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Daily Archives: April 10, 2024
The Foundation for Practical Christian Living (Part 1) – Romans 12:1-2 | Tom Ascol
This sermon was given by Dr. Tom Ascol on March 13, 2022 at Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, FL and is a part of his sermon series on Romans: The Grace of God in the Gospel.
Source: The Foundation for Practical Christian Living (Part 1) – Romans 12:1-2 | Tom Ascol
The Purposes of Bible Prophecy first | The Christ in Prophecy Journal
[Note: The following is an excerpt from Steve Miller’s wonderful book, One Day Nearer, published by our friends at Harvest House Publishers. Steve Miller is the senior editor at Harvest House and the author of multiple books. He and his wife, Becky, are active in deaf ministry. His books can be found at stevemillerresources.com.]
1) To Give Hope
Imagine the Bible with no prophecies in it. Suppose God had decided not to tell us anything about the Second Coming, ultimate victory over evil, and our future home in heaven and eternity. If God had left prophecies out of His Word, we would have no idea of what the future holds. Instead, all we would know is that the world we live in is descending deeper and deeper into darkness, evil, and hopelessness.
With no knowledge of what is to come, life would be bleak. We would have nothing to look forward to. We would go from day to day filled with dread and uncertainty.
But because God chose to provide us with glimpses of the glorious future that awaits us, we can live with hope. That is the major reason God filled the Bible with so many prophecies about what is to come: to give us hope.
What we know about the future helps to influence our thoughts and actions in the present. Because we know the ultimate outcome of the battle now being waged on earth, we can live with anticipation rather than angst. Bible prophecy helps us to have an eternal focus—it reminds us that no matter how bad things get, good and righteousness will prevail. Victory is certain.
That is why, in 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul wrote at length about the promised Rapture that will deliver us from this world and take us to heaven. He concluded with the exhortation that we “encourage one another with these words” (verse 18, ESV). The more we remind each other of God’s prophetic promises, the more we give one another hope.
2) To Give Us an Eternal Focus
Because we live in a fallen world, life is filled with struggles. Romans 5:12 says that “just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (ESV). No one can avoid sin and its devastating consequences. Even “creation [is] subject to futility”—all of nature is in “bondage to corruption.” It groans in anticipation of the day when we are freed from our decaying mortal bodies and given new, immortal bodies (Romans 8:19-23, ESV).
Sin is the reason that life is filled with pain and trials. And after we receive salvation in Christ, we enter a new kind of battle. Because we have turned away from sin to walk in the light, we are now at odds with the darkness around us. Jesus warned the disciples—and us, by extension—that “in the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33).
But notice Jesus’ very next words: “Take courage; I have overcome the world.” In our times of suffering, we can find hope in the Lord’s promises of future redemption and victory. Even when life becomes so unbearable we don’t know how we can possibly go on, we are reminded that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
God’s promises about the future are meant to help us look beyond the present and develop an eternal focus. As we learn what it means to live with our minds and hearts set on eternity, we are more able to persevere through the difficulties we face now. Every prophecy about the future is designed to keep us looking up and ahead at the glory that awaits us.
3) To Motivate Us to Purity
One of the most amazing truths in Scripture is that someday, we will be fully transformed into the likeness of Christ.
Because we dwell in imperfect bodies in a fallen world, we are not able to fully grasp what we will become. As the apostle Paul wrote, “for now we see in a mirror dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). There is coming a day when we will see clearly— when “the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:54, ESV). At long last, we will be conformed to the image of God’s Son (Romans 8:29).
We eagerly look forward to that day, don’t we? We tire of succumbing to temptation and stumbling into sin. We become increasingly frustrated as we fight the same spiritual battles over and over. With Paul, we say, “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out…I do not do the good I want” (Romans 7:18-19, ESV).
When we struggle with sin, the prophetic promise that we will someday have glorified bodies and be like Christ is uplifting. This hope not only keeps us going, it also motivates us to personal purity. As 1 John 3:3 says, “Everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure” (ESV).
As we fix our hope on the premise that we will be transformed to Christlikeness in the future, the result is that we will want to be more like Him in the present. In this way, Bible prophecy has a powerful and sanctifying effect on our lives.
4) To Spur Us to Share the Gospel
Time is running out. Each day that we draw nearer to Christ’s Second Coming, we draw closer to when it will be too late for unbelievers to receive Jesus as their Savior. When the King of kings and Lord of lords descends from heaven to reclaim the earth, He will wield “a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations” (Revelation 19:15). On that day, every unbeliever on earth will have their eternal fate sealed.
Now, it is true that after Christ raptures all believers to heaven, the seven-year Tribulation will offer more time for unbelievers to come to salvation. We might think, If my loved one or friend doesn’t become a Christian before the Rapture, they will still have opportunities during the Tribulation.
But consider the dismal survival rates of those who end up being on the earth during the Tribulation. In Revelation 6:7-8, we are told that one-fourth of the world’s population will die during the fourth Seal Judgment. Then in Revelation 9:15-18, we read about four angels who will “kill a third of mankind.” Between those two events, half the people on the earth will die. Also, many people will be so hardhearted that even when they recognize God as the source of the Tribulation judgments, they will call for the rocks and the mountains to fall upon them rather than turn from their sin (Revelation 6:15-17).
When it comes to sharing the Gospel, sooner is better than later. The fact that we don’t know the time of Christ’s coming should fill us with a sense of urgency. God’s desire is that Bible prophecy will spur us to proclaim the message of salvation before it’s too late.
5) To Rest in God’s Sovereignty
Only God is able to declare “the end from the beginning.” And not only does He know the future, He plans it. He dares to say, “I will accomplish all my purpose…I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it” (Isaiah 46:10-11).
Those aren’t just empty words. Up to this point in time, every one of God’s declarations about the future—in the form of Bible prophecies—has come to pass with precision. This helps us to realize that prophecies are not merely guesses or predictions; rather, they reveal exactly what God will do. Prophecy is history written in advance.
The abundance of fulfilled prophecies serves as powerful confirmation that God truly is God. His sovereignty is total; nothing can alter what He says will happen. He who created and sustains the universe guides the course of human history and our individual lives. As chaos swirls seemingly out of control here on earth, all is calm in God’s throne room. As surely as Jesus silenced the storm and the waves, God has all world events in His hands.
Because every single prophecy about Christ’s First Coming was fulfilled literally with 100 percent accuracy, we can be at peace—confident that the same will be true with every single prophecy about Christ’s Second Coming. There is coming a day when every wrong in this world will be righted—for all eternity. Nothing can keep that from happening, because God is God. Because His sovereignty is total, our heavenly future is secure.
The post The Purposes of Bible Prophecy first appeared on The Christ in Prophecy Journal.
Critical Thinking: The Secret Weapon of Confident Christians | Cross Examined
As Christians, developing critical thinking skills and maintaining an informed understanding of our faith is crucial. The world is full of misinformation and uncertainty, making it difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood. It is not enough for Christians to blindly adhere to whatever traditions or practices they have inherited from the past. They should critically evaluate and discern the relevance and validity of these traditions in their present context.
With so many different worldviews competing for our attention, staying engaged and equipped with our beliefs is essential. Without the intellectual stamina to navigate these opposing views, we risk becoming uninformed and ill-prepared to face the challenges of contemporary society.
The Age of Competing Ideas
In a recent interview with John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center, I asked him why so many Christians lack the ability to think critically. His initial response was that many Christians lack the proper training in biblical doctrine and have not been catechized in the basic categories of reality. John added,
“We live in a world where we are bombarded with a lot of information, most of which is not objective or neutral. This makes it difficult to determine what to believe and whom to trust. Therefore, this era is better called ‘The Age of Competing Ideas,’ which leads to ‘The Age of Competing Authority.’”
I have seen firsthand how a lack of critical thinking about one’s faith can leave a Christian susceptible to false teachings or worldly philosophies. Paul warned in Colossians 2:8, “Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ” (NLT).
We are exhorted by the apostle Paul to “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Christianity is not about unquestioningly accepting things without using reasoning and intellect. Instead, it is about having faith while also engaging your mind.
Not Just Belief, but Informed Belief
Therefore, we must recognize the role of informed beliefs in Christianity and draw on the biblical foundations of critical thinking to equip ourselves with the knowledge necessary to distinguish truth from falsehood.
Critical thinking is a systematic skill that involves analyzing and assessing a particular belief, idea, argument, or issue in an unbiased manner. After thoroughly examining the subject matter, the individual arrives at a conclusion that makes the most sense of and aligns with reality. In Christianity, possessing a biblical worldview means approaching life matters with an understanding of the Word of God and proper discernment that aligns with biblical doctrine.
I like what David Dockery says about the quality of Christians possessing a robust worldview in his book What Does It Mean to Be a Thoughtful Christian?. Dockery writes,
“A Christian worldview is not escapism but an energizing motivation for godly and faithful thinking and living in the here-and-now. In the midst of life’s challenges and struggles, a Christian worldview provides confidence and hope for the future while helping to stabilize life, serving as an anchor to link us to God’s faithfulness and steadfastness.”
Three Critical Thinking Skills
Applying these three foundational tips in your daily life is an excellent start for developing the art and skill of critical thinking.
- Know and pursue truth wisely: Truth is an objective reality that corresponds with, rather than contradicts, the actual state of things. By analyzing, observing, and submitting to objective truth, you will become more aware of the facts that support your Christian beliefs. Proverbs 4:7 advises, “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.” Solomon emphasizes the importance of pursuing wisdom as you acquire knowledge and understanding to overcome life’s challenges as a Christian.
- Stay grounded in God’s Word: Sadly, less than 20% of self-proclaimed Christians read the Bible daily. Of those who do, the majority only read one verse a day. Reading portions of the Bible daily will enhance your knowledge of Scripture, provide moral fortitude, give insight into wise decision-making, and help you resist temptations.
- Embrace questions and objections: Christians should be the last to shy away from people who object to or challenge their faith. Peter directly speaks to this when he affirms, “But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). Don’t be afraid when someone asks you tough questions about your beliefs. Be prepared to explain why you believe in what you do. If you don’t know the answer to a question, make an effort to research and understand the material. Studying and understanding the material thoroughly will enable you to communicate effectively with others. Lastly, remember always to be respectful towards others, even if their beliefs differ from yours.
I hope you have been challenged to continue developing your critical thinking skills. This will not only keep you informed and prevent you from being deceived, but it will also increase your passion for God’s truth and enable you to become a great defender of the Christian faith. We need more defenders of the faith, and I believe you have the potential to become one!
Recommended Resources On This Topic
I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Paperback), and (Sermon) by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek
Can All Religions Be True? mp3 by Frank Turek
How Philosophy Can Help Your Theology by Richard Howe (DVD Set, Mp3, and Mp4)
Another Gospel? by Alisa Childers (book)
Jason Jimenez is President of STAND STRONG Ministries and author of Challenging Conversations: A Practical Guide to Discuss Controversial Topics in the church. For more info, check out http://www.standstrongministries.org.
Originally posted at: Critical Thinking: The Secret Weapon of Confident Christians — Stand Strong Ministries
The post Critical Thinking: The Secret Weapon of Confident Christians appeared first on Cross Examined.
Fishers Follow Him | VCY
And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. (Mark 1:17)
Only by coming after Jesus can we obtain our heart’s desire and be really useful to our fellow men. Oh, how we long to be successful fishers for Jesus! We would sacrifice our lives to win souls. But we are tempted to try methods which Jesus would never have tried. Shall we yield to this suggestion of the enemy? If so, we may splash the water, but we shall never take the fish. We must follow after Jesus if we would succeed. Sensational methods, entertainment, and so forth—are these coming after Jesus? Can we imagine the Lord Jesus drawing a congregation by such means as are now commonly used? What is the result of such expedients? The result is nothing which Jesus will count up at the last great day.
We must keep to our preaching as our Master did, for by this means souls are saved. We must preach our Lord’s doctrine and proclaim a full and free gospel, for this is the net in which souls are taken, We must preach with His gentleness, boldness, and love, for this is the secret of success with human hearts. We must work under divine anointing, depending upon the sacred Spirit. Thus, coming after Jesus, and not running before Him, not aside from Him, we shall be fishers of men.
April 12 – Did Jericho Really Fall to Joshua’s Army? | VCY
TODAY’S BIBLE READING CHALLENGE:
Joshua 5:1-7:15
Luke 15:1-32
Psalm 81:1-16
Proverbs 13:1
Joshua 5:2 — God’s command for Abraham to be circumcised extended to all his descendants (Genesis 17:10). He reiterated to Moses that it be done on the eighth day (Leviticus 12:3). But the wandering Israelites had not obeyed. Just when you thought you had heard of all their sins …
Joshua 5:13 — During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was asked if God was on his side. Lincoln responded, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side.”
Joshua 6:20 — From Associates for Biblical Research (ABR), the leading scholarly and Bible-upholding archaeology ministry:
The battle of Jericho is one of the bloodiest episodes of the Old Testament. It’s a fantastic tale of victory through faith but is there any truth behind story? Archaeologist, Dr Bryant Wood, believes the physical evidence indicates the biblical account is true…
For Bryant Wood, Jericho is an archaeological puzzle waiting to be solved. On re-examining the evidence that was excavated, Wood, an expert in Canaanite pottery, dated its destruction to 1450 BC- the time of the Israelite conquest. But his investigation didn’t stop there, incredibly he also discovered evidence that he believes corroborates numerous aspects of the biblical version of events.
Joshua 7:6 — When Joshua faced a setback, he could have sent out a second force right away, but He turned to the LORD. Hezekiah tried to bribe his way out of his predicament (2 Kings 18:14) and Asa tried buying friends (2 Chronicles 16:7). Don’t go first to the natural answer, go to the Supernatural Answer!
Luke 15:2 — The dinner saga is escalating. Jesus didn’t just talk about eating with second-class citizens, He actually welcomed them near and ate with them!
Luke 15:20 — This is our Father! He is the One who found us smelling like pigs, but He had compassion, He ran to us, He kissed us, He gave us the best robe, a ring, shoes, and is now preparing a feast for us (Revelation 19:6-9)!
Luke 15:28-30 — John MacArthur preached a great message at a VCY Rally on this passage.
Psalm 81:10 — You can get a memorable recording of this verse and other Scripture passages from our friend, Earl Martin.
Proverbs 13:1 — Listen and be wise!
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.
The City of Destruction: The Pilgrim’s Progress – A Guided Tour with Derek Thomas
When the Lord Jesus Christ liberates a soul from the power of sin, He also extends an invitation to a lifetime of discipleship. In this message, Derek Thomas introduces us to John Bunyan’s literary masterpiece, The Pilgrim’s Progress.
This message is from Dr. Thomas’ 19-part teaching series The Pilgrim’s Progress: A Guided Tour. Learn more: https://www.ligonier.org/learn/series/pilgrims-progress-guided-tour
Source: The City of Destruction: The Pilgrim’s Progress – A Guided Tour with Derek Thomas
10 Apr 2024 News Briefing
IDF strikes infrastructure used by Hezbollah in Syria
The IDF on Tuesday evening struck military infrastructure that, based on precise intelligence, was used by the Hezbollah terrorist organization on the Syrian front. “The IDF holds the Syrian regime accountable for all activities which take place within its territory and will not allow for any attempted actions which could lead to the entrenchment of Hezbollah on the Syrian front,” said the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit in a statement.
Europe Needs More Funds For Defence As Wider War ‘No Longer A Fantasy’, Borrell Warns
A full-scale conflict in Europe is “no longer a fantasy” and Europeans must find new ways to financially prepare for a potentially wider war on the continent, the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell warned on Tuesday (9 April). “Russia threatens Europe” through its war in Ukraine and hybrid attacks on EU member states, he added.
Manta Ray High-Endurance Underwater Drone Unveiled
Northrop Grumman has completed the construction of its first full-scale Manta Ray uncrewed underwater vehicle, or UUV, prototype. The company is developing the drone under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Manta Ray program, which seeks to demonstrate critical technologies for a new class of very long-endurance payload-capable UUVs.
Pfizer And A Corruption Too Deep To Fix
It’s always a shock to see the way the insiders treat each other so brutally, and how they lie, cheat, and steal to get their way. It’s especially satisfying when they get caught in the end. Countless movies in the old days followed this basic plot. ….. but we have a different problem in our own time. The higher powers on which we depend for redress are themselves part of the issue. with the Supreme Court hearing for Murthy v. Missouri, which documented how dozens of federal agencies worked with social media companies, directly and indirectly, to censor free speech.
Scandal Rocks Biden’s Labor Dept For Lying About Sharing Non-Public Inflation Data With Secret Group Of Wall Street “Super Users”
a scandal erupted among the (relatively small( group of economists who keep a close eye on the monthly inflation data reported by the Biden Department of Labor, when they learned that there is an even smaller, and much more exclusive group of economists called “super users” who get preferential treatment from the BLS, including wink-wink-nudge-nudge explanations of where the data may diverge from expectations. That was the case for the January CPI when as Bloomberg first reported, the BLS sent an email to a group of data “super users”, …………..
Staving Off Revolution
Whatever else we might say or think about the leadership class, they tend to have a keen sense of self-preservation. As a general rule, the ability to maintain a delusional confidence that it’s all going to work out just fine tends to end very poorly for the leadership class. In other words, the leaders saving the financial elite from the consequences of their own rapacity will get no credit from those they’re saving.
Arizona’s top court revives 19th century abortion ban
Arizona’s top court on Tuesday revived a ban on nearly all abortions under a law from 1864, a half century before statehood and women’s suffrage, further restricting reproductive rights in a state where terminating a pregnancy was already barred at 15 weeks of gestation. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled, opens new tab 4-2 in favor of an anti-abortion obstetrician and a county prosecutor who pressed to implement the Civil War-era statute after the Democratic attorney general of the key presidential battleground state declined to do so.
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. 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. The silence in most churches regarding our “blessed hope” makes our expectation all the more difficult to maintain.
Hamas data on civilian casualties in Gaza war is misleading and easily disproved
The global media consistently quotes Hamas’ figures regarding the casualties … these numbers are inflated and hide the fact that, in this war, the civilian casualty mortality rate is relatively low. Hamas’ sole way to survive is by increasing and inflating the civilian casualty figures,
Toronto: Posters depicting children hostages defaced with swastikas
“What kind of sick monster vandalizes posters of kidnapped and murdered people, including babies and kids, with a swastika? Are there no limits to the hate in our city? No justification for this, not in Toronto, not anywhere.
WSJ: Denying weapons to Israel in the middle of a war is betrayal
“Denying weapons to an ally in the middle of a war is the definition of betrayal,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote, labeling Pelosi a “sunshine ally.” “Democrats claim to be looking out for Israel’s best interests,” the editorial board wrote, “but that’s for Israelis to decide. The threats to withhold weapons from an ally must overjoy Hamas, whose strategy of hiding behind civilian deaths is the real source of Gaza’s humanitarian tragedy.”
US Defense Secretary says there’s no evidence of Israel committing genocide in Gaza
The US does not have any evidence of Israel committing genocide in Gaza, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin testified during a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Armed Services. Austin denied accusations that he “green-lit genocide.” “From the very beginning we are committed to help assist Israel in defending its territory and its people by providing security assistance,” Austin said. “And I would remind everybody that what happened on October 7 was absolutely horrible.”
Rising Global Conflicts Make A Perfect Setup For Events Predicted In Scripture
The nations of planet earth are presently engaged in a deadly game of brinksmanship. It’s happening on every continent.
Captured terrorist admits: ‘We lied about Ahli hospital blast, used journalists to blame Israel’
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror group was responsible for the blast at Gaza’s Al-Ahli Hospital last October, its political spokesman Tarek Abu Shaluf admitted to IDF interrogators, based on footage released by the Israeli army on Monday. Abu Shaluf, a well-known media figure in the enclave, told IDF Intelligence Unit 504 interrogators how the group used Arabic and international media outlets to blame Israel for the explosion that became one of the first major PR victories for the terrorists in the Gaza war.
Hezbollah leader says Biden pushing Israel to ceasefire and ‘historic defeat’ in Gaza War
The secretary-general of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, celebrated recent reports of an impending ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, saying it would bring about a “historic defeat” for Israel.
Bible prophecy says the world will turn against Israel in the ‘last days’ – is it happening now?
Israel is now in its 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”?
Lakeville schools’ classic violation of the First Amendment
Not only is the district’s position false, but it is promoting the political views of some of its community and refusing to allow alternative messages — a classic violation of the First Amendment. Today, we are talking about our lawsuit Cajune v. Independent School District 194.
MK Rothman: ‘We cannot stop; We must protect the world from this evil’
MK Simcha Rothman speaks to Arutz Sheva and says that ‘Our friends from all around the world need to understand that any pressure on Israel to stop the war is actually pressure to make Israel sign a suicide pact.’
Rare 6,000-year-old elephant ivory relic unearthed in southern Israel
An ivory vessel made of elephant tusk, dated to the Chalcolithic period, was uncovered in an Israel Antiquities Authority excavation near Beer Sheva in southern Israel. The rare vessel, known in research as an “amphoriskos” (a small jar), attests to commercial relations between the land of Israel and Egypt roughly six thousand years ago.
Louis Farrakhan’s multi-billion dollar lawsuit against Jewish groups rejected
A multi-billion dollar lawsuit filed by the Nation of Islam and its leader, Louis Farrakhan, against two American Jewish groups has been dismissed by a federal judge. On Friday, Judge Denise Cote, a Clinton-appointee for the United States District Court in the Southern District of New York, rejected the suit filed against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) on behalf of Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.
House to vote on resolution against clear Israel bias
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Rules will hold a hearing on Tuesday at 4 p.m. during which, in part, it will discuss a yet-unnumbered resolution “Opposing efforts to place one-sided pressure on Israel with respect to Gaza.” The text of the resolution, whose sponsor does not yet appear to be named, notes that the Jewish state has a right to self-defense and that Washington and Jerusalem have “a close and robust bilateral relationship marked by strong people-to-people ties and close cooperation on a wide range of issues including defense, diplomacy, energy, cybersecurity, agriculture, science and space.”
DHS to issue grants helping ‘New Americans’ work in long-term care facilities
State government defines a “New American” as “an individual born abroad and the individual’s children, irrespective of immigration status.” As such, people who entered the United States illegally could eventually become authorized to take care of vulnerable, elderly, and disabled Minnesotans.
Strong M6.5 earthquake hits northern Molucca Sea, Indonesia
A strong and shallow earthquake registered by the BMKG as M6.5 hit the northern Molucca Sea, Indonesia at 09:48 UTC on April 9, 2024. The agency is reporting a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles). USGS is reporting M6.6 at a depth of 33 km (20.5 miles); EMSC M6.6 at a depth of 35 km (21.7 miles).
Widespread record floods hit parts of Russia, flooding over 10,500 homes
Severe flooding struck Russia’s Ural Mountains and Siberia, alongside parts of neighboring Kazakhstan since April 3, 2024, caused by rapid snow melt and heavy rainfall. The situation worsened after two dams broke near Orsk City on April 5, leading to record flood levels by April 7. The crisis has resulted in at least three deaths in Russia and more than 10 500 homes flooded. In Kazakhstan, two fatalities and nearly 75 000 displacements have been reported.
Exceptionally intense Saharan dust episode over Europe degrading air quality, suggesting changes in atmospheric circulation patterns – The Watchers
A third exceptionally large wave of Saharan dust in just two weeks is moving over parts of Europe, significantly increasing PM10 concentrations at ground level for the Iberian Peninsula, and some parts of France and Germany. This event coincides with high birch pollen concentrations, potentially affecting sensitive persons.
Shallow M6.1 earthquake hits near the north coast of Papua, Indonesia
A strong and shallow earthquake registered by the BMKG as M6.1 hit near the north coast of Papua, Indonesia at 00:02 UTC (07:02 LT) on April 9, 2024. The agency is reporting a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles). USGS is reporting M6.0 at a depth of 9 km (5.6 miles); EMSC M6.0 at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles).
California man arrested after removing a leg from fatal train accident site and feasting upon it | Law Enforcement Today
A California man, later identified as 27-year-old Resendo Tellez, was arrested and charged by local authorities after he took possession of a dismembered leg of a train accident victim.
27% of Saudis in ‘Bombshell’ Study Experienced Heart Issues After mRNA COVID Shots
Santa Teresa Middle School in New Mexico has been forced into lockdown twice in one week due to illegal aliens being discovered on school premises.
Iran FM warns: Coming days will be difficult for Israel
In a message to Israel, Iran sent its foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, to Damascus on Monday, a week after an airstrike in the city struck a building adjoining its consulate, killing senior Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi. Iran has vowed revenge on Israel, accusing it of the strike.
Christians Out, Muslims In: The Islamic Takeover of Germany
From Sharia patrols to mass Islamic sexual assaults, Fuori dal Coro’s investigation unveils the irreversible Islamification of Germany, mirroring a nation increasingly resembling Turkey, where Muslims reign, and Christians grow scarce.
New Zealand: Coroner ignores critical information in deciding the cause of a child’s death following a covid injection
Ten days after receiving a covid mRNA “vaccine,” a 13-year-old boy in New Zealand died suddenly from myocarditis, a known side effect of the injections. The coroner ruled that he couldn’t determine the exact cause of death, as viral particles could not be ruled out as a cause. The ruling failed to consider the larger scientific context and the need to analyze data from the entire population. Access to this data has been denied to New Zealanders; the coroner should have acknowledged this fact.
Digital information bill could grant UK Government extraordinary financial surveillance powers ahead of decision on whether a CBDC will be introduced
Big Brother Watch has been running a campaign called “No Spycoin” to alert the public to the risks of the UK implementing a central bank digital currency (“CBDC”). Last year Big Brother Watch, a civil liberties campaign group fighting for a free future, published a detailed report examining the impact on citizens of CDBC projects in various countries. None of the projects passed the test of preserving privacy and prohibiting surveillance.
The Oil is Running Out: Your Personal Survival Plan
On Sunday, The Telegraph published an article about the death of the North Sea oil and gas and what it means for Britain – a disaster. Last year alone, more than 200 oil and gas wells were plugged, eight platforms were removed, and another 180 of the UK’s 284 oil and gas fields will close down by the end of the decade.
DeSantis predicts ‘very, very extreme’ pro-abortion ballot initiative will ‘fail’ in Florida
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he expects voters to reject the pro-abortion amendment on the ballot in the Sunshine State this November, calling it a “very, very extreme” California-style proposal.
Headlines – 4/10/2024
Australian FM says Canberra to consider recognizing Palestinian state
Fleitz, Shaffer: ‘Horrific’ Biden ‘Trying to Sandbag’ Israel for Votes
US says ‘no evidence’ of Gaza genocide, but wants Israel to deliver on aid long-term
US Sen. Warren: World Court has ‘ample evidence’ to find Israel guilty of genocide
At Top U.N. Court, Germany Rejects Allegation It’s Enabling Genocidal Acts In Gaza
World lost ‘moral compass’ on Gaza, deputy UN chief says
French FM threatens possible sanctions to force Israel to boost Gaza aid
Unrwa vital to avert starvation in Gaza, says agency official
Relatives of October 7 victims file suit against Canadian resumption of UNRWA funding
‘U.S. Military Aid to Israel Is Endangered. More People Will Say It Should Be Cut’
Cameron confirms UK Government position on arms export licences to Israel is ‘unchanged’
UK arms exports to Israel will continue, Cameron says, bucking left-wing pressure
Israel has circled date in calendar for repeatedly pledged Rafah invasion, PM says
Contradicting Netanyahu, Gallant told Austin no date set for Rafah op
Israel seeks 40,000 tents to evacuate Rafah civilians; hostage talks with Hamas languish
Top Biden adviser: Israel ready for hostage deal, Hamas needs to be pushed
Report: Biden Calls for Unilateral Ceasefire in Gaza – Before Israeli Hostages Freed
Biden urges Israel ‘to just call for’ 6-8 week ceasefire, slams PM’s handling of Gaza war
‘Stop the war’ Macron, Sisi, Abdullah demand immediate ceasefire in joint op-ed
Mayor of London repeats call for Hamas to ‘immediately’ release hostages
Cabinet convenes to discuss potential truce as hostage deal hangs in balance
Some cabinet ministers said considering opposing truce deal if not all hostages freed
Government’s far-right flank fumes over Khan Younis withdrawal, talk of Gaza truce
Israeli gov’t to discuss linking temporary truce to US OK for Rafah op
Israeli experts believe Israel hid longest Gaza tunnel to trap Hamas
IAF kills Hamas ’emergency committee’ leader in central Gaza
Turkey and Israel Engage in Trade Tit-for-tat as Relations Deteriorate Further
Turkey And Israel Restrict Trade With Each Other As Relations Sour Over Gaza
Moroccan protesting Israel ties, war in Gaza given five-year prison sentence
Lord Pickles joins European leaders to issue new warning about rising antisemitism
Bags with antisemitic flyers and what may be rat poison placed in Chicago
Anti-Israel Protesters Shut Down Senate Cafeteria
At Michigan Quds Day rally, protesters chant ‘Death to Israel’ and ‘Death to America’
Greg Gutfeld On ‘Death To America’ Chants in Michigan: Why Are We Respecting Anti-American Behavior?
White House condemns ‘Death to America’ chants at rally in Dearborn, Mich.
Iran Smuggles Arms to West Bank, Officials Say, to Foment Unrest With Israel
NYT: Iran has flooded West Bank with arms for 2 years, aims to make it next flashpoint
Cyberattacks by Iran, Hezbollah have tripled during the war, says Israel cyber czar
Iran’s naval commander threatens Israel, talks up regional war
IRGC naval chief threatens to close key strait, vows response to Syria strike coming
Iran Says It Can Close Hormuz Strait, Views Israeli Presence in UAE as Threat
Israel threatens to bomb nuke sites as Iran backs down from direct attack – report
Israel says it hit Syrian army post being used by Hezbollah
US lawmakers press White House to secure release of Israeli researcher kidnapped in Iraq
‘Kill Them All’: ISIS Threatens Fans Attending UEFA Champions League Quarterfinal Matches
Champions League soccer matches to go ahead despite Islamic State terror threat
Hamburg college student and his ‘pop-Islamist’ followers want to establish a caliphate in Germany
US gives Ukraine weapons it seized from Iran en route to Houthis
Ukrainian Evangelical Christians facing torture, destruction of churches in Russian-occupied areas
A black market for Starlink is helping Russia attack Ukraine
Zelenskyy warns Russia has penetrated U.S. politics, invites Trump to Ukraine
Giving Money to Ukraine is in Your Own Best Interest, David Cameron Tells U.S. Congress
Florida woman is sentenced to month in jail for selling Biden’s daughter’s diary
Tech company headed by former CEO of bankrupt Solyndra to receive $6.6 billion from Biden admin
Marjorie Taylor Greene rails against Johnson’s ‘total surrender’ to the Democrats
Marjorie Taylor Greene escalates pressure on Speaker Johnson as ouster threat looms
Mike Johnson will delay transmission of Mayorkas impeachment articles to Senate
Chuck Schumer Says ‘Impeachment Should Never be Used to Settle Policy Disagreements’
Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s 11th-Hour Request to Delay Stormy Daniels ‘Hush Payment’ Trial
Judge Grants Donald Trump’s Request to Reconsider Gag Order
Trump hush money trial stems from ‘zombie case’ brought back to life
China interfered in 2019, 2021 Canadian federal elections: Canadian Security Intelligence Service
Donald Trump crashes out of the Bloomberg rich list due to his meme stock nosediving
‘Throw Him Out’: Elon Musk Declares War on Brazil’s Most Powerful Judge
Musk promises free Starlink for Brazil schools if government cancels contract
A thief stole his identity, but nobody believed him. He spent nearly 2 years locked up
Commentary: The Real Battle for Data Privacy Begins When You Die
Strong M6.5 earthquake hits northern Molucca Sea, Indonesia
5.0 magnitude earthquake hits near Yongning, China
Sabancaya volcano in Peru erupts to 22,000ft
Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupts to 21,000ft
Fuego volcano in Guatemala erupts to 17,000ft
Semeru volcano in Indonesia erupts to 15,000ft
Santa Maria volcano in Guatemala erupts to 14,000ft
Marapi volcano in Indonesia erupts to 12,000ft
Ebeko volcano in the Kuril Islands erupts to 11,000ft
Russia, Kazakhstan evacuate over 100,000 people amid worst flooding in decades
Colombia’s capital to ration water as El Nino adds to drought
Earth has its warmest March on record, beating 2023’s milestone
European court rules human rights violated by climate inaction
Government Watchdog Files Complaint vs. NOAA over ‘Scientific Violations’ in Climate Change Report
At least three dead after explosion at Italy hydroelectric plant
A whistleblower claims that Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner is flawed. The FAA is investigating
‘A move of God’: Thousands of students attending revival events, hundreds baptized
Michigan school shooter’s parents sentenced to 10 years in prison for not stopping a ‘runaway train’
Illegal Alien From El Salvador Arrested For Murdering Man, Dismembering His Body
Dismembered Bodies, Executions Plague Once Peaceful Central Mexican State
Biden: I’m ‘Examining’ if I Can Shut Down Border Unilaterally, ‘Trying to Work Through that’
Ocasio-Cortez ‘shocked’ by porn deepfake in her likeness
Priest jailed after man collapsed from too many erectile drugs at cleric’s sex party
Australia: Transgender Roxanne Tickle Sues Women-Only App Giggle for Denying Membership
Vatican declares transgender surgery should never be attempted
‘Gender Queer’ tops list of most challenged library books: American Library Association
Arizona Supreme Court Revives 160-Year-Old Law, Bans Most Abortion Except to Save a Woman’s Life
Arizona Supreme Court rules a near-total abortion ban from 1864 is enforceable
Arizona Attorney General Says She Won’t Enforce State Supreme Court Ruling Banning Abortion
Arizona bombshell tests Trump’s abortion gamble
Kari Lake opposes state Supreme Court abortion ruling, calls 1864 law ‘out of step’
Biden blames ‘extreme’ GOP agenda for Arizona abortion ruling
Trump Says Dems Are True Radicals on Abortion
Axelrod: Arizona Abortion Ban Is an ‘Earthquake’ that Could ‘Tip This Election’
Canadian DNA lab knew its paternity tests identified the wrong dads, but it kept selling them
Health alert issued by CDC: Person tests positive for bird flu, only 2nd human case in US
The Great COVID Cover-up: Shocking truth about Wuhan and 15 federal agencies
U.S. prosecuted criminal COVID fraud cases totaling $2 billion in losses, DOJ report says
Mid-Day Snapshot · April 10, 2024
“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”.
THE FOUNDATION
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?” —Thomas Jefferson (1781)
| Fellow Patriots, on this day in 1942, roughly 75,000 American and Filipino warriors captured by the Japanese began the brutal 90-mile Bataan Death March. Casualty estimates differ, but somewhere between 5,500 and 18,650 POWS died along the way, often shot on the spot for falling down. The Japanese commander and two deputies were later executed for war crimes. —Mark Alexander |
IN TODAY’S DIGEST
- NPR Veteran Blows the Whistle
- Executive News Summary
- Oregon’s Death Sentence of No Boundaries
- ‘White Rural Rage’ Gets It All Wrong
- U.S. Sovereignty: Back to Basics
- America Is Now in the Business of Losing Wars
- DAILY FEATURES: Videos, Best of Right Opinion, Short Cuts, Memes, and Cartoons.
ON THE WEB
- Linda Moss Mines: A Cry to ‘Remember’
- In Brief: Lawless Student Loan Forgiveness
FEATURED ANALYSIS
NPR Veteran Blows the Whistle
What was once a network with some journalistic integrity has become obsessed with narratives and a political agenda.
Nate Jackson
The entire mainstream media is a cesspool of leftist activism disguised as journalism. This was true when Mark Alexander launched The Patriot Post in 1996, and it’s perhaps even truer today when the media market is full of alternatives that didn’t exist 28 years ago. But don’t take our word for it. Listen to Uri Berliner, a 25-year veteran of National Public Radio, who says the partly taxpayer-funded network has lost its way and America’s trust.
He published a damning article about NPR at The Free Press, along with a podcast episode with Free Press founder and New York Times refugee Bari Weiss. Berliner describes himself as the stereotypical NPR listener: “raised by a lesbian peace activist mother” and a Subaru driver with a Spotify playlist “most similar to people in Berkeley.”
Yet he blows the whistle: “It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding. In recent years, however, that has changed.”
He argues that NPR wasn’t always this kind of left-wing, as reflected by its generally equal audience as recently as 2011 — 26% conservative, 23% middle, and 37% liberal. “By 2023,” he writes, “the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal.”
Berliner admits that Donald Trump changed a lot of things. “As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair,” he wrote while admitting to “eagerly” voting against Trump twice. “What began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.”
For a network featuring a show called “All Things Considered,” that doesn’t sound very objective.
Indeed, Berliner points to the Russia-collusion story as evidence that NRP lost its way. “At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff,” he said. Schiff was interviewed at least 25 times, each time spouting lies about Trump and Russia. When Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded that there was no credible evidence of that conclusion, Berliner said, “NPR’s coverage was notably sparse.”
“It’s bad to blow a big story,” Berliner admits. “What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.”
That wasn’t the end or maybe even the most destructive episode, though. As he noted, back in October 2020, a bombshell dropped about Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop, which contained evidence that Joe Biden and his son were running a lucrative influence-peddling operation. NPR, like most of the rest of the Russia-obsessed Leftmedia, were either silent or actively tried to debunk the true story.
As we noted at the time, NPR Public Editor Kelly McBride claimed there were “many, many red flags” about the laptop story, adding that NPR wouldn’t touch it in any case because “the assertions don’t amount to much.” Terence Samuels, NPR’s managing editor for news, called it a “pure distraction.”
However, “When the essential facts of the [New York] Post’s reporting were confirmed and the emails verified independently about a year and a half later,” Berliner lamented, “we could have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we didn’t make the hard choice of transparency.”
All things considered!
He went on to talk about the Wuhan lab origin of COVID, which NPR either ignored or attempted to discredit “as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory.” He explained how George Floyd’s death and the discussion about systemic racism became not an opportunity for journalism but a declaration of something obvious accompanied by a “mission … to change it.” In fact, DEI soon became “the ‘North Star’ of the organization,” complete with mandatory “unconscious bias training” and a database of identity markers for all interviewees.
Ultimately, his most important point is about the real lack of diversity. “What’s notable is the extent to which people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview,” he wrote. “And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity.”
He has the receipts.
“Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity,” he said, “I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.” So much for that “North Star” of diversity. In fact, when Berliner complained about this, he was met with either indifference or canceled meetings. Publicly, NPR responded to Berliner’s story by dismissing his concerns and touting again the supposed strength of its work.
For our audience, NPR hasn’t been trustworthy for decades. Notably, even a few left-wingers are starting to notice. Almost humorously, Berliner points to an example from February in which NPR employees were treated to a poll showing that the network was more trustworthy than CNN or The New York Times. What was its score? Three out of 10 audience members found it trustworthy. Berliner deadpanned, “Only in a world where media credibility has completely imploded would a 3-in-10 trustworthy score be something to boast about.”
Only a Subaru-driving left-winger like Berliner would take so long to admit some of the obvious truth about the partly taxpayer-funded Leftmedia outlet when it has spent more than 50 years advancing a big government agenda on behalf of Democrats.
Executive News Summary
Arizona abortion ban, Idaho jihadi, shooter’s parents sentenced, East Palestine settlement, and more.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
- Arizona’s new/old abortion ban: The Democrats continue to get lucky on abortion, which is their only winning issue this election season. The latest “good news” for Joe Biden’s party came from Arizona yesterday, where, as The Washington Post reports, the state’s conservative Supreme Court “revived a near-total ban on abortion, invoking an 1864 law that forbids the procedure except to save a mother’s life and punishes providers with prison time.” The pro-Biden political ads practically write themselves, with those Neanderthal Republicans seeking to undo a century and a half of progress on women’s rights. Donald Trump has attempted to carve out a pragmatic middle ground between the absolutes, but that won’t stop the Left from demagoguing the issue. As the Post continues, “The 4-2 decision supersedes the previous rule, which guarded the right to end a pregnancy by the 15-week mark, resetting policy to the pre-Roe v. Wade era and adding Arizona to the roster of 16 other states where abortion is virtually outlawed.” The electoral politics here are unseemly, but they’re impossible to ignore. Biden “won” Arizona by less than a third of one percent in 2020, and while Trump now enjoys a 4.5-point lead in the Grand Canyon State, Team Biden’s pro-abortion zealots know that a ruling like this will energize the young single female vote that’s so critical to their electoral success. Indeed, this was Arizona’s dim-witted but dutiful governor, Katie Hobbs, yesterday: “To the people across Arizona who are concerned about the future of abortion rights in our state … you can make your concerns known at the ballot box, and I encourage you to do so.” Speaking on behalf of the state’s Republicans, Congressman Juan Ciscomani said this: “Today’s ruling is a disaster for women and providers. In Arizona, our 15-week law protected the rights of women and new life. It respected women and the difficult decision of ending a pregnancy — one I will never personally experience and won’t pretend to understand.” Clearly, Republicans struggle with making life a winner.
- Idaho jihadi: An 18-year-old was arrested in Idaho on Saturday by federal law enforcement over his plot to attack Christian churches in the state on behalf of ISIS. The FBI first began investigating the young man back in 2021 when it found that he was fundraising for the Islamic terrorist organization. He told an FBI informant that he had pledged allegiance to ISIS and that he needed to “respond to the call to the caliphate by killing Jews and Christians.” According to court documents, he planned to “walk to the church, pull out the pipe to light it on fire on one end, hit people in the elbows and kneecaps, force them to the ground, slit their throats with a knife or machete, start small fires, use gas cans to throw at the small fires to cause an explosion and when the police respond he will hide in a corner and attempt to grab the gun of an officer to use.” This story hardly made the mainstream media headlines and has quickly descended down the memory hole, likely due to the fact it does not play up the Left’s popular DEI narrative elements. Had the foiled attack targeted minority groups or religions, then it would have been headline news for days.
- Teenage Michigan shooter’s parents sentenced: A somber history was made yesterday in a suburban Detroit courthouse, where a Michigan judge sentenced the parents of a teenage school shooter to 10 to 15 years in prison on four counts of unintentional homicide for the 2021 murders of four students at Oxford High School. This marks the first time that the parents of such an assailant have been held directly responsible for the act. James and Jennifer Crumbley had been convicted in separate trials that ended in February and March, while their son had earlier pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and is now serving life in prison. “These convictions were not about poor parenting,” said Judge Cheryl Matthews. “These convictions convey repeated acts or lack of acts that could have halted an oncoming runaway train.” This was a preventable tragedy — one that hinged on the parents’ unwillingness to respond immediately to their son’s clearly dangerous and deteriorating emotional condition. As the Detroit Free Press reports: “On the morning of the school shooting … the Crumbleys were summoned to the counselor’s office over a violent drawing their son had made of a gun, a human body bleeding, and the words, ‘The Thoughts won’t stop. Help me.’ The meeting ended with the Crumbleys returning to their jobs and promising to get their son help within 48 hours.” School officials also dropped the ball, concluding that the boy wasn’t a threat to himself or anyone else and letting him return to class.
- NY migrant flights: While New York City Mayor Eric Adams has heaped blame for the Big Apple’s illegal migrant crisis on Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott over his migrant bussing program, he should instead focus his ire on the bigger source of the problem: Joe Biden. Indeed, not only have Biden’s de facto open-border policies allowed millions of illegal aliens into the country, but his administration has been secretly flying them into the U.S. and releasing them in places like New York City. According to a recent report from the Center for Immigration Studies, the Department of Homeland Security has flown roughly 33,000 illegal aliens, whom it dubiously classifies as “asylum seekers,” into New York. These migrant flights account for 22% of the illegal alien influx into the city. Meanwhile, of the migrants bussed into NYC, roughly 37,000 of them came from Texas, which represents 25% of the total influx of illegals into the city. But maybe Adams shouldn’t be blamed for not knowing. “It is secret because [DHS officials are] not telling anybody,” observed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. “They don’t tell us anytime somebody comes in. They don’t give us any information on it. They are not coordinating with state government at all. If they throw six people on a commercial flight coming from a foreign country, there’s no acknowledgment at all to state or local authorities. That’s just a fact.”
- Biden keeps playing to his pro-Hamas base: “I think what he’s doing is a mistake,” said Gaza Joe Biden yesterday on Spanish-speaking Univision. He was speaking, of course, about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who continues the prosecution of his country’s existential war against the terrorist hordes hell-bent on the Jewish state’s utter destruction. Biden continued: “I don’t agree with his approach. I think it’s outrageous that those three vehicles were hit by drones. … What I’m calling for is the Israelis to just call for a ceasefire, allow for the next six, eight weeks total access to all food and medicine going into the country.” Biden clearly doesn’t understand how wars work. In this case, Hamas started it, so Israel has the right to finish it. How nice it would’ve been, for example, if the American president had at least mentioned the cause of the fighting — namely, the barbaric October 7 attack by Hamas on innocent Israeli civilians, some 1,200 of whom were murdered. How nice it would’ve been if Biden had demanded the immediate release by Hamas of the more than 100 hostages it’s still holding, and perhaps denounced the repeated sexual assaults by Hamas animals upon the Israeli women among the captives. But who are we kidding? This is Joe Biden, and he needs to win Michigan in November. And he likely can’t win Michigan without the Jew-hating pro-Hamas vote. In a related story, the White House reluctantly kinda sorta denounced those “Death to America” chants coming out of the Detroit suburb of Dearborn at a recent anti-Israel rally. Dearborn is home to one of the world’s largest Arab populations outside of the Middle East — but, disappointingly, it’s a population that doesn’t see fit to shout down the America-hating rabble in its midst.
- $600M East Palestine settlement: Norfolk Southern, the train company responsible for the train wreck and subsequent environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023, has settled a class-action lawsuit. Norfolk Southern has agreed to pay out $600 million in the settlement, which will go to all involved in the lawsuit within a 20-mile radius of the wreck. “The agreement is designed to provide finality and flexibility for settlement class members,” the company explained. “Individuals and businesses will be able to use compensation from the settlement in any manner they see fit to address potential adverse impacts from the derailment.” The settlement does not mean Norfolk Southern is admitting any wrongdoing, as the Atlanta-based company is still facing a lawsuit from the Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency to finance the cleanup of the disaster.
- Red states sue Biden over student loan vote-bribe scheme: Thank goodness for Missouri. The Show-Me State has shown itself to be a leader in taking the legal fight to Joe Biden for his nakedly unconstitutional actions. First came Murthy v. Missouri, the First Amendment lawsuit against the Biden administration for its speech-suppressing collusion with Big Tech and the social media giants. And now comes a lawsuit by Missouri and six other Republican states, which are suing to block the administration’s latest scheme to transfer billions of dollars in student loan debt. As National Review reports: “The joint lawsuit, filed by Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey, targets President Joe Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment program, which will cost Americans $475 billion over the next ten years. This amount is $45 billion more than the price tag attached to the White House’s previous student-loan forgiveness plan that the Supreme Court struck down last June.” The language of the 62-page lawsuit assails Biden for trying to ram through a scheme that he could never get through Congress. “This latest attempt to sidestep the Constitution,” the suit reads, “is only the most recent instance in a long but troubling pattern of the President relying on innocuous language from decades-old statutes to impose drastic, costly policy changes on the American people without their consent.”
- New State Dept. DEI chief is a race hustler: Even as Americans increasingly reject the woke and inherently racist ideology of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” the Biden administration is effectively doubling down. A case in point is the State Department’s newly appointed diversity chief. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week named Zakiya Carr Johnson to the role, touting her as bringing “expertise and a fresh perspective on how we build a workforce that reflects America.” So, who is Carr Johnson? Well, she previously worked as Barack Obama’s first director of the Race, Ethnicity, and Social Inclusion Unit at the State Department. She has become infamous for her radical leftist views, including the claim that the U.S. is a “failed historical model” with a “colonizing past.” She calls for doing “the work of dismantling that traditional structure at every juncture.” Carr Johnson identifies as a feminist and champion of critical race theory who demands “intersectionality in all spaces.” She coauthored a Fair Share guide titled “Feminist Leaders for Feminist Goals,” which argues: “Feminist leadership must change power structures. In order to achieve transformative change, we must analyze and question existing power structures and how they affect decision-making. How can we redefine, value, use, share and distribute power differently?” In short, Carr Johnson is little other than a feminist race hustler with an alarming level of disdain for America.
Headlines
- Consumer prices rose 3.5% from a year ago in March, more than expected (CNBC)
- Florida woman sentenced to a month in prison for theft of Ashley Biden’s diary (ABC News)
- House delays sending Mayorkas impeachment to Senate (Roll Call)
- U.S. funneled nearly $1 million to Hamas-linked charity that hosted terror leader’s son (Washington Free Beacon)
- EPA imposes first national limits on “forever chemicals” in drinking water (NBC News)
- Salon goes full Jussie Smollett, blames men punching women in the streets on Trump supporters (Not the Bee)
- Spaced out: Sheila Jackson Lee tells Texas students “planet” moon is “made up of mostly of gases” (Fox News)
- Scottish police overwhelmed by 8,000 reports of “hate crime” in first week of new law (Not the Bee)
- Humor: Biden announces student loan forgiveness to help people afford all his taxes and inflation (Babylon Bee)
For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.
Oregon’s Death Sentence of No Boundaries
The Beaver State reinstated the criminalization of hard drug use when the reality of its soft policy started hitting home with voters.
Emmy Griffin
Taking away the stigma and the illegality of hard-core drug use wasn’t ever going to solve the problem, and yet the state of Oregon had to find this out the hard way.
In a futile attempt to be empathetic and help addicts get clean, Oregon passed legislation known as Measure 110 in 2020. This action decriminalized hard drug use (i.e., heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl, etc.). It had the support of 85% of Oregon voters. Under this legislation, offenders caught using hard drugs would, at worst, face a $100 fine, though they wouldn’t even have to pay the fine if they called the hotline number given to them by the police officer who issued the ticket.
According to a Wall Street Journal report in November, “Some 6,000 tickets have been issued for drug possession since decriminalization went into effect in 2021, but just 92 people have called and completed assessments needed to connect them to services, according to the nonprofit that operates the helpline.” That’s a success rate of 1.5% for addicts getting help to get clean — an absolute failure.
You can see the leftist logic behind Measure 110: Take away the stigma of doing drugs, and people won’t use and abuse them as much. Also, taking away any serious legal impediments (fines, incarceration, or involuntary enrollment in rehab) for using hard drugs will reduce the recidivism rate and also provide addicts with an opportunity to get clean via the hotline on their tickets.
But the logic is a total misunderstanding of human nature, and reality soon reared its ugly head.
Instead of a reduction, Oregon saw a spike in drug use of all kinds. And along with that increased drug use came a visceral and clear decay in communities. Addicts were strewn across sidewalks along with feces and needles. Homelessness and overdose-related deaths skyrocketed. In fact, one could say that legalizing hard drug use was a death sentence for addicts. Not only was the legal deterrent taken away, but drugs became both easier to access and increasingly harder and more deadly. This is a far cry from the humanitarian vision behind the ill-conceived Measure 110. By 2023, Oregon voters were clamoring to reverse the measure and reinstate law and order when it came to hard drug use.
Ironically, Governor Tina Kotek signed legislation reversing Measure 110 on April Fools’ Day. The leftists who aren’t having to deal with the day-to-day devastation that the defunct measure had wrought on the state are irate that Oregon is returning to law and order. The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union encouraged constituents to contact their state lawmakers while calling the reversal of Measure 110 a “return to the failed racist and classist tactics of the war on drugs that wasted billions of tax dollars criminalizing drug addiction, especially amongst Black, brown, and low-income people.” The ACLU chapter also asserted that reverting to the previous law-and-order strategy is more expensive.
This claim is particularly insidious when you look at the numbers. Remember, the success rate of the citation strategy was just 1.5%. Ergo, the leftists who share the ACLU’s opinion would rather see the destruction of communities and families continue. They would rather addicts continue to ruin their lives or even die via overdose because to do otherwise would be racist and expensive. This seems like a human-last perspective.
There isn’t a perfect solution to curbing drug abuse and addiction and all the subsequent consequences that go along with those life choices. Even in reversing Measure 110, legislators like State Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp conceded: “HB 4002 [which reversed Measure 110] is not a perfect solution; legislators will undoubtedly have much more work to do in upcoming sessions. But it sets a standard for how the state should approach the drug addiction crisis: by empowering law enforcement and our behavioral health systems to work together to help Oregonians struggling with chronic addiction seek life-saving treatment.”
Having boundaries via laws and law enforcement stands a better chance of reducing the problem than the anarchy of so-called freedom. Giving addicts the freedom to use and abuse drugs with impunity is giving them over to the enslavement of addiction.
Oregon voters have had an up-close and personal view of this contrast. The social experiment of legalizing hard drug use made the problem worse and killed more people. Residents have found they prefer law and order, as well as giving addicts a more firm hand in getting clean.
‘White Rural Rage’ Gets It All Wrong
A new book by a pair of agenda-driven leftists is being roundly criticized from the Left for its shoddy research and intellectual dishonesty.
Douglas Andrews
A salacious title in search of facts. That’s the damning assessment of White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, a new book from a couple of agenda-driven leftists who, it turns out, are sounding a false and defamatory alarm about certain of their fellow Americans.
But that harsh critique isn’t coming from some indignant right-winger like yours truly. Instead, it comes from an ostensible friend, an assistant professor of government at Colby College named Nicholas Jacobs.
“White Rural Rage misuses data to villainize rural Americans as the greatest threat to American democracy,” writes Jacobs. “The real threat is that poorly supported and damaging stereotypes will drive a deeper wedge between rural and urban America.”
That’s no way to launch a book, is it — by drawing fire from one’s own fellow travelers?
Alas, what its authors, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, had hoped would be a bestselling book about the looming threat of rural, racist, and violent pro-Trump voters has instead been roundly criticized by many of the same academics whom it cited in its “findings,” which take liberties with the truth in order to paint rural Americans with a broad and generalized brush. Here’s how the book pitches itself:
Schaller and Waldman show how vulnerable U.S. democracy has become to rural Whites who, despite legitimate grievances, are increasingly inclined to hold racist and xenophobic beliefs, to believe in conspiracy theories, to accept violence as a legitimate course of political action, and to exhibit antidemocratic tendencies. Rural White Americans’ attitude might best be described as “I love my country, but not our country,” Schaller and Waldman argue. This phenomenon is the patriot paradox of rural America: The citizens who take such pride in their patriotism are also the least likely to defend core American principles. And by stoking rural Whites’ anger rather than addressing the hard problems they face, conservative politicians and talking heads create a feedback loop of resentments that are undermining American democracy.
Given this thesis, it’s no wonder that some fair-minded academics have taken issue with the book. Typical of the blowback was this assessment from Bates College assistant professor Tyler Austin Harper in an Atlantic op-ed: “In the weeks since its publication, a trio of reviews by political scientists have accused Schaller and Waldman of committing what amounts to academic malpractice, alleging that the authors used shoddy methodologies, misinterpreted data, and distorted studies to substantiate their allegations about white rural Americans. I spoke with more than 20 scholars in the tight-knit rural-studies community, most of them cited in White Rural Rage or thanked in the acknowledgments, and they left me convinced that the book is poorly researched and intellectually dishonest.”
When your leftist tome is being denounced by the Left as “poorly researched and intellectually dishonest,” you’ve pretty much hit rock bottom.
Want more? Here’s University of South Carolina assistant professor Kristen Luna Trujillo, who took to Newsweek to criticize the duo’s disparagement of “rural Americans for their anti-intellectualism, building on tired tropes of rural people being backward, dumb, violent, and ignorant, while pushing a narrative that worsens such distrust in the first place.”
Ouch. It’s almost as if these friendly-fire critics remember their history and aren’t inclined to give Donald Trump any new bulletin board material. It’s as if they realize that “White Rural Rage” could become the latest iteration of the Democrats’ election-year insults. As our Nate Jackson wrote recently: “In 2008, it was Barack Obama mocking those who are ‘bitterly clinging to guns and religion.’ In 2016, Hillary Clinton scornfully derided ‘the basket of deplorables’ — supporters of Donald Trump, whom she said are ‘racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.’ Only last fall, Hillary declared that half the country needs ‘a formal deprogramming.’”
“This shoddy analysis and faux expertise does real damage,” Jacobs writes, calling into question the very purpose of the book. “It is clear that the overwhelming portrayal of rural America as angry and irrational feeds into and amplifies the divisions between rural and urban Americans, overshadowing the shared challenges and aspirations that cut across these geographic lines.”
Not content with his own broadside, though, Jacobs joined another academic, Utah State’s B. Kal Munis, to fire off a few more rounds in a Reason op-ed: “At a time when trust in experts is on the decline throughout America,” they write, “flawed analysis like the ideas in White Rural Rage may be a greater threat to American democracy than anything coming from the countryside. It is popular these days to say ‘follow the science.’ Well, the science shows that there is no mystery to rural rage: Years of neglect, abandonment, and scorn have driven rural America to view ‘experts’ like Schaller and Waldman as the enemy.”
More than that, though, these rural Americans have come to realize that they have far more in common with the 77-year-old New York City billionaire — the guy whom Schaller and Waldman derisively call “The Unlikely King of Rural America” — than they do with the sneering and bigoted leftist elites of academia and the media.
U.S. Sovereignty: Back to Basics
Even uninvited guests should be well treated — but they don’t get to run the place. We’ll decide what’s for dinner.
Jack DeVine
Sometimes in life, when we’re stuck in a truly messy situation (even a self-created one), we have to go back to square one and rethink the whole problem.
I believe that’s exactly where we are with the illegal immigration nightmare. Fixing it goes far beyond building a wall or even changing presidents; we must begin thinking clearly and acting together to deal with it.
Here’s my take on the simple realities of illegal immigration:
1.) There is no more precious gift than American citizenship. It’s priceless, and nothing remotely like it is available anywhere else in today’s world. We don’t give it away. And we surely don’t allow anyone who wants it to just waltz in and take it.
2.) Effective control of our 2,000-mile southern border is impossible without physical barriers, electronic surveillance, manned points of entry, and adequate security forces. Unauthorized (illegal) entry has been going on for some time and will continue unabated until we regain full control of that border.
3.) We must know who is living in our country, and we must know which ones are not U.S. citizens. We now have in our midst millions of unknown new residents from places far and wide in a dangerous world. No doubt, many are basically good people, but just as surely, there are some who pose a significant threat to U.S. safety and security. We must act accordingly.
4.) The noncitizens among us are our guests. Guests do not vote. We are a hospitable lot, and we treat our guests well — but even the invited ones don’t get to decide what’s for dinner. All guests, invited or not, must follow our laws; failing to do so, they should be prosecuted and/or deported.
5.) We allow our country to be a safe haven for those legitimately seeking asylum from religious or political persecution — but we must do so only in a strictly controlled way, fairly and promptly adjudicated. Our current asylum regulations and processes are untenably burdensome. The system requires revamping on an urgent basis.
6.) U.S. policy, law, and regulations regarding immigration are not optional. We cannot allow states or cities that declare themselves “sanctuaries” or U.S. tax-protected non-governmental organizations that actively encourage and support illegal migration to actively undermine national safety and security measures. At a minimum, entities that do so should be denied all federal tax or other financial benefits. Even better, Congress should act to prohibit such actions.
7.) Historically, enemies of our nation were primarily hostile nations. No more. Terrorist organizations like ISIS and Hamas, as well as international criminal enterprises such as Mexican drug cartels, pose a growing threat to U.S. security. Our government must adopt policies that enable U.S. security armed forces to counter and disable them, with proper authorization, even on foreign lands.
8.) And it goes without saying that anything we do to throttle back on illegal immigration is wheel-spinning without companion steps to update and streamline our legal immigration policies and practices.
That leaves us with the remaining huge political and practical long-term policy issue: how to deal with the 10 million or more illegal migrants already here, along with those who will continue to arrive until we are able to fully seal our borders. In my view, our action must take into account our nation’s complicity in their presence. No, we did not actually invite them in, but for the past three years we left the door open and the lights on, and we demonstrated day in and day out that not only would we allow them to enter, but we would even help them to settle here.
While we should not allow that very flawed policy to reward illegal entry, I think that a balanced resolution could include the following elements:
- Mandated self-identification and registration within a reasonable, well-communicated time frame (months, not years). All who register within the established time frame and who are not otherwise unacceptable (e.g., with no record of serious criminal offenses) would be permitted to stay for an indefinite period. Others, when found, would be deported.
- Issuance of suitable ID and work authorization, perhaps a green card variant, and access to U.S. benefits. They would be responsible for paying taxes, for reimbursement over time of taxpayer funds made available to them upon entry, and for compliance with all U.S. laws.
- Those who satisfy those constraints for an extended period (10 years at least) would be eligible for a path to U.S. citizenship. Prior to that time, they would have no voting authorization at any level.
As contentious as such an approach would surely be, I don’t see a viable alternative. Neither presidential candidate has proposed even a remotely coherent plan to deal with the problem. Both seem focused primarily on whom to blame. Joe Biden has been blissfully casual about the entire situation for three years and was stirred to action only by gruesomely bad election season polling. Donald Trump has been on it from day one and now promises the most massive deportation program in history. That won’t ever fly, nor should it.
What is most critical right now is national unanimity about the nature, the dimensions, and the gravity of our illegal immigration problem. For once, can we transcend partisanship?
America Is Now in the Business of Losing Wars
The alternative to an America confident in its own moral role — and an America willing to stand with its allies — is a world of chaos.
Ben Shapiro
On Oct. 7, thousands of members of the terrorist group Hamas and its “civilian” friends broke through the barrier between the Gaza Strip and Israel and proceeded to torture, rape and slaughter at least 1,200 Israeli people. They burned their homes, killed their children in front of them and then kidnapped some 250 Israelis back to Gaza, where they planted themselves in terror tunnels built with foreign humanitarian funding over the course of two decades, just beneath civilian areas including hospitals and schools.
Israel responded by utilizing every measure at its disposal to kill Hamas members while maintaining civilian life. They warned civilians to leave war zones. They put soldiers on the ground to go door-to-door despite total air superiority. They facilitated the entry of hundreds of trucks filled with humanitarian aid every single day in order to try to stave off hunger and thirst.
Almost 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the Gaza Strip during the course of its six-month war. Over 100 hostages, including five Americans, remain in Hamas’ hold. Tens of thousands of Israelis have been removed from their homes in the south of Israel, as well as along the northern Lebanese border, where the Iranian proxy terror group Hezbollah prepares for a large-scale war involving hundreds of thousands of rockets. Terrorism in the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, has skyrocketed, with nearly daily murderous attacks by Hamas sympathizers, including members of the Palestinian Authority.
Despite all of this, Israel has achieved historic military wins: killing the top Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander in Lebanon and Syria; quieting the West Bank through targeted raids; extirpating Hamas control from most of the Gaza Strip, leaving only the city of Rafah with its four divisions of Hamas.
And the Biden administration has responded by calling on Israel to stop.
Not only that: the Biden administration has become the propaganda arm of Hamas. They have suggested that Israel has been indiscriminate in its war aims, too willing to kill civilians, willing even to stymie humanitarian assistance without reason. This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the astonishing statement that Israel was risking losing its reverence for human life — even as Israelis sacrifice their own lives in an attempt to rescue hostages and preserve civilians who largely support genocidal Jew-hatred. Blinken stated, “If we lose that reverence for human life, we risk becoming indistinguishable from those we confront.” He then added, “Right now, there is no higher priority in Gaza than protecting civilians, surging humanitarian assistance, and ensuring the security of those who provide it.”
Of course, there is a higher priority for Israel: victory.
But America is no longer interested in victory.
The pattern of every American war since the end of World War II has been simple: we jump to involve ourselves in military conflicts when we feel a surge of moral outrage at the evils of our enemies; we then begin to question ourselves when we see hideous pictures on our televisions; we then surrender or cut an ugly deal. That is the pattern in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. Sometimes, we simply abandon our allies without any sort of serious opposition, as with the Kurds or the people of Hong Kong.
Obviously, America ought not involve itself in foreign conflicts in which we are unwilling to stay the course. American interests dictate pragmatism. But we’ve gone far beyond that. Now we’re telling our allies that they can’t win victories in conflicts in which they are willing to stay the course and in which they can win.
We will actively step in to prevent victory.
And so our enemies grow stronger. They have no such Hamlet-like moral qualms. They push where there is mush. Should Israel accede to America’s request to leave Hamas in place in Rafah, Hezbollah will challenge Israel in the north; Iranian proxies will challenge Israel in the West Bank; Iran will up the ante in Yemen and the Red Sea. Israel and Saudi Arabia will be forced to search for new allies and new weapons. The world will significantly become more dangerous.
It turns out that the alternative to an America confident in its own moral role — and an America willing to stand with its allies — is a world of chaos. We are now living in that world. And things will get much, much worse before the end of this era of moral vacillation and cowardice in the face of evil.
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VIDEOS
- The Eclipse: ‘An Emotional Event’ — Watch a roundup of stunning moments from the people watching the eclipse, and the eclipse itself.
- Leftmedia Reacts to NAIA Protecting Women’s Sports — A woke “non-binary” ESPN writer cries to CNN over the NAIA banning “transgender” athletes in women’s sports.
- Menthol Cigarette Ban Delayed — The Biden administration has delayed a ban on menthol cigarettes over fear of losing black support ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
- Sage Steele Reveals Backstory on Scripted ESPN Biden Interview — She explains how ESPN instructed her not to ask follow-ups and call Jill Biden “doctor,” as well as how major news networks control the narrative.
- America Must Be Colorblind — Should we judge people by the color of their skin or by their actions? The answer to this question was once obvious. Not anymore.
- The End of Freelance? — Biden’s Labor Department just imposed 300 pages of new rules. They say it will help freelancers. Apparently, the leftists didn’t notice how similar rules in California hurt freelancers.
BEST OF RIGHT OPINION
- SALENA ZITODemocrats Should Be Jittery About Pennsylvania Voter Registration Trends
- STAR PARKERAmericans Are Not Seeking Out Middle Ground
- BYRON YORKThe Reality of Migrant Crime
- JOHN STOSSELA Ban on Freelance Work
- GARY BAUERGarland’s Contempt
For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.
SHORT CUTS
The BIG Lies
“I, like an awful lot of people in this audience, was the first in my family to go to college.” —Joe Biden (“One of the reasons we know it’s a lie is because Biden has bragged several times in the past about how his grandfather played college football.” —Greg Price)
“People say to me … ‘How about all those hardworking people who grew up and had no opportunity to go to college?’ I get it. That’s the neighborhood I come from.” —Joe Biden
Demagoguery
“My predecessor and his MAGA friends … want to ‘terminate’ the Affordable Care Act. … Well, guess what? Killing millions of Americans — taking them off of healthcare insurance and stripping others of services like homecare.” —Joe Biden
Can’t Fix Stupid
“What you will see today will be the closest distance that the moon has ever been in the last 20 years, which means that’s why they will shut the light down, because they will be close to the Earth.” —Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)
“[The moon] is made up mostly of gases. … Why or how could we as humans live on the moon? Are the gases such that we could do that?” —Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee
“I want to be first in line to know how to live and to be able to survive on the moon. That’s another planet which we’re going to see shortly.” —Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee
“Who benefits from Donald Trump? Putin. There is, in my view, a connection there.” —Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
“The issue about a woman’s right to choose, it’s a democracy issue. This is about freedom — freedom of women to make their decision, families to make their decisions. So, when — what’s his name — said what he said [about abortion], he either is stupid or he thinks the rest of us are stupid.” —Rep. Nancy Pelosi
“[Mike] Pence, Lindsay Graham, and [Donald] Trump are fighting to see who could make women’s lives more miserable. That’s like what they’re really fighting for. ‘How can we really destroy women in this country?’ That’s it.” —”The View” co-host Joy Behar
Re: The Left
“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?” —Nate Jackson
“The fundamental problem with many of today’s Democrats is their embrace of radical leftist ideology. … 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.” —Thomas Gallatin
Shot/Chaser
“I anticipate inflation will continue the remarkable progress that it’s made.” —National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard
“If food and common household items are costing 36 to 50 percent more than they did five years ago, people are going to be angry about the state of the economy. Everybody’s got to eat.” —Jim Geraghty
Green Is the New Red
“Over the past two decades, the renewable energy lobby has collected more than one-quarter trillion dollars in subsidies — payments that we’ve been assured over and over would be temporary. The argument for these grants, loans, tax abatements and other sweetheart kisses is that these were ‘infant industries’ in need of a Head Start program for CEOs. Except these companies have never even reached puberty after all these years. … It’s just a reminder that a lot of people are getting really, really rich off climate change hysteria. The ‘green’ in green energy doesn’t stand for a cleaner environment. It stands for the color of money. Yours and mine.” —Stephen Moore
Insight
“What is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.” —Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
TODAY’S MEME
For more of today’s memes, visit the Memesters Union.
TODAY’S CARTOON
For more of today’s cartoons, visit the Cartoons archive.
“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”.
Biden Criticizes Netanyahu’s Handling of Gaza War, Knesset Member Warns Ceasefire Push a ‘Suicide Pact’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Tuesday that Israel will invade Rafah, despite international objections. Many in Israel believe the nation’s future depends on what happens with the remaining Hamas battalions in Gaza.
Biden’s DOJ Sentence Aimee Harris to Prison for Allegedly Stealing Ashley Biden’s Diary that Revealed Old Joe’s Perverted Acts | The Gateway Pundit
Aimee Harris, 41, was sentenced by Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) to prison, followed by a period of home confinement for her role in the alleged theft and distribution of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden.
As previously reported by The Gateway Pundit, Ashley Biden, Joe Biden’s youngest daughter, left her diary under a mattress at the Palm Beach rehab home following a stay at a treatment facility. Two individuals who found Ashley Biden’s diary at a halfway house later sold the diary to James O’Keefe and Project Veritas.
In a January 2019 entry, Ashley Biden recalled how she used to shower with her father, Joe Biden, and suggested it may have contributed to a sex addiction.
The diary describes Ashley and her father, Joe Biden, taking showers together at an inappropriate age.
“I have always been boy crazy,’ Ashley wrote. ‘Hyper-sexualized @ a young age … I remember somewhat being sexualized with [a family member]; I remember having sex with friends @ a young age; showers w/ my dad (probably not appropriate),’ she wrote in a January 2019 entry, according to the Daily Mail.
James O’Keefe was later the victim of a late-night FBI raid and was arrested by the Biden regime.
In 2022, Aimee Harris and co-defendant Robert Kurlanderwho, who found Ashley Biden’s diary at a halfway house, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property.
In an emotional court appearance, a remorseful Harris expressed regret over her actions, emphasizing her difficult personal circumstances, including surviving domestic abuse and sexual trauma, the New York Post reported.
Despite Harris’s personal plea and her defense attorney’s appeal for leniency based on her traumatic past and responsibilities as a mother, the prosecution highlighted Harris’s pattern of disrespect for the law.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman claimed that Harris’s actions were not only unlawful but were intended to harm the Biden family and influence the political landscape.
Chief US District Judge Laura Taylor Swain described the act of selling the diary as “despicable,” highlighting the privacy invasion and the potential political motivations behind the sale.
Harris was ordered to serve a one-month prison sentence, pay a $20,000 fine, and undergo three years of probation.
Harris is set to begin serving her prison term in July, while Kurlander’s sentencing is pending.
The post Biden’s DOJ Sentence Aimee Harris to Prison for Allegedly Stealing Ashley Biden’s Diary that Revealed Old Joe’s Perverted Acts appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
‘We Will Eliminate Hamas, including in Rafah’ | CBN NewsWatch – April 10, 2024
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will complete the elimination of the last Hamas battalions, including in their last stronghold in Rafah, saying “there is no force in the world that will stop us,” as members of Israel’s coalition government warn their country’s existence is at stake if Hamas isn’t destroyed, even as President Biden again criticizes Netanyahu for his handling of the war and calls for a ceasefire, and hostage families hope for a deal that would mean the release of the captives; Iran again promises to retaliate against Israel for the strike against their consulate in Syria, but analysts warn the bigger threat from Iran is its nuclear program, which it is hiding from the world; Arizona Supreme Court upholds a near-total ban on abortion from 1864, while some pro-life leaders criticize former President Donald Trump for his position on abortion; CBN’s Studio 5 talks Noah and Nicole Stratton about the new stage production of “Prince Caspian” from the Chronicles of Narnia at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC; and hundreds of college students baptized at the “Unite Georgia” evangelistic outreach.
CBN News. Because Truth Matters™
Source: ‘We Will Eliminate Hamas, including in Rafah’ | CBN NewsWatch – April 10, 2024
Sen. Rand Paul: 15 Federal Agencies Knew in 2018 that Wuhan Lab Was Trying to Create COVID 19 – NOT ONE PERSON Came Forward and Spoke the Truth to the American Public | The Gateway Pundit
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), a US Senator and Doctor of Ophthalmology, released a stunning report on Tuesday where he discovered that 15 different federal agencies knew that the Wuhan laboratory in China was trying to create a COVID-19 virus and they knew this since 2018.
Not one single official or employee in these 15 agencies revealed the truth to the American public during the pandemic. They should all be fired.
In 2019 the virus escaped from the Wuhan laboratory at the same time US President Donald Trump had crippled the Chinese economy with his economic policies. The rest is history.
Dr. Tony Fauci, who funded the Wuhan laboratory for some reason, repeatedly lied to the American public about the origins of the virus.
As The Gateway Pundit reported back in May 2023, Fauci gave a $1.88 million grant and $16.5 million in NIH funding to a British scientist in January 2020 if he kept his mouth shut about the origins of the COVID-19 virus.
On January 31, 2020, Danish-born and British-educated scientist Kristian Andersen, emailed Dr. Tony Fauci saying the virus looks lab-made.
Kristian Anderson, “Some of the features look engineered” and the “genome looks inconsistent with evolutionary theory.”
Then on February 4, 2020, after a call with Dr. Tony Fauci, British scientist Kristian Anderson wrote that the lab leak theory was a conspiracy theory.
Kristian Anderson, “The main crackpot theories going around at the moment related to this virus being somehow engineered… and that is demonstrably false.”
So what happened between January 31, 2020 and February 4, 2020?
Dr. Tony Fauci called Dr. Kristian Anderson and ordered him to publicly say the COVID virus was NOT lab-made.
The New York Times reported on Anderson’s early email to Dr. Fauci in an article published in June 2021.
Over the past year, Dr. Andersen has been one of the most outspoken proponents of the theory that the coronavirus originated from a natural spillover from an animal to humans outside of a lab. But in the email to Dr. Fauci in January 2020, Dr. Andersen hadn’t yet come to that conclusion. He told Dr. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, that some features of the virus made him wonder whether it had been engineered, and noted that he and his colleagues were planning to investigate further by analyzing the virus’s genome.
The researchers published those results in a paper in the scientific journal Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, concluding that a laboratory origin was very unlikely. Dr. Andersen has reiterated this point of view in interviews and on Twitter over the past year, putting him at the center of the continuing controversy over whether the virus could have leaked from a Chinese lab.
When his early email to Dr. Fauci was released, the media storm around Dr. Andersen intensified, and he deactivated his Twitter account. He answered written questions from The New York Times about the email and the fracas. The exchange has been lightly edited for length.
Dr. Anderson switched his story in 4 days after his call with Tony Fauci.
But, The New York Times conveniently omitted that after his call with Dr. Fauci on February 1, 2020, Dr. Anderson was given a $1.88 million grant and $16.5 million in funding from NIAID, Dr. Fauci’s personal piggy bank.
Dr. Andrew Huff testified to this fact back in 2022. He released this information in a legal report he signed created by the Renz Law Group.
Dr. Andrew Huff reported that Dr. Anderson’s funding at the Scripps Research Institute increased from $393,079 per month, to $800,139 per month after he backed down on the COVID lab-leak theory.
(page 56)
Scientists later discovered the first victims of the COVID 19 pandemic were researchers from the Fauci-funded Wuhan lab.
And it was also discovered that a Fauci-run Montana laboratory conducted experiments with the Wuhan Coronavirus strain over a year before the global outbreak.
Now we learn from Senator Rand Paul that 15 different federal agencies knew in 2018 that the Wuhan laboratory was trying to create a coronavirus strain like COVID-19. Not one person had the guts to step forward and tell the truth to the American public.
And we all know it is likely that they will never be indicted or punished.
Via FOX News.
How vast was the Great COVID Cover-up? Well, my investigation has recently discovered government officials from 15 federal agencies knew in 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to create a coronavirus like COVID-19.
These officials knew that the Chinese lab was proposing to create a COVID 19-like virus and not one of these officials revealed this scheme to the public. In fact, 15 agencies with knowledge of this project have continuously refused to release any information concerning this alarming and dangerous research.
Government officials representing at least 15 federal agencies were briefed on a project proposed by Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
This project, the DEFUSE project, proposed to insert a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus to create a novel chimeric virus that would have been shockingly similar to the COVID-19 virus.
For years, I have been fighting to obtain records from dozens of federal agencies relating to the origins of COVID-19 and the DEFUSE project. Under duress, the administration finally released documents that show that the DEFUSE project was pitched to at least 15 agencies in January 2018.
What does this mean?
It means that at least 15 federal agencies knew from the beginning of the pandemic that EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology were seeking federal funding in 2018 to create a virus genetically very similar if not identical to COVID-19.
The post Sen. Rand Paul: 15 Federal Agencies Knew in 2018 that Wuhan Lab Was Trying to Create COVID 19 – NOT ONE PERSON Came Forward and Spoke the Truth to the American Public appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Senior editor at NPR explains “how we lost America’s trust” | WINTERY KNIGHT
Several people mentioned an article published at Free Press to me. The senior editor writes: “By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent [of NPR listeners] described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal.” And then he explains how it happened. Let’s take a look.
First thing, is that they reported on the Trump-Russia collusion story, and then when it was revealed that there was no collusion, and it was all just based on opposition research funded by Democrats, NPR forgot all about the story:
Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.
Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.
Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.
But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.
People noticed how NPR handled that story. And they didn’t do a good job of reporting how the fake Trump-Russia dossier came into being, and was used to get the surveillance warrant. People reasonably thought “listening to NPR is just listening to lies”.
More:
What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.
Here’s my 2020 post about Trump-Russia collusion, which was better than anything that NPR wrote about it. I remember when you couldn’t even say these things, because the big social media companies, who were being guided by NPR misinformation, would ban your account.
He has another example:
In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here’s how NPR’s managing editor for news at the time explained the thinking: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.
The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.
When the essential facts of the Post’s reporting were confirmed and the emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we didn’t make the hard choice of transparency.
Here’s my 2022 post on the Hunter Biden laptop, which is, again, better than anything NPR wrote about it. If you told the truth about the laptop, then the social media companies who were influenced by NPR misinformation would ban your account.
And, like most of the Facebook-approved “fact checkers”, NPR opposed the lab-leak theory of COVID:
Politics also intruded into NPR’s Covid coverage, most notably in reporting on the origin of the pandemic. One of the most dismal aspects of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological story lines. For example, there was Team Natural Origin—supporting the hypothesis that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan, China. And on the other side, Team Lab Leak, leaning into the idea that the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab.
The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately, dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory. Anthony Fauci and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.
But that wasn’t the case.
My 2023 article on the lab leak theory was much better than anything NPR has ever done on it. But again, because big tech was relying on NPR misinformation, you would get banned on social media, if you told the truth about these things.
I think every conservative is conservative in part because they realize how they’ve been lied to by the secular left, and found out the truth later on their own. Whether it’s the origin of life in a “prebiotic soup”, the “static” fossil record, the “eternal universe”, global cooling / warming, etc., conservatives have learned not to trust the wordsmiths. We know that journalists are typically stupid people who don’t know anything about evidence-based subjects like science, math, or economics. They just believe what they want to believe – whatever will give them the largest epistemic distance from God, and accountability to God as moral lawgiver.
American Transition To Idiocracy Running Ahead Of Schedule | Babylon Bee
U.S. — Lawmakers and powerbrokers across the United States were proud to announce that America’s transition to being an idiocracy is currently running far ahead of schedule.
The shift has been in progress for several decades but has made significant advancements in recent years, with many members of Congress now fully on board and operating as key members of the country’s idiocratic government.
“We’ve become morons much more quickly than we anticipated,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Though it initially seemed like an impossible feat, our hard work to turn the United States into a nation governed by total imbeciles is nearly complete. We’ve succeeded in weeding out the country’s best and brightest and replaced them with drooling dolts. There’s now light at the end of the tunnel. The dream of a nation run entirely by idiots is within reach.”
Proponents of the transition to idiocracy cited the recent statements made by Texas Congresswoman Sheils Jackson Lee regarding the moon and sun as clear evidence the plan is ahead of schedule. Jackson Lee offered a brief comment on the incident. “What I said is correct,” she explained. “Once you realize that cars are made of cheese and rain is actually falling tears from crying birds, everything else makes sense.”
At publishing time, Jackson Lee proposed a plan for NASA to launch a mission to colonize the sun.
https://babylonbee.com/news/american-transition-to-idiocracy-running-ahead-of-schedule
Donald Trump on abortion and the Vatican on “gender-affirming surgery” | Denison Forum
On the same day Donald Trump said abortion restrictions should be left to the states, the Vatican released a twenty-page document reaffirming its opposition to surrogate parenthood, “gender theory,” and what the media euphemistically calls “gender-affirming surgery.” It also restated its opposition to abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty.
Meanwhile, a growing chorus is demanding that Israel declare a ceasefire in its war with Hamas and condemning the way the IDF has conducted its offensive in Gaza. This despite the fact that, as the Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker reports, critics are “demanding that a democratic country conduct war to standards that have never been met by any belligerent in history—and could never be met.” He asks: “If the Jewish state can be bullied into letting Hamas survive, how can any free nation defend itself?”
In related news, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokesperson captured by Israeli forces in Gaza has admitted that Islamic Jihad and Hamas use hospitals in the enclave, employ ambulances to move their soldiers around in the Strip, and manipulate international media for propaganda purposes. An IDF spokesperson noted: “Hamas uses the world media as their Iron Dome to prevent Israel from fulfilling our goals by manipulating [the] minds of decent people.”
What narrative connects these stories?
A “second American revolution”
C. Bradley Thompson, a political science professor at Clemson, published a brilliant blog yesterday in which he references Thomas Jefferson’s belief that the election of 1800 was a “second American revolution.”
Thompson explains that the first American revolution in 1776 articulated a new social order that would “democratize American culture” by elevating the equality of all Americans. But it was the second revolution electing Jefferson and his Republican Party to power that brought this philosophy into practice.
In Jefferson’s view, his election rejected the principles and policies of monarchy and aristocracy for a philosophy that, as Thompson writes, “believed in man’s ability to govern himself largely without government. Ultimately, it was a philosophy about how men should live.”
Jefferson articulated this philosophy most famously in his declaration that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator” with the “unalienable rights” to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Such convictions were absolutely indispensable to the democracy they birthed.
Jefferson and the other Founders knew that self-government requires the ability of citizens to govern themselves. No amount of laws and law enforcement can fully restrain the sinful impulses of sinful people. Only when we see each other as “created equal” and confer the same unalienable rights to others that we seek for ourselves can a consensual democracy flourish.
“Measures to avoid needless civilian harm”
That was then, this is now.
Today’s consumeristic culture commodifies, objectifies, and dehumanizes people as a means to our ends. From aborting the preborn to euthanizing the infirm, we ignore Jefferson’s “unalienable rights” to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness except when we claim them for ourselves.
This is a worldview more in keeping with Hamas than with Israel. The former, like the Nazis before them, dehumanize the Jews to justify raping, beheading, and murdering them while weaponizing the media as a means to their jihadist agenda. The latter, in defending itself from this onslaught, has “taken more measures to avoid needless civilian harm than virtually any other nation that’s fought an urban war,” according to a West Point urban warfare professor.
But even Israel’s embrace of the sanctity of life, rooted in the Hebrew Bible (cf. Genesis 1:27), requires a transformative power beyond human capacity.
It is fallen human nature to be our own gods (Genesis 3:5) pursuing our own ends (v. 6). It is therefore unsurprising that participants in democracy would inevitably commodify and objectify their fellow citizens, leading ultimately to the demise of civil society.
“No democracy can exist unless . . .”
Here we see again the urgency of our week-long emphasis on spiritual transformation.
I agree with historians who believe the First Great Awakening preceding the Revolutionary War fueled our national move toward civil liberty and democracy. And I agree with those who note that the Second Great Awakening following the Revolutionary War not only caused church membership to soar but helped create social networks that accelerated moral, educational, and racial reforms across the new country.
Only a holy God can make holy an unholy people. He does this by the sanctifying power of his Holy Spirit in every heart fully yielded to him (Ephesians 5:18). Absent such transformation, Christians are no more able to value the “unalienable rights” of others than anyone else. But if you and I begin each day by submitting that day to God as our King and inviting his Spirit to empower and use us, we become the salt and light our broken nation needs so desperately.
Aristotle was right: “No democracy can exist unless each of its citizens is as capable of outrage at injustice to another as he is of outrage at injustice to himself.” Conversely, the great philosopher noted:
“A person’s life persuades better than his word.”
How persuasive will your life be today?
Wednesday news to know:
- Hamas, Israel remain far apart on Gaza cease-fire deal
- What to do if your eyes hurt after the eclipse and how to spot damage
- Arizona Supreme Court rules a near-total abortion ban from 1864 is enforceable
- King Charles has charming reaction to first bank notes featuring his face
- On this day in 1912: the Titanic sets sail from England, bound for New York
Quote for the day:
“The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.” —C. S. Lewis.
The post Donald Trump on abortion and the Vatican on “gender-affirming surgery” appeared first on Denison Forum.
MUST SEE: FOX News Reporter Jacqui Heinrich Nails Karine Jean Pierre on Biden Administration’s Complete Lack of Morals – Ignoring Dearborn Islamists While Calling Republicans Murderers (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit
FOX News reporter Jacqui Heinrich exposed the Biden Administration’s complete absence of moral clarity at the latest White House press briefing.
Jacqui Heinrich asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to explain why they were not condemning the anti-American chants by Dearborn Islamists but instead were calling Republicans “murderers” for opposing the failures and climbing costs of Obamacare.
Curtis Houck, the Managing Editor of Newsbusters, posted the transcript of this questioning in a thread on Twitter-X.
Here is the transcript of the exchange:
Jacqui Heinrich: “A couple days ago in Deaborn, there were protesters chanting, ‘Death to America!’ and, ‘Death to Israel!’ Does the President condemn that?”
Karine Jean Pierre (KJP): “Yes.”
Heinrich: “Is the President at all concerned that Dearborn is becoming – is facing a risk of becoming a hotbed of any sort of homegrown threats?”
KJP: “I don’t have any intelligence to share with you on that. Obviously, that’s something that we’re always very vigilant about, but don’t have any national intelligence to share with you.”
Heinrich: “And then…”
KJP: “But, obviously, we will condemn any – any of violent rhetoric…”
Heinrich: “…Would we be seeing a statement?”
KJP: “…Which …which we have been very, I mean, you’re hearing from me, right? You’re asking me a question. I’m answering it and we’ve been very vigilant about… or very consistent about denouncing that type of that type of rhetoric.”
JACQUI TIME: : “A couple days ago in Deaborn, there were protesters chanting, ‘death to America’ and ‘death to Israel.’ Does the President condemn that?”
KJP: “Yes.”
.@JacquiHeinrich: “Is the President at all concerned that Dearborn is becoming – is facing a risk of becoming a… pic.twitter.com/WX2XYeWtzB
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 9, 2024
Heinrich: “Should we see a – should we expect a statement from the President on that? It was a pretty significant display.”
KJP: “I mean, you’re hearing from me. I think that’s important. The other part, too, that I do want to be very clear about – you know, peaceful protest is something that the President has also been very, very clear that is important for – to give folks space to peacefully protest, but any type of violent rhetoric, we are going to denounce.”
.@JacquiHeinrich: “Should we see a – should we expect a statement from the President on that? It was a pretty significant display.”
KJP: “I mean, you’re hearing from me. I think that’s important. The other part, too, that I do want to be very clear about – you know, peaceful… pic.twitter.com/cVk7prsRjb
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 9, 2024
After setting up KDP, Jacqui Heinrich then goes for the kill shot.
Heinrich: “And then, on some of the comments he made today, did – did the President mean to, essentially accuse Republicans of – of murder? I mean, the – the language that he was using to describe opposition to the Affordable Care Act – the quote was, um, ‘They want to terminate the Affordable Care Act. Terminate will – guess what – kill millions of Americans.’ Does he think that Republicans are trying to kill Americans?”
KJP: “I think you’re – I think you’re taking the most extreme – extreme definition or extreme evaluation of what the President said. Here’s the reality. The Affordable Care Act, which obviously started in the Obama-Biden administration, the President expanded on that, making sure that people have affordable health care that saves lives. It does. It is important.”
Heinrich: “[Inaudible] use other language, though? It – it’s a stronger than usual…”
KJP: “But you’re taking what he said to the most extreme part of – of your definition or your realization.”
Heinrich: “Well, he said it.”
KJP: “I know, but let’s be – let’s be really clear.”
Heinrich: “…He – he said –”
KJP: “Let’s…”
Heinrich: “…harm and…”
KJP: “…Let’s be really clear. People having health care is important. It saves lives. It is important to have that.”
.@JacquiHeinrich: “And then, on some of the comments he made today, did – did the President mean to – essentially accuse Republicans of – of murder? I mean, the – the language that he was using to describe opposition to the Affordable Care Act – the quote was, um, ‘they want to… pic.twitter.com/fLFPJUCPSG
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 9, 2024
The post MUST SEE: FOX News Reporter Jacqui Heinrich Nails Karine Jean Pierre on Biden Administration’s Complete Lack of Morals – Ignoring Dearborn Islamists While Calling Republicans Murderers (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Comer: Accountability for Biden Coming With or Without Impeachment | The Daily Signal
House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., says he is confident that President Joe Biden and his family will be held accountable for overseas business deals that add up to influence peddling.
“Impeachment is still on the table,” Comer said shortly after his remarks Tuesday at a government weaponization symposium at The Heritage Foundation, parent organization of The Daily Signal.
Congressional Republicans and other observers have been particularly concerned, because presidential son Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family have struck lucrative business deals in foreign nations such as China, Russia, and Ukraine.
But as a House impeachment of Biden seems less likely because of the razor-thin Republican majority, Comer said he is considering making criminal referrals to the Justice Department—and that Biden’s own law enforcement agency could be forced to take the referrals seriously.
“The main goal for me is to provide accountability, because they have done wrong,” Comer said in a brief interview with The Daily Signal about the Biden family’s influence-peddling scandal. “I think there will be accountability.”
“Because of our investigation, were it not for our investigation,” the Kentucky Republican added, “Hunter Biden would have gotten blanket immunity several months ago.”
Last year, the president’s son reached a plea agreement with the Justice Department. However, after a federal judge scrutinized the deal, it fell apart. Two federal grand juries later indicted the younger Biden on a gun charge and unrelated tax charges.
“We provided an infrastructure to ensure there is a chance of getting accountability in the Justice Department now, in the Merrick Garland Justice Department,” Comer said, referring to the attorney general appointed by Biden.
“With respect to the other crimes, I think there is going to be [accountability]–because of our investigation—an opportunity to have real accountability for the Bidens and the crimes that they’ve committed.”
During his remarks at the Weaponization of the U.S. Government Symposium held by Heritage’s Oversight Project, Comer also stressed that accountability is the next step but didn’t mention the House’s impeachment inquiry.
“Right now, we are going to try to figure out the best way to hold this family accountable,” Comer said at the symposium. “We’ve proven they were influence peddling. We’ve proven [the] many financial crimes they’ve committed. This was never an investigation of Hunter Biden. This was always an investigation of Joe Biden.”
Comer noted that three Biden family business associates—Tony Bobulinski, Jason Galanis, and Devon Archer—have said the business enterprises revolved around Joe Biden.
“What we’ve proven, three Biden associates testified under oath that Joe Biden was the central figure in the influence-peddling scheme,” he said.
Another goal of his oversight committee will be to pass legislation to discourage influence peddling by officeholders, the Kentucky Republican said. He compared Biden to Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who was recently indicted on corruption charges.
“I don’t think the American people approve of that. I don’t think they approve of our president or vice president being for sale,” Comer said. “We are going to try to figure out the best path forward. Then we are going to focus on, from my committee, how to pass legislation to keep the Bidens and the Menendezes from doing this again—because the law is pretty murky.”
Moreover, the House probe into the Biden family’s activities has expanded to include the actions of government agencies.
“What we’ve found in the Biden investigations is there were numerous government agencies that were investigating the Bidens—the Securities and Exchange Commission, FBI, the Department of Justice in several different jurisdictions, the IRS,” Comer said.
“Each time they were told to stand down. So in addition to the financial crimes that we’ve discovered, we found a massive government coverup in many different agencies.”
The post Comer: Accountability for Biden Coming With or Without Impeachment appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Replay – Pastor Joe Bell: Watching, Waiting, and World Affairs | Stand Up For The Truth Podcast
[Original airdate: 2/20/24] Mary Danielsen chats with Pastor Joe Bell of Calvary Chapel LaFayette Indiana about bible prophecy. Pastor Joe has faithfully hosted a Spring prophecy conference for many years and has helped many Midwesterners to watch and wait for Jesus; he teaches verse by verse weekly. We talk about his history in Indiana, the conference theme and details. Then we go on to some current headlines including technology, Bill Gates, climate change carbon hysteria, and much more.
Shameless plug for swag for our listeners/donors! https://www.redpillprints.com/stand-up-for-the-truth – Thanks for YOUR Support!
The post Replay – Pastor Joe Bell: Watching, Waiting, and World Affairs appeared first on Stand Up For The Truth Podcast.
TERRIFYING: The True Force Behind the ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ | The Daily Signal
The foreign policy establishment that once thrived under the control of both political parties has used Big Tech and the Biden administration to codify a “war on wrongthink” that stifles dissent from the elites’ narrative, a journalist and an online censorship analyst warned.
“What we’re up against here are not pink-haired, ambi-gendered LGBT-BLM-maximizing identitarian politics when we’re talking about censorship on the internet,” Michael Benz, a former State Department official under President Donald Trump and founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, said Tuesday at an Oversight Project event at The Heritage Foundation.
It’s not “partisan politics” driving censorship, said Benz, but “the foreign policy establishment.” Conservatives and populists “don’t think about the American empire, they don’t think about the managers of the American empire, which is the foreign policy establishment, our State Department, our Pentagon, our intelligence services.”
“When you go upstream on internet censorship and what’s driving it, you will find that foreign policy establishment,” Benz argued.
Benjamin Weingarten, editor-at-large at RealClearInvestigations, also attributed “the leading edge of all the attacks on Donald Trump as an avatar for tens of millions of dissenting Americans” to the administrative state and the “deep state” within it. (The “deep state” refers to bureaucrats who oppose the agenda of the duly-elected president.) These entrenched bureaucrats “felt most threatened that [Trump] would upend the uniparty foreign policy blob,” he said.
“You also had the tech companies identify that what happened in 2016 could never happen again,” Weingarten said, referring to both the Brexit referendum and Trump’s election victory.
“They kind of used the pretext of Russian mis-, dis-, and malinformation, grafting a Cold War paradigm” to define a new enemy—Americans who disagree with their agenda, he said. “We are the enemy that’s engaging in wrongthink that threatens to undermine their power.”
After 2016, “Big Tech platforms became perceived as—rather than vehicles for free and open discourse—now they needed to be weaponized as assets of this security state, essentially.”
These bureaucrats used the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, as a pretext to launch “a National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” Weingarten claimed, referring to the Biden White House strategy released in June 2021.
He warned that the strategy “codifies a war on wrongthink in this country,” based on the idea that “you can’t have an information environment that enables what we saw on Jan. 6.” He described as “terrifying” the idea that the federal government would take upon itself the task of “confronting the longterm contributors to domestic terror” in the context of the misinformation panics of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Benz, the former State Department official, highlighted what he called the “foreign-to-domestic switcheroo,” noting that federal powers created to oppose terrorism in the War on Terror became tools to silence dissent at home.
The narrative that Donald Trump represented a threat to the U.S. from Russia enabled the foreign policy establishment to target conservatives, he said. Yet special counsel Robert Mueller’s report found no smoking gun evidence of Trump as a Russian agent, so the establishment had to move on to something else.
“Instead of shutting down the censorship apparatus when Russiagate died, they changed the predicate,” Benz noted. Suddenly, the foreign policy blob started warning about “a threat to democracy.”
“Democracy is the watchword of the foreign policy establishment to overthrow governments,” Benz said.
He noted that the National Science Foundation has given over $60 million in the past year to “specially-constructed censorship labs” to study “misinformation as a threat to democracy.” This bolsters “the ability to overthrow a government that is not doing the bidding of the U.S. foreign policy establishment,” he warned.
Benz described a symposium with “some of the most important thought leaders in the industry” convened after Space X founder Elon Musk purchased Twitter, now known as X.
Benz said the “censorship industrial complex” suffered a serious setback when Musk purchased Twitter and with the Murthy v. Missouri Supreme Court case revealing the extent to which the federal government pressured social media companies to censor dissent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet he said the censors still have “two tricks” up their sleeves.
He explained that the European Union Digital Services Act—which he dubbed “the NATO censorship law”—intends to “stop the rise of populist parties,” going beyond “the simple hate speech laws” in Europe to establish a new rule on disinformation.
“You cannot be a multinational tech platform without access to the EU market,” Benz warned. This disinformation rule will come from “the same people who constructed the election censorship apparatus in 2020,” which urged Big Tech to censor concerns about voting by mail, for example.
He also warned about state governments launching “state-mandated programs on media literacy” in public schools, teaching students that “if you read the wrong media sources, you are illiterate.”
The “censorship industrial complex” is becoming an industry employing millions of people,” Benz warned.
Benz said Americans need to pressure Congress to cut funding to the “censorship industrial complex.”
Weingarten, the RealClearInvestigations editor, agreed, saying that “cutting off the federal funding … is imperative.”
“I would advocate for criminal penalties” for those who use social media and “misinformation” programs to censor Americans, he added. “There’s a censorship-to-criminalization pipeline and all we have is oversight? There needs to be something more than oversight.”
The post TERRIFYING: The True Force Behind the ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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