war” (that it started, he didn’t add). “There’s no graffiti, there’s no filth, no foul smells. There are no bums or drug addicts or rapists or people waiting to push you onto the train tracks and kill you. No, it’s perfectly clean and orderly.” He added, “It’s nicer than anything in our country.”
“That’s not an endorsement of Stalin, who was bad, obviously,” Carlson assured viewers. “Nor is it an endorsement of the current president, Vladimir Putin.” The sweeping music played with the gawking footage implied otherwise. In any case, he definitely meant it as an indictment of Democrat leaders here in the U.S., and it is that.
But Carlson also could have answered the implied question by noting that Stalin reportedly built the subway station with marble from a cathedral he destroyed or that he intended the station as a propaganda tool for his communist regime, both for residents and (ahem) foreigners. He could have explained that Putin’s regime, which is as much in the mold of Stalin’s as modern pretenses and sensibilities will allow, uses facial recognition surveillance to jail anyone and everyone — perhaps especially journalists — who run afoul of Putin’s rule.
Alexei Navalny could tell us about that if Putin’s goons hadn’t just killed him.
Keep it clean and orderly or head to the gulag can be effective, we suppose. It’s also not Liberty through the Rule of Law.
One other thing Tucker didn’t mention is that the subway station’s colorful mosaic of dutiful farm workers depicts a scene in Ukraine, where Stalin committed genocide through famine and where Putin is arguably also committing genocide during his invasion that began two years ago. Carlson doesn’t favor U.S. aid for Ukraine, so maybe he thought it best not to bring that up.
Another subject of his intrigue was grocery shopping at a Russian supermarket. As he bought what a family of four might typically buy so as to compare costs, he highlighted wine from Crimea, which for some reason he didn’t mention was formerly a part of Ukraine that Russia invaded and annexed in 2014.
Carlson intended his video to nail American leaders for causing inflation, and in one sense, he did that well. “I went from amused to legitimately angry,” he said after checking out and paying a little over $100 for his cartload instead of the expected $400. He accused our leaders of “wrecking people’s lives and their country” and said he’d been “radicalized” by the experience he just had.
We’re really not here to pick on Carlson. We even agree with some of the points he was trying to make, though his omissions are glaring.
Inflation is awful, as we’ve said a thousand times. Yet Russian groceries were cheaper than America’s long before Biden ignited inflation. And cheaper food is not proof of a stronger Russian economy or a testament to its superior system. Instead, it’s thanks to a dollar that remains relatively strong and allows American tourists to enjoy increased purchasing power in other countries.
In fact, the average American salary is nearly six times as much as in Russia, where most people spend half their salary on food, and nearly a quarter of residents don’t even have indoor plumbing. Notably, American life expectancy is four years longer for women and nearly a decade longer for men. And when was the last time Russia led the world in innovation that mattered? National Review’s Jim Geraghty made a list of recent American ingenuity to celebrate.
It’s true that totalitarian countries can do things with a lot less resistance or argument than we do here in the not-so-United States. It’s true that bureaucratic red tape hampers things here in ways that even the Soviet Politburo would find eyebrow-raising. It’s also true that Democrat urban centers are disgraceful cesspools of crime and filth.
But America is still, contrary to recent polling, the greatest country in the world. We’d take it over Russia all day, every day. Sometimes we all need that reminder.
Hochul says the quiet part out loud, KC mayor is a thug apologist, Disney goes woke and broke, and more.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
Two-tiered justice: Hochul says the quiet part out loud: In the wake of Friday’s “civil fraud” ruling against Donald Trump, the former president is now on the hook for more than half a billion in legal judgments, all of which seems nakedly politically motivated. This might cause thoughtful investors and entrepreneurs to wonder whether doing business in the high-tax, low-liberty state of New York is a smart decision or whether they might be better off taking their business elsewhere. No doubt sensing this sentiment, New York Governor Kathy Hochul took to the airwaves Sunday. Asked by host John Catsimatidis whether she thought other New York businesspeople should be worried that if “they can do that to the former president, they can do that to anybody,” Hochul responded: “I think that this is really an extraordinary, unusual circumstance that the law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are business people have nothing to worry about because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior.” Nope, nothing to worry about here. But as constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley put it, “Drawing new businesses to the city is going to be about as easy as selling country estates during the French Revolution.” Real estate executive and “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary was somewhat less subtle. “New York was already a loser state,” he said, “like California is a loser state. … I would never invest in New York now. And I’m not the only person saying that.”
Fani Willis, Christian Nationalist: Over the weekend, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was the honored guest speaker at Berean Seventh Day Adventists Church. She delivered a message effectively asserting that she was the victim of an unjust campaign against her regarding her prosecution of Donald Trump for alleged election racketeering. While avoiding the elephant in the room — her illicit affair, her apparent theft of taxpayer funds, and her lying about it — Willis referenced Scripture, saying: “‘No weapon formed against you shall prosper.’ … They did not say the weapons will not form, and that’s the part I didn’t hear until recently.” Scripture also warns, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” Is Willis facing off against weapons raised against her unjustly, or is she reaping the consequences of what she has sown? Unfortunately, demonstrating that identity politics rather than scriptural truth was guiding this service, Willis was awarded the Black History Achievement Award, with a number of Fulton County’s political leaders in attendance to celebrate. If any of this happened among Republicans, the denunciations of “Christian Nationalism” would be deafening.
KC mayor is a weak-kneed thug apologist: There are times when criminality is so brazen, so outrageous, so sickening that it needs to be called out and denounced without respect to political correctness. Such a moment occurred last week, when, after what appeared to be an argument among rival groups of hoodlums, some number of them opened fired among celebrants during the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade, killing one, Lisa Lopez-Galvan, and injuring 22 others. Following the assault, Republican Missouri Governor Mike Parson was in no mood to mince words: “We can’t let some thugs just take over and ruin what happened.” Apparently, though, Democrat Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas couldn’t bring himself to call the thugs thugs. Responding to Parson’s characterization, Lucas said: “I disagree strongly with how [the governor] would describe that situation. … ‘Thugs’ is a dog whistle in the most classic sense. And I have seen this dog whistle time and again.” Okay, we’ll bite: We’ve seen this sort of barbaric behavior “time and again.” And we’ve seen local Democrat leaders fail to vigorously denounce these young killers “time and again.” One wonders: Would Lucas have preferred that Parson had instead called these misunderstood youths “animals” or “gangsters” or “barbarians”? We suspect not.
Hawaii’s climate tax and NYC’s Tide Pod challenge: Tourists to Hawaii will soon be paying more to enjoy the island paradise, as the Aloha State’s legislature is poised to pass a $25 climate tax per visitor. Democrat Hawaii Governor Josh Green argued, “It’s a very small price to pay to preserve paradise.” Green, who had previously pushed a $50 entrance tax that failed to pass, claims that the climate tax will garner some $68 million annually for the state. Green then ridiculously asserted, “All I want to do, honestly, is to make travelers accountable and have the capacity to help pay for the impact that they have.” So, tourists, upon whom much of the state’s economy depends, are the problem. Evidently, Green doesn’t understand economics. Meanwhile, in New York City, Democrat lawmakers are pushing for a ban on Tide Pods because of climate change. NYC Councilman James Gennaro, who introduced the “Pods Are Plastic Bill,” contends that the laundry pods contain polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), which dissolves in water. “[PVAs] are the most concerning of emerging contaminants,” Gennaro argues. Thus far, there is no scientific-based research to back up Gennaro’s concern.
Barkley dunks on San Fransicko: California’s crown jewel is one of the world’s most naturally beautiful cities, so it’s sad to note that the crime, the drugs, the feces, and the homelessness are now among San Francisco’s most recognizable features. But this is what decades of one-party Democrat rule will get you. So who can blame the erstwhile Round Mound of Rebound, former NBAer Charles Barkley, for blasting the city on Sunday during the league’s little-watched broadcast of the NBA All-Star Game? “Hey Reggie,” Barkley said to one of his broadcast colleagues, former Indiana Pacer Reggie Miller, “if you had a chance of being in the cold or being around a bunch of homeless crooks in San Francisco, which would you take?” When another colleague, Candace Parker, came to the beleaguered city’s defense, saying, “We love San Francisco,” Barkley shot back: “No, we don’t. You can’t even walk around down there.” When still another colleague, Draymond Green, who plays basketball for the San Francisco-based Golden State Warriors, weighed in with, “Yes, you can walk around,” Barkley fired back once again: “Yeah, with a bulletproof vest.” Game, set, and match to Sir Charles. For those keeping score, here are the grim facts about San Francisco’s downward spiral during the past three years, according to data from the city’s police department: Homicide is up 12.5%, robbery is up 13.5%, assault is up 13%, larceny and theft are up 26%, and total major crime is up 13%. Interestingly, the NBA All-Star Game will be in San Francisco next year. And we have no doubt Charles will get a warm welcome from the addicts, the homeless, the shoplifters, the car thieves, and the violent criminals. We doubt Charles will need a bulletproof vest, but he’ll want to watch where he steps.
Disney goes woke and broke: We keep waiting for Disney to wake up and snap out of it, but we’re growing more pessimistic by the day. How many unequivocal messages, after all, can the American people send to the once-proud and now-woke entertainment company? “The Walt Disney Company is in deep trouble,” writes Lauren Smith at Spiked. “Its last four high-profile releases bombed at the box office, losing over $1 billion between them.” Never fear, though: It’s just a “misalignment” — or at least that’s how it’s been characterized by the company’s leadership, which last year admitted to its investors that there was a growing “misalignment” between its creative product and “public and consumer tastes and preferences for entertainment.” That, it seems, is just a mealy-mouthed way of admitting that they’re continuing to try to ram their woke politics down the throats of unwilling consumers. People are “fed up with storylines being mangled to fit ‘progressive’ narratives,” Smith adds. “They are irked by Disney’s desire to lecture them instead of entertain them.” We had a little hope for Disney when the company appeared to shift its stance: “When you tell stories, there’s a delicate balance,” said CEO Bob Iger. “You’re talking to an audience, but it’s also important to listen to an audience. It’s important to have respect for the people you are serving, that you are trying to reach, and not have disdain for them.” Sadly, for all who once cherished this singularly American brand, we’re still waiting for it to listen to its audience.
Sister of Perpetual Indulgence charged with child porn: Last year, the Los Angeles Dodgers stubbornly insisted on celebrating the deviant anti-Catholic hate group known as the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” men who dress as drag queen nuns. Apparently, the Dodgers’ brass was more worried about offending the Rainbow Mafia than any of its Christian fanbase. Well, lo and behold, one of these drag queens has been arrested in Wisconsin and charged with possession of child pornography and sexual exploitation of a child. He is a member of the anti-Catholic drag queen group’s Wisconsin chapter known as the Brew City Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and he is also a teacher. It seems like willingness to engage in blatant sexual deviancy should be a warning of other possibly more sinister behavior.
Headlines
Is an executive order coming on immigration as State of the Union looms? (Hot Air)
Biden now “happy to meet” with Speaker Johnson over Ukraine funding, border impasse after WH snubbed past discussion requests (New York Post)
Biden administration “extremely upset” at New York Times coverage of president’s age, publisher says (National Review)
Biden admin cited “Indigenous Knowledge” as reason to block oil and gas leases (Washington Free Beacon)
Immigrant from Hong Kong becomes first noncitizen appointed to San Francisco Election Commission (Fox News)
Capital One to acquire Discover Financial (Fox Business)
Javier Milei delivers Argentina’s first monthly budget surplus in 12 years (Sky News)
Frozen embryos are children, Alabama Supreme Court rules in couples’ wrongful death suits (AL.com)
California gun control fails to stop man from accumulating massive arsenal (Bearing Arms)
Study of 99 million COVID-vaccinated people finds links to brain, heart problems (Washington Times)
St. Patrick’s Cathedral breaks silence after transgender activists hold irreverent funeral for atheist prostitute (Daily Signal)
Trans controversy erupts when girls basketball game ends in forfeit following three injuries (Daily Wire)
British National Health System says men’s “chest” milk is as good as women’s for babies (Not the Bee) | Humor: Study shows 10 out of 10 babies prefer female boobs (Babylon Bee)
The left-wing activist is interested in controlling a historically conservative stronghold.
Emmy Griffin
George Soros, billionaire and left-wing activist, is going after media companies that are floundering. Last August, a Soros front company called Fortress joined a consortium of other buyers to purchase bankrupt Vice Media — the former home of investigative journalist Tim Poole that went woke and broke. And last week it was made public that Soros is poised to purchase a big share in the second-largest radio broadcast network, Audacy.
Radio, largely considered the arena of conservative political voices, can be viewed as under attack. Soros is a well-known leftist who has already helped further destabilize several U.S. cities around the country by funding his preferred district attorneys’ election campaigns. Soros believes in soft-on-crime policies and undermining if not defunding the police — in general, allowing chaos to reign in places where he doesn’t have to face the consequences of those actions.
Now Soros is interested in controlling a radio broadcast network that has political personalities and talk-show hosts like Dana Loesch, Guy Benson, Mark Levin, Rich ZeoliIn, and Sean Hannity.
Why is Audacy selling? Well, in spite of being the second-largest network, Audacy declared bankruptcy on January 7 with the amount of debt piling into the billions. This debt was caused by a dramatic fall in advertising revenue and the company is in the midst of Chapter 11 restructuring in bankruptcy court.
In the restructuring of Audacy, Soros is expected to be paid back in stock for his helping to buy the debt. We can assume from this that Soros will be able to use his position as one of the primary shareholders to influence the types of programs broadcast on the various Audacy-owned radio stations. It is a calculated business and political move.
As the Washington Examiner’s Christopher Tremoglie points out: “Objectively, it’s a shrewd move by the affluent left-wing political activist. Of course, this could all just be a conjectural overreaction. However, if Soros were to implement a Republican talk show purge nationwide, it would undoubtedly be seen as a political power play to influence public opinion. And in many ways, if this does happen, it should be considered the Left’s countermaneuver to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now known as X. It should make Republicans at least a bit uneasy.”
Aside from being a countermove to Musk’s purchase of X (formerly Twitter), Soros’s purchase of Vice and Audacy can be a tool to influence voters ahead of the 2024 election. Though some may consider radio a dying medium that’s losing out to easier, more tailorable listening experiences such as Spotify or podcasts, Pew Research still finds that a majority of Americans listen to the radio.
One thing that would work in Soros’s disfavor should he seek to banish conservatives from the Audacy platform is that the majority of people who listen to the radio are in the older demographic (50 to 64), whereas the youngest generation that is easily influenced and less politically decided uses other forums to get political information. He could potentially officially kill radio by alienating those who generally still listen to it.
Whatever Soros’s reasons may be, this is something Republicans should be aware of. Don’t be surprised, should the deal go through, if your favorite stations start to change in a direction you don’t like.
A leftist climate change organization seeks to get broadcasters from air ads exposing Joe Biden’s anti-fossil fuel agenda.
Thomas Gallatin
In Joe Biden’s ongoing war on fossil fuel, the Environmental Protection Agency is poised to introduce new tailpipe emissions standards that will serve as a “de facto electric vehicle mandate.” That is the allegation made by the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers in a recently launched ad campaign in a number of leading fossil fuel-producing states.
The EPA’s proposed standards are designed to restrict the sale of new gas-powered vehicles so as to effectively force the realization of its target of 67% of all new car sales being electric by 2032. The ultimate goal, of course, would be to end gas-powered vehicles entirely. As The New York Times reported last April, the EPA’s new rules “could put the nation on track to end sales of new gasoline-powered cars as soon as 2035.”
Of course, the Biden administration argues that the new EPA rules are needed to combat climate change. But as we and many others have repeatedly observed, EVs would have almost no impact on emissions levels while at the same time saddling Americans with a much more expensive and more limited vehicle.
In short, the reasoned and practical economic and scientifically sound objections don’t back up the Biden administration’s mad dash into green-dream dystopia.
But the Biden administration doesn’t want that message getting out to the American public and thereby delivering a dose of practical reality to its consumer-controlling agenda. Therefore, following the AFPM’s ad campaign, the Biden administration is calling foul via the leftist organization Climate Power.
In a letter sent to broadcasters in states where the AFPM is running its ad campaign, Climate Power ridiculously alleges that the “advertisements include obvious lies aimed at deceiving the public and must be pulled from the air immediately.” Furthermore, Climate Power warns that local broadcasters who don’t pull these ads risk having their licenses revoked by the Federal Communications Commission. The pretense? “Failure to prevent the airing of ‘false and misleading advertising’ may be ‘probative of an underlying abdication of licensee responsibility’ that can be cause for the loss of a station’s license.”
And what is supposedly “false and misleading” in AFPM’s ads? Well, according to Climate Power, which conveniently cites the Leftmedia outlet PolitiFact, it is “wrong to say there is a ‘Biden mandate’ to replace gasoline-powered cars with [electric vehicles].” The letter further observes, “The EPA does not have the authority to demand such a mandate.”
Yes, it is technically accurate to observe that the Biden administration, via the EPA, doesn’t have the power to mandate what vehicles people are allowed to buy. But that is a disingenuous dodge of the truth.
The issue is one of intent, which the Biden administration has made quite clear — to end the sale of fossil fuel-powered vehicles. The administration is acting toward this end by having the EPA impose its new and onerous tailpipe emissions regulations, which will effectively make gas-powered vehicles unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans. It’s a de facto mandate for EVs.
Meanwhile, the administration’s effort to engage in censorship of views that challenge its favored climate change narrative doesn’t stop with threatening local broadcasting stations. The White House recently teamed up with a leftist British online censorship advocacy group, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, in an effort to pressure Big Tech into censoring the so-called “New Denial” on climate change.
Hiding behind the claim of preventing “hate” and the dissemination of online “disinformation” regarding climate change, the CCDH is pressuring Big Tech companies “to update policies to keep up with new forms of climate crisis denial along with removing financial incentives, and reducing its reach and visibility.”
The goal of the CCDH is to prevent people from being able to challenge the Left’s narrative on climate change. You know, because challenging The Science™ should never be tolerated.
A new “analysis” by ABC News suggests that the business-friendly policies of Republican governance have little to do with the economic success of the red states.
Douglas Andrews
It’s the economy, stupid — and Joe Biden is nothing if not stupid. Which is why he and his handlers get giddy every time they see good economic news. Surely this time, they think, those ungrateful voters will start coming around and giving us a polling bump for our awesomeness, right?
Wrong.
If ever a presidential campaign were going nowhere fast, it’s this one. If Biden 2024 were a car, it’d be a Trabant. If his campaign were a condition, it’d be stuck in the mud. Try as they might, Biden and his handlers keep spinning their wheels and miring themselves ever deeper. Isn’t there an honest man among his many sycophants who can tell Biden the truth? Who can tell this “sympathetic [sic], well-meaning [sic], elderly man with a poor memory” that the American people reached Peak Biden a long, long time ago, way back in July 2021, before the Afghanistan disaster?
Sadly, no. Which brings us to a state-by-state economic analysis by the Nobel laureates at ABC News, this one saying that most of the best-performing states voted for — say it isn’t so! — Donald Trump.
As they report: “An examination of key economic measures — including job and income growth — found an overwhelming majority of red states among 18 top performers. The disparity between red and blue states has little to do with anything Biden has done, experts interviewed by ABC News said, noting that federal policy typically holds minimal influence over state-by-state economic trends.”
You can see where this is going. If the success of these red states has “little to do with anything Biden has done,” then they can say the same thing about the Republican governors and the Republican-led state legislatures that run those states. And sure enough, ABC News continues, “The dynamic owes in large part to the appeal of warm weather states for workers and businesses, as well as the combination of company-friendly state policies and Democrat-leaning cities that attract young, educated workers.”
So, you see, it’s the warm weather and the cool Democrat mayors of the big cities that are the cause of all this red state economic success. They even found a “progressive” economist to support their findings:
The strong performance of red states may result from the convergence of business-friendly state laws and attractive cities for young, educated liberals, Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economist, told ABC News. The pool of skilled workers offers companies a ready source of employees, while companies benefit from state policies like low taxes and right-to-work laws, he added. “That’s just a very powerful combination,” Glaeser said.
Maybe it’s the “sanctuary city” policies of these Democrat mayors that are attracting this young and talented workforce. And the no-cash bail policies. And the shoplifter-friendly policies. After all, they’ve done wonders in the big cities of the blue states, like New York and Philadelphia and Chicago and Denver and San Francisco and LA and Seattle.
As Hot Air’s David Strom quips: “Democratic mayors in Red states are attracting young liberal workers. So Texas is going gangbusters because people like hot weather and Democrats. … You do have to hand it to the MSM; they can look you in the eye and tell you the most absurd things and keep a straight face. Lying without shame is a skill, if not one that most of us would want to be taught to our children.”
Daniel Hornung, the Biden administration’s deputy director at the National Economic Council, won’t take “No” for an answer, though. It is Joe Biden who’s responsible, he insists: “Dating back to when the president took office, he has enacted a set of historic legislative accomplishments that have very directly driven the historic labor market recovery and historic economic growth we’ve had.”
Yeah, that highly successful Inflation Reduction [sic] Act comes immediately to mind. As PJ Media’s Rick Moran chortles, “If you gave my dead grandmother $5.5 trillion and pumped it into the economy after an unnecessary shutdown due to a pandemic, she could grow the economy equally as well as Biden.”
Just to drive the point home, though, ABC News concludes by returning to their Harvard economist to reiterate what this is all about: “The warmer parts of America tend to be doing much better than the colder parts,” Glaeser said.
In sum, there are no business-friendly economic policies to see here, folks. Just the sun and a little global warming.
The Leftmedia’s “fact-check” falsehoods make them look foolish, but they can’t seem to help themselves.
Michael Swartz
As PolitiFact celebrated at length its 1,000th “fact-check” on Donald Trump, it pointed out with glee that its “median rating” on Trump is “false.” Even more mirthful to those who believe they’re serious, PolitiFact claims, “More than 18% of our fact-checks of Trump landed at Pants on Fire, which we define as a statement that is not just false but ridiculous.” By way of comparison, PolitiFact has graded a total of 286 statements from Joe Biden, with just seven qualifying as “Pants on Fire” and roughly 40% graded out as True or Mostly True.
(We’ll pause a moment for your hearty, belly-shaking laughter.)
The caveat is fairly obvious, but Townhall’s Leah Barkoukis breaks things down this way: “Trump’s election claims were the most fact-checked topic, followed by immigration, foreign policy, the economy, homeland security, crime, coronavirus, candidate biography, and healthcare.”
There’s no doubt PolitiFact disagrees with Trump’s take on the 2020 election, despite the fact that more is being revealed about those shenanigans and dirty tricks as time goes on. In that respect, it’s just like the revelations that have debunked those fake Russian election interference stories from 2016. (It’s unclear whether PolitiFact has ever set the record straight on those “Russia, Russia, Russia” claims for which they gave Trump the “Lie of the Year” award in 2017.)
Barkoukis’s fellow Townhall denizen Tim Graham sums it up as well, adding: “Never call PolitiFact an ‘independent fact-checker.’ They are every bit as liberal and biased as their fans in the liberal media.”
Columnist Salena Zito famously observed that Trump’s target audience of everyday citizens takes him seriously but not literally. On the other hand, the press and outlets like PolitiFact have a field day taking Trump literally but not seriously. Power Line’s John Hinderaker gave a good example of this with Trump’s recent statements encouraging fellow NATO nations to pull their weight when it comes to military funding. While Joe Biden blew a gasket calling what Trump said “shameful” and “dangerous,” it was obvious to our NATO allies that Trump was sending the message that they need to spend more on defense to bring themselves up to a standard they agreed to, which is the same consistent message Trump had while in office.
As our Emmy Griffin noted a while back, “The truth is that many of these so-called ‘false claims’ are actually hyperbole or satire, and that’s exactly what has endeared Trump to so many. But the rabidly deranged media cannot take a joke or countenance exaggeration of any sort — perhaps because they assume everyone is as literal and foolish as they are.”
Donald Trump has been in the public spotlight for several decades now, so his pursuit of “the art of the deal” should be a known quantity by now. And he uses the best exaggeration and hyperbole — you know it’s the best. By nature, he’s a braggadocious huckster who became best known for telling people they were fired on national television.
That role helped propel him to the GOP nomination for president not once but twice (barring something unforeseen) because so many people believed that The Swamp really did need to be drained, particularly after the “jobless recovery” from the Great Recession that we endured for eight years. Trump was the leader of the heretofore leaderless populist movement that came out of the political shadows to elect him in 2016.
Does Trump play fast and loose with the facts sometimes? Indeed, he does, and there are many on the conservative and pro-liberty side who facepalm themselves every time he tells one of those egregious whoppers. Why? Because these distractions draw attention away from a solid political philosophy and record as president. Only his handling of a unique situation with COVID — during which he perhaps listened too much to his advisers and not his instincts — took him down. But his successor — who simply makes things up and lies almost reflexively — has brought on several other simultaneous crises that will give Trump a more-than-full plate should he pull a Grover Cleveland and be reelected to a second, non-consecutive term.
It makes you hope that the PolitiFact meter keeps spinning around for another thousand “fact-check” falsehoods because these clowns just make the Leftmedia look foolish. When it comes to Donald Trump, take note of what the man does more than what he says.
Editor’s Note: Each week we receive hundreds of comments and correspondences — and we read every one of them. Click here for a few thought-provoking comments about specific articles. The views expressed therein don’t necessarily reflect those of The Patriot Post.
“Mr. President, would you go so far as to say that Alexei Navalny’s blood is on the hands of House Republicans right now?” —CNN’s M.J. Lee
Useful Idiot
“What’s happening in the Gaza Strip isn’t a war, it’s a genocide. It’s not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It’s a war between a highly prepared army and women and children. What’s happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn’t happened at any other moment in history. Actually, it has happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.” —Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
For the Record
“The Associated Press, not exactly a right-wing outfit, recently reviewed 70 years of New York civil fraud cases. Here’s what the AP concluded: ‘Trump’s case stands apart in a significant way: It’s the only big business found that was threatened with a shutdown without a showing of obvious victims and major losses.’ This is clearly a case of selective prosecution, vindictive leftist lawfare, and political persecution.” —Gary Bauer
Political Futures
“Though certain Republican-leaning pundits as well as Democrats think Trump ought to be a weak, even hopeless nominee for the GOP, he polls better against Biden than he ever did against Hillary Clinton — and, of course, he beat her. It’s easy to say that isn’t so much a sign of Trump’s strength as it is of Biden’s shakiness. Yet what does it tell us that no other, younger leader in either party has been able to challenge them?” —Daniel McCarthy
“There’s a larger pattern in American politics since the end of the Cold War that has held up no matter the differences between candidates and philosophies. Voters as a whole won’t give either party, or any set of ideologues, full, long-term control over their lives — not even enough control for coherent national policy in major areas like immigration and diplomacy.” —Daniel McCarthy
“To call Trump a bull in a china shop is unfair to the delicacy of bulls. When a bull traipses through the shop, the damage he causes is incidental; Trump intends to break things and force people to clean and fix them up. He knows what to break and what the remodel should look like. As often as not, he succeeds in getting things fixed and a gold-plated toilet installed.” —David Strom
And Last…
“There are legitimate policy disagreements about NATO and the Ukraine war, but there shouldn’t be any doubt about the larger significance of Vladimir Putin’s challenge to the West’s interests, values and resolve.” —Rich Lowry
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“System Update” host Glenn Greenwald comments on the battle in the U.S. Congress to send more money to Ukraine:
GLENN GREENWALD: There is not one Democrat in the House of Representatives now willing to vote no on a bill that sends billions and billions of dollars to the arms industry. There may be some in the House now willing to vote no because of the Israel part of it, but the vast majority of Democrats are ready to vote yes. They’ve always voted unanimously yes for Ukraine spending, and there are more than enough Republicans to join the Democrats to form a majority because in Washington, the military-industrial complex always wins. And there’s one thing and one thing only standing in the way of getting this $60 billion for Ukraine authorized. That is the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s refusal to bring this bill to the floor because he promised he wouldn’t put up any vote to give money to Ukraine unless the American border was secured first, and because there are members of the Republican caucus who have vowed that they will remove him as Speaker if he brings this bill to the floor. Remember, the margin he works with is extremely small — you only need about four or five members of the Republican caucus to decide they want Mike Johnson out of that job, and he will be out.
People like Marjorie Taylor Greene and others have said if one dollar goes to Ukraine, Mike Johnson’s Speakership ends.
So the pressure that is being applied on Mike Johnson is almost impossible to overstate. Every time I’ve talked about this issue, I have said it seems like this money is imperiled, but I have been paying a lot of attention to money in politics and when it comes to war spending and military-industrial complex bills, I have never seen the military-industrial complex lose on something they really care about. $60 billion is a lot of money that will go into a lot of pockets.
And suddenly, a lot of things started happening to make everybody enraged with Russia. Beginning with the fact that Alexei Navalny just died in a Russian prison, and we’re all now being told this is the most significant and morally reprehensible thing taking place on the planet. It’s dominated our political discourse for reasons that don’t quite make immediate or intuitive sense.
Here is the current state of the Biden spending request for Ukraine from the New York Times on February 13, heading: Ukraine Aid Bill Faces Hurdles in the House Amid G.O.P. Opposition: Speaker Mike Johnson has indicated he won’t put the Senate legislation to a vote in the House, leaving proponents scrambling to find a path to passage.
Look at how desperate they get in Washington when they really want to pass something. When have they ever done this for any kind of bill that would actually improve the lives of American citizens? Work this hard, this tirelessly, trying to find their way around the refusal of the Speaker to bring a vote to the House floor. This is clearly their top priority: more money for Ukraine.
…
Everybody who we’ve been interviewing on this how — people who were dissidents from the start about the lack of wisdom of us trying to encourage the Ukrainians to fight the Russians — have wanted from the start that there is no way Ukraine can beat Russia. For so many reasons, including the fact that Russia is just a much bigger country, it has a way more men to send to fight over and over and Ukraine doesn’t. Ukraine is now reduced to 45 and 50-year-olds off buses and drafting people with chronic conditions. There is no way Ukraine can win this war, no matter how much the United States spends to fuel the war. It is just impossible, and it is increasingly obvious and visible that Russia has been able to produce far more military equipment and artillery shells than all of NATO combined, leaving Ukraine at a huge artillery disadvantage.
We’ve spent over $120 billion, the Europeans have spent tens of billions more, and Russia occupies 20% of Ukraine and the chances are far more likely than not that Russia will continue to occupy more and more of Ukraine. Even if we do spend the $60 billion. What is the $60 billion really for when everyone acknowledges the chances the Ukrainians are going to expel Russia out of all of the provinces of Eastern Ukraine that they are completely dug into… let alone Crimea… is basically zero. Where is this money going? What is its real purpose?
— Read on www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/02/20/greenwald_what_is_the_60_billion_for_when_everyone_acknowledges_ukraine_cant_really_win.html
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis cries racism on the stand and eventually emasculates her alleged lover, Nathan Wade, while claiming to protect his masculinity. Actor, producer, and brand-new Blaze TV contributor Matthew Marsden joins Sara Gonzales to discuss.
A ‘Mornings with Maria’ panel discusses Trump’s N.Y. civil fraud ruling and Kelly Wong, the first non-citizen sworn into San Francisco’s Elections Commission…
Lament is not a common word today. It is rare to hear of lamentation in our secular culture, and even within the Church we don’t often speak of lament. And yet, I believe lament is one of the most important – and biblical – postures that we can take as Christians in the public square today.
Why lament?
Consider our situation. We see (at least) 87,000 abortions every year here in Canada. Over 13,000 died by euthanasia last year, and that number grows every year.
We’ve seen our fundamental freedoms eroded. Conscience rights for health care workers aren’t adequately protected. Our governments have redefined marriage by liberalizing divorce laws, recognizing same-sex marriages, and even starting to legitimize polyamorous relationships. The entire concepts of motherhood and fatherhood are fractured by our country’s policies on in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, and jurisdictions like Ontario are recognizing that kids can have many (not just two) parents. Hundreds of kids are pursuing medical gender transitioning, rejecting the bodies that God has given them. Counseling children to love the body and identity they have been given has been outlawed by conversion therapy legislation. Human trafficking, pornography, and prostitution are rampant in society. And our country, ostensibly still founded on the principle “that recognizes the supremacy of God,” has insisted that all cultures and all religions by-and-large are equal.
Sin and brokenness are pervasive in all aspects of Canadian society. Let’s consider some potential unbiblical options of how to respond to this sin before coming to why we need to lament for our nation.
Unbiblical responses
1. Do not grumble
One response – the most unbiblical response – is to grumble. We can be tempted to complain to God, to each other, and to ourselves.
But complaining is antithetical to the Christian life. The Israelites of the Old Testament were famous for grumbling. They complained about bitter water or a lack of water (Ex. 15:24, 17:3), about a lack of food (Ex. 16:2), their misfortunes (Num. 11:1), the strength of the Canaanites (Num. 14:2), and their leadership (Num. 16:11, 41; 17:5). In most of these instances, God punished His people. He had just brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and, rather than worshipping and praising Him, they complained.
Rather than “grumbling or disputing,” Paul calls on Christians to be “blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world” (Phil. 2:15). We confess that “it is impossible for those grafted into Christ by true faith not to produce fruits of gratitude” (HC Q&A 64).
2. No need to fear
Another response to a bleak political situation is fear and anxiety, but this too is an unbiblical response. We may fear persecution from our culture, tyranny from our government, or censure from media companies. But in Philippians 4, Paul instructs followers of Christ, “do not be anxious about anything.” Christ Himself commands us “do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on” or about anything else for that matter (Matt. 6:25-34; Luke 12:22-31). The most frequent command found in Scripture is “do not be afraid.”
3. Do not be angry
Another common response to this sin-filled world is anger. Anger can be a powerful motivator to inspire people to speak up and to act. And, unlike complaining or anxiety, there is some biblical justification to be angry (e.g., Eph. 4:26). When people sin and transgress the law of the LORD, there is a reason for righteous anger. Jesus Himself became angry on occasion with a righteous anger (Mark 3:1-6 and Mark 10:13-16).
Scripture, however, portrays human anger as a negative phenomenon in almost every instance. Proverbs often counsels the wise and the righteous to refrain from anger (Prov. 14:29, 15:18, 16:32, 19:11, 22:24, 29:22). The apostle Paul commands believers to put away anger on several occasions (2 Cor. 12:20; Gal. 5:20; Eph. 4:31; Col. 3:8; 1 Tim. 2:8).
Our fallen anger makes us susceptible to sin. (Perhaps why Eph. 4:26 says “be angry and do not sin.”) Anger can easily lead to hasty and thoughtless words and actions. Perhaps this is why James admonishes believers to be “slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:19-20). Like fire, anger can be a beneficial and God glorifying tool when used in the right way, yet it can easily grow out of control and cause great spiritual (not to mention temporal!) damage.
So instead of complaining, fearing, or being angry about the state of our nation, a more biblical response is lament.
An example of lament
Scripture is full of laments, but the best example of lamentation flows from the prophet Jeremiah and the people of Judah in exile.
Put yourself in their shoes. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Clear your mind.
Imagine you are a young Jew living around 609 BC. You and your people are led by King Josiah. Your life revolves around a divinely inspired calendar of feasts and sacrifices. In fact, you just celebrated a Passover the likes of which hadn’t been observed since the days of the judges. You observe a weekly Sabbath day of rest, a year of Sabbath rest of the land every seven years, and a year of Jubilee every 50 years. You periodically visit the glorious temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, perhaps the most ornate, beautiful, and costly structure on earth. There the Levite singers and musicians make music to God and the priests offer sweet incense to the LORD. God has promised that a descendent of David would sit on the throne of Judah forever. In fact, the current king “turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might” so that there was never a king that came before him or after him that pursued the LORD with such fervour (2 Kings 22-23). Life is good.
During your lifetime, all that comes crashing down. The Egyptian Pharoah Neco kills godly King Josiah, hauls his successor, King Jehoahaz, in chains to Egypt, exacts a heavy tribute from Judah, and sets up a puppet king, Jehoiakim, on the throne. After a stint under Egyptian oppression, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon puts your country under tribute. When King Jehoiakim rebels against Babylon, bands of Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites begin raiding your country. King Nebuchadnezzar comes back with a vengeance, besieges and conquers Jerusalem, carries away all the treasures of the temple and the king’s house, and carries away all the royal family, all officials, all the mighty men of valor, all the smiths and craftsmen, and 10,000 more captives. Only the poor remain under another puppet king, Zedekiah.
Thankfully, the temple, the center of Jewish life, still stands. But your religious leadership pollutes this temple. Then Zedekiah rebels against Babylon too, prompting Nebuchadnezzar to return again to besiege Jerusalem and trigger a terrible famine in the city. When the city falls, Nebuchadnezzar slaughters Zedekiah’s sons in front of him, gouges out Zedekiah’s eyes, and carries him off to Egypt. But at least the temple still stands.
A few years later, Nebuchadnezzar attacks Jerusalem a third time, destroying every building in Jerusalem, including the temple, and tearing down the walls. Even the poor people who were originally left in Jerusalem are carried off to Babylon, except for the poorest of the poor who are left to work the land. And even after all this, the poorest of the poor rebel against Nebuchadnezzar, murder the governor, and flee in fear to Egypt, the very place that God had led them out of slavery 890 years before. And so, the land lays desolate.
Your nation is utterly destroyed. Your whole religion revolving around the temple, sacrifices, and feasts is impossible. There is no descendant of David seemingly on the throne. It’s a horrific state of affairs. What was the response of the Jews carried off to Babylon?
They responded with lament. We get a glimpse of this in Psalm 137: “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.” But the main lamentation over the exile is written by the prophet Jeremiah. While there isn’t a book of Complaining, of Anxiety, or of Anger in Scripture, there is a book of Lamentations. For almost the entire book, Jeremiah recounts and laments the destruction of Jerusalem. The book opens,
How lonely sits the city that was full of people!
How like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave.
She weeps bitterly in the night with tears on her cheeks;
Among all her lovers she has none to comfort her;
All her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
They have become her enemies.
Judah has gone into exile because of affliction and hard servitude;
She dwells now among the nations but finds no resting place;
Her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress.
What is a lament?
Lament, properly speaking, is a uniquely Christian activity. It isn’t complaining, though it certainly recounts all the evils of this present age. It isn’t anxiety, although the situation certainly seems bleak and full of uncertainty. And it isn’t primarily angry, despite the calls for judgement on Babylon found in the final verses of Psalm 137. And lament isn’t just mourning what has been lost.
A lament has hope.
That’s why, smack dab in the middle of the book of Lamentations and in the middle of perhaps the most hopeless period of Judah’s existence, Jeremiah confesses, “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness” (3:21-23).
One hundred and one years ago, Thomas Chisholm plucked these words out of Lamentations to create the hymn Great Is Thy Faithfulness. It is a beautiful hymn of hope and praise. But it helps to remember its scriptural context. God’s faithfulness is wonderful indeed when we consider how He changes not; how all nature witnesses to His great faithfulness, mercy, and love; and how His presence cheers and guides us, as the hymn’s verses recount. But those truths aren’t the context for Jeremiah’s confession when he says, “great is thy faithfulness.” Lamentation over the destruction of Judah and the captivity of the Jews (Jeremiah is in captivity himself) is the context. God’s faithfulness is always important, but it tastes the sweetest when it is juxtaposed with the evils of this world.
Lamentation today
Politically, culturally, socially, economically, religiously – really any way you can think of – we are in a far better position than Judah was at the start of the exile. As we’ve already recounted, we certainly face many evils in this dark world that tempt us to respond with complaints, fear, or anger. But I think that the best response is lament. We can lament instead of complaining about the failure of political leaders to follow God’s will. We can lament rather than fear the cultural hostility to orthodox Christianity. We can lament rather than rage about the injustices in the world. And lament does more than just look around at others. It confesses our own wrongdoings, remembers the faithfulness of our sovereign God, and prays for His intervention.
And so, I lament for our nation. And I’ll do it with a song, a Jeremiah lament-style version of Great Is Thy Faithfulness:
O LORD, our nation reviles and forgets Thee.
We have departed from thy righteous law.
We deserve judgement and none of thy favour,
But I call this to mind and so have hope:
Great is thy faithfulness! Great is thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases –
Great is thy faithfulness, LORD, unto me!
Israel releases video of a mother being taken captive on October 7th with her four-year-old and nine-month-old children, as Israel says those who question their need to operate in Gaza “should take a good look at this terrified mother, Shiri, clutching her babies” – the release coming as the International Court of Justice is hearing arguments over Israel’s so-called occupation of Palestinian land; as Israel fights one of its most important battles ever, it does have an ally it can depend on: we have a look at the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus, which began 20 years ago to bridge the gap between Christians and Jews and has grown into a global movement; the many ways marriage improves lives, particularly for believers – even though the number of Americans getting married is declining; psychiatrist Georgia Ede, author of “Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind,” talks with CBN’s Healthy Living about how what we eat affects our mental and emotional health; and Lakewood Church pastor Joel Osteen tells his congregation “fear is not going to win” one week after a shooter opened fire in their church.
On CNN, a “reporter” interviewing Vice President Kamala Harris gushes, “I’m struck, just in your presence! Looking you in the eye, with your passion … ”
Really?
Even Harris looked embarrassed.
My new video shows how the mainstream media treat conservatives and libertarians differently.
We shouldn’t be surprised.
Reporters overwhelmingly lean Democrat. A survey by TheAmerican
Journalist found that for every Republican in a newsroom, there are 10 Democrats.
The reporters claim to be objective.
They aren’t.
News networksalwayscovered Iowa Caucus victory speeches. Not this year — After Donald Trump won. CNN cut away from his speech, and MSNBC didn’t carry it at all.
Recently, NPR hired a new CEO. They chose Katherine Maher, who once tweeted that “Trump is a racist.” During BLM looting, she tweeted, “It’s hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression.”
Now she’s the boss of government-funded radio?
Sadly, yes.
Recently, the media got very upset about rule of law. Outraged anchors said, “Texasrefusesto give in to federal law.” This was because Texas politicians won’t remove a fence that the feds told them to remove.
An outraged NBC asked, “Why isn’t the Biden administration suing Texas?”
That’s actually a reasonable question. Rule of law deserves discussion.
But when it comes to sanctuary cities, the media show no such outrage.
These places merely “choose not to follow federal immigrations laws,” says an ABC anchor.
They don’t “refuse,” like Texas does.
Finally, it’s absurd how the media label politicians.
Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, is a libertarian. He wants to shrink his country’s corrupt bureaucracy.
So, the media call him a “far-right radical.”
But we libertarians aren’t “far-right,” or even “right.” Most of us want to end wars. We support free trade, gay marriage, drug decriminalization and other things far from “far-right.”
Milei wants to increase the supply of donated organs by legalizing their sale. That’s not “far-right.” The American Economic Association found 43% of conservatives oppose organ sales.
But the media smear Milei as “far” or “hard” or “extreme right.”
Maybe it’s because he wants to cut the size of the government.
The clueless medialike big government.
They exaggerate any proposed cuts.
“Republicans Set on Hurting Their Own Constituents With Draconian Budget Cuts” is an actual Forbes headline. (The magazine went downhill after Steve Forbes stopped running things.)
What were the “draconian” cuts?
Instead of increasing spending by 7.8% last spring, politicians “cut” the increase to 3.9%. How is that a “draconian” cut?
Sometimes the media label anyone who doesn’t agree with them “right-wing.” Or “Donald Trump like.”
Stephen Colbert calls Milei the “Donald Trump of Argentina.”
Yes, Milei has big hair, and he’s good on TV. He’s not a traditional politician. But that doesn’t make him a “Donald Trump of Argentina.”
Milei is for free trade. He opposes protectionist interventions like tariffs. Unlike Trump, he’s an economist who’s smart about economics.
He’s serious about shrinking the state. Trump, by contrast, grew our national debt by $7.8 trillion.
I’ve worked as a reporter for 50 years — for NBC, then CBS, then ABC, then FOX. But now I’ve come to hate most of the media. They scare people to death about minor threats, and spin left while pretending to be neutral. They routinely smear libertarians.
The Guardian headlines, “Libertarian ideology is the natural enemy of science.”
But there is some good news. More people now ignore leftist media.
CNN’s prime-time viewership recently fell behind the History Channel’s, and even behind an obscure channel that just plays old Western movies.
Today, more people get their news from independent journalists who publish in places like Substack and YouTube. Like Stossel TV.
That’s a good trend, because we’re more thoughtful than the biased people on TV.
Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom.
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Today a law was passed in France qualifying any opposition to mRNA-LNP injections as a "sectarian aberration". It carries a penalty of up to 3 years' imprisonment and 45,000 euros.
“It will not tolerate any criticism of the therapeutic treatments which will be recommended or… https://t.co/J6tdIx0I9x
Violations of this law will carry a penalty of 45,000 euros and up to three years imprisonment. “It will not tolerate any criticism of the therapeutic treatments which will be recommended or made obligatory by the state,” tweeted Dr. Kat Lindley. “Any person who dares to openly criticize these therapies will be liable to fines and imprisonment.”
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — In an unexpected move to strengthen and add legitimacy heading into the 2024 election season, Chinese President Xi Jinping was appointed to serve on the San Francisco Elections Commission.
Though the leader of the Chinese Communist Party is not an American citizen and many would argue that he has a vested interest in undermining and destabilizing the United States, proponents of the move hailed it as a landmark achievement for diversity and a step toward improved diplomatic relations between the two world powers.
“It’s a move that makes perfect sense,” said Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin. “Why wouldn’t we want the leader of a rival nation playing an important role in election here in the United States? He clearly has extensive experience in politics, and his prominent position indicates that he’s a man of integrity and would never do anything improper. Right?”
When reached for comment, Xi expressed gratitude for the opportunity to serve. “Thank you for such a great honor,” he said through an interpreter. “My years of experience in secretly overseeing elections in the United States will come in handy in my new role publicly overseeing elections in the United States. Starting out small in an area like San Francisco, which is basically a Chinese province, will let me get my feet wet before I expand my influence. Also, please continue using TikTok. Thank you.”
At publishing time, authorities were investigating allegations that other members of the Elections Commission and their families had mysteriously disappeared.
By now the whole internet has heard Ben Shapiro rapping, but did you know that there are actually two more verses they cut out of the track?
If a “pandemic treaty” fails to account for the dismal international response to COVID-19 and isn’t focused on preventing future pandemics, is it really a “pandemic treaty”? Yet that’s the current state of a draft “pandemic treaty” being negotiated under the auspices of the World Health Organization.
The failures of the international health system’s response to COVID-19 are well-established. China failed to inform the international community of the outbreak of the new disease in a timely manner, as required by the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations, a provision established because of Beijing’s cover-up of the 2002 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
China mischaracterized COVID-19, saying there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission—a deadly lie that the WHO parroted unquestioningly.
The failures didn’t stop there. China didn’t expeditiously share genomic data on the new coronavirus and didn’t allow prompt access to research labs at the Wuhan Institute of Virology by an international expert team. China also shut down internal travel while allowing international travel, turning a local outbreak into a global pandemic.
To date, the Chinese government has refused to allow an unfettered, independent international investigation into the origins of COVID-19, which even Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director-general, has called for.
A comprehensive, scientific investigation with total access is vital to prepare for and prevent the next pandemic. Without this basic level of cooperation and information, it is farcical to move forward with this Potemkin façade.
All of this resulted in millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in economic harm that might have been prevented if China had acted responsibly.
At a minimum, one would expect any new pandemic treaty to address China’s failures during COVID-19 to prevent a repetition in the future. But the WHO’s current draft treaty does no such thing.
It fails to require timely access for expert teams to specify obligations by governments to provide full and timely disclosure of genomic data. Nor does it clarify other measures, such as trade and travel restrictions, that governments can reasonably take in response to a pandemic.
So, what would this new treaty actually do?
Well, it affirms: “Equity is at the centre of pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, both at the national level within states and at the international level between states.” That means that the drafters of the treaty prioritize redistribution and preferences—specifically “unhindered, fair, equitable and timely access to safe, effective, quality and affordable pandemic-related products and services.”
If you’re not in the class of people that the notion of “equity” is meant to protect, you just may be out of luck during the next pandemic.
The treaty also would establish a new, international bureaucracy to oversee the agreement, because, naturally, if you really want to solve a global problem, you need hundreds of international bureaucrats working on it. The treaty envisions an annual meeting of all treaty members—a “conference of parties” just like the United Nations’ climate change convention.
In turn, this conference of parties may create “subsidiary bodies” and “expert advisory groups” to carry out the treaty’s functions, including an “Implementation and Compliance Committee.” So there will be lots of busywork.
It’s unclear who’s going to pay for all of this convening and implementing, but you can be sure that the U.S. will be on the hook for more than its fair share if the Biden administration attempts to join it (as it surely would). The financial responsibilities created by the draft treaty are vague and open-ended; they would leave an undue level of discretion to whatever international bureaucracy is created to determine the amount of financial support required from countries that ratify the treaty.
Empowering an international bureaucracy to oversee equitable distribution of pandemic-related products and services is Orwellian enough, but it gets worse. The draft also would require nations to battle “misinformation” and “disinformation” relating to pandemics. Specifically, parties to the treaty must “combat false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation, including through effective international collaboration.”
Presumably, governments and the World Health Organization would decide what is misleading. But, of course, it was the WHO and individual governments—notably China’s—that were the most egregious purveyors of disinformation about COVID-19.
Remember, the WHO communicated false information from Beijing that “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of COVID-19. Some governments, including our own, purveyed misinformation or disinformation about the efficacy of masks in preventing the spread of the disease, the origins of the virus, and the economic, social, and educational costs of school closures.
Quite simply, the World Health Organization and governments have been wrong (and downright dishonest) too often to give them authority to police misinformation and disinformation—especially when it infringes on the internationally accepted right to freedom of expression.
In addition to all of this, the draft treaty would obligate members to “encourage” pharmaceutical companies under their authority to share proprietary technology with “developing” countries (such as China) and waive their intellectual property rights. Such requirements would do grave harm to the property rights of U.S. companies and disincentivize future research and development of vaccines and other medical innovations that could be critical in dealing with a future pandemic.
All of this is a shame. The prevention of future pandemics should be an issue that galvanizes the world. The WHO and the nations negotiating the treaty, including the Biden administration (which participated in drafting it), have an opportunity to craft a no-nonsense, focused agreement that gets to the heart of the failures of the COVID-19 response.
The current draft treaty, however, falls far from the mark. It ignores the failures of the current international health system revealed by COVID-19: working largely behind closed doors, weakening intellectual property rights, and encouraging actions to address “misinformation” that certainly will be used to suppress free speech rights.
The Biden administration should not sign and the Senate should not ratify this fatally flawed effort.
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