There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good. (Genesis 32:12)
This is the sure way of prevailing with the Lord in prayer. We may humbly remind Him of what He has said. Our faithful God will never run back from His word, nor will He leave it unfulfilled; yet He loves to be enquired of by His people and put in mind of His promise. This is refreshing to their memories, reviving to their faith, and renewing to their hope. God’s Word is given, not for His sake, but for ours. His purposes are settled, and He needs nothing to bind Him to His design of doing His people good; but He gives the promise for our strengthening and comfort. Hence He wishes us to plead it and say to Him, “Thou saidst.”
“I will surely do thee good” is just the essence of all the Lord’s gracious sayings, Lay a special stress on the word surely. He will do us good, real good, tasting good, only good, every good. He will make us good, and this is to do us good in the very highest degree. He will treat us as He does his saints while we are here, and that is good. He will soon take us to be with Jesus and all His chosen, and that is supremely good. With this promise in our hearts we need not fear angry Esau or anyone else. If the Lord will do us good, who can do us hurt?
Welcome to Day 101! We’re into the triple digits of faithfully reading the Bible!
Joshua 3:13 — Did you catch the phrase “Lord of all the earth?” We serve a big God!
Joshua 3:17 — God was demonstrating to Joshua that just as He was with Moses, He would be with Joshua (Joshua 3:7). How? With the same miracle that He used to led Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 14:22). This miracle would also signify Elijah and Elisha’s transition at the same place (2 Kings 2:8, 14).
Joshua 4:3 — At the Ark Encounter, they “add 12 stones at the base of the life-size Noah’s Ark. These stones signify that it was built to remind future generations and the whole world of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the truth of God’s Word.”
Luke 14:15 — Many people like to name drop the famous people they have been with. This man was able to eat dinner at the home of one of the chief Pharisees; but far more special, he ate with the LORD Jesus the Messiah! He heard the teaching and wanted to say something to this distinguished guest. But the distinguished guest was criticizing the other guests who were fighting for the seats at the main table. And if that wasn’t enough, he’s criticizing the guest list! The unnamed host of Luke 14:15 tried to make a spiritual comment. Maybe he thought, “I may not be the chief Pharisee, but even the mediocre Pharisees should be at the upcoming heavenly feast.” Jesus proceeded to say that all the proper guests of the kingdom will be distracted with lands (Luke 14:18), goods (Luke 14:19), or relationships (Luke 14:20), and be replaced with not just the poor, maimed, halt, and blind (Luke 14:13, 21) but even those out in the highways and hedges. Jesus then left the feast (Luke 14:25) and said “If you want to come with me to the kingdom, be willing to give up your family, yourself, and be horribly crucified. Don’t follow me. Sit down and do the math – are you willing to give up everything?”
Psalm 80:19 — Three times in this chapter the people cry out to the LORD. As we read in Jeremiah 17:14, the LORD is capable of saving. How can we be saved? By calling on the LORD (Acts 2:21 and Romans 10:13)!
Proverbs 12:28 — Eternal life is the result of the way of righteousness. The Righteous One is the Way (John 14:6)!
Share how reading through the Bible has been a blessing to you! E-mail us at 2018bible@vcyamerica.org or call and leave a message at 414-885-5370.
Death to America’ chanted at pro-Palestine Michigan rally Pro-Palestinian protesters chanted “death to America” and “death to Israel” at an Islamic event celebrating International Al-Quds Day in Michigan last Friday. … the Islamic event, … took place in Dearborn, Michigan, which was previously labeled as “America’s Jihad Capitol” in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal.
Chicken owners required to register with UK gov’t Chicken owners will now be required to register their birds with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by October 1 of this year. The press release added, “Owners will need to provide information, including their contact details, the location where birds are kept and details of the birds, such as species, number and what they are kept for.” If chicken owners do not register their birds, they could be fined up to £5,000 or face six months in prison,
China’s huge sea buildup dwarfs Philippine push on tiny island A tiny island in the South China Sea symbolizes the struggle — and disparity — in the Philippines’ efforts to assert its rights in disputed waters when compared to China, which claims much of the waters. Manila is rushing to develop the 33-hectare Thitu Island, with the government planning to pour in billions of pesos to upgrade it. Just over 200 civilians and military personnel currently reside on the island.
Jamie Dimon Warns World Faces “Risks That Eclipse Anything Since World War II” he worries geopolitical events including the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, as well as U.S. political polarization, might be creating an environment that “may very well be creating risks that could eclipse anything since World War II.”
Nothin’ says lovin’ like a baby in the oven and Islam does it best In case you didn’t know – nothing has changed. When it comes to the Jews, Muslims are the Nazis of today. And once again, the West stands with the wrong side. Or, to put it more precisely – Same thing, Different Day
‘If Hitler were alive today, he would sing the UN’s praises’ Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan spoke today in the General Assembly at a meeting on the war in Gaza. At the beginning of his remarks, Ambassador Erdan referred to the historical connection between the Palestinians and Hitler and presented a photo from the meeting of Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini with Hitler on the UN Stage. “From well before the establishment of the UN – or the State of Israel – the Palestinians’ goal has been clear: the annihilation of the Jews. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and one of the founding fathers of Palestinian nationalism, worked hand-in-hand with Hitler to achieve this.
For the first time: ‘Naval Iron Dome’ intercepts drone near Eilat Sirens warning of a suspected infiltration of a hostile aircraft were sounded shortly after 11:30 p.m. on Monday evening in Eilat and the surrounding area. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit announced shortly after midnight that IDF Naval forces identified a suspicious aerial target crossing into Israeli territory. The target was successfully intercepted by the “C-Dome” naval defense system. “The target was tracked by the IDF, no injuries were reported and no damage was caused,”
Exceptional’ Sahara dust cloud hits Europe, says monitor An “exceptional” dust cloud from the Sahara is choking parts of Europe, the continent’s climate monitor said yesterday, causing poor air quality and coating windows and cars in grime. Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said the latest plume, the third of its kind in recent weeks, was bringing hazy conditions to southern Europe and would sweep northward as far as Scandinavia.
RFK Jr Vows Special Counsel To Probe ‘Harsh Treatment’ Of Jan 6 Defendants The comment capped a rollercoaster couple of days for Kennedy communications about Jan. 6 prosecutions. A campaign fundraising email sent Thursday said the defendants had been “stripped of their constitutional liberties.”
‘Brazil’s Darth Vader’ Orders Investigation Into Elon Musk After Defying X Court Order Brazil’s activist Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes has ordered an investigation into Elon Musk, after the billionaire vowed to defy a court order as part of an ongoing probe into social media accounts allegedly spreading misinformation and ‘hate’ speech. in a Sunday post, Musk said that Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes had “brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil,” and should “resign or be impeached.”
Global Cataclysms Nations across the globe feel vulnerable and are looking for safety. They are arming as never before. China’s new high-tech weapons, its unprecedented military buildup, and its aggressions in the South China Sea and Taiwan have also scared the nations. What happened to Finland and Sweden’s traditional stance of neutrality? Putin happened. The communist leaders of Soviet Russia were not enough to get them into NATO, but Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine scared everyone in Europe. It awakened memories of Adolf Hitler, of global war, and of holocaust.
NASA engineers discover why Voyager 1 is sending a stream of gibberish from outside our solar system The 46-year-old spacecraft sends regular radio signals as it drifts further from our solar system. But in November 2023, the signals suddenly became garbled, meaning scientists were unable to read any of its data, and they were left mystified about the fault’s origins. …engineers sent a command prompt, or “poke,” to the craft to get a readout … After decoding the spacecraft’s response, the engineers have found the source of the problem: The FDS’s memory has been corrupted. … engineers say they can find a workaround to run the FDS without the fried chip.
Multiday severe weather pattern covers South with threat of tornadoes, large hail A very stormy week is on tap for much of the Gulf Coast and South as a stubborn and dangerous severe weather pattern takes shape, threatening very large hail, damaging wind gusts, and possible tornadoes – many of which may occur during the overnight hours.
Dallas severe weather threat upgraded for Monday’s total solar eclipse Severe weather managed to hold off from thwarting any solar eclipse viewing, but it still remains a threat to much of Texas and into neighboring states Monday evening and night as millions make their trek home.
Hundreds rescued after flooding in Australia Widespread flooding in Australia left hundreds needing to be rescued after a natural disaster was declared in regions across New South Wales on Sunday. Intense rainfall at the start of the weekend saw around 300 homes evacuated in north-east Sydney, emergency services said.
‘Gender Identity’ Law Spells The End Of Religious Liberty In MN In 2023, the Minnesota Legislature and governor added a new category of so-called human rights, “gender identity,” to the Minnesota Human Rights Act. They included no corresponding religious exemption, however, demonstrating their intent to deny religious freedom to Minnesota citizens, churches, and schools and to engage in persecuting Christians and some other religious bodies.
Why Knowing The Imminency Of The Rapture Is So Critical For Believers Imminency. It tells us we live on the edge of eternity. The Rapture might happen at any moment. However, as the moments become days and then weeks, months, and years, we struggle to maintain our eager anticipation of Jesus’s appearing. Many of us wonder how much closer we will get to the start of the Tribulation before He comes for us. We see so many biblical signs of the end times and yet we wait and wait. I know it’s not easy, not at all.
Almost Everyone Missed One Of The Main Points Of The Eclipse …I did not expect to see any sort of a major disaster or emergency on April 8th…without a doubt, I believe that this eclipse was a sign and a warning. In particular, the fact that the Great American Eclipse of 2024 completed the giant “X” over the New Madrid fault zone that the Great American Eclipse of 2017 started is such an obvious warning that I can’t believe that almost everyone is ignoring it.
House Speaker: It’s time to stop lecturing Israel on how it should defend itself US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Sunday marked the six-month anniversary of Hamas’ deadly terrorist attack on Israel and blasted what he described as an “appalling” lack of support from some Democrats for the country as it continues its war in Gaza, The Washington Examiner reported.
Proof Americas Critical Infrastructure Is Under All-Out Attack In an excellent comment by ANP reader ‘El Gato Blanco’ on Sunday, he spoke these words of truth that I must repeat to begin this new story, “Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action. Thinking of those 100+ food factory fires and train derailments since 2019.”
Massive Container Ship Loses Power Near NYC Bridge A massive container ship lost power in the waters around New York City and was brought to a rest near the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge Friday night — less than two weeks after failure on another massive cargo vessel caused it to smash into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Evil Walks Among Us In politics, it is common for one party to demonize the other, but in all honesty, there are things associated with just one political party, Democrats, that is truly evil, and somehow they don’t see the Devil on their shoulders, whispering in their ears about things like murdering unborn babies.
“The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this Truth, that God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a Sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?” —Benjamin Franklin (1787)
Fellow Patriots, on this day in 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army to Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army, effectively ending the War Between the States. The two armies conducted themselves with honor, and the process of trying to heal began. It would be a welcome change if more Americans remembered and honored our history. —Mark Alexander
Not exactly known for possessing the wisdom of Solomon, the former president tries a stance on abortion.
Nate Jackson
Abortion: “the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus.” That’s the definition provided by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, and it’s a pretty honest definition. For pro-lifers who believe in the sanctity of life, the goal is zero intentional deaths of human babies in utero.
Politically, in the United States today, reaching that goal seems nigh impossible — especially at the federal level. One political party has become grotesquely enamored with human sacrifice as one of its untouchable sacraments. Thanks to Democrats, the U.S. remains one of only seven nations in the world permitting abortion all the way through pregnancy. Even sending fewer taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood is a nonstarter for these radicals. The other party has become convinced that standing too firmly for life results in lost elections.
Millions of women believe that the only path to equality and freedom is to cast off the supposed shackles of having to carry a pregnancy to full term. They will fight — often quite angrily — for this supposed “right.” Ironically, abortion frees men from the responsibility that comes with sex, and “free love” has made for more single, struggling, and government-dependent moms than ever. Empowerment?
Is there really a compromise here that’s suitable? Is it okay to kill some babies, like those precious few conceived by rape or incest? Or the ones with Down syndrome? Is it okay to kill a baby who’s only five or 14 weeks gestation? Is there a compromise between God, the author of life, and Satan, the bringer of death?
If the polls provide the answer, it’s “yes.” Yet it’s also arguably the most powerful issue for single-issue voters on both sides, which indicates that the answer is “no.”
Enter Donald Trump. The former president hasn’t exactly been consistent on abortion during his career. He was once “very pro-choice” only to become “the most pro-life president” ever. He appointed the Supreme Court justices who rightly overturnedRoe v. Wade, but he blamed abortion for Republican defeats since then. He recently offered support for a 15-week ban at the federal level only to say yesterday that “the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land.”
“You must follow your heart on this issue,” Trump added, “but remember: You must also win elections.” Following your heart is a terrible idea, but it’s one for another article. Yet if Republicans don’t win elections, radical pro-abortion Democrats will win instead.
Suffice it to say, Trump’s not an ideologue — about this or much of anything else. He’s a pragmatist who wants to win.
Nevertheless, the Leftmedia views its job as enraging people against him. Thus, we were treated to a Washington Post “analysis” story about his “cynical punt on abortion.” If he had again supported federal legislation, they’d have raged about that even harder. (Anyone waiting for the Post’s criticism of Joe Biden’s cynical vote-buying strategy of transferring student loan balances to taxpayers?)
Meanwhile, PolitiFact issued a “fact-check” focusing on Trump’s “false” assertion that Democrats even support “execution after birth.” Democrats did vote against legislation protecting babies who survive abortion attempts, but PolitiFact insists that would be “redundant under current law.” (Paging former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam.) And Trump is correct that Democrats “support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month.” Trump will, of course, never be precise, which opens him up to supposedly discrediting “fact-checks.”
Biden’s campaign blames Trump for the health struggles of a woman denied an abortion. Such emotional stories — many of them dishonest and deceptive — will be replayed countless times to make Republicans appear heartless.
Trump found himself under fire from his own side, too. Former Vice President Mike Pence wrote, “President Trump’s retreat on the Right to Life is a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him in 2016 and 2020.”
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham likewise had thoughts. “The states’ rights only rationale today runs contrary to an American consensus that would limit late-term abortions and will age about as well as the Dred Scott decision,” Graham said. “The science is clear — a child at fifteen weeks is well-developed and is capable of feeling pain.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said: “We respectfully disagree with him. Abortion is not a states’ rights question.” Currently, it is, and conservatives have argued just that for decades, but her point is understandable. Murder can be a federal crime, for one thing, and for another, Democrats have ensured that abortion is a federal issue whether Republicans like it or not. They will, Dannenfelser rightly noted, “wipe out states’ rights.”
As a final thought, making everything a federal issue is precisely why the political temperature seems so high. When everything is winner-takes-all, the stakes are incredibly high, and people get extremely angry. In the past, it led to war.
The War Between the States effectively ended on this day in 1865. Senator Graham mentioned Dred Scott, and we’re told that the war was fought over slavery (it’s far more complicated, but again, that’s an article for another time). In any case, if enslaving four million human beings was worth a war, what do we do about killing a million humans every year?
For now, Republicans must win elections, and pro-lifers must win hearts and minds while we save one life and one mom at a time.
Whether funneling money to student loan deadbeats or certain types of homebuyers, Joe Biden is doing everything he can to buy votes.
Michael Swartz
When they actually win elections, Democrats win them with a coalition of interest groups, and two vital parts of that coalition are working-class folks and young people. Unfortunately for the Democrats, working-class voters abandoned the party for Donald Trump eight years ago. The youth vote isn’t always reliable, and Trump is also making inroads into that demographic.
But if there’s one thing Democrats have patented while in power, it’s doling out government largesse to favored constituents. And this time, these two affinity groups get their turn at the trough thanks to two schemes from the Biden regime.
The youth are being served by yet another attempt by the administration to transfer student loan debt from those who actually owe it to all the rest of us. Fox News figured it out quickly: “The president’s forthcoming attempt at sweeping debt cancellation comes as polling shows he is struggling with younger voters compared to his first White House run, and another controversial student loan handout is expected to be challenged in court.”
This time, however, the Biden Department of Education is hurriedly working through a revision of regulations in the hopes of staving off the inevitable court challenges from Republicans. After all, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona trumpeted, “When the Supreme Court struck down the president’s boldest student debt relief plan, within hours, we said, ‘We won’t be deterred.’”
As The Wall Street Journal summarizes: “The proposed regulation is expected to outline several categories that would qualify borrowers for debt relief, including financial hardship. … For example, borrowers with high debt loads and low incomes could see their loan balances reduced or eliminated under the plan. It could also outline a path to relief for borrowers who have carried their debt for decades; who now owe more than their initial loan amount because interest has piled up; or who are eligible for relief through other federal programs, but haven’t applied.”
It’s estimated that 43 million Americans have student loan debt, and the proposed rules would affect nearly 30 million of them, either partially or fully reducing their interest payments. Other aspects of the Biden vote-buying scheme would affect those who have been paying on their student loans for 20 years or more, those who have medical debt or high childcare expenses, or those who are otherwise at high risk for default. The administration also stressed the opportunity to help the black and Latino populations — can’t forget about those crucial voting blocs — and noted that borrowers need not apply for the relief, as it will just be credited to them.
But the pandering doesn’t stop there. You may not have noticed this last month in the wake of bigger cultural and news events like March Madness and the Key Bridge collapse, but Biden also promised his working stiffs he would provide help for the housing market. Once again, though, that “help” comes in the form of a twofold wealth transfer: tax credits and down payment assistance for certain homebuyers, and expanding the voucher program for rent assistance to another half-million households.
National Review’s editors, though, have poked a number of holes in Biden’s argument that government goosing of the housing market will be helpful to average Americans. Take, for example, Biden’s bright idea of a $10,000 tax credit for those selling their starter homes and trading up. As NR notes:
But — on top of the cost to other taxpayers — it would be a rotten deal for any homeowner to take Biden up on such a proposal. To start with, the closing costs associated with selling and then buying a home (broker commissions, inspection and appraisal fees, loan-origination fees, etc.) would easily take up most if not all of that $10,000. But more importantly, increased housing payments would quickly exceed $10,000, and after that credit expires after the first year, the new homeowner would be drastically worse off.
Thanks to Bidenflation, that $10,000 would be quickly eaten away to the tune of a $1,200-a-month higher mortgage payment. And it wouldn’t just be the higher interest rates; as the government has done to the costs of college through its massive student-loan push, the price of housing will also soar with the influx of government money. Who else can see the scam of the government paying people to trade houses?
It’s one thing to assist homebuyers with loans that require a reduced down payment. This author is one of millions who have purchased a house thanks to an FHA loan. But, like the trillions spent during the pandemic that did little but offset the government-induced lockdowns and fuel rampant inflation, the government “fix” for student loan debt and the housing market will only make the problem worse. It will be yet another reckless disaster.
But isn’t the idea for the Democrats that of getting more people dependent on Uncle Sam? It’ll be Mission Accomplished if they get away with this.
Garland contempt, NY AG still after Trump’s stuff, Biden admin inflating climate disaster, and more.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
Garland contempt? The Justice Department has rebuffed the House Oversight Committee’s request for the audio recording of Special Prosecutor Robert Hur’s interviews with Joe Biden. Back in February, Republicans requested the audio after receiving a redacted transcript of the interviews with Biden done over two days. Recall that Hur was investigating Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, some of which were found at his home in Delaware. Hur concluded the investigation and decided not to recommend charges due in part to Biden being a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” whom a jury would be unlikely to convict “of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.” The DOJ is refusing to comply with the House Committee’s demand for the audio, claiming that the redacted transcript is sufficient. Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) responded to the DOJ’s assertions by stating: “The Biden Administration does not get to determine what Congress needs and does not need for its oversight of the executive branch. The American people deserve to hear the actual audio of President Biden’s answers to Special Counsel Hur.” Comer and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) have given Attorney General Merrick Garland until today to comply with the House’s demands or be held in contempt of Congress.
James is still after Trump’s stuff: If things were going swimmingly in New York, one might be able to excuse Attorney General Letitia James’s Trump fetish as a case of idle minds being the devil’s workshop. But things aren’t going swimmingly in the Empire State. Crime is rampant, and people are leaving in droves. And yet. As Newsweek reports, “An insurance company will not be permitted to post a $175 million bond for Donald Trump while he appeals a fraud judgment [and] as a result, New York Attorney General Letitia James will be able to begin enforcement proceedings on Donald Trump’s properties.” “Enforcement proceedings” is, of course, a euphemism for snatching properties. The backstory is that Trump submitted the $175 million bond on April 1, but the court’s filing system rejected it due to missing paperwork, and AG James has claimed that the bond company, Knight Specialty Insurance Company, isn’t authorized in New York. Knight has since resubmitted paperwork to restart the process, but James could move on Trump’s properties in the meantime. Far be it from us to dole out political advice to a hack like James, but our sense is that the sympathy vote will once again side with the former president. Incidentally, Norfolk Southern Railway just announced a $600 million settlement in its class-action train-derailment lawsuit with the residents of East Palestine, Ohio. For some perspective, that settlement number is only a bit more than the original bail amount levied by New York’s corrupt legal system against Trump.
Is the FBI cooking the crime stats to help Biden? “The fourth quarter 2023 crime report from the FBI, the federal government’s keeper of crime data, is unreliable at best and deceptive at worst.” So say Mark Morgan and Sean Kennedy at the Washington Examiner, adding: “The FBI’s preliminary 2023 data show murder declined by 13.2% across the country and violent crime dropped 5.7% compared to 2022 levels. Various news headlines have reported the FBI’s numbers unquestioningly, claiming murder is ‘plummeting’ and violent crime ‘declined significantly’ to pre-pandemic levels.” With words like “plummeting” and “significantly,” we can’t help but wonder whether these folks are watching the same reality show we are. The problem stems from a failure to communicate. As the Examiner reports: “In 2019, 89% of agencies covering 97% of the population submitted data, but by 2021, that coverage plummeted to less than 63% of departments overseeing just 65% of the population. Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City all failed to submit crime data.” This sounds like an invitation to make stuff up and thereby push a political agenda, and the FBI appears to be obliging. For example: “For Baltimore, the FBI reported 225 murders in 2023, but the city reported 262 — which means the FBI left out 37 murders. In Milwaukee, the police department reported a 7% increase in robberies, but the FBI showed a 13% drop. Nashville’s own data tallied more than 6,900 aggravated assaults in 2023, but the FBI counted only 5,941, leaving almost 1,000 of those offenses ‘missing.’” In a way, this seems like the crime-and-punishment version of the Bidenomics disconnect, wherein we’re told just how great the economy is, but we just aren’t buying it. In this case, once again, the mainstream media seem to be lapping up the FBI’s statistics and saying to the people, Who ya gonna believe — us, or your lyin’ eyes?
Biden admin inflating climate disaster: Another day, another piece of environmental scaremongering from the Biden administration. In this case, it appears that Joe’s Green New Dealers have embraced bad data to make the case that storms, which are part of everyday life, are becoming worse because of climate change. As The Washington Times reports, “Protect the Public’s Trust cited a new study that combed through data used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for its climate and disaster tracking project and found it inflated damage and made inexplicable data calculations that did not factor in obvious contributions to disaster costs, such as an increase in development in coastal regions and other areas vulnerable to hurricanes, flooding or wildfires.” We’re shocked — SHOCKED — to hear that a government agency would cook the books to promote an agenda. To no one’s surprise, we learn that the NOAA data was cited in a November fact sheet from the administration to justify $6 billion in new spending on “climate change” and “environmental justice.” Why, it’s as if Joe Biden’s NOAA were in cahoots with Joe Biden’s FBI.
Solar power eclipsed: Solar power only generates energy when the sun is shining, which is the biggest drawback to solar power. Yesterday, as a full solar eclipse impacted a significant part of the U.S., not only did those in the full eclipse zone see and feel the sun go dark, but the power grid experienced an energy production downgrade. According to Schneider Capital Group LLC, the amount of solar power energy lost due to the eclipse was 30 gigawatts. The state of Texas saw the biggest energy loss, a total of 17 GW, while the Midwest and Northeast lost an estimated four GW and 4.8 GW, respectively. “The US will lose more than 30 gigawatts of solar energy during today’s total eclipse,” Wyoming Senator John Barrasso observed, adding: “A good reminder the sun doesn’t always shine and solar power alone is not enough. But don’t worry, WY oil, gas & coal producers will continue to step up to keep the lights on across America.” Fortunately, most consumers won’t be impacted by the energy loss, as the majority of the nation’s electricity is still produced by the more reliable sources of fossil fuel.
EVs decrease in popularity: Speaking of electricity, a recent Gallup poll has found that despite the Biden administration’s push to get the country driving electric vehicles, the vast majority of Americans aren’t buying into the EV-only future. Indeed, fewer Americans are sold on EVs than the year prior, as almost half, or 48%, say they would not consider buying an EV this year. Last year, 41% of Americans said they would not consider an EV. On the flip side, the number of Americans who would seriously consider buying an EV has dropped from 55% last year down to 44% today. The poll was conducted after Joe Biden’s EPA presented its strictest emissions regulations yet, which equate to a de facto EV mandate designed to force 56% of new car sales to be EVs by 2032. Gallup observed: “Unless that market expands greatly in the next few years, it is unlikely auto companies doing business in the U.S. will be able to meet the emissions targets laid out by the Biden administration. Those targets may need to be relaxed further if Biden is reelected, or they may be done away with under a second Trump administration.”
Illegals on unregistered motorized bikes: When we read this story, our first thought was of those illegal alien gangs in New York City — the ones that zip around on motorbikes and snatch the purses of unsuspecting women, even dragging them along the pavement and into metal posts if need be. Perhaps this same gig will be coming soon to Washington, DC. As The Daily Signal reports: “Many drivers of two-wheeled motorized vehicles are breaking the law in the nation’s capital and don’t appear to be facing any consequences for doing so. Individuals, many of whom entered the country illegally, are acquiring and driving motorbikes to do food deliveries in the District of Columbia, but many of the bikes do not have legal license plates, indicating they aren’t properly registered or insured.” So next time you’re standing in an interminably long line at the DMV, patiently waiting for the privilege of paying an increasingly exorbitant fee to renew your driver’s license, consider the hard truth that it’s sometimes better to be an illegal alien.
Good news: NAIA protects women athletes: For female college athletes who want to compete fairly against other females, the athletic body for smaller colleges has just ensured that will be the case for their schools. The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Council of Presidents voted unanimously to adopt a policy requiring all female athletes who compete in their schools to be exclusively biologically female. The NAIA represents 249 colleges and does not fall under any of the NCAA’s divisions. Regarding the decision, NAIA President Jim Carr explained: “For us, we believed our first responsibility was to create fairness and competition in the NAIA. … We also think it aligns with the reasons Title IX was created. You’re allowed to have separate but equal opportunities for women to compete.” With its decision, the NAIA avoided the needless complications that other sports-governing organizations have saddled themselves with, like using hormone-level restrictions rather than adhering to the basic binary distinction of biological sex. The NAIA is to be commended for standing boldly for the truth, and this will benefit female athletes in their schools.
Headlines
New York Appeals Court denies Trump motion to delay hush-money trial, setting up jury selection for next week (Fox News)
Seven more states sue to block Biden’s student loan handout plan as lawsuits pile up (Fox Business)
Netanyahu declares “there is a date” for Rafah invasion (NY Post)
Iran urging its terrorist proxy groups to launch a “large-scale attack” on Israel (Daily Wire)
Newsom and California Democrats blasted for “gimmicky” $17 billion fix for massive budget deficit (Washington Examiner)
Lori Lightfoot hired to investigate “worst mayor in America” Tiffany Henyard at $400 per hour (NY Post)
The feds are coming for “extremist” gamers (The Intercept)
New poll reveals young women are abandoning churches in “unprecedented numbers” as young men are finally coming back (Not the Bee)
Satire: Vatican reluctantly sides with God on gender theory (Babylon Bee)
It’s a growing problem across the country, especially in New York City, and primarily because of leftist policies.
Thomas Gallatin
Squatting is theft. Not recognizing it as such is to embrace the immoral notion that Marxism preaches — that only the state has a right to property. Of course, this is justified by the notion that everyone collectively owns the property. But if everyone owns it, no one actually owns anything.
Thus, when it comes to squatting, which has been gaining a lot more press lately thanks in large part to Joe Biden’s open borders, the notion of “squatters’ rights” is increasingly being challenged.
It wasn’t that long ago that squatters’ rights were expanded in New York City, for example. In 2019, NYC enacted an amendment to the city’s Real Property Actions Proceedings Law 711, which required a property owner to engage in “a special proceeding” before the owner could kick out a squatter.
And it’s not as if the Big Apple didn’t already have a ridiculous squatters’ rights law on the books anyway, as a person could invoke squatters’ rights after just 30 days of occupying a home. The rest of the state only recognizes a tenant’s rights after at least 10 years of living in a home.
According to real estate lawyer Alan Goldberg, NYC’s squatters’ rights amendment has led to a 10% to 20% increase in lawsuits filed against squatters.
Adding to the insanity is a recent report that NYC homeowners whose properties have been squatted on have been told that they would be “arrested instantly” if they sought to evict squatters or even stop paying the water and electric bills for their properties. “They turned off the hot water and then reported that they had no hot water,” according to one homeowner named Susan Mascara. “It’s a $250 fine per day, up to $15,000 punishable by five years in jail.”
Given this problem, it comes as no surprise that a well-run state like Florida would act to protect homeowners’ rights against the lawlessness that appears to be growing in places like New York City.
But it’s not just Republicans who see the notion of “squatters’ rights” as a problem. Leave it to Pennsylvania Democrat Senator John Fetterman to insightfully and directly argue against the problem.
“Squatters have no rights,” Fetterman recently stated. He then asked the obvious: “How can you even pretend that this is anything other than you’re just breaking the law?” Exactly. But he didn’t stop there. “It’s wild,” he continued, “that if you go away on a long trip, for 30 days, and someone breaks into your home and suddenly they have rights. This is crazy. Like if somebody stole your car, and then they held it for 30 days, then somehow [they] now have some rights?”
The fundamental problem with many of today’s Democrats is their embrace of radical leftist ideology, which argues against foundational American ideals like property rights and law and order. Or the concept of equality under the law. Just because one person has more than another doesn’t mean that the first one is somehow guilty of oppression or of succeeding through ill-gotten means.
Those who do the hard work, who save and plan and make wise decisions on how they invest and spend their money, should enjoy the fruits of their labor, regardless of whether others didn’t put in the hard work, didn’t take the time to plan or wisely invest, and as a result ended up with very little.
At the root of the “squatters’ rights” notion is a justification of an envy-based ethic: If there are people who have more than others, those others should be entitled to have the same, irrespective of the circumstances. Indeed, this envy is at the root of woke ideology. Politicians who appeal to this supposed “fairness” ethic are actually playing into those base emotions of envy and entitlement. Good for Fetterman to unequivocally call out this “squatters’ rights” nonsense for what it is: theft.
In a scathing essay on the effects of racial excuse-making on public policy, Heather Mac Donald pulls no punches.
Douglas Andrews
Does counting by race make a nation stronger or weaker? More talented or less talented? More competitive or less competitive?
Put another way, would the just-concluded NCAA men’s basketball tournament have put out a better product if it enforced a strict limit of 13% of its players being black? That, after all, is the percentage of the American people who are black. What about the NFL? What if strict quotas were enforced to ensure that 71% of its running backs, wide receivers, and cornerbacks were white? What about hip-hop artists? Concert pianists? Mechanical engineers? Brain surgeons? Airplane pilots?
These are the sorts of questions that fearless Heather Mac Donald poses in the latest issue of Hillsdale College’s Imprimis monthly, titled “Disparate Impact Thinking Is Destroying Our Civilization.” (If the title doesn’t pull you in, we don’t know what will.)
Given its outsized effect across the whole of American society, disparate impact as a public policy principle is remarkably obscure. “If a cancer research lab, for example, does not have 13 percent black oncologists,” Mac Donald begins, “it is by definition a racist lab that discriminates against competitively qualified black oncologists; if an airline company doesn’t have 13 percent black pilots, it is by definition a racist airline company that discriminates against competitively qualified black pilots; and if a prison population contains more than 13 percent black prisoners, our law enforcement system is racist.”
That’s how the disparate impact argument is used to “prove” discrimination. It’s purely a numbers game, but it only works in one direction — in the direction that favors blacks and dismisses their often inferior academic or professional credentials as a product of racial discrimination. As Mac Donald observes, this demonstrably false assertion had been floating around in academic and elite media circles for years, but it began to infect the more essential parts of our culture in the wake of the George Floyd riots. That’s when Big Business and other historically merit-based institutions began to take the plunge.
Were the effects of disparate impact limited to, say, business and entertainment, that’d be one thing. Sadly, that’s not the case. “Consider medicine,” says Mac Donald:
Step One of the medical licensing exam, taken during or after the second year of medical school, tests medical students’ knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. On average, black students score lower on the grading curve, making it harder for them to land their preferred residencies. Step One, in other words, has a “disparate impact” on black medical students. The solution, implemented last year, was to eliminate the Step One grading disparity by instituting a pass-fail system. Hospitals choosing residents can no longer distinguish between high and low achieving students — and that is precisely the point!
Accordingly, the Medical College Achievement Test followed suit, with some medical schools going so far as to waive the MCAT submission requirement entirely for black applicants.
Barack Obama, that fundamental transformer himself, brought disparate impact into the classroom when he saw that black students were being disciplined more often than Asians or whites. His Department of Education’s infamous “Dear Colleague” letter “advised school superintendents nationwide that racial disparities in suspension rates would be grounds for finding school districts in violation of federal anti-discrimination law, and therefore at risk of losing federal funding.”
Then there’s law and order and public safety, which the great Thomas Sowell unpacked back in 2015 in the wake of the Ferguson, Missouri, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” hoax of Michael Brown, a menacing black hoodlum whose death at the hands of a white cop was initially based in lies, but which the evidence ultimately showed was an unequivocal act of self-defense. As Sowell wrote:
Like many other uses of “disparate impact” statistics, the Justice Department’s evidence against the Ferguson police department consists of numbers showing that the percentage of people stopped by police or fined in court who are black is larger than the percentage of blacks in the local population.
The implicit assumption is that without “discriminatory intent,” these statistics would reflect the percentages of people in the population. But no matter how plausible that outcome might seem on the surface, it is seldom found in real life, and those who use this standard are seldom, if ever, asked to produce hard evidence that it is factually correct, as distinct from politically correct.
Mac Donald drives home this same point in her Imprimis piece: “The curious state of our criminal justice system today,” she says, “is a function of the disparate impact principle. If you wonder why police officers are not making certain arrests, or why district attorneys are not prosecuting whole categories of crimes — such as shoplifting, trespassing, or farebeating — it is because apprehending lawbreakers and prosecuting crime have a disparate impact on black criminals. Urban leaders have decided that they would rather not enforce the law at all, no matter how constitutional that enforcement, than put more black criminals in jail.”
Is technology racist because those “speeding” and “red light” cameras capture a disproportionate number of black lawbreakers? “Throw out the cameras,” says an exasperated Mac Donald.
And what of high-crime inner-city black neighborhoods? Thanks to disparate impact, the cops are discouraged from policing those desperate areas and arresting the criminals, lest they themselves be accused of racism and have their careers ended. Yes, “The Ferguson Effect” is real.
Ultimately, Mac Donald saves her harshest medicine for the academic skills gap between blacks and non-blacks, which she says is at the heart of black underrepresentation in a wide array of merit-based fields. The numbers are equal parts grim and heartbreaking: “In 2019, 66 percent of all black 12th graders did not possess even partial mastery of basic 12th grade math skills, defined as being able to do arithmetic and to read a graph. Only seven percent of black 12th graders were proficient in 12th grade math, defined as being able to calculate using ratios. The number of black 12th graders who were advanced in math was too small to show up statistically in a national sample. The picture was not much better in reading. Fifty percent of black 12th graders did not possess even partial mastery of basic reading, and only four percent were advanced.”
As Mac Donald puts it: “At present you can have proportional diversity or you can have meritocracy. You cannot have both.”
Take a guess what they’ve opted for in Communist China. There, as Mac Donald points out, our leading geopolitical foe ranks first in international tests of K-12 math, science, and reading skills, while the U.S. ranks 25th.
“Lowering standards,” she concludes, “helps no one, since high expectations are the key to achievement. In defense of excellence we must speak the truth, never apologize, and never back down.”
She’s right, of course. The question is: Is anyone listening?
Producer and director Barak Goodman unintentionally reminds his viewers of why Buckley was needed in the first place.
Daniel McCarthy
Imagine making a documentary about one of the 20th century’s leading opponents of the Ku Klux Klan — without ever talking about the evil of the KKK itself.
If that sounds like malpractice, consider PBS’s new documentary on the life of William F. Buckley Jr.
“The Incomparable Mr. Buckley,” the latest installment in the “American Masters” series, has much to say about anti-Communism but never reckons with the murderous reality of Communism itself.
In failing to do so, producer and director Barak Goodman unintentionally reminds his viewers of why Buckley was needed in the first place — and why he still is.
Never mind that Buckley died in 2008, and next year marks the centenary of his birth.
The liberals who already reigned in America’s universities when Buckley was a Yale student in the late 1940s have not learned any lessons in the decades since then.
Faculty and administrators still will not speak frankly about evils emanating from the left end of the political spectrum, from Communism to the many violent groups that claim to act in the name of anti-colonialism.
The PBS documentary gets Buckley’s resume right but understands little of its significance.
In 1951 Buckley published his first book, “God and Man at Yale.”
Four years later, when he was not quite 30 years old, Buckley launched National Review, which became the all-but-official publication of the nascent conservative movement.
He had a hand in the creation of other institutions, too, such as the right’s student activist arm, Young Americans for Freedom.
Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan drew political support and intellectual sustenance from the movement Buckley built.
And after Goldwater’s crushing defeat in the 1964 presidential election, Buckley restored conservatives’ spirits with his run for mayor of New York City the following year.
“The Incomparable Mr. Buckley” is right to suggest that although WFB’s mayoral campaign never had a shot at winning — Buckley joked that if he won, he’d demand a recount — it taught conservatives how to mobilize urban Catholics and voters fed up with escalating crime.
The Nixon coalition, which would win the White House in 1968 and 1972, was the Buckley coalition first.
His mayoral run made him a media sensation and led to a career in television, on top of the several careers he already had as an author, editor, lecturer and movement-maker.
He even started his own highly successful interview show, “Firing Line,” which ran for more than three decades, mostly on PBS affiliates, starting in 1966.
“The Incomparable Mr. Buckley” tantalizes viewers with clips of WFB’s exchanges with “Firing Line” guests such as Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg.
But the documentary is reluctant to let Buckley speak for himself; voiceovers from historians offering their own spin break in after only a few words from the subject himself.
The filmmakers prefer to highlight defeats and embarrassments: the debate Buckley lost to James Baldwin at Cambridge University in 1965 on the resolution “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro” and WFB’s explosion on live TV, while covering the 1968 Democratic National Convention, when Gore Vidal taunted him as a “pro- or crypto-Nazi.”
Buckley, losing his composure for once, retorted by calling Vidal a “queer” and saying he’d “sock” him in the face — “and you’ll stay plastered!” — if he kept up the abuse.
Vidal delighted in getting this rise out of Buckley and thought it made great television, but the conservative was mortified.
The trouble with “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley,” though, isn’t that it showcases such episodes but that it finds its subject incomprehensible at the most important level — the meaning of his life’s work.
When Goodman isn’t presenting Buckley as a figure fit for “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” he and the historians he’s enlisted press the thesis that Buckley was an irresponsible elitist who dabbled with populist forces he could not control.
The documentary ends with scenes of Donald Trump and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
But it’s elite liberals, not Buckley, who created the opening for Trump.
Buckley’s institutions, notably National Review, opposed Trump — yet their opposition wasn’t enough to offset demand for Trump from voters whom liberals had alienated.
By failing to learn the lessons Buckley tried all his life to teach, and refusing to moderate their left-wing prejudices in light of an articulate conservative critique, liberals in politics, media and the academy guaranteed the rise of populism.
From the Cold War to crime in the cities, they blamed America for every problem.
Thirty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, liberals like those behind “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley” persist in treating Communism as a footnote to McCarthyism.
They have their history, and their view of Buckley, upside down.
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.
Should Social Media Have Age Limits? — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently put forward legislation requiring kids to be at least 14 years old to be on social media.
This Story Is Infuriating — A group of Massachusetts hospitals will no longer report babies born with drugs in their system to state welfare agencies. Why? Because substance abuse disorders “disproportionately affect black people.”
Tulsi Gabbard Left the Woke War Party — The former representative gets grilled by The Babylon Bee on whether atheists can say “Aloha,” being sent to war, politics, and why she had to leave the Democrat Party.
Happy Holiday Formerly Known as Easter! — Andrew Klavan hopes you all had a wonderful Easter, or Transgender Day of Visibility, depending on whether you celebrated the promise of eternal life in the risen Lord or preferred to memorialize the mutilation of children.
“The person who is actually using illegal immigrants as political pawns is Joe Biden. Joe Biden has created this open-border policy that has allowed illegal immigrants into our country to appeal to and to appease the far leftists in the Democrat Party … in hopes of trying to win their support while at the same time destroying the country that he’s in charge of. He is the commander-in-chief in charge of national security for our country. Our country is being invaded in ways that put our country at risk because of the political games that Joe Biden has played. And Mayor [Eric] Adams is just aiding and abetting that by having a ‘sanctuary city’ status, welcoming in anybody from across the world to live there or stay there in New York City.” —Texas Governor Greg Abbott
Dezinformatsiya
“Biden … has clamped down on unauthorized border crossings.” —USA Today
Dumb & Dumber
“I can safely walk my dog to the Capitol today in a way that you couldn’t do when we all got here.” —Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is guarded by security
“We got a solar eclipse. We’ve got the earthquake. … Also, I learned that cicadas are coming for the first time in like a hundred years. … All those things together would maybe lead one to believe that … climate change exists.” —”The View” co-host Sunny Hostin
“I experienced my first earthquake in NJ. We never get earthquakes. The climate crisis is real.” —New Jersey Senate candidate Christina Amira Khalil
Hot Air
“You’re seeing the impacts, really, of climate change on people’s heating bills.”—Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm
Gaslighting
“We’re … achieving a lot as a country. And while there is a very well-funded noise machine trying to poke holes in those achievements, trying to talk down the economy and all the things America has done, I think it reflects well on the president that the American people under his leadership and the American economy under his leadership have added so many jobs.” —Secretary Pete Buttigieg
“I think we can feel great about our economy. … The U.S. is firing on all cylinders.” —Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
Village Idiot
“[Trump] will take a hammer and break the glass where the Constitution is, and he will tear it up in our faces and say: ‘Now I’m the king of the f—ing world. You will bow down, b-tch.’ He will punish everybody that didn’t vote for him. … [Trump] will have us in camps.” —actress Jenifer Lewis
“[Whites] are going to do everything they can to stay in those gated communities, not pay taxes, and put those n—ers in their places and get those wetbacks out of this country.” —Jenifer Lewis
Race Bait
“Rather than deal with the core inequities in our system, [Trump] finds a villain. And the villain happens to be people who don’t look like his base, who speak with an accent, who come from somewhere else.” —Congressman Dan Kildee (D-MI)
“What Donald Trump is trying to do … is to normalize bigotry again, to make it okay … and to try to motivate people to act on the worst instincts that they all carry inside them.” —Rep. Dan Kildee
A Broken Clock Is Right Twice a Day
“Squatters have no rights. How can you even pretend that this is anything other than you’re just breaking the law?” —Senator John Fetterman (D-PA)
“Israel is a democracy, it is our key special ally. And our nation wouldn’t appreciate any kind of foreign input. So why should we do that for Israel?” —Sen. John Fetterman
Belly Laughs of the Day
“[Biden] has the wisdom, the judgment, and the temperament to take on difficult, complex situations like the one that we’re facing in the Middle East.” —Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler
“There is no one who has a better grasp of global issues of world affairs than President Joe Biden. … There is no one who has the same level of respect on the world stage than Joe Biden does.” —Biden campaign finance chair Rufus Gifford
And Last…
“Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t need advice from Joe Biden. He has a history of being wrong, including opposing the raid to take out Osama bin Laden.” —Gary Bauer
The Justice Department is refusing to hand over audio recordings of Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur.
“The Committees have responded with escalation and threats of criminal contempt,” the DOJ wrote in a letter to House GOP Chairmen James Comer and Jim Jordan. “We urge the Committees to avoid conflict rather than seek it.”
House Oversight Chairman James Comer on Monday released a statement after the DOJ rebuffed his committee’s request for the audio recordings.
“The Biden Administration does not get to determine what Congress needs and does not need for its oversight of the executive branch,” Comer said. “The American people deserve to hear the actual audio of President Biden’s answers to Special Counsel Hur.”
Comer said it is “curious” that the Biden Regime is refusing to release audio of Biden’s interview with Hur after releasing the transcript.
What we do know is that Joe Biden lied about Robert Hur raising the issue about his dead son Beau.
The Justice Department previously defended not bringing charges against Biden because he’s a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Joe Biden attacked Robert Hur during an impromptu presser in February.
“There is even reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden previously told reporters in an impromptu White House press conference. “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”
What else is Biden lying about? How bad was his memory during the 2-day interview with Robert Hur?
“We will respond to the Justice Department soon,” Comer said.
🚨STATEMENT🚨
The Biden Administration does not get to determine what Congress needs and does not need for its oversight of the executive branch.
The American people deserve to hear the actual audio of President Biden’s answers to Special Counsel Hur.
Special Counsel Robert Hur last month testified before Congress on Biden’s interview on his stolen classified documents scandal that spanned two days.
Robert Hur in February released a 345-page report on his investigation of the stolen classified documents.
Robert Hur
Biden’s stolen classified documents were scattered all over the place in damaged cardboard boxes and unlocked drawers at the Penn Biden Center. The documents were also easily accessible in Biden’s Delaware garage and basement den.
Robert Hur found that Joe Biden “willfully retained” classified information, however, he decided not to charge him. Hur said there is evidence Biden retained classified notebooks, “knowing he was not allowed to do so.”
Biden was not charged even though he willfully retained SCIF-designated classified documents and shared material with his ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.
According to Robert Hur, In 2017, Joe Biden read aloud classified passages about meetings in the Situation Room to his ghostwriter “verbatim on at least three occasions” – and Biden still wasn’t charged.
“We also considered whether Mr. Biden willfully disclosed national defense information to his ghostwriter by reading aloud certain classified notebook passages to the ghostwriter nearly verbatim on at least three occasions,” the report read.
Biden wasn’t charged for reading classified information to his ghostwriter because jurors could conclude his actions were “unintentional.”
I looked up “buying votes” on the internet this morning and was greeted with this fun video of Kamala Harris talking about canceling student loans for millions ofAmericans
Moral clarity is what’s needed most right now. Hamas is evil, and their insistence on using genocide, human sacrifice, and human body shields to defend, promote, and achieve their geopolitical ambitions should never gain the sympathy of anyone with a moral conscience.
The state of security in modern Israel and its standing as a nation around the world has reached one of the lowest points in its 75 year history. Recent U.S. government actions reveal that political and American public support is waning on multiple fronts.
Last month, the Biden administration failed to provide a key vote in vetoing a United Nations resolution that demanded a ceasefire, without any preconditions for Hamas to release more than 100 hostages it had been holding since October 7 – the day that over 1,200 Israelis were massacred by Hamas. Despite earlier hostage exchanges, many men, women, and children are still being held hostage without release.
That U.N. resolution for a ceasefire was celebrated by key leaders in Hamas and Iran as a clear sign the Biden administration was parting ways with longstanding U.S. policy in solidarity with Israel and the Israeli government.
To further add to the political distance, on Thursday, April 4, President Biden called for “an immediate ceasefire” in Gaza and told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “the overall humanitarian situation” was “unacceptable.” Indeed, the entire “U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined” by the Biden administration’s “assessment of Israel’s immediate action” to address the humanitarian conditions on the ground.
It would seem that the entire political table has shifted from one that favored Israel’s right to defend itself and to demand the immediate release of hostages to a new political calculus that appeases Hamas and gives the terrorist group the upper hand in foreign diplomacy. While Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that the U.S. government could change policy on Israel if they do not see changes soon, it is not immediately obvious what changes and what evidence the Biden administration is working from.
Virtually all information provided on the ground in Gaza, including humanitarian conditions, collateral damage, and casualties, come from Hamas-controlled and -backed entities that have everything to gain from propagating falsified reports and already have been untrustworthy in their reporting.
Regardless, it is clear that political priorities within the Democratic Party are changing even as the party is almost completely split on Israel during a critical presidential election year. According to the Pew Research Center, in December 62 percent of Democrats believed Hamas was mostly responsible for what happened on October 7. Today, more than 75 percent of Democratic voters disapprove of Israel’s handling of this war. Even Independents and Republicans are polling at historic lows when it comes to support for Israel and their confidence in current Israeli leadership.
The far-left wing of the Democratic party and the BDS movement — that is, Boycott-Divest-Sanction — has become far more mainstream and less fringe among Democrats in recent years. Even Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., now a moderate in today’s party, has called for new elections in Israel and a total replacement of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, something that would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago. The BDS movement is largely comprised of pro-Palestinian sympathizers, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who represents Dearborn, Michigan, the first Arab-American city in the United States.
The White House has its eyes on this key constituency largely due to Michigan’s prominent role as a battleground state in the 2024 election. More than 100,000 votes in Michigan’s Democratic primary in February remained uncommitted for President Joe Biden, a clear message that Democrats, including Dearborn Arab-Americans, were sending to the Biden campaign. They are withholding their support for Biden pending the outcome of the White House’s handling of the Israeli-Hamas conflict.
Today, there is a push among Democrats in Congress to withhold military equipment and financial aid to Israel. The Biden administration and Democrats are not alone; a current proposal is being considered by the U.K.’s Foreign Secretary and former Prime Minister David Cameron to cut off military arms sales to Israel. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson says that idea would be “insane” and would be advocating for “the defeat of Israel and victory of Hamas.” Johnson said all Hamas needs to do is “hang on, rebuild, and go again. That’s victory for Hamas.”
Only time will tell.
House Republicans are working right now to pass a resolution in rebuke of the Biden administration’s failed support for Israel, but the time for public support may be running out. The IDF has postponed its long-anticipated ground operation in Rafah — a critical objective to defeating Hamas — until after talks with U.S. officials have concluded. The entire world now watches as Israel is at a political stalemate and is losing a propaganda war that is dominated by Western media.
How should Christians think about this present crisis? Moral clarity is what’s needed most right now. Hamas is evil. Let’s be clear. Their insistence on using genocide, human sacrifice, and human body shields to defend, promote, and achieve their geopolitical ambitions should never gain the sympathy of anyone with a moral conscience. Christians must be outspoken about the realities of terrorism, violence, and fear that are being orchestrated and promoted by Hamas and have earned the praise of the most reprehensible advocates in the Western world. Christians cannot lack moral clarity when it is needed most right now.
We must speak up with courage. We must stand with the Israeli people, who are by now well acquainted with persecution, sorrow, and grief. Even as Israel stands alone, Christians must stand with them.
After six months of war in Gaza, Israel is losing the global public relations battle
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL — Prior to October 7, the future seemed so bright for Israel.
We had just signed our sixth Arab-Israeli peace and normalization agreement.
We seemed to be on track to sign a seventh agreement with Saudi Arabia.
Our economy was booming, tourism was hitting record levels, and Israel was building increasingly close and warm ties with nations and governments all over the globe.
But October 7 and the war that ensued changed everything.
Israel is now in our darkest hour since the War of Independence in May 1948.
And the world is increasingly turning against us.
Indeed, the situation has gone from bad to worse in recent weeks, as I’ll describe in a moment.
But the big question is this: Are Israelis just going through a bad patch and our fortunes will brighten again soon, or are we beginning to see Bible prophecies unfold in which the entire world turns against Israel and Jewish people in the “last days”?
WHAT I SAW WHILE TRAVELING OUTSIDE OF ISRAEL
I’m back in Israel now after six and a half weeks traveling throughout the United States.
During that time I was speaking at churches and the National Religious Broadcasters convention, giving interviews to various media outlets, and meeting with a range of Evangelical leaders.
In the course of responding to hundreds of questions — and listening to the observations and concerns of so many people — one thing has become painfully clear.
After six months of fighting against Hamas in the Gaza Strip — and against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon — Israel may be winning on the military battlefield but it is most definitely losing the global public relations battle.
Consider a few examples:
South Africa has put Israel on trial at the World Court in The Hague, charging the Jewish state with “genocide,” and few nations or world leaders are coming to Israel’s defense.
The United Nations is consistently and overwhelmingly voting to condemn Israel.
The President of the United States recently refused to veto one such anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council, instructing his ambassador to “abstain” instead, allowing the resolution to pass.
President Biden is openly opposing Israel’s planned military operation in Rafah — the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip — to finish off the final group of Hamas forces pinned down there.
President Biden is openly and repeatedly castigating how the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are fighting in Gaza and defending Israel from future October 7-style invasions, calling the IDF’s operations and tactics “over the top.”
President Biden is also openly blasting Israel’s prime minister with obscenities, calling Benjamin Netanyahu — the only truly democratically elected U.S. ally in the Middle East — a “f*ing bad guy” and an “ahole.” By contrast, Biden never speaks so brazenly or crudely about enemies of the U.S. like Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese communist leader Xi Jinping.
Meanwhile, other countries — including Canada and Turkey — are beginning to impose military and trade embargoes on Israel.
And the global media — especially TV news programs around the world — keeps painting Israel as a monster that destroys the lives and homes of innocents in Gaza and tries to starve millions of Palestinians, as well.
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE PROPHET EZEKIEL TELL US?
This is as bad as I’ve seen Israel’s global reputation suffer in my lifetime.
There have certainly been other tough times — the IDF’s response to the eruption of the first Palestinian intifada in December 1987 comes mind, as does Israel’s response to the eruption of the second intifada in September 2000.
In my estimation, this is worse.
But is it prophetic?
Throughout the Bible, there are repeated prophetic warnings that when we get to the eschatological season known as the “last days” the entire world will turn against the nation of Israel.
For example, in the Old Testament — in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 — it becomes painfully clear that no nation comes to Israel’s defense when the “War of Gog and Magog” begins in the “last days” (Ezekiel 38:16).
Many pastors and Bible scholars believe that Ezekiel is describing a Russian dictator who will lead the attack on Israel in an alliance with the military forces of Iran, Turkey, Sudan, and several other Central Asian and African nations.
Yet the prophecy makes it clear that when such an invasion comes, Israel will be all alone, utterly abandoned even by its closest friends and allies.
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE PROPHET ZECHARIAH TELL US?
In the writings of the ancient Hebrew prophet Zechariah, we find another Old Testament example of all nations turning against Israel in the End Times.
Consider this passage from Zechariah 12:2-3.
“Thus declares the Lord who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him, ‘Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah. It will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it.’”
The eyes — and enmity — of “all the nations of earth” will be against Jerusalem, Israel’s eternal capital, the prophet tells us.
Why?
Because God is going to supernaturally “make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling [or intoxication] to all the peoples around” in order that all of Israel’s enemies will be “severely injured.”
That is, in the last days, the Bible indicates that all of the leaders of the world will essentially get drunk on the notion that Israel — Jerusalem — is the problem that that the world must solve.
Yet, God also makes it clear that all the nations that turn against Israel will themselves face divine judgment and this be “severely injured.”
WHAT DOES THE BOOK OF REVELATION TELLS US?
We also find such sobering prophecies in the New Testament.
The Apostle John — who wrote the Book of Revelation — repeatedly prophesied that all nations will turn against Israel in the End of Days.
One example is found in Revelation chapter 12, where the Apostle writes that one day Satan will be thrown down to earth where he “deceives the whole world” to turn against Israel and the Jewish people and to persecute them terribly.
The prophecy goes on to tell us that Satan even forces the Jewish people to flee from the land of Israel “into the wilderness” — widely believed by many Bible scholars to be the Petra region of the current Kingdom of Jordan — but that God will protect them there “for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.” (Revelation 12:5-6)
Another example is found in Revelation 16.
There, the Apostle writes that demonic forces in the spirit world will gather together “the kings of the whole world” for terrible and apocalyptic “war” against Israel during the last days.
In that war, it is written, all the military forces of the world will converge “in the place which in Hebrew is called Har-Megiddo” — located in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel — and which in English is called, famously, “Armageddon.”
The text is clear that God will supernaturally destroy and judge all of these enemies of Israel.
But before He does so, God will sovereignly allow the world to turn against Israel en masse.
ARE WE THERE YET?
Have we arrived at the prophetic point in history in which the entire world is turning against Israel and the Jewish people?
No, not yet — but that’s definitely where we are trending.
The next prophetic war is not Armageddon.
That takes place during the what that the Old Testament calls Daniel’s 7th week (see Daniel chapter 9) or what the New Testament calls the “Tribulation” or the “Great Tribulation” (see the entire Book of Revelation).
The next prophetic war is the War of Gog and Magog, as described in Ezekiel 38 and 39.
Will those prophecies come to pass soon, much less in our lifetime?
No one knows but God Himself.
But they could.
So, we should be watching closely.
After all, it certainly appears that the chess pieces are being arranged on the board for just such a war.
The dictator of Russia is building alliances with the leaders of Iran, Turkey, and Sudan, to name just a few.
The nations of the world are increasingly turning against Israel and the Jewish people.
Even the leaders of Israel’s most trustworthy ally — the United States of America — are abandoning Israel.
WHAT WILL THE CHURCH DO? OUR TEST HAS COME
In light of all that is happening spiritually and geopolitically in the world today, my question is this: What will the Church do?
Will true followers of Jesus Christ — and their pastors and shepherds who read and love and teach the Bible — stand with Israel in our darkest hour?
Or abandon Israel?
Will they embrace and unconditionally love and protect the Jewish people as antisemitism surges and more and more Jew-hatred is unleashed?
Or will the Church flunk this test of history?
While there were many true Christian heroes during the Holocaust who protected the Jewish people at great risk to their own lives and freedom, much of the Roman Catholic Church and Lutheran Churches failed disastrously.
Now it’s your turn — and mine.
When you stand before the God of Israel one day soon, what will He say to you?
When our great test is over, will you have passed or failed?
In 2021, Joe Biden was elected after a bitterly fought campaign that deposed the incumbent Donald Trump. Democrats eventually captured, for a time, both the House and Senate, ensuring the most left-wing government in modern American history.
Americans were then set to witness a great experiment. For the first time in their lives, a truly radical socialist program would supposedly fundamentally transform the way America dealt with the border, immigration, the economy, race relations, foreign policy, energy, law enforcement, crime, education, and social questions such as religion, gender, abortion, and schooling.
In a sense, we were all to be lab rats of sorts, to be experimented on by the radical left and their various critical theories. Now in the last year of the Biden term, we can see the results of that experiment—and the unfortunate disasters that followed.
But first, how was such a radical move to the left even possible in a center-right America?
The Democratic nominee, Biden, had earlier united the left, but only through a Faustian deal. The handlers of a nearly non compos mentis Biden had ushered all his 2020 primary rivals out of the primary races in unison.
But in exchange for their exits that ensured Biden the nomination, the left took over his general campaign—in which Biden was virtually relegated to his basement—and then set his agenda.
Who was running things?
The mysterious architects of White House ideology included, inter alia, the omnipresent, now-Washington-DC-dwelling Obamas, the old socialist gadfly Bernie Sanders, the fossilized tribunes of the black and Latino congressional caucuses, the DEI firebrand Squad, and the neo-socialist scold Elizabeth Warren.
As a result, for one of the few times in American history, the hard left now had undreamt of power. And it was enhanced by a chorus in our compliant media, academia, corporations, the administrative state, foundations, entertainment, and popular culture.
So we were all to embark on a great adventure led by the foot soldiers of DEI, the Chicken-Little green extremists, the critical race and critical legal theory crowd, the modern monetary theorists, the woke commissars, the transgendered zealots, Antifa, BLM, the hate-Israel lobby, and the Trump Derangement Syndrome media sorts.
Ostensibly, America was to be reset financially, economically, socially, culturally, militarily, and politically. The nation would be arbitrarily divided into oppressors and oppressed—with one caveat: hyper-rich, left-wing white architects had to be exempt from the damage inflicted on those they targeted. Thus, like Orwellian pigs who walked on their two hind legs, they were free to fly their private jets, get their kids into racially quota-bound Ivy League schools, burn lots of fossil fuels to heat and cool their massive homes, and be protected by their walls, security details, and zip codes from the crime wave they would soon unleash on others.
Now, as we enter the fourth year of the great experiment, America is $35 trillion in debt, borrowing $1 trillion every 100 days. Home mortgages are at 7 percent. Key prices for food, insurance, rent, and fuels are 30-40 percent higher than when Biden entered office.
The nation has been humiliated and emasculated abroad. Racial relations are the worst in a half-century. The military is in virtual receivership. Biden is polling about 40 percent approval and is behind in key swing states in most of the 2024 polls.
As a result, the Biden administration is furiously trying to find a way to release more of its hated oil and natural gas on the world market. It stopped refilling the strategic petroleum reserve that it had earlier drained to lower gas prices before the 2022 midterms.
So it will quietly pump more oil and gas, appease Iran in fear of a war in the oil-producing Middle East, plead with the once “pariah” Saudis, and order the Ukrainians not to hit Russian oil installations—all to get more oil produced to lower November 2024 gas prices.
It will head nod to eliminating fossil fuels, mandating EVs, banning natural gas stoves, and subsidizing more inefficient wind and solar farms. But it now realizes that its green agenda on its watch will wreck the United States economy and throw the left out of power. So it pivots to an old-fashioned “Drill, World, Drill” mantra—at least until the election is over.
Biden fulfilled his agenda of getting 10 million illegal aliens into the United States by destroying the southern border. The point was to swarm America with poor, unaudited migrants, all in need of massive federal and state assistance, all supposedly now loyal to their entitlement benefactors. Who could stop them from voting as repayment to their enablers in the new age of 70 percent mail-in ballots, same-day registration, inadequate authentication and audit of ballots, third-party vote harvesting, ballot curing, and Zuckbucks pouring into key precincts to absorb the work of the registrars?
Most of the illegals went to Texas and Florida, key swing states that the left still thinks it can flip to blue status. Long term, the 10 million will recalibrate congressional districts to favor neo-socialist agendas. Short-term, millions of new arrivals unlawfully may still try to vote in 2024.
Any who object to or publicize this agenda will be dammed with boilerplate smears of “election deniers,” “voter suppressions,” “racists,” and “xenophobes,” Yet all that said, the administration is now desperately trying to distance itself from its greatest “new Democratic Majority” border success, given that public opinion abhors what Biden had done at the border to the country at large.
So it floated a phony “bipartisan border security” bill in hopes of luring naïve Republicans to support a stealth de facto amnesty agenda that would have still allowed 5,000 illegals in a day rather than the now customary 10-15,000. The hope was that when it failed (and the left knew it would), to blame Republicans for what the left had wrought.
Biden knows destroying the border will ruin America for generations to come, costing billions of dollars in subsidies and legal and policing costs to integrate the massive influx. So until the election, it is thrashing about, claiming that it never did such a thing at all. Its duplicity is again proof that the open borders agenda was hated by the public, a human catastrophe, and not sustainable before an impending election.
Biden’s foreign policy is also in ruins. Biden destroyed deterrence in an effort to beg, appease, and buy off America’s enemies to behave and not cause an election-losing war. But the more it fled from Afghanistan in humiliation, the more it appeased Russia as it massed on Ukraine’s border, the more it snored as a Chinese spy balloon traversed the United States, the more it put early holds on aid to Ukraine, the more it assured Putin a “minor” offensive into Ukraine would not elicit a US response, so all the more it convinced Putin that he could take Ukraine without an American pushback, the Chinese to threaten Taiwan, and Hamas to prepare for massacring Jews.
So here we are in Ukraine with nearly 800,000 dead, wounded, and missing Ukrainians and Russians. The administration has no clue how to stop the Verdun that its appeasement birthed. The entire therapeutic approach to foreign policy lies in ruins.
Ditto the Middle East. National security advisor Jack Sullivan’s “quiet” portfolio that he inherited from the Trump administration simply blew up. Biden is now scrambling to stop the Israeli response to the encircled Hamas remnants, trapped in their last redoubt in Rafah.
Biden is now replaying the 1950s CIA-stereotype of the “Ugly American,” as he does his best to overthrow the Netanyahu government, and to allow the trapped Hamas remnants to escape and claim they defeated the Zionist entity, despite butchering more Jews in a single day than any time since the Holocaust. No matte: the Biden administration is stealthily communicating with the Israeli opposition concerning the best joint strategies to force Netanyahu out. Mass protests in the streets of Tel Aviv attest to the success of destabilizing the current Israeli government.
Team Biden whispers to the media about slow-walking or stopping key arms shipments, abdicating America’s once protective role in the UN, or encouraging the “international community” to go after Netanyahu for “war crimes” for accidentally hitting a civilian team in Gaza. (By such logic, are Biden and Gen. Mark (“righteous strike”) Milley equally culpable for being in charge when a US strike in Kabul blew up 10 innocent civilians by similarly mistaken targeting?). Meanwhile, Biden keeps courting Muslim-American Michigan voters, who repay his appeasement with cries of “Death to Israel! Death to America!”.
The release of violent criminals and an uptick in property crimes, murders and assault follow a similar script. The Biden administration outsourced criminal justice to defund the police/critical legal theorists at the federal, state, and local levels. No bail arrests led to violent offenders released the next day. Thousands were let go from jails and prisons.
The word spread in the criminal community that in the new Biden years, there were no real consequences, no serious punishments for violent assault or major felonies.
So in 2021-2023, crime exploded. When it reached the point of making life unlivable in the major cities and began to max out, the administration declared “crime is declining”—in the same way that hyper-inflation supposedly did so on the economic front.
After spiking the prices of key food staples, insurance, fuel, and interest rates, such hikes could not go too much higher without destroying outright the American way of life. So as the rate of inflation slowed, Biden bragged about “lowering inflation”—but not the 30-40 percent higher food prices since his own inauguration.
The common denominator for these disasters is the embrace of left-wing “theory.”
Critical legal theory mandates that jurisprudence is a construct. Laws have no morality since they favor the powerful. The latter use “white privilege” arbitrarily to invent crimes and punishments to protect their own power hierarchies. All that nonsense has now led to a pre-civilizational free-for-all in our dirty, dangerous, and dysfunctional cities.
Modern monetary theory—printing lots of money to spread around to those who have none while diminishing the value of money of those who have it—only led to hyperinflation and high interest rates.
When DEI theories were unleashed on the military, potential recruits hesitated, and thousands quit. After Pentagon grandees virtue signaled their fear of “white rage” and “white privilege,” after DEI made promotions and assessments often contingent on race, gender, and sexual orientation, and after the new military was humiliated in Afghanistan, it found it could no longer deter the enemy, recruit sufficient soldiers, or win back the confidence of the American people.
In all these cases, the woke genie left the bottle—and won’t go back in. So it will be hard for the administration to assure a long-suffering public that things are just wonderful, much less to reverse these policies, if indeed they are reversible, before November.
Expect instead nonstop distraction as the left beats the January 6 horse to death, calls for abortion on demand, and waits for its underling judges, prosecutors, and juries to jail or bankrupt Trump and therefore do what balloting cannot.
In other words, the long-awaited Great Fundamental Transformation finally got its moment, crashed, and now has torched the nation—middle-class Americans most of all.
“If they’re bold enough to chant “Death to America!” without repercussion in America’s Midwest, just as they have always done in the Mideast, then Israel must now think and act as though America’s support were always in question. Because thanks to Biden, it is.”
(Stephen Green – PJ Media) Two weeks ago I had the sad duty to inform you that most, if not all, of the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 were probably dead. Now, Hamas has confirmed it.
“Today I received a detailed report on the talks in Cairo, we are constantly working to achieve our goals, first and foremost the release of all our hostages and achieving a complete victory over Hamas,” Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu said on Monday.
He added, “This victory requires entry into Rafah and the elimination of the terrorist battalions there. It will happen — there is a date.”View article →
During his “My Take,” Tuesday, “Varney & Co.” host Stuart Varney reacted to Biden’s pledge to make community college tuition-free, warning the president’s plan is part of a “political strategy” to win votes for the 2024 election.
STUART VARNEY:Joe Bidenis the giveaway president. He’s giving away your money.
He’s giving away our country. He hopes that, in return, he gets your vote.
The latest is community college. He wants to give that away, too.
JOE BIDEN:“I also want to make, and I’ve been pushing this, and if I’m re-elected, I’m going to push it hard. We’re going to get it done next time. I want to make community college tuition-free, so you won’t need loans at all. You cut in half the costs of going to college. If we do this, the economic gains will far outweigh the cost, and that’s not hyperbole. That’s the truth.”
What is America’s future? Columnist Cal Thomas considers that question in his book, America’s Expiration Date. The book came out years ago but has a new preface and is more relevant today. He was on my program recently to talk about the fall of empires and the future of the United States.
He begins with an observation by Sir John Glubb, who wrote The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival. He noticed an interesting historical fact. The average age of a nation or empire’s greatness is only 250 years. Most nations lose their way in a relatively short amount of time.
Using that ruler, Cal Thomas gives us a history lesson of the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Arab Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, and the Russian Empire. He concludes with the United States.
Each empire fell for different reasons, but they are lessons to us today. Sometimes they fell because they became too prosperous and thus too apathetic. Sometimes they fell because the empire was over extended. Most had a period of decadence and decline. The Spanish empire was so riven with conflict, they were never invaded because other countries saw nothing worth conquering.
All of that brings him to this country. He said that whenever he hears the song, “God Bless America” sung at baseball games and patriotic events, he asks himself, Why Should He? America doesn’t seem to be doing much that would find favor in God’s sight. We seem to be living in our own age of decadence.
He does believe that there is still time to resurrect the republic, but the answer can’t be found in politicians. Our future doesn’t depend on the White House, but instead is dependent on what we do in our house.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Monday that a date has been set to invade Rafah, Hamas’ last stronghold. The prime minister insists Israel won’t accept a ceasefire deal that prevents such an invasion and the achievement of total victory over Hamas.
Israel is preparing to strike Iranian nuclear plants if faced with a revenge attack for the death of a top Tehran commander last week.
Lots of news coming out of the Middle East today, and none of it good. Israel, according to reports from the site Elaph News, has been conducting Air Force drills for a retaliatory attack on Iran to destroy their nuclear facilities. Netanyahu may be considering this because when you consider the position he’s in right now, he has absolutely nothing to lose.
“Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” Psalm 121:4 (KJB)
I think that taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities should have been done 10 years ago, you will remember that Russia built their reactors for them. The thing that helped Iran the most was having the full support of then-president Barack Obama who gave the terror state everything they wanted in his infamous Nuclear Treaty of 2015. Here in 2024 the whole thing is a mess, and is only about to get messier.
Israel ‘preparing to strike Iranian NUCLEAR facilities’ amid tense wait for revenge attack and soaring WW3 fears
FROM ELAPH NEWS: Netanyahu’s war cabinet has been locked in crunch meetings over fears that Iran will launch an assault as Middle East tensions threaten to boil over into all-out war. Now a Western security official has revealed that Israel will respond to any attacks by striking Iran’s nuclear targets directly. Israeli forces have been conducting air force drills in preparation for the dangerous escalation.
Iran is home to several nuclear sites – including power plants, uranium mines and research reactors. A targeted attack against one of them could mark an unprecedented escalation in the melting pot of Middle East conflict.
Israel has been conducting secret air force training in recent days in the form of flying fighters of various types, marching over long distances, conducting maneuvers and targeting sensitive sites in Iran that may be nuclear facilities
Tehran’s embassy in Syrian capital Damascus was destroyed in a suspected Israeli strike last Monday – killing several top brass commanders. General Mohammad Reza Zahedi died alongside six senior members of Iran’s twisted terrorist army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Iran’s formidable Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei quickly hit out with revenge threats and vowed to “defeat the Zionist regime”. Snarling Tehran President Ebrahim Rasi said Israel’s alleged blast “will not go unanswered”. READ MORE
“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB
Mary Danielsen talks to Bill Perkins of Compass International about a range of topics that he covers in his Steel on Steel series of books. He hosted the first Steeling the Mind Conference in Vail in 1993, and moved to Idaho to take a job with Koinonia House (headed by Chuck Missler) that same year. In 1994 he founded Compass, and proceeded to lead trips to Israel and has since hosted 50 conferences with a tremendous variety of popular and knowledgable guests. Bill has always had his eye on the blessed hope and is a staunch defender of the Pre-Trib view of the rapture. We will discuss the increase of knowledge, Israel, and observe the culture here in the first half of 2024. All of his resources can be purchased at the extensive Compass online bookstore.
“We’ve been in the last days for 2,000 years, and I think you can make a case that we’re in the last days of the last days before the rapture of the Church,” he said. “The most important thing is not trying to guess when Jesus is coming back again, but realize He is coming back again, and it makes sure we’re prepared.”
Instead of making predictions, Jeffress focused more on several ways Christians can prepare for the End Times, such as wearing the “right spiritual clothes,” referring to the righteousness of Christ.
“There are two different garments we can choose to put on to meet the Lord,” he said. “We can use the garment of our own righteousness, our own good works, and the Bible says that’s nothing but a filthy rag in God’s sight, or we can choose to be dressed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And that’s what becoming a Christian is.”
“God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God,” he added, citing2 Corinthians 5. Jeffries contended that this righteousness is the essence of the Christian faith because believers are made faultless before God through Christ, not their own deeds.
“That’s the first thing we do to make sure that we’re Christians that were saved, that we’ll be welcomed into God’s presence,” he said.
During the interview withThe Christian Post, Jeffress identified three End Times misconceptions prevalent amongst Christians, such as fanaticism, fatalism and cynicism.
“Fanaticism is trying to set the date for the rapture or for the Second Coming of Christ, trying to read a prophetic significance into every headline in the paper,” the pastor explained. “Jesus was very clear inMatthew 24and 25. Nobody knows the hour, the day, of the Lord’s return, which is why we need to be ready at all times.”
Regarding fatalism, Jeffress said it’s the the “most dangerous place” for Christians to land because it is the belief that “Jesus is coming back whenever He’s going to come back, and I don’t need to do anything different in my life.”
“As much as the Bible talks about prophecy, the Bible never separates biblical prophecy from everyday life,” he said. “In2 Peter 3, the apostle said, ‘Since all these things are to be burned up in this way since the world is going to end, what sort of people are we to be? In holy conduct and godliness.’”
The third view, cynicism, is the view that “People have been saying for thousands of years, ‘Jesus is coming back and He hasn’t come back yet,” Jeffress said.
“Peter said scoffers will come with that message, and2 Peter 3says, ‘They will come saying, where’s the promise of this coming?’ We need to realize the theme of Scripture is consistent: Jesus is coming back again, and we need to be ready,” he said.
Jeffress also noted that the rapture of the Church is the next prophetic event on the biblical timeline as pointed out in1 Thessalonians 4, when Christians “shall be caught up together… to meet the Lord in the air.”
He distinguished the event from the Second Coming of Christ, which will take place 7 years later as detailed inRevelation 19.
“The interesting thing about the Rapture is there are no prophecies that have to be fulfilled for the rapture to occur. It could happen before we finish this interview, which is, again, why we need to be ready,” he said.
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for Christian Headlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
US Small-Business Optimism Slides To 11-Year Low As Bidenomics Fails
The failure of Bidenomics has crushed confidence among US small businesses to the lowest level in more than a decade, as the future path of inflation remains a significant concern. Readers must remember small businesses are vital to the economy, contributing 44% of the country’s economic activity and creating two-thirds of net new jobs.
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) reported Tuesday that its small-business optimism index declined .9 points to 88.5, the lowest level since the second half of 2012 – or about whenthe US
economy climbed out of the worst financial crisis ever.
Twenty-five percent of business owners identified inflation as the largest issue plaguing day-to-day operations, highlighting the impact of increased costs for inputs and labor. This represents a 2-point increase from February. Additionally, the proportion of businesses that have increased their average selling prices went up by 7 points compared to the previous month.
“Owners continue to manage numerous economic headwinds,” Bill Dunkelberg, the group’s chief economist, wrote in a statement, as quoted by Bloomberg.
Dunkelberg said, “Inflation has once again been reported as the top business problem on Main Street and the labor market has only eased slightly.”
The worsening sentiment among small business owners directly correlates to the rise in consumer prices in the first two months of the year:
Last week, the NFIB reported that small businesses’ hiring plans in March were the shockingly weakest since May 2020. This report is a major concern, considering small firms are the economic engine of the economy.
The gloom among small business owners is an ominous sign that the US economy is on shaky ground while the federal government recklessly spends to avert a recession before the November elections.
Economist EJ Antoni joined ‘Fox & Friends First’ to discuss Jamie Dimon’s warning on inflation and his take on Biden’s second attempt to ‘forgive’ student loan debt. #FoxNews
“If they’re bold enough to chant “Death to America!” without repercussion in America’s Midwest, just as they have always done in the Mideast, then Israel must now think and act as though America’s support were always in question. Because thanks to Biden, it is.”
Truth2Freedom's Blog 