“Satan continues his efforts to make sin less offensive, heaven less appealing, hell less horrific and the Gospel less urgent.” — John MacArthur
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Daily Archives: April 19, 2024
Meme: Repentance
April 19 Evening Verse of the Day
22 And since it is Jesus who is acclaimed as priest after the order of Melchizedek, it is Jesus whose superior dignity is thus confirmed. Our author emphasizes this by arranging the construction of this long sentence, vv. 20–22, so that the weight of the argument falls on its last word, “Jesus.” And when he does so, he introduces a further aspect of the priesthood of Jesus which will be developed in the following chapters—Jesus’ rôle as guarantor and mediator of a covenant which is as much superior to the covenant of the ancien régime as his priesthood is superior to that of Aaron. This is the first occurrence of the term “covenant” in this epistle, but the term is about to play such a central part in the argument to follow that the whole epistle has been described as “The Epistle of the Diatheke.” For the moment, however, the designation of Jesus as “the guarantor of a better covenant” prepares the reader for what is to come; there are still two further tokens of the superiority of the Melchizedek priesthood which must be mentioned.[1]
22 Thus this “oath” is the reason why “of a better covenant he has become Guarantor, even Jesus.” This translation reflects the word order of the Greek text. The pastor calls the “better hope” a “better covenant” in anticipation of Jer 31:31–34 (Heb 8:6–13). By beginning this clause with his characteristic “better” he reminds the hearers of the unsurpassable quality of this new arrangement for approaching God. “Covenant” is appropriate because it is broad enough to encompass the whole arrangement God has made for people to relate to him without the negative connotations the pastor finds in “law” and “ordinance.” By using “covenant” the pastor emphasizes the fact that this arrangement is God’s gracious gift. “Covenant” establishes an expectation that the Son will be called “Mediator.”78 The surprise created by “Guarantor” calls attention to the pastor’s purposeful use of this important term. Since the unalterable oath of God has established the Son as Priest, he is not merely the “Mediator,” but the “Guarantor” of God’s “better covenant.”80 On the basis of God’s own oath the Son absolutely guarantees that God’s people can be cleansed of sin and come into God’s presence because he is the one at God’s right who mediates these benefits. Chapters 8 through 10 explain all that the Son has done in order to become the “Guarantor” that this new “covenant” or arrangement for approaching God is truly effective and thus “better.”
The pastor hints at the direction of this explanation, however, by ending this verse with the name “Jesus.” He opened this chapter by speaking of “one made like the Son of God” (v. 3), and he will conclude with “a Son perfected forever” (v. 28). He has identified this new Priest of Ps 110:4 with the eternal Son of 1:1–14 exalted to God’s right hand according to Ps 110:1. When he referred to the Son’s advent in v. 14, he called him “our Lord.” Thus when he says in v. 22, “he has become Guarantor of a better covenant,” his hearers are thinking of the Son—until the last word—“Jesus.” The exalted Son at God’s right (8:1) is the eternal Son who through his obedient life and self-offering as Jesus (cf. 6:20) “has become” the one who guarantees the effectiveness of this new way of approaching God. He has achieved the effective priesthood inherent in his divine sonship only through his incarnation and death.84
Thus the superiority of the New Covenant is founded on God. It is effective because the Son shares God’s eternal life and because he has been established by God’s oath as its “Guarantor.” As eternal Son and Guarantor he gives God’s people all the reason they could possibly need to persevere through faith in the availability of God’s power and the certainty of his promises (see 11:1–6).
The hearers are anxious for more about this “better covenant” and what Jesus has done to guarantee its effectiveness. The pastor will not disappoint their expectations in the chapters that follow. However, he must first conclude his exposition of Ps 110:4 by expounding its key affirmation: “You are a priest forever.”[2]
22. In a summary statement which gathers up the main point of the preceding discussion, Jesus is again mentioned by name (the last time was 6:20). Moreover in the Greek text the name stands in the emphatic position at the end of the sentence. It is clear that special significance must be attached to the use of the human name here, since it is as perfect representative of man that he becomes the surety (engyos). This word occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It is common in the papyri in legal documents in the sense of a pledge or as a reference to bail. When a father assents to the marriage of his daughter he gives a surety of the marriage dowry (see MM). In the present case the surety is related to the covenant and not directly to man. Since the covenant in the biblical sense is an agreement initiated by God, the surety (i.e. Jesus) guarantees that that covenant will be honoured. In the next chapter the writer enlarges on the idea of the new covenant and clearly has this in mind when speaking of a better covenant. The old covenant was closely linked with the law and with the Levitical order. The new offers a better hope (verse 19) and without question has a better high priest.[3]
Its guarantor (7:22)
If God has said it, that surely is enough; but in order to encourage these Jewish Christians to commit themselves unreservedly to the finished work of Christ, he introduces us to a new picture, that of Jesus as the surety or guarantor of a better covenant. We ought to look a little more closely at those three key words, better, covenant and guarantor.
Better is a key word in the letter. At the beginning the author declares that Jesus has a better (rsv ‘more excellent’, same word) name than angels (1:4), for he is ‘the Son of God’. Motivated by deep pastoral concern, the writer dreads the thought that some of the members of this church might go back to something inferior, temporary and partial, when in Christ there is ‘a better hope’, ‘a better covenant’, with ‘better promises’. The once-for-all offering of Christ’s life is a ‘better sacrifice’. In time of persecution some lost their homes and property, but rejoiced that in heaven they had a ‘better possession’. They set their hope not on those earthly, material things which might be plundered by aggressive neighbours; their eyes were fixed on a ‘better country’. Even if their ‘hard struggle with sufferings’ exceeds verbal abuse and physical affliction (10:32–34) so that they are compelled to lay down their lives for Christ (12:4), still they would not be distressed. They know that in him they will ‘rise again to a better life’ (11:35). When they are up against opposition and violence, their confidence is not in their material goods or moral effort, or even their spiritual integrity; they rely entirely on the blood of Christ which has something far ‘better’ to say than Abel’s blood (12:24). It speaks graciously to them of security, purification, pardon and access, and so they are supremely content.
Covenant is another word which is prominent in the writer’s thought, though this is the first time that it makes its appearance in the letter. In chapters 8 and 9 this word covenant, or testament (diathēkē), is to dominate the exposition. The word is used in two senses in this letter. More commonly diathēkē signifies the covenant of God with us. In Old Testament times agreements were made, for example, between two kings fixing the conditions of peace or the allocation of their territories. In these circumstances some form of mutual acceptability was always necessary. But in God’s covenant with us it is not entirely satisfactory to translate the term as ‘agreement’, for in God’s diathēkē the initiative is not with us but with God. In his merciful goodness God deigned to enter into a covenant with us through the work and merit of his Son. In this letter the diathēkē is described as a ‘better’, ‘new’, and ‘eternal’ covenant. The author intends to develop this covenant theme later and we will defer any further discussion of its meaning and implications until then.
Surety or guarantor (engyos) is an interesting word which makes its only New Testament appearance in this verse. Westcott observes that a surety ‘for the most part pledges himself that something will be: but here the Ascended Christ witnesses that something is: the assurance is not simply of the future but of that which is present though unseen’. In the Greek text the name ‘Jesus’ stands in the most emphatic place, right at the end of the sentence, ‘the guarantor is Jesus’. Once again the human name of Christ is given prominence. Our guarantor is one who knows our need, having lived amongst us, but he now sits in God’s presence as our surety. In classical literature the engyos was a person who guaranteed that a legal obligation would be carried out. In this letter we see that in heaven Jesus ‘now acts as the guarantor and representative of those who are still on earth awaiting the rest promised to the people of God’.[4]
22. Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.
The first word and is significant. It provides additional proof of the superiority of Christ’s priesthood. The proof comes from the first part of Psalm 110:4. The author of the epistle quotes and alludes to this psalm citation a number of times (5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:11, 17) to call attention to the priesthood of Christ in the order of Melchizedek.
How did Christ become a priest? Psalm 110:4 unequivocally states that God swore an oath when he appointed Christ. This is unique. God told Moses to consecrate Aaron and his sons to the priesthood and stipulated, “The priesthood is theirs by a lasting ordinance” (Exod. 29:9). But God did not swear an oath; he only administered an ordinance. No law was enacted when God appointed Christ to the priesthood of Melchizedek. Instead God swore an oath.
By human standards Christ, not God, should have sworn the oath of office. For example, when a government official is about to assume his task, he is sworn in. The appointee declares on oath that he will execute his duties to the best of his ability in accordance with the laws of the land.
In this instance, however, God purposely takes the initiative and swears an oath. He confirms his promise to Abraham by swearing an oath to guarantee that his purpose does not change (Gen. 22:16; Heb. 6:13). A second time, when God installs his Son as priest in Melchizedek’s order, he swears an oath to vouch for the unalterable nature of the appointment. When God’s people confess sin, God changes his mind (see for example Exod. 32:14). But when God swears an oath, his purpose is unchangeable. Because he swore an oath when he instituted Christ’s priesthood, that priesthood is eternal.
What is the purpose of confirming Christ’s priesthood with an oath? “Because of this oath,” says the writer, “Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.” Two concepts the author introduces. One is embodied in the word guarantee (which appears once in the entire New Testament) and the other in the word covenant (an expression that recurs seventeen times in the epistle).
Even though the term guarantee is unique, its synonym mediate is not (Gal. 3:19–20; 1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 8:6; 9:15; 12:24). These two words in the epistle are interchangeable, and the writer uses them to stress God’s absolute reliability in fulfilling the covenant he has made with his people. God has appointed his Son not merely to be the guarantor who represents man to God. In addition, Jesus is the believer’s guarantee that all God’s promises will be fulfilled. That is, no promise God has made to us can ever be broken, for Jesus gives the assurance that his perfection will be our perfection, our bodies “will be like his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21), and his ascension guarantees our entrance into heaven (John 14:3).
Note that the author uses the name Jesus purposely. This name summarizes the work of our Savior—he saves “his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). The writer places the name last in the sentence (in the Greek) to give it full emphasis.
The second concept that the author introduces is contained in the noun covenant, qualified by the adjective better. In context the adjective actually means “eternal.” The covenant God makes with his people is an agreement that has two parties, promises, and a condition. The parties are God and his people. The promises are: “I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts,” says God, “I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Jer. 31:33; Heb. 8:10). And the condition is faith.
Why is this covenant called “better”? In the old covenant that God made with the Israelites at Mount Sinai, Moses acted as mediator between God and his people. But Moses could never guarantee the covenant. In the new covenant Jesus is both mediator and guarantor because of his atoning work. Jesus guarantees the fullness of God’s covenant with us.
To Thee, O Lord, alone is due
All glory and renown;
Aught to ourselves we dare not take,
Or rob Thee of Thy crown.
Thou wast Thyself our Surety
In God’s redemption plan
In Thee His grace was given us,
Long ere the world began.
—Augustus M. Toplady
(Revision by Dewey Westra)[5]
7:22. This verse summarizes the discussion of the superiority of Jesus’ priesthood. The oath God offered guaranteed that Jesus would provide a better and more secure covenant for his people.
The name Jesus appears last in the sentence, a position of emphasis clearly stating the importance of Jesus.
Jesus’ character, his sacrifice, and the power of his resurrection pledge the strength of the new covenant. This is the first appearance of the term covenant in Hebrews. The word will play an important role in the discussions in coming chapters. The covenant was an arrangement by which God’s purpose to save human beings became a reality. This new covenant depended on the saving work of Christ to accomplish its purpose.
The word guarantee appears nowhere else in the New Testament. Outside the New Testament it carried the meaning of a pledge or security for bail. Jesus himself provided a guarantee that God had provided a better covenant with a better hope.
The following chapter will discuss the content of the new covenant Jesus has introduced. The old covenant had links with the Law and the Levitical order. It had proven to be a failure in producing people of godly character. Because Jesus was a better High Priest, this new covenant introduced a better hope. Jesus’ life provided strength for turning weak people into spiritual champions (see chapter 11). His death provided a basis for the acceptance by God of sinners into his family.[6]
[1] Bruce, F. F. (1990). The Epistle to the Hebrews (Rev. ed., p. 171). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
[2] Cockerill, G. L. (2012). The Epistle to the Hebrews (pp. 329–331). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
[3] Guthrie, D. (1983). Hebrews: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 15, p. 168). InterVarsity Press.
[4] Brown, R. (1988). The message of Hebrews: Christ above all (pp. 132–134). InterVarsity Press.
[5] Kistemaker, S. J., & Hendriksen, W. (1953–2001). Exposition of Hebrews (Vol. 15, pp. 201–202). Baker Book House.
[6] Lea, T. D. (1999). Hebrews, James (Vol. 10, p. 136). Broadman & Holman Publishers.
April 21 – Phinehas Has His Answer | VCY
TODAY’S BIBLE READING CHALLENGE:
Joshua 22:21-23:16
Luke 20:27-47
Psalm 89:14-37
Proverbs 13:17-19
Joshua 22:2 — The presumed rebel tribes are making an appeal to the LORD. The altar is non-functioning, but a witness that while they’re across the Jordan, they are one with the rest of the tribes (Joshua 22:27). Phinehas was pleased (Joshua 22:30).
Joshua 23:8 — What does it mean to cleave unto the LORD? A man is to cleave unto his wife (Genesis 2:24). Cleaving to the LORD preserves your life (Deuteronomy 4:4). We are to fear, serve, and cleave to Him (Deuteronomy 10:20). We are to love Him, walk in His way, and cleave unto Him (Deuteronomy 11:22). If we cleave to Him (Deuteronomy 13:4), the cursed will not cleave to us (Deuteronomy 13:17), nor the pestilence (Deuteronomy 28:21), nor the diseases (Deuteronomy 28:60). Love, obey, and cleave (Deuteronomy 30:20).
Luke 20:31 — The Sadducees presented a hypothetical scenario featuring a woman who is best described as “bad luck.” Even though the Sadducees and Pharisees tried to entrap Jesus, He was able to appeal to some of them (Luke 20:39). But He was not enticed to soft-pedal His critique (Luke 20:46).
Psalm 89:37 — What happened to the “throne of David?” When Jesus was born the angel said, “The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David (Luke 1:30-33).”
The Kingdom of God in the past then will be re-established with Christ as it’s king – but at this future time ALL nations will be in subjection to it. This Kingdom will bring peace to the earth and all peoples will know about God and want to please Him. We are given a few glimpses in the Bible of what this wonderful kingdom on earth will be like …
Proverbs 13:18 — Nothing is harder than accepting reproof … but that will be honored!
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.
When Making a Case for Christianity is Futile | Cold Case Christianity
After four weeks, sitting just ten feet from the jury, I still wasn’t sure how to read them; especially Juror Number 9. She scowled through most of the testimony, took notes when things seemed obvious and often displayed gestures that were confusing and difficult to read. I wasn’t sure that we were reaching her with the evidence. In fact, I was beginning to doubt our choice of her as a juror in the first place. The prosecution and defense teams evaluate the initial jury panel and vet each juror in an effort to select jurors that will best serve the purpose of either side. The defense lawyers are looking for something in a juror and the prosecution team is looking for something in each juror (more on that tomorrow). I found myself reviewing the notes related to Juror Number 9 many times toward the end of the trial, trying to see if we had missed something with this one. My concern was that this juror was rejecting the truth as demonstrated by the evidence, and I knew from experience that this sometimes occurs in jury trials.
It turns out that there are three reasons why anyone might reject a truth claim, and only one of these three reasons is rational (evidential). I’ve written quite a bit about this in Cold Case Christianity, and it’s important for us to make the distinction when trying to communicate the truth about Christianity to our friends, family and co-workers. Why? Because there are times when reasoning through the evidence is futile. There are three reasons someone might reject the truth and we need to be careful to distinguish between these three conditions. We need to listen carefully to the words that our friends are using to understand where their objections reside in the first place, so we can better understand how we might be able to reach them. Here is a brief review of why someone might SHUN the truth:
They Have a RaSHUNal (Rational) Objection
When you hear people say things like, “I just don’t get it,” or “It makes no sense to me,” or “I just don’t see the evidence for that,” you are probably dealing with someone who holds a rational objection and would be willing to engage and review the evidence that supports your case.
They Have an EmoSHUNal (Emotional) Objection
When you hear someone say something like, “Christians are so hypocritical,” or “My dad was a Christian and he was a jerk,” or “I have friends who are Christians and I would never want to be like them,” you are probably dealing with someone who is responding emotionally based on some experience in their past.
They Have a VoliSHUNal (Volitional) Objection
When you hear someone say something like, “I’m a good person, so I’m not worried about God,” or “I just don’t have time to think about those kinds of things,” or “I wish Christians would just live their own lives and stop telling me how to live mine,” you may be dealing with someone who willfully rejects Christianity because they are unwilling to change their life to embrace the truth.
It would be great if everyone we met was in the first category, wouldn’t it? After all, Christian Case Making involves studying the evidence and arguments for God’s existence, the reliability of the Bible and the historicity of Jesus, and these evidential pursuits are designed to help make a rational, evidential case for Christianity. But the truth is that few people object for rational reasons; most object to the truth for emotional or volitional reasons. In fact I think most people resist truth claims for purely volitional reasons. Each of us wants to be in charge, to be our own god, to make our own decisions and pursue our own interests without limitation, especially the limits that might be imposed by Christianity.
If you’re wondering why your reasonable and rational efforts to describe the truth seem to be falling on deaf ears, it just may be that you’re coming at it from the wrong angle
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If you’re wondering why your reasonable and rational efforts to describe the truth to your friends and family seem to be falling on deaf ears, it just may be that you’re coming at it from the wrong angle, given the nature of the objections your friends and family may hold. There are times when we ought to be addressing emotional or volitional objections people may have. By the way, Juror Number 9 was not a problem for us, but in the post-verdict interviews with the jury I spent time mining out the nature of her hesitation and discovered that her past did present some emotional barriers. Luckily, she was able to move through those barriers on the way to the truth.
For more information about the nature of Biblical faith and a strategy for communicating the truth of Christianity, please read Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith. This book teaches readers four reasonable, evidential characteristics of Christianity and provides a strategy for sharing Christianity with others. The book is accompanied by an eight-session Forensic Faith DVD Set (and Participant’s Guide) to help individuals or small groups examine the evidence and make the case.
The post When Making a Case for Christianity is Futile first appeared on Cold Case Christianity.
The Safest Place | VCY
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. (John 10:28)
We believe in the eternal security of the saints. First, because they are Christ’s, and He will never lose the sheep which He has bought with His blood and received of His Father.
Next, because He gives them eternal life, and if it be eternal, well then, it is eternal, and there can be no end to hell, and heaven, and God. If spiritual life can die out, it is manifestly not eternal life, and that effectually shuts out the possibility of an end.
Observe, further, that the Lord expressly says, “They shall never perish.” As long as words have a meaning, this secures believers from perishing. The most obstinate unbelief cannot force this meaning out of this sentence.
Then, to make the matter complete, He declares that His people are in His hand, and He defies all their enemies to pluck them out of it. Surely it is a thing impossible even for the fiend of hell. We must be safe in the grasp of an almighty Savior. Be it ours to dismiss carnal fear as well as carnal confidence and rest peacefully in the hollow of the Redeemer’s hand.
WHAT IS HEAVEN LIKE?
What Is Heaven Like? | WRETCHED TV Episode 3386 What is Heaven going to be like? What will we do? What will we eat? Will animals be there? ___ Thanks…
WHAT IS HEAVEN LIKE?
19 Apr 2024 News Briefing
Israel struck targets Thursday night in Iran
Fars news agency reported explosions near the Isfahan airport and an Iranian military air base. Investigations continue until the exact details of the incident are determined. A Syrian security source said an Israeli attack also took place in southern Syria and targeted a radar base. At the same time, there were reports of increased activity of US aircraft over Iraq.
Severe weather claims 141 lives in Pakistan and Afghanistan amid unprecedented rainfall
Recent extreme weather conditions have led to significant casualties and destruction in Pakistan and Afghanistan, with a combined death toll of 141 as of April 18, 2024. Torrential rains and flash floods have devastated large areas, resulting in extensive damage to infrastructure and agriculture.
FBI WARNING: Chinese Hackers Preparing to Launch Massive Attack on U.S. Infrastructure – Have Already Infiltrated Several Critical Companies
Chinese hackers are preparing to launch a major attack on critical U.S. infrastructure and have already infiltrated multiple companies according to the FBI.
Californians arming themselves over border issue
…Many of the people buying pistols at Firearms Unlimited California said they were concerned about the massive number of migrants being released onto the local streets after the area became a hub for the crisis at the border — which is just 25 miles from El Cajon, a Southern California suburb of 105,000 people.
Planned Parenthood Spent $700 Million in Government Funds to Kill Nearly 400,000 Children in 2022-23
Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider, released its 2022-2023 Annual Report, which shows that government revenue and violent abortions are up.
Hezbollah launches major rocket attack that injures 18
Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it launched missiles and drones on an Israeli military facility in Arab al-Aramshe on Wednesday in response to the Israeli killing of Hezbollah members and commanders in Lebanon. This escalation comes as tensions between Israel and Iran are reaching new heights after a series of strikes and counterstrikes.
The UN Security Council Is About To Vote On A Palestinian State
Why are they being so quiet about this? On Friday, the UN Security Council will take a vote which will determine whether or not “the State of Palestine” will be granted full UN membership. If this vote is successful, that will formally create a Palestinian state that will have full recognition by the international community. So this is a really big deal. Algeria is the nation that has put this draft resolution forward, and it is scheduled for a vote at 3 PM Eastern time on Friday afternoon…
Inside Gaza: The World’s Largest ‘Open-Air Prison’
Video and images capturing large gatherings of Palestinians enjoying themselves at the beach in central Gaza offer a stark contrast to the grim scenes of conflict, destruction, and loss of life that have been pervasive in the region for over six months. Hopefully, these poor prisoners are wearing sunscreen; temperatures in the area soared to 36°C (96°F) today.
US government-commissioned study finds mRNA injections cause myocarditis
An agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Health Resources and Services Administration, requested a study to review the evidence regarding specific potential harms related to COVID-19 injections used in the United States. On Tuesday a report of the study’s findings was released. The report concluded that the two mRNA injections, manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, can cause myocarditis – inflammation of the heart muscle.
AI Transformation Of Humanity – Nano and Micro Robots In Jabbed & Unjabbed Human Blood – ‘There Are Solutions…’
We are observing the “hacking of humans” as described by Noah Harrari when he celebrated his vision which also includes the end of the human spirit. Changes are now showing in the blood of those who were coerced into taking the Covid jab and perhaps surprisingly to some, these changes are being seen in the blood of those of us who resisted the jabs.
The Deagel Report Is Coming Closer To Reality As The Planned Destruction Of The United States Is Right On Schedule!
Most researchers know what the Deagel Report is. However, many do not know that it has been scrubbed from the internet. Fortunately, I correctly anticipated that this might happen as more of us discovered the report. I rarely offer projected dates when I connect the dots in order to predict futuristic events. However, I believe we are going to see a series of multiple attacks upon the United States with each attack becoming more serious.
Stunner in 4th place among America’s leading causes of death
A new report has revealed a real stunner in fourth place among America’s leading causes of death: The abortions from Planned Parenthood.
BREAKING: 3 Major Explosions Reported in Isfahan, Iran Where Iranian Nuclear Facilities are Located
A massive explosion was reported near Isfahan, Iran today. Isfahan is considered to be the primary location of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Explosions were also reported in Syria and Iraq on Friday morning.
There Is More To This Current Bird Flu Panic Than Meets The Eye
Why are global health officials issuing such ominous warnings about the bird flu? Do they know something that the rest of us do not? H5N1 has been circulating all over the planet for several years now, and it has been the worst outbreak that the world has ever seen. Hundreds of millions of birds are already dead, and now H5N1 has been infecting mammals with alarming regularity. The good news is that so far it has not been a serious threat to humans, but could that soon change? According to the World Health Organization, the possibility that H5N1 could start spreading among humans is an “enormous concern”…
Headlines – 4/19/2024
Former US ambassador to Israel dismisses 2-state solution: ‘God gave this land to the Jewish people’
China Leads the Way – Beijing Supports Full UN Membership for Palestine
Saudi Arabia wants Netanyahu to renew Palestinian statehood talks as part of normalization
PA envoy: Full UN status for Palestinians would ease ‘historic injustice’
Pelosi: I Question if Netanyahu Is ‘Capable of Peace’
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warns Middle East ‘on edge of regional war’
Israel retaliates as missiles strike a site in Iran, US officials say
Israel’s Strike Was Smaller Than Expected, and So Was Iran’s Reaction
Iranian News Downplays Strike on Military Sites, Claims ‘No Damage’
Iran says no retaliation planned, as both sides seek distance from Isfahan attack
Iran activates air defence system and diverts flights after explosions heard over Isfahan
Carriers scramble to reroute flights as alleged Israeli strike hits Iran air traffic
Iran and Israel’s open warfare after decades of shadow war
Hamas official: Israeli ‘aggression’ on Iran is an escalation against the region
Israel’s Revenge: Explosions Reported In Iraq, Syria, And In Iranian Cities With Nuclear Facilities
Iran warns it may revise its ‘nuclear doctrine,’ threatens to hit Israeli nuclear sites
Israeli strike on Iran ‘limited’ in scope, not targeting nuclear facilities – reports
US got ‘last minute’ warning from Israel on Iran strike but wasn’t involved – Italian FM
Blinken says US committed to Israel’s security, wasn’t involved in any offensive
Report: US agreed to Rafah operation in return for smaller Israeli response against Iran
Top Iranian official: No immediate retaliation plans against Israel for alleged strike
US and Britain announce new sanctions against Iran after attack on Israel
S&P cuts Israel’s long-term credit ratings, citing ‘military escalation risks’
Palestinians to call for sanctions against Israeli soccer at FIFA congress next month
‘Squad’ Member Ilhan Omar’s Daughter Suspended from Her University for Anti-Israel Protest
Rashida Tlaib: ‘Appalling’ Universities Punish Anti-Israel Students Protesting ‘Genocide’
Over 100 arrested in Columbia U unrest as NYPD clears ‘Gaza solidarity encampment’
Police arrest Israeli professor over denial of Hamas atrocities, genocide claims
Ex-Mossad spy whose novel predicted October 7 fears for Israel’s future
Panel set to publish report Saturday on accusations of UNRWA employees’ terror ties
Israeli warplanes said to take out radar installation in southern Syria
Argentina: Latin American Neighbors Are Letting Hezbollah Thrive
IDF hits Hezbollah cell and sites as Lebanon border skirmishes persist
IDF: 4 troops wounded, several Palestinian gunmen killed in West Bank raid
Israel braces for ‘Freedom Flotilla’ set to sail from Turkey to Gaza
Kenya military helicopter crash kills defence chief, senior officers
Indian Police Kill 29 Suspected Maoist Rebels in Gun Battle
Sen. Ron Johnson: Secure Our Own Border Before Ukraine’s
Donald Trump: Ukraine’s Survival Is Important to US
Mike Johnson Gives Impassioned Ukraine Speech as He Defies MAGA
US House speaker ‘anxious’ to pass Israel, Ukraine aid as far-right mutiny brews
‘Unprecedented’: Speaker Mike Johnson Moves to Pass Rule for Ukraine Aid Using Democrats
House GOP leadership discusses raising threshold for option to vacate speaker
Johnson: Motion to Vacate ‘Harmed this Office,’ But We Lack the Votes to Change the Rules for Now
Joe Biden’s Gaffe Ridden Campaign Stop – Possible Record for Most Screwups in One Speech
Second Trump juror dismissed after it was revealed he was arrested for anti-conservative vandalism
Bragg’s Prosecutors Claim Trump Violated Gag Order ‘7 More Times’ Since Monday
Fani Willis Office Warned Behavior Could Land Prosecutors in Jail
Former MI Senator Files Perjury Criminal Complaint Against Dominion Voting Machines CEO
Second US civil war becoming ‘increasingly plausible’ as more insurrections likely
U.S. likely to enact a law soon that could ban TikTok nationwide
House Passes Bill to End ‘Unconstitutional Sale’ of American Data to Intel Agencies
Josh Hawley Moves to End FBI ‘Power Grab’ in Spy Powers Bill
Mobileye founder gives sneak peek into human-like AI robot doing household chores
The Real-Time Deepfake Romance Scams Have Arrived
911 Outages in Las Vegas, South Dakota, and Texas Blamed on Light Pole Installation
5.7 magnitude earthquake hits southeast of the Loyalty Islands
5.6 magnitude earthquake hits near Loreto, Mexico
5.6 magnitude earthquake hits near Sulusaray, Turkey
5.2 magnitude earthquake hits south of the Fiji Islands
5.2 magnitude earthquake hits the central Mid-Atlantic Ridge
5.1 magnitude earthquake hits western Xizang
Ruang volcano in Indonesia erupts to 25,000ft
Sabancaya volcano in Peru erupts to 25,000ft
Popocateptl volcano in Mexico erupts to 22,000ft
Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupts to 21,000ft
Sangay volcano in Ecuador erupts to 19,000ft
Fuego volcano in Guatemala erupts to 16,000ft
Semeru volcano in Indonesia erupts to 14,000ft
Marapi volcano in Indonesia erupts to 14,000ft
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‘Apocalyptic’ Dubai floods shake picture-perfect city
Taxing the Super-Rich Is Brazil’s G-20 Plan for Climate, Hunger
NYC provides free airline tickets to illegal immigrants for travel across the US
Migrants Getting 6 Months of Free Rent Blasted as ‘Insufficient’
Illegal Alien Arrested in Crash That Killed Staffer of Democrat U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto
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Trans teen allegedly plotted mass shootings at two schools in twisted plot to become ‘famous’
Woman Who Strangled Pregnant Teen, Ripped Baby from Womb Sentenced to 50 Years
Biden’s EEOC Says Employers Must Accommodate Workers’ Abortions
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Mid-Day Snapshot · April 19, 2024
“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”.
THE FOUNDATION
“Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the FEW, not for the MANY.” —James Madison (1788)
| On this day in Patriot history in 1775, minutemen under the command of Captain John Parker encountered British regulars en route to seize arms and supplies in Lexington, Massachusetts. Eight Americans were killed before retreating and regrouping to fight the British on their way to Concord. “The shot heard ‘round the world” set off the American Revolution. Read more about what became known as Patriots’ Day here. —Mark Alexander |
IN TODAY’S DIGEST
- The Idiotic Controversy Over the WNBA ‘Pay Gap’
- Executive News Summary
- China Is LITERALLY Killing Us
- The Shame of Columbia University
- Standardized Testing Is Making a Comeback
- Eroding the Electoral College Erodes Americans’ Voting Rights
- DAILY FEATURES: Videos, Best of Right Opinion, Short Cuts, Memes, and Cartoons.
ON THE WEB
- Ron Helle: Brotherhood
- RNC: Biden’s Record-Setting Border Crisis Continues to Expand
- Remembering the First Shots of the American Revolution: Patriots’ Day
FEATURED ANALYSIS
The Idiotic Controversy Over the WNBA ‘Pay Gap’
Leftists are once again in a lather, this time about the outrageous difference in salaries of men and women basketball players.
Nate Jackson
Millions of Americans learned something new this week: There’s a professional women’s basketball league called the WNBA. And we’re all supposed to be upset that women who play in this heretofore unknown league aren’t paid very well compared to the men of the hugely popular NBA.
Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark may have just lost the college national championship game, but she was picked first by the Indiana Fever in the WNBA Draft. She’s guaranteed a starting base salary of $76,535, which most college graduates would probably celebrate for their first job right out of school. The average salary for any American is just under $60,000 a year.
Clark does seem to be pretty happy, though probably more so because of the endorsement deal she’s reportedly signing with Nike for north of $20 million.
Similar to the kerfuffle over “equal pay” in women’s soccer, the social justice warriors took to the court to cry about the unfairness of it all.
“One NBA benchwarmer will earn more than Caitlin Clark’s entire team,” headlined Axios. Vox lamented, “The WNBA draft puts pro basketball’s longstanding pay gap on stark display.” A Forbes contributor wondered, “Can Caitlin Clark Fix The WNBA And NBA Pay Gap?”
The details are eye-popping. According to Axios, “The highest-paid WNBA player makes a little less than $250,000. The highest-paid NBA player makes a little more more than $50 million.” Gee.
Even Joe Biden weighed in:
Women in sports continue to push new boundaries and inspire us all.
But right now we’re seeing that even if you’re the best, women are not paid their fair share.
It’s time that we give our daughters the same opportunities as our sons and ensure women are paid what they deserve.
Clearly, the solution is to turn our sons into daughters.
After all, Biden is the same guy currently rewriting Title IX, which governs women’s sports, to allow men to play those sports so long as they pretend to be women. Just last week, Dawn Staley, head coach of the national champion South Carolina Gamecocks, made clear that she thinks men ought to be allowed to play women’s sports. “Lady Ballers” in real life.
Leftist radicals demand that men pretending to be women be allowed in women’s locker rooms and dominate female sports with their biologically superior strength and speed. But by golly, don’t pay women less than men.
Clark certainly did increase interest in women’s basketball. In fact, more people watched this year’s college women’s final than the men’s final. There’s reason to think the WNBA will get a lot more attention because of her.
Still, this all got me thinking: Is there something other than gender that might dictate the pay of female basketball players compared to their male counterparts?
Lo and behold, as I read down into the Vox story, I ran across this clue about the NBA vs. the WNBA: The pay gap is “due in part to the leagues’ differences in revenue and season lengths.”
Huh. So, revenue and profit play a role in employee salaries? Weird.
As it turns out, those things play a huge role. The WNBA is projected to bring in revenue of roughly $200 million this year. The NBA takes in roughly $10 billion every year. I’m not a math guy, but it seems like the NBA makes a lot more money, which means players can be paid a lot more.
The Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Stiles does some math to answer Biden’s “fair share” statement. “NBA first overall pick Victor Wembanyama earned a salary of $12 million this year, which is X percent of the league’s annual profit of $3 billion,” he noted. “Once we solve for X and adjust for the runaway inflation on Biden’s watch, we can determine what Caitlin Clark’s ‘fair share’ would be based on the WNBA’s annual profit of… zero dollars.”
He’s not making up the last part. Google “Has the WNBA ever made a profit?” All the results talk about revenue, not profit. But the answer is, in fact, no. The WBNA has not made a profit in any of its 28 years. It exists only because of subsidy money from the NBA.
In this economic system called capitalism, revenue and profit are directly tied to earnings. The system that critics of the pay gap seem to want is called communism.
I’ve never watched a women’s basketball game and don’t plan to start now. Nothing against women — I just don’t like basketball. But how many of the sanctimonious critics of this supposedly outrageous pay gap have ever watched a single minute of the WNBA themselves?
Executive News Summary
“Limited” Israeli strike on Iran, leftist threatens to murder city council, redefining women at the federal level, and more.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
- Israel conducts “limited” strike on Iran: After last night’s “limited strike” by Israel on Iran, which comes in retaliation for last weekend’s largely thwarted drone-and-missile attack by Iran on Israel, the question now becomes: Have both sides saved enough face? We say this because it’s clear by their actions that neither side is interested in a hot war with the other. As Fox News reports, last night’s strike involved missiles but no aircraft, and it was targeted at the Iranian province of Isfahan, which is home to a major Iranian airbase and sites associated with both missile production and the country’s nuclear program. Earlier on CNN, Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, had warned the Biden administration and Israel that if the Israelis do attack, then the Iranian response will be “decisive, definitive, and regretful for them.” Uh-huh. Following the attack, Iranian state media dutifully downplayed its effects, which should help to cool things down and allow the mullahs to avoid a more serious escalation with Israel and get back to its preferred business of fomenting strife by funding dirty proxy wars throughout the Middle East. Jonathan Conricus, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, summed things up well: “Iran seeks to return to the shadows and is downplaying the Israeli strike on the strategic city of Isfahan, but I think they’ve gotten the message: Israel can penetrate Iranian defenses and strike wherever it wants.”
- Crazed leftist threatens to murder city council members: To watch the rank stupidity with which 28-year-old leftist organizer Riddhi Patel behaves, it’s a wonder she can find the doorknob to get out of the house each day. How else to explain her recent performance before the mayor and city council of Bakersfield, California, during discussions about the council’s stance on a ceasefire resolution aimed at Israel for its actions in Gaza? Patel, to her “credit,” began calmly enough by saying that the council members “are all horrible human beings, and Jesus probably would’ve killed you himself.” She was just getting warmed up, though. She went on to add that the council didn’t care about “anything happening in Palestine or any other country where oppression occurs,” and then this: “I hope one day somebody brings the guillotine and kills all of you motherf**kers.” But it wasn’t just the situation in Gaza that had her so riled up. When she spoke a second time, Patel criticized the council for installing metal detectors at the building, which she said were an affront to her and her fellow rabble. To that indignity, she said: “You guys want to criminalize us with metal detectors? We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.” Um, that’s not exactly protected speech, Riddhi. And she wonders why she’s been arrested and charged.
- Wikipedia cofounder excoriates new NPR CEO: Larry Sanger, the cofounder of Wikipedia, was recently interviewed by journalist and free speech activist Christopher Rufo concerning NPR’s new CEO, Katherine Maher. Ms. Maher served as the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation prior to taking up her new gig. After noting recent videos that have come to light wherein Maher expresses her views on truth and free speech, Sanger stated: “I did not know just how radical-sounding Katherine Maher is. [T]o say that it was somehow a mistake for Wikipedia to be ‘free and open,’ that it led to bad consequences — my jaw is on the floor. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised that she thinks it, but I am surprised that she would say it.” Later in the interview, Rufo asked, in light of her radical anti-free speech views, what should happen to Maher. Sanger answered, “If NPR wanted to prove that they were still committed to free speech, to being ideologically neutral, and simply nonpartisan, they would let her go right away.” He then added: “I don’t expect them to do that. They don’t listen to people like us. They don’t care what we think. But nevertheless, this is an important story because it shows just how cynical it is. It is getting to the point where you can’t accuse people like Katherine Maher of hypocrisy anymore because they’re not being hypocritical. They’re actually saying it out loud: ‘We don’t really believe in this freedom stuff anyway.’”
- Redefining women at the federal level: The Biden administration is finalizing its Title IX rewrite, specifically focusing on expanding the definition of sex to include the “transgender” identity. Title IX was passed in 1972 for the express purpose of protecting equal access for women in education, which included school sports. Ironically, by redefining sex, the Biden administration is effectively eliminating that protection, as biological males legally will be allowed to invade women’s spaces, so long as they claim to be women. While the Biden administration has paused applying its sex redefinition to include “transgender” participation in sports until after the election, the Department of Education is moving forward in implementing its definitional change to Title IX provisions that deal with sexual harassment and discrimination. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, blasted the Biden administration’s action: “The rule also undermines existing due process rights, placing students and institutions in legal jeopardy and again undermining the protections Title IX is intended to provide. Evidently, the acceptance of biological reality, and the faithful implementation of the law, are just pills too big for the Department to swallow — and it shows.”
- Gender-confused teen allegedly planned Covenant 2.0: Thankfully, authorities in Maryland thwarted a copycat mass attack against a high school by a woman who identified as a man. According to reports, the 18-year-old had a 129-page “manifesto” containing a myriad of disturbing views, including pedophilia fantasies, praise for the Covenant School attacker, and her own mass attack plot that included worries over whether or not she would be “misgendered” following her crime. Court documents reveal portions of her manifesto. In one instance, she wrote: “I really want to be famous. Even infamous.” In another entry, she says: “I sometimes think I’m a pedophile. I get turned on by little kids.” Regarding the Covenant School assailant, she wrote: “Makes me want to change my name legally before I commit a shooting to make sure the news doesn’t misgender me. He was suicidal before the shooting. Just like me. He, too, wanted to kill little kids. A rush of adrenaline fills my body. He’s so relatable.” This individual was hospitalized in December 2022 after expressing threats to “shoot up a school” a few months before the Covenant School attack. She did not go back to school in person since that time, but did return home and attended school online. She was hospitalized last month, at which time she shared her manifesto with another patient who reported it to the authorities. She was subsequently taken into custody.
- Racist bean counters decry MLB while ignoring NBA and NFL: Thirteen percent. That’s the relative percentage of blacks that make up the whole of the American people. And because Major League Baseball isn’t represented by at least 13% of blacks among its players, then the enterprise itself must be racist. If you doubt us, just listen to MSNBC race-baiter Joy Reid: “The number of Black American players in Major League Baseball has plummeted to just 6%, offering a warning about what can happen when institutions de-emphasize diversity.” Diversity, of course, is just a euphemism for the race-based discrimination favored by leftists. And all this racial bean counting is emblematic of a pernicious and destructive phenomenon we wrote about recently called disparate impact. Put it this way: Would the recently concluded NCAA men’s basketball tournament have put out a better product if it enforced a strict limit of 13% of its players being black? What about the NBA, which, in the 2022-23 season, had just 17.5% white players — a number that would surely be down in the single digits if European players were excluded from the “white” tally? And what about the NFL? What if strict quotas were enforced to ensure that 71% of its running backs, wide receivers, and cornerbacks were white? What about hip-hop artists? Concert pianists? Mechanical engineers? Brain surgeons? Airplane pilots? You can see the awful place where counting by race invariably takes a people. It pits them against each other and instills bitterness on all sides. Forget the appalling black skills gap and the equally appalling underachievement of black students at all levels. Just cry Racism! As researcher Heather Mac Donald puts it: “At present you can have proportional diversity or you can have meritocracy. You cannot have both.”
- Harder workers break bigly for Trump over Biden: A recently released survey from Emerson College Polling found that registered voters who work 40 or more hours a week on average support Donald Trump over Joe Biden by a significant margin. The poll found that 50% of voters working 40 to 49 hours a week support Trump, whereas 38% support Biden. And when the hourly load increases, so does support for Trump. Of those voters working 50 to 59 hours a week, 59% picked Trump, while just 35% chose Biden. And for those working 60-plus hours a week, an astounding 80% favored Trump to just 7% for Biden. Meanwhile, the survey found that those voters who were working fewer than 40 hours a week favored Biden. The biggest spread was between voters working between 20 to 29 hours a week, with 52% picking Biden and 37% picking Trump. Those who embrace individual freedom the most also appear to be those who embrace self-reliance and hard work rather than government handouts.
- NASA Mars crew has a Muslim but no white people: The Left’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion obsession isn’t limited to sports. Otherwise, NASA wouldn’t still be trying “to reach out to the Muslim world … to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering,” as Barack Obama infamously ordered his NASA chief, Charles Bolden, to do back in July 2010. Take, for example, one of NASA’s most recent projects: a simulated trip to Mars. About this, the Johnson Space Center’s X page proudly trumpets, “A new team is set to enter HERA! On May 10, four volunteers will step inside the 650-square-foot HERA habitat and begin a 45-day simulated journey to Mars, helping NASA test how isolation affects crews on deep space journeys.” As FrontPage Magazine’s Daniel Greenfield observes, “Now the four-person crew for the ‘virtual’ mission to Mars has been unveiled and they carefully screened out the white people.” Perhaps there’s a simple explanation for the lack of white guys. Perhaps there just aren’t any white astronauts anymore. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Headlines
- House advances Ukraine, Israel aid as Dems help Speaker Johnson, GOP (The Hill)
- FBI director Christopher Wray warns Chinese hackers lying in wait to attack U.S. infrastructure: “Upon us now” (NY Post)
- Biden wants to triple China tariffs on steel, aluminum imports (CNBC)
- Biden DOJ enlists Kristen Clarke, who defended black nationalists charged with voter intimidation, to combat voter intimidation (Washington Free Beacon)
- Rep. Gallagher cites swatting as a reason for his resignation (RedState)
- Ilhan Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, suspended from Barnard College for her involvement in anti-Israel protests (NY Post)
- Justice Department agrees to pay $100 million to Simone Biles, other victims of gymnastics team doctor (RedState)
- Scotland to ditch key climate change target (BBC)
- Humor: NPR says it always strives to feature a broad range of opinions from slightly communist to very communist (Babylon Bee)
For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.
China Is LITERALLY Killing Us
The murderous fentanyl flood from China is both intentional and purposeful.
Douglas Andrews
Anyone who doubts the monstrosity of communism need only consider the death toll racked up by Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong during the first half of the previous century. These two butchers made Adolph Hitler, a genocidal madman in his own right, look like a mere piker — and they did so while murdering almost exclusively their own people.
We mention this because China wants to rule the world and because its thuggish leaders, from Xi Jinping on down, know that in order to do so, they must first supplant the United States from atop its geopolitical perch.
On this front, we’ve helped the ChiComs immensely by “electing” Joe Biden. Nothing makes one’s rivals look stronger and more serious than a weak, irresolute, and downright embarrassing leader, and Biden, having first been co-opted, is now cooperating.
Having thus made the American president look bad, China has also resolved to make the American people look bad — to hook our consumerist selves on its cheap goods and to hook our young people on that infamous ChiCom spyware and mind poison otherwise known as TikTok.
But beyond TikTok, there’s another American addiction that the Chinese have been spearheading, and they’ve done so with deadly efficiency. I’m speaking about the fentanyl epidemic that’s ravaging our country to the funeral dirge of some 70,000 dead Americans every year.
According to the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, China has been subsidizing the manufacture and export “of illicit fentanyl precursor chemicals and other synthetic narcotics through tax rebates and other means.” Translation: China is intentionally poisoning us with fentanyl.
Former Trump Attorney General William Barr agrees, asserting that the ChiComs are knee-deep in the fentanyl crisis: “The [People’s Republic of China] is the source of the fentanyl that is slaughtering Americans,” he said. “China produces nearly all the illicit fentanyl precursors used and the fentanyl introduced into the United States. These are the indispensable ingredients that drive the fentanyl trade.”
Barr made the remarks while testifying on Tuesday before the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party on a 64-page report titled “The CCP’s Role In The Fentanyl Crisis.”
“There is no practical alternative for anywhere near the volume of precursors necessary to fuel this trade,” Barr continued. “Simply put, without China’s production and export of fentanyl and fentanyl precursors, there would be no fentanyl crisis in the United States and the mass slaughter would effectively stop.”
As Barr told Fox News earlier this week: “It’s clear that they’re not acting in good faith. And when they do something, it’s window dressing. They’re knee-deep in this. They’re active. … They’re driving the trafficking. They’re incentivizing the trafficking.”
As The Washington Times reports: “Key findings from the investigation reveal that the Chinese government provided grants and awards to companies ‘openly trafficking illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics,’ the report states. ‘There are even examples of some of these companies enjoying site visits from provincial PRC government officials who complimented them for their impact on the provincial economy,’ the report said.”
Asked what the ChiComs’ angle is in all this, Barr says: “I think a big part of it is strategic. That is, they believe it weakens the United States. It tells the world that we’re a decadent society and a disciplined society like China’s is the future, and it distracts us. And so, if it’s bad for us, it’s good for them.”
Barr isn’t optimistic about any lessening of the crisis, at least not from the Biden administration, whose obeisance to the ChiComs knows no bounds. He says the Chinese and the Mexicans are giving us “happy talk” and that they’re both complicit.
Maybe it’s time for a tougher foreign policy — one that puts the lives and interests of American citizens before the sensitivities of our greatest geopolitical foe. If only our nation had a president who was tougher on China than our current one.
“The key point here is that the PRC and the CCP have the capacity to shut this down,” said Barr. “This is not taking place in the rain forests of Burma. This is taking place among a manageable number of companies in industrial parks in a modern surveillance state. The Chinese can push a button with a keystroke, find somebody in one of their cities within less than a minute, know exactly where they are. They know what’s on the internet. There’s no question they’re aware of what’s happening.”
Barr also said that although Joe Biden met with Xi Jinping, we haven’t seen any lessening of China’s fentanyl flood into the U.S.
Here, we have to wonder: Would it not be an act of war for a foreign country to actively conspire to poison American citizens by the bushel? Asking for a dead friend.
And given all this, why, as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in “Full Metal Jacket” might’ve asked, are we not stomping China’s guts out?
It’s a great question.
The Shame of Columbia University
Like other Ivy Leagues, Columbia has let pro-Hamas protests fester, and its Jewish students live in fear.
Emmy Griffin
The barbarians are within the Ivy League gates. This has become increasingly apparent with each passing month as reports reveal that pro-Palestinian (read: pro-Hamas) protesters continually get more bold and disruptive on campus.
This past Wednesday, Columbia University students held yet another anti-Israel protest. Students and campus activists — only ID-carded students were allowed to participate — chanted their usual chants, such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “There is only one solution: intifada revolution.” The protesters took over the main campus lawn, setting up tents and taking over the space through which other students have to pass to get to their classes.
Why weren’t these protesters in class? How much money are they paying to attend this pedigreed Ivy League and not attend classes? But I digress.
This protest coincided with Columbia President Minouche Shafik testifying before the House Education and Workforce Committee. Shafik, along with two board of trustee members, David Greenwald and Claire Shipman, and professor David Schizer, who co-chairs the university’s task force on anti-Semitism, were grilled by the congressional committee members as to what was going on with the series of protests at Columbia.
Shafik invoked Representative Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) framing of the protests, stating that they were not anti-Jew but anti-war protests. Shafik claimed that she had not seen any anti-Jewish protests on campus. The ironic part was that Professor Schizer had just elaborated on the many instances of antagonism toward Jewish students at Columbia, even showing a video with pro-Hamas students chanting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slogans.
There have been “a raft of protests” at Columbia, according to The Washington Free Beacon, “many of them held in violation of university rules — where students promoted the attacks and chanted slogans like ‘Intifada’ and ‘glory to our martyrs.’ One unsanctioned event, ‘Resistance 101,’ featured speakers from Israeli-designated terror groups and praise for plane hijackings, which Khaled Barakat, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, described as an ‘important tactic’ of the ‘Palestinian resistance.’”
To top it off, Columbia also has several professors that have gone public with their pro-Hamas stances. One of them is a tenured professor. According to the committee hearing on Wednesday, the professor was talked to and supposedly removed from his leadership position but not removed from the classroom.
There are also several claims that the powers that be are much more likely to prosecute university policy violations against the Jewish and pro-Israel students who often show up to counterprotest. This double standard was obvious during the congressional hearing.
The delegation from Columbia did not make the same mistake that the Harvard, UPenn, and MIT presidents made; the delegation said calling for genocide of the Jews was a violation of university policy — none of the “it depends on the context” excuse. Yet one thing was made incredibly clear: Columbia has been ignoring its own policies on anti-Semitism and allowing the pro-Hamas activists to face little consequences. Congressional members were exceedingly firm in their responses.
As Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) put it in a statement: “Today’s hearing of Columbia University president and board members epitomizes the failed leadership on ‘elite’ college campuses to combat antisemitism and protect Jewish students. From the university president’s moral equivocation on antisemitism, to glaringly inconsistent testimony regarding disciplinary action and lack thereof taken against antisemitic students and pro-terrorist faculty, to astonishingly stating that there has been no ‘anti-Jewish’ protests on campus only to then acknowledge that ‘F— the Jews’ & ‘Death to the Jews’ is in-fact anti-Jewish when she was further pressed.”
Perhaps that is why yesterday afternoon, after warning the Columbia protesters to disperse or face consequences, Shafik called in the NYPD. Over 100 protesters were arrested and will face suspension from the university.
This is a step in the right direction, but these protesters have been allowed to cause chaos on campus with impunity for months. They will do so again because they know Columbia’s crackdown is half-hearted at worst and reactionary to the congressional microscope at best.
Standardized Testing Is Making a Comeback
After an equity-induced dalliance with test-free admissions policies, many colleges and universities now recognize the importance of testing.
Brian Mark Weber
Millions of Americans have experienced the stress and hard work of studying for the SAT or ACT, sitting in a room for hours during test day, and waiting for the results to arrive by mail.
In recent years, more people have wondered whether the tests were a necessary part of the college admissions process. But as it turns out, assessing students with these tests is a good measure of knowledge. We know this because we’re emerging from a phase in which schools and universities jumped on the bandwagon of abandoning standardized tests. At first, the excuse was COVID-19, but many schools continue to be test-optional.
As Forbes reported in November 2022, “At least 1,835 U.S. colleges and universities are now employing either ACT/SAT-optional or test-blind/score-free policies, according to an updated list released … by the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), an organization that is one of the nation’s leading opponents to high-stakes standardized testing.” The list has grown since then.
It all happened so fast and with very little discussion. Long before COVID, the anti-test push grew out of the philosophy of postmodernism, a movement that, in part, lowered standards for all in the name of equality. Within this philosophy came the piggyback movements of critical race theory, anti-racism, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
In fact, FairTest asserts on its website, “What the SAT, and standardized tests generally, seem to pick up better than anything is whether your origins lie in the winning side of the existing birth ‘meritocracy.’”
In other words, because some students may not have had access to quality teachers, schools, or tutors, we should completely dismantle the merit-based system and admit everyone regardless of aptitude.
The philosophy of “equity” has a ripple effect being felt across the nation. Students who enter degree programs without any foundational knowledge end up dropping out with significant college debt or graduating with a degree but entering the workforce wholly unprepared for the job.
That may not be a serious problem in many professions, but you’d probably want your surgeon, airline pilot, lawyer, or accountant to be highly proficient. In addition, this lack of academic rigor further divides people within the workplace.
“Equity segregates workers and students by race and sexuality in affinity groups while naming itself an enemy of racism and discrimination,” journalist David Mastio writes. “It fosters enmity among colleagues and classmates while claiming to build belonging. It claims to fight microaggressions and ends up restricting expression.”
Anti-test proponents conveniently neglect the reality that test admissions scores are only one part of an applicant’s profile. Typically, admissions counselors consider a range of factors, including students’ socioeconomic background, the quality of their high school program, letters of recommendation, the college essay, and, of course, grades.
Abandoning standardized tests like the SAT and ACT gave colleges and universities a chance to evaluate their worth. Now, some schools have decided to start testing applicants again — a decision based on evidence strongly supporting the value of standardized testing.
In fact, one study used “admissions records and first-year college grades from multiple Ivy-Plus colleges for students between 2017 and 2022 to study how standardized test scores and high school grade point average (GPA) relate to academic success in college.” The results: “Even among otherwise similar students with the same high school grades, we find that SAT and ACT scores have substantial predictive power for academic success in college.”
The report’s authors concluded, “Standardized test scores may have more value for admissions processes than previously understood in the literature, especially for highly selective colleges.”
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports: “Colleges nationwide have been updating their coronavirus-era policies on standardized testing, which many dropped when the pandemic shut down in-person testing centers. Some of the most selective schools are declaring they will require tests again — including, across the last two months, Dartmouth College and Yale and Brown universities.”
The movement to end standardized testing is part of a broader agenda of the cultural Marxists to “decolonize” the West, not some innovative and thoughtful approach to reconsider what brings out the best in our students. This takes many forms, including the abolition of meritocracy in American society.
The U.S. has worked hard to ensure equality of opportunity for all, but now a segment of our population wants to replace it with equality of outcome. The good news is that it hasn’t taken long for most of us to see that such an approach doesn’t work. Standardized test scores are not the be-all and end-all, but eliminating all evaluative measures doesn’t serve the interests of students or society.
Eroding the Electoral College Erodes Americans’ Voting Rights
This week, Maine became the 17th state to pass legislation joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Laura Hollis
The structure of the American government was designed by the Founders to prevent raw majoritarianism: the three branches of government and their checks and balances, the allocation of power between the state and federal governments, constitutional limits on the federal government’s power, the differing composition of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and the Electoral College.
Leftists are doing everything they can to eliminate these safeguards and create a system where a bare majority will control every level of political power. The Electoral College is a particular target of their vitriol and machinations.
The U.S. Constitution provides that the president of the United States is elected not by a popular vote of the people but by the states. Each state has electors, the number of which is equal to the number of representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives (which is determined by the state’s population, established every 10 years in the census). After a presidential election, each state’s electors cast their votes for the candidate who has won a majority of the state’s votes. (All but two states have a “winner-take-all” electoral vote system; Maine and Nebraska allocate electors roughly proportionately.) In theory, members of the Electoral College have the power to cast their votes for whichever candidate they choose. (And there have been loud calls for them to do so, in 2016 and again in 2020.) In practice, however, they have abided by the decision of the voters in their state.
The objection to the Electoral College arises largely from the fact that the victor in a presidential election can win despite losing the “popular vote,” as has happened five times in U.S. history, including the 2000 and 2016 elections. This is pitched as some kind of grave injustice. But the Electoral College was designed precisely to protect and preserve the votes and voices of smaller, rural, less populated states.
Opponents of the Electoral College also claim it was put in place to protect slavery. But a quick review of history disproves that. The Constitution was adopted in 1789. In 1790, at the time of the first census, the states in ascending order of population were Southwest Territory, Delaware, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Georgia, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, South Carolina, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Of the 17 then-existing states, slave states were four of the top six most populous. Virginia alone held almost 20% of the country’s entire population. By contrast, the bottom nine least populated states — including New York — were free states.
In other words, at the time it was created, the Electoral College protected the voting rights of less populated free states vis-a-vis the votes of the larger states where slavery was practiced.
Eliminating the Electoral College altogether would require a constitutional amendment, a process requiring either a convention of the states or passage by a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress followed by ratification by three-quarters of all state legislatures (38 out of 50 at present).
However, those trying to change the method of electing the president have found another way: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which was launched in 2006. States join the NPVIC by passing legislation by which they agree to allocate their Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who receives the largest percentage of the popular vote — even if that is not whom a majority of the state’s own voters have chosen.
This week, Maine became the 17th state to pass legislation joining the NPVIC. (The District of Columbia has also passed legislation joining.) At this writing, the compact has 209 of the 270 votes needed to trigger its application in a presidential election.
The legislatures that have passed NPVIC legislation have effectively disenfranchised their own citizens, who should be irate that their votes will be cast aside because of what has transpired in other states.
There are additional reasons to oppose the NPVIC.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order in 2021 ordering the U.S. Census Bureau to count all U.S. residents — including illegal immigrants — as part of the census. Since that time, at least 10 million people have crossed the border illegally — more than the populations of 40 states. Huge numbers of these have landed in California, New York and Illinois, bloating their population figures for both congressional representation and Electoral College purposes. California, Illinois and New York (all of which have joined the NPVIC) have 101 Electoral College votes just between the three of them. They are also in the top 10 states with the highest number of illegal immigrants.
This explains Democrats’ push to make all illegal immigrants citizens and give them voting rights. That, coupled with the NPVIC, would give the most populous states de facto control over presidential elections. A handful of states should not be able to decide the election of the president of all 50, particularly when they have padded their population via illegal immigration. Claims that the Electoral College “undermines democracy” are either ignorant or deliberately misleading. The United States is not a “democracy”; it is a constitutional republic. And it is not merely a country; it is also a federation of 50 semi-sovereign states, each of which has citizens.
NPVIC advocates, along with those who want to abolish the Electoral College outright and change the composition of the U.S. Senate, are pushing us toward a situation where a majority of states will nevertheless be home to a permanent, politically disenfranchised minority.
That is not a prescription for “fairness” or “unity.” It is a path to balkanization, calls for secession — or worse.
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VIDEOS
- DeSantis Calls Out ‘Passive Aggressive Nonsense’ — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis weighs in on the ongoing battle over school book challenges.
- Outraged Students Stage Walkout Over ‘Furries’ — Middle school students at Mt. Nebo School in Payson, Utah, held a walkout protest against unhinged school officials who allow “furries” to attack them at school.
- Leftists Getting Owned — There is truly nothing more satisfying than watching smug, self-righteous leftists be humbled by facts and logic.
- Mike Rowe: Solving the ‘Made in America’ Problem — What does it take to make a traditional flannel shirt in America? According to a New York Times reporter, it’s a combination of engineering and artistry.
- PopCon #40: Red Pill Community Rejects Redemption — Top-earning OnlyFans content creator Nala Ray has chosen to leave it all behind and follow Jesus Christ. However, doing so has unleashed some right-wing backlash.
BEST OF RIGHT OPINION
- JOSH HAMMERHold Obama-Biden Foreign Policy Responsible for Iran’s Unprecedented Attack on Israel
- VICTOR DAVIS HANSONAre Iran’s Nine Lives Nearing an End?
- MICHAEL REAGAN’Hating America 101′ — A Course for Homegrown Terrorists?
- TIM GRAHAMDo Celebrities Have Deeper Liberal Thoughts?
- MICHAEL BARONEMaybe Larger Families Will Produce Better Leaders, as in the Early U.S.
For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.
SHORT CUTS
The BIG Lies
“Allow me assure you that I have honored the oath of office that I have taken more than five times in my 22-plus years of federal service.” —DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
“With the resources and authorities that we have, [the border] is as secure as it can be.” —Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
For the Record
“In the 237 years of our nation’s history, I don’t know that there has been a more shameful day in the United States Senate than today.” —Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on the Democrats’ immediate dismissal of impeachment charges against Alejandro Mayorkas
Leftmedia Spin
“Biden is off on details of his uncle’s WWII death as he calls Trump unfit to lead the military.” —Associated Press (“I’d say that making up a story about cannibals eating your uncle qualifies as a bit more than being ‘off on the details.’” —T. Becket Adams)
Pot Calling the Kettle Black
“We could be attacked in a way that could seriously jeopardize our country’s security with a commander-in-chief who is just not up for defending America’s interests because he’s putting his own first.” —Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA)
Theater of the Absurd
“[Trump] is a legal terrorist who has 40 years of experience — probably more than any person in America — with lawsuits and tying up the system and seeking to delay, delay, delay.” —Rep. Eric Swalwell
More BIG Lies
“I’ve not once talked to anyone in my administration about Trump’s legal problems.” —Joe Biden
“First outfit ever to endorse me.” —Joe Biden vis-à-vis United Steelworkers (“The UAW was the first outfit to endorse me when I ran for U.S. Senate in 1972.” —Joe Biden in February)
Missing Context
“On my watch, unemployment has been below 4% for the longest stretch in more than 50 years.” —Joe Biden (Now do inflation.)
Freudian Slip
“Are you ready to choose freedom over democracy? Because that’s America.” —Joe Biden
Non Compos Mentis
“I made it clear to the Israelis — don’t move on Haifa.” —Joe Biden, who meant Rafah in the Gaza Strip and not the Israeli city of Haifa
“My mom didn’t live in Scranton since she was 1954.” —Joe Biden
Political Futures
“California, Illinois and New York (all of which have joined the [National Popular Vote Interstate Compact]) have 101 Electoral College votes just between the three of them. They are also in the top 10 states with the highest number of illegal immigrants. This explains Democrats’ push to make all illegal immigrants citizens and give them voting rights. That, coupled with the NPVIC, would give the most populous states de facto control over presidential elections.” —Laura Hollis
Upright
“American negotiators have duped themselves into a baseless faith that a deal might persuade Tehran to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The U.S. — indeed the world — has only one option left: regime change. This should be the policy of the United States and other free countries, especially those that have been subjected to terrorist attacks. The goal must be removal of the ayatollahs ruling and ruining Iran and to make sure free and fair elections are held to replace them.” —Cal Thomas
And Last…
“Katherine Maher: I’m pro-censorship, anti-First Amendment, anti-truth, anti-white, and anti-‘free and open’ internet. NPR: She’s perfect. Let’s make her CEO.” —Christopher F. Rufo
“If NPR wanted to prove that they were still committed to free speech, to being ideologically neutral, and simply nonpartisan, they would let [Katherine Maher] go right away.” —Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger
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)”.
Grammy-Winning Christian Artist Mandisa Has Died: Report | Faithwire
Grammy-winning Christian recording artist Mandisa has passed away, according to reports.
The Christian radio network K-LOVE first reported the tragic news of the “Stronger” singer-songwriter’s death over the airwaves before sharing the news to social media.
Mandisa — whose full name is Mandisa Hudley — died at her Nashville home on Thursday at age 47. The cause of her death has not been disclosed.
In a statement, K-LOVE Chief Media Officer David Pierce said, “Mandisa loved Jesus, and she used her unusually extensive platform to talk about Him at every turn. Her kindness was epic, her smile electric, her voice massive, but it was no match for the size of her heart.”
“Mandisa struggled,” he added, “and she was vulnerable enough to share that with us, which helped us talk about our own struggles.”
The “Overcomer” singer appeared on CBN’s “Quick Start” in 2022 to talk about her memoir, “Out of the Dark,” which chronicled her struggles with anxiety and depression amid her fame following her success on the 2007 season of “American Idol.”
In her book, Mandisa addressed dark and difficult subjects — like her near-suicide attempt — and how the Lord redeemed those broken things in her life for His glory and her good.
The singer-songwriter’s suicide attempt, she told CBN, came amid a spiraling depression sparked by the death of her friend, Keisha, whom she was believing would survive breast cancer.
When her friend passed away, Mandisa didn’t know how to cope.
“When she passed away, it shook the foundation underneath me and I was angry,” she said. “[I] was numb. And then I started to question God.”
Rather than talk about her pain, though, Mandisa kept it bottled up.
“I kept it all inside,” she reflected back in 2022. “Before I knew it, I was miserable and hopeless. I didn’t want to be around anybody. I stayed in my house for two years, essentially, just eating and getting worse and worse.”
“It was a slow fade,” she continued, “until the point where I really wanted to end it all.”
Ultimately, Mandisa’s attempt to take her own life failed. Looking back, she told CBN it was the wakeup call she needed. At the time, she said, “I’m able to see now how God has redeemed it. I still wish my friend were here, but I’ve learned how important it is to grieve and to walk with God through things like that.”
The Lord used the Old Testament book of Psalms to help Mandisa understand the pain she was feeling.
“Look at the Psalms,” she encouraged. “I mean, you see David one minute talking about how good God is and the next minute saying, ‘I want you to slaughter my enemies,’ and, ‘How could you allow this?’ … I have learned how important it is to say these things, because I think we miss the comfort that we get from God when we choose to just stuff it down and not say anything at all.”
You can listen to our full conversation with Mandisa here:
She also appeared in the summer of 2022 on CBN’s “700 Club Interactive.”
During that conversation, she shared how she came to Christ as a teenager when her mother — at her coworker’s invitation — took her to a singing Christmas tree performance.
“Never mistake that a little invitation like that can really change somebody’s life, because it did for me,” she said. “I remember sitting there in that audience, seeing all the musical acts and everything up on the stage. But really, I was struck by the life of Jesus and how He came for us and, for the first time, though I had been going to church every other weekend when I would visit my dad and step-mom, it just struck something new in me in that moment.”
“So I made the decision — I stuck my little hand up,” she continued, noting the pastor then encouraged those who wanted to come to know Christ to come forward to the altar. “As I walked down that aisle, I had that moment where [I thought], ‘If Jesus would make such a public declaration for me, then I can do the same for Him.’”
You can see that full conversation below:
Source: Grammy-Winning Christian Artist Mandisa Has Died: Report
Trump’s Jury Trial Will Be As ‘Fair’ As The Russia Hoax And 2020 Election
New York County, which encompasses Manhattan, voted for Biden over Trump 87 percent to 12 percent in 2020.
There Is More To This Current Bird Flu Panic Than Meets The Eye | End Of The American Dream
Why are global health officials issuing such ominous warnings about the bird flu? Do they know something that the rest of us do not? H5N1 has been circulating all over the planet for several years now, and it has been the worst outbreak that the world has ever seen. Hundreds of millions of birds are already dead, and now H5N1 has been infecting mammals with alarming regularity. The good news is that so far it has not been a serious threat to humans, but could that soon change? According to the World Health Organization, the possibility that H5N1 could start spreading among humans is an “enormous concern”…
The increasing spread of bird flu to humans is an ‘enormous concern’, the World Health Organization has warned.
The virus, an extremely deadly H5N1 subtype, has caused devastating declines in bird populations following its emergence in Europe in 2020.
It has since jumped to mammals such as cows, cats, seals and now people, raising the risk of the virus mutating to become more transmissible.
The fact that so many different types of mammals are now being infected is definitely alarming.
But perhaps cows would not be getting infected if we were not literally feeding them chicken crap…
As epidemiologists scramble to figure out how dairy cows throughout the Midwest became infected with a strain of highly pathogenic avian flu — a disease that has decimated hundreds of millions of wild and farmed birds, as well as tens of thousands of mammals across the planet — they’re looking at a standard “recycling” practice employed by thousands of farmers across the country: The feeding of animal waste and parts to livestock raised for human consumption.
“It seems ghoulish, but it is a perfectly legal and common practice for chicken litter — the material that accumulates on the floor of chicken growing facilities — to be fed to cattle,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with Consumers Union.
It is not known if eating chicken crap is why so many cows in so many different states are being infected with H5N1.
But at a time when the bird flu is running rampant among chickens and turkeys, it seems very foolish to take chicken crap and feed it to our cows.
In any event, now there is a lot of panic about the potential for an H5N1 outbreak among humans.
Authorities at the WHO are warning that the death rate would be “extraordinarily high” if such an outbreak were to occur…
Experts at the WHO said humans face an ‘extraordinarily high’ mortality rate if the strain were to take hold, currently killing more than half of those infected.
I agree.
The bird flu is very dangerous, and if it starts spreading among humans on a widespread basis a lot of people will die.
So why are U.S. taxpayer dollars being used to fund experiments in China that are specifically designed to make bird flu viruses even more deadly? The following comes from an extremely shocking Daily Mail article…
Lawmakers are demanding answers after it was revealed the US is sending taxpayer dollars to a Chinese army lab to make bird flu viruses more dangerous to people.
Eighteen members of Congress are demanding answers from the Department of Agriculture (USDA) about the project, which was first revealed by DailyMail.com.
It is part of a $1million collaboration between the USDA and the CCP-run Chinese Academy of Sciences – the institution that oversees the Wuhan lab at the center of the Covid lab-leak theory.
In a scathing letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack last week, the bipartisan group said: ‘This research, funded by American taxpayers, could potentially generate dangerous new lab-created virus strains that threaten our national security and public health.’
As I warn in my latest book, mad scientists all over the globe are taking some of the most deadly bugs even known to humanity and are purposely trying to make them even more deadly.
And way too often, your tax dollars are paying for it.
Of course experiments on H5N1 are not new.
Over a decade ago, gain of function experiments that were funded by Dr. Francis S. Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci actually created a mutant version of H5N1 that “had gained the ability to spread through the air between ferrets”…
And yet in late 2011 the world learned that two scientific teams – one in Wisconsin, led by virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka, and another in the Netherlands, led by virologist Ron Fouchier – had potentially pushed the virus in that direction. Each of these labs had created H5N1 viruses that had gained the ability to spread through the air between ferrets, the animal model used to study how flu viruses might behave in humans.
The ultimate goal of this work was to help protect the world from future pandemics, and the research was supported with words and funding by two of the most prominent scientists in the United States: Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Why would they purposely create such a thing?
Ferrets were specifically chosen for that research because they have respiratory systems that are very similar to humans.
Our ability to create deadly diseases far exceeds our ability to control them, and once something gets out it can spread around the globe in the blink of an eye.
Right now, there is a lot of concern about a “mystery respiratory illness” that has suddenly appeared in Argentina…
A mystery respiratory illness has hospitalised dozens of people in Argentina in an outbreak that shares eerie similarities with Covid’s arrival.
Sixty patients have been sickened with ‘severe atypical pneumonia’ in the capital, Buenos Aires.
An alert about the cluster of cases was last night circulated via an international public health surveillance system.
Covid was brought to the attention of the world in late 2019 as a result of the same database, called ProMed.
Hopefully this will turn out to be nothing.
But it is just a matter of time before more great pestilences ravage our planet.
Will H5N1 be one of them?
I don’t know, but this is a story that I will definitely be watching closely.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
About the Author: Michael Snyder’s extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. You can find Michael on social media on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and sharing his articles on your own social media accounts is definitely a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.
The post There Is More To This Current Bird Flu Panic Than Meets The Eye appeared first on End Of The American Dream.
Why Americans Can’t Trust NPR — or Any of the Elite, Liberal Media | Standing for Freedom Center
While the American people have lost their trust in the media, Christians had better not lose trust in the Gospel truth — not only that it is the truth, but that it is the truth that will set us free.
Has NPR and the mainstream media lost America’s trust? What does the story of Uri Berliner teach all of us?
Just last week, former senior editor at National Public Radio, Uri Berliner published a tell-all essay in the Free Press where he declared that his long-time network had lost America’s trust when it started to tell listeners exactly how to think.
No one listening right now questions the liberalism or leftism of NPR. But in Berliner’s words, the stereotypical, average NPR listener is an “[electric vehicle]-driving, Wordle-playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite.” Yes, he nailed it. Uri describes himself as not far from the tree — he was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother, is a Subaru driver, and his listening habits on Spotify are similar to people living in Berkeley, California. So far, that squares with what you would expect.
According to Uri Berliner, the 25-year veteran of taxpayer-funded, non-profit, biased reporting NPR, it has always been liberal. And yes, I will echo that sentiment from where I sit today. As a Texas-born, Bible-belt kid, who listened to Rush Limbaugh and went to vacation Bible school, youth camp, and Republican rallies — yes, NPR has always been a liberal outlet with no conservative thought. Conservative and Republican are dirty words at NPR.
So, what’s the scandal here, and why is this news breaking this week?
We already know this news, of course, but something has changed and it’s something to notice. Berliner reflects that NPR went from being a kind of high-browed, bookish, cultured news institution for coastal elites on the left to one that was “knee-jerk,” “activist,” and “scolding” of anyone who dared to disagree. NPR went from liberal purveyor to combatant in the arena. And I think Berliner is on to something we already know.
Since the presidential election of 2016 and the rise of Donald Trump’s influence on America’s cultural and political landscape at large, many media outlets with coastal loyalties and biases, including NPR, opted for a new level of antagonism and belligerency in their reporting. The bias in the media only grew from what had already existed to being pungent, odious, and intolerable. Berliner recounted that Congressman Adam Schiff was interviewed by NPR some 25 times about Russia collusion — yes, Russiagate — until the Robert Mueller report concluded there was no credible evidence to the allegations whatsoever. NPR went silent.
NPR also decidedly avoided the Hunter Biden laptop story as both a distraction and something that, according to Berliner, would have helped Donald Trump in his 2020 election efforts. NPR was no longer reporting with liberal bias, but purposefully curating news intended to lead and mislead the public.
During COVID, Berliner remarks that “one of the most dismal aspects of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological storylines.” That’s something you and I will most certainly echo today. That wasn’t just NPR, but every major media outlet was pushing quite hard on the COVID narrative as puppets of propaganda. Even in the broader evangelical world, outlets like Christianity Today were committed to the ideological story and framing rather than the truth or the facts — an embarrassing stance today that should not easily be forgotten.
According to Berliner, “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.”
Even as the pandemic carried on, several investigative journalists outside of NPR were able to make compelling cases for the lab leak with mounting evidence. NPR, however, insisted on natural origin as late as February 2023. The Wuhan lab gain-of-function research was later proven to be true.
Berliner continued on the deep absence of viewpoint diversity, saying, “There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless—one story after another about the instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.”
Much like the rest of the media, NPR has no real conservatives working there, nor would any conservatives likely thrive there. But that lack of a balanced perspective has led to NPR’s inevitable decline, which included layoffs and cancellation of programming as NPR is losing listeners and much-needed advertising revenue. It is good to be reminded that there is always a price to pay when playing gatekeeper for ideology rather than reporting the truth.
NPR CEO Katherine Maher can be heard in a TED talk from 2022 discussing what she calls the balance between truth and beliefs. Maher, borrowing from Wikipedia, advocates for a model of reporting that is primarily devoted to common beliefs rather than divisive truth. But if there is no truth, then what does it mean to have common ground?
The Berliner story reveals there is bias; more importantly, there is dissension among the rank-and-file media class.
How should Christians think about this?
The counterfeit world of digital media, news, and information might seem monolithic and, if compared to a castle fortress, impregnable. But it has serious cracks and the foundation is built on sinking sand. No one can propagate myths and deceptions in perpetuity. There are real costs to doing that and the bill always comes due in the end.
As the saying goes, “They can fool everyone some of the time. They can fool some all of the time. But they can never fool everyone all of the time.” Truth always wins.
Christians are beholden to the truth. It is the truth that sets us free. It is also the truth that will gain acceptance in the world, the truth that must save the world, and the truth that will save the world.
In the book of Acts, the public enemies of Christ could not conceal the resurrection as fake news or a theory — not even for one day. They were compelled by overwhelming evidence to concede that the resurrection was real and the obvious truth that they had killed an innocent man. Not even the Roman government, ruled by an absolute dictator with no delegated power, could overturn the truth or hide it from the world.
Yes, truth wins and truth saves. While the American people have lost their trust in the media, Christians had better not lose trust in the Gospel truth. Not only that it is the truth, but that it is the truth that will set us free.
Israel Strikes Iran | CBN NewsWatch – April 19, 2024
Israel has reportedly struck targets in Iran in response to last weekend’s massive missile and drone attack against the Jewish state. A well-known Christian politician in Lebanon who publicly opposed Hezbollah was recently murdered. Ahead of the Passover holiday, family members of hostages from a Kibbutz devastated on October 7th, gathered in the community dining room to cry out once again for freedom for those in Hamas captivity.
CBN News. Because Truth Matters™
Source: Israel Strikes Iran | CBN NewsWatch – April 19, 2024
Trump Goes From Courtroom to Campaign Trail | The NEWSMAX Daily (04/19/2024)
Today’s 20-min top headline news brief from NEWSMAX includes:
[2:09] -In NY, former President Donald Trump calls out crooked Joe Biden. [Newsmax Breaking]
[2:39] -Newsmax host Greg Kelly on Trump hush money trial, “This should not be happening.” [Greg Kelly Reports]
[5:12] -Lara Trump and Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt discuss the NY jury selection [Rob Schmitt Tonight]
[9:17] -House Speaker Mike Johnson discusses foreign aid bill and funding for the border. [The Record with Greta Van Susteren]
[15:33] -Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) does not agree with ousting Mike Johnson as Speaker or funding Ukraine. [Wake Up America]
[19:17] -Stock market continues slide after Israel attack.
Source: Trump Goes From Courtroom to Campaign Trail | The NEWSMAX Daily (04/19/2024)
DEI Failure | VCY
Kerby Anderson
A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal began with these sentences. “Memo to companies: Go ahead and cancel your DEI programs. That’s more or less the message of a recent report commissioned by the UK government finding that diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” The report found little evidence that DEI had any positive effect on corporate culture.
In fact, it is difficult to say what DEI means. The terms are, according to the report, “ambiguous, rapidly evolving, and often conflated.” Although the current fad is to focus on diversity among racial, social, or other lines, “a visibly diverse organization is not necessarily meaningfully heterogenous.” The Wall Street Journal editors concluded that “viewpoint diversity may be more important for a thriving company.”
As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, cancelling DEI programs, and closing DEI departments can save money. US companies spend $8 billion a year on DEI training. The other savings is in the legal area. Even in the UK, there have been lawsuits against companies because their DEI policies have “violated British protections on freedom of belief by punishing employees who dissented from the DEI orthodoxy on race or transgenderism.”
Last month I talked about the fact that the University of Florida announced it was ending its experiment with DEI. The college closed the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer and eliminated DEI positions, thereby saving more than $5 million each year on the controversial program. The Florida legislature passed a law prohibiting state funding of DEI programs and University of Florida President Ben Sasse implemented it.
I suggest other companies and universities follow their example.
Salvation Out, Self-Help In | Daily Declaration
We no longer believe in sin, so we no longer believe in a saviour.
In the old days, most people knew they were sinful beings in need of salvation and rescue. Today, they see themselves as gods who need affirmation and self-realisation. We have moved from a view of the good life through self-denial and rejection of self to one of self-actualisation and self-affirmation.
This is a massive shift in the way we see ourselves, how we understand our troubles, and how we view the way out – the way of salvation. Instead of lost sinners needing saving, we are good people simply needing some therapy and affirmation.
Awareness of this major shift in thinking about who we are, what our condition is, and what is the way forward, has long been with us. Criticism of theological liberalism from a century and more ago can be mentioned, including the critique of J. Gresham Machen that I just again discussed in a new piece.
Secular voices also noted this and wrote extensively about it. Most notable was the 1966 volume The Triumph of the Therapeutic by Philip Rieff (Harper & Row). In it, the American sociologist said this:
“Christian man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased. The difference was established long ago, when ‘I believe!,’ the cry of the ascetic, lost precedence to ‘one feels,’ the caveat of the therapeutic.”
Distant God
Another crucial discussion of this appeared in the 2005 book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press) by another American sociologist, Christian Smith. In it, he made use of the term “moralistic therapeutic deism.”
Deism is the view that God made the world but has no real direct involvement in it. So, in his study of US teens, by MTD, he meant that most of them feel that God wants us to be good and nice, and the main goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself. When we get in a jam, we call upon God, but otherwise, He has no real role in our lives. Sadly, it is not just non-Christian youth that think this way, but Christian youth as well.
A number of important Christian thinkers and cultural observers have made much use of the insights provided by Rieff and Smith. For example, in his 2008 book Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Baker), Michael Horton referred to this in various places. It is Christianity Lite, not biblical Christianity:
It was secular psychologist Karl Menninger who pointed out (in a book titled Whatever Became of Sin?) that the growing suppression of the reality of guilt in churches was actually contributing to neuroses rather than avoiding them…
If we feel guilty, maybe it is because we really are guilty. To change the subject or downplay the seriousness of this condition actually keeps people from the liberating news that the gospel brings. If our real problem is bad feelings, then the solution is good feelings. The cure can only be as radical as the disease.
Like any recreational drug, Christianity Lite can make people feel better for the moment, but it does not reconcile sinners to God. Ironically, secular psychologists like Menninger are writing books about sin, while many Christian leaders are converting sin – a condition from which we cannot liberate ourselves – into dysfunction and salvation into recovery. (pp. 35-36)
David Wells
One evangelical intellectual and theologian who wrote copiously about such matters is David Wells. He has taught theology for many years at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. (If I can add a personal note here, some students thought him to be a hard grader, so sought to avoid his classes. I quite enjoyed his classes, and only got As in them.)
A number of his many books have dealt with this shift in thinking about the human person and what he needs. Let me only feature four of them, with a quote or two from each:
No Place for Truth (Eerdmans, 1993)
We are therefore accomplishing in our culture what only such dystopian writers as Aldous Huxley and George Orwell ever imagined. We are replacing the categories of good and evil with the pale absolutes that arise from the media world — entertainment and boredom.
It is not by struggle, still less by grace, that we have eliminated the corruption from human nature of which the Reformers were so aware. We have done it simply by a fresh definition. Evil is boredom, and that is remedied with far greater ease than sin. It is remedied not by Christ but by a cable hookup.
Rieff’s “psychological man” has no interest in ultimate concerns, in searching out meaning that is outside of the self and that cannot be experienced; the doctrinal imagination has long since atrophied. It is in the self that meaning is uncovered.
Meaning is the self, the uncovering of the self, the stroking of the self, the attendance to its needs. Outside of this small inland retreat, there is only the inhospitable terrain of modernity, in which the search for meaning is so complex, so exhausting, so nerve-shattering, that only fools attempt it. (p. 170)
God in the Wasteland (Eerdmans, 1994)
Stripped of external connectedness and haunted within by anxiety, modern individuals drift in society like bits of cork on the ocean, moved about in ways beyond their understanding by deep and irresistible currents. Filled with dread, disease, and foreboding and unable to secure a foothold in any external reality, they take refuge in the one certain thing remaining — the self.
This turn to the self as the source of mystery, of meaning, and of hope is the key to understanding the shape that much religion in America is taking today. As Philip Rieff has pointed out, however, all this brave talk about the self and about its potential is actually evidence of a “disordering” of the self, and it follows from this, that any religion based on the self must itself be disordered. (p. 97)
Losing Our Virtue (Eerdmans, 1998)
In a recent article, I looked at some key insights from American historian and social critic Christopher Lasch. Wells also draws upon his work:
According to Christopher Lasch, in the 1960s therapists and psychiatrists began to see a different kind of patient. Many of their patients prior to this time had been neurotics with obsessive and compulsive behavior, but they were increasingly replaced by a new kind of patient, the forerunners of whom Freud had seen and had refused to treat because he believed they were impervious to analysis.
In the 1960s, these patients often had fragmentary selves, weak or vacant consciences, and they engaged in covering up their inward deficiencies, their sense of anxiety, by exaggerating their accomplishments. They were filled with a vague sense of disease.
Dissatisfaction, like a fog, seeped into all the nooks and crannies of their life. They often had a pervasive feeling of emptiness. Their self-esteem oscillated between a sense of self-importance that was either greatly enlarged or greatly diminished. They were chronically bored, restless, uprooted, always seeking instantaneous gratification without emotional involvement. …
If the narcissist classically has a shrunken, fragmentary self, our culture has similarly become hollowed out and lost its core. If the narcissist covers up the emptiness by exaggerated self-importance and fantasies of power, our culture is covering up its hollowness by fads and fashions, ceaseless consuming, and the constant excitement of fresh sexual conquest. This is going to lead, as I shall suggest, to an entirely new understanding of salvation. (pp. 107-108)
God in the Whirlwind (Crossway/IVP, 2014)
Discussing the “saccharin-like” preaching of Joel Osteen, Wells says this of the kind of God he presents:
God is our greatest booster who, sadly, is frustrated that he cannot shower on us more health, wealth, happiness, and self-fulfillment. The reason is simply that we have not stretched out our hands to take these things. God really, really wants us to have them. If we do not have them, well, the fault is ours.
Actually Osteen’s message is not much different from the way that a majority of American teenagers think about God today. In his Soul Searching, Christian Smith has given us the fruit of a large study he conducted on our teenagers. It was released in 2005.
What is really striking in this study is Smith’s findings of the view of God that is dominant among a majority of these teenagers. He calls it “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” The dominant view, even among evangelical teenagers, is that God made everything and established a moral order, but he does not intervene.
Actually, for most he is not even Trinitarian, and the incarnation and resurrection of Christ play little part in church teenage thinking — even in evangelical teenage thinking. They see God as not demanding much from them because he is chiefly engaged in solving their problems and making them feel good. Religion is about experiencing happiness, contentedness, having God solve one’s problems and provide stuff like homes, the Internet, iPods, iPads, and iPhones.
This is a widespread view of God within modern culture, not only among adolescents but among many adults as well. It is the view of God most common in Western contexts. These are the contexts of brilliantly spectacular technology, the abundance churned out by capitalism, the enormous range of opportunities that we have, the unending choices in everything from toothpaste to travel, and the fact that we are now knowledgeable of the entire world into which we are wired. All of these factors interconnect in our experience and do strange things to the way we think. Most importantly, they have obviously done strange things to how we think about God.
Indeed, Ross Douthat, in his “Bad Religion”, speaks of this as a pervasive “heresy” that has now swept America. He is quite correct, though most people would not think of heresy in this way. However, what so many Americans think about God is a distortion of what is true. And as a distortion it is a substitute for the real thing. And that is why it is heretical. So, why are people thinking like this? Let me take a stab at answering what is, no doubt, a highly complex question. (pp. 20-21)
See my review of this book here.
Much more could be shared by Wells and others. But if you wonder why the world is in such a mess today, it is because the church is in such a mess. Moralistic therapeutic deism and the like has swamped much of the Western church, certainly most of its young people. God, please rescue us from this.
___
Originally published at CultureWatch. Photo by cottonbro studio.
The post Salvation Out, Self-Help In appeared first on Daily Declaration.
Biden’s Global Pandemic Agreement Empowers WHO, China, Conservatives Warn | The Daily Signal
Congressional Republicans are calling on President Joe Biden to abandon plans for a pandemic treaty that would strengthen the World Health Organization, citing that global body’s numerous failures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., backed by about half of all Senate Republicans, signed a letter to Biden urging him to withdraw from two agreements with the World Health Organization that would boost its authority to declare public health emergencies and give it new powers over the U.S. and 193 other member states during such emergencies.
The letter to the president from Senate Republicans also asks that he submit any such pandemic agreement with WHO—criticized for going easy on China during COVID-19—to the Senate for ratification.
“China has far too much control over the WHO. We certainly don’t want the WHO to control our individual health decisions,” Johnson said at a press conference Thursday outside the Capitol, flanked by several House Republicans and other conservative leaders.
“I have a bill that would deem any agreement between the Biden administration and the WHO a treaty to come before the Senate for debate and ratification. That is absolutely crucial,” Johnson said.
The Biden administration looks to commit the United States to the new global pandemic preparedness agreement, as well as to revised rules within the International Health Regulations adopted in 2005.
The existing rules allow the World Health Organization, with the consent of member nations, to declare a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern.” The amendment will allow WHO to do so over the objection of member nations.
Even if the Biden administration tries to commit the United States to the agreement May 27 at the World Health Assembly—absent Senate ratification—at a minimum Congress can ensure that it doesn’t go unnoticed, said Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C.
“We are going to expose it. They needed four months to get the amendments out there that are going to be considered on May 27,” Norman told The Daily Signal as speakers took questions. “That’s unacceptable. I’ve seen too many documents at the last minute. This is too important to let this go by.”
Norman added that he is calling on Biden to be transparent with Americans about the pandemic agreements.
“What I will ask him to do, and it will fall on deaf ears, is to show the American people exactly what you are submitting America to,” Norman said. “Show us the fine print. Ladies and gentlemen, the devil is in the details of almost everything that my colleagues and I have to deal with. So exposure is what we can do right now, and he can lead the way as the leader of the free world. Do I think he will do it? No.”
Earlier this month, the White House released a Global Health Security Strategy that says in part:
The United States is supporting efforts to strengthen global policies and legal preparedness, including negotiating a pandemic agreement and targeted amendments to the IHR [International Health Regulations], as these two instruments have the potential to provide the international community with the opportunity to establish a shared path forward for preventing, preparing for, and responding to international health emergencies.
Nations that belong to the World Health Organization agreed in November 2021 to negotiate and draft an agreement based on WHO’s constitution to strengthen pandemic prevention, according to the White House.
Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on global health, global human rights, and international organizations, also spoke at the press conference.
“It remains unclear whether the Biden administration intends to submit this treaty agreement to the Senate for its constitutionally required advice and consent as a prerequisite for ratification,” Smith said. “An executive agreement bypassing Senate ratification would be an egregious mistake.”
In January 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations that would enable WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to declare a public health emergency in any member nation—even over the objections of a member nation.
“Every single day you wake up and say to yourself, ‘Well, what more can it be? I can’t believe what just happened,’” Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., said at the press conference.
“They can’t do anything else,” Perry said, referring to the Biden administration. “As bad as it is in dealing with this government taking away our rights every single day, just imagine how difficult it is going to be to drag our rights back away from some international organization of bureaucrats that aren’t even elected, that don’t care about America, that don’t care about our Constitution and don’t care about what we think.”
The change could provide unilateral authority to WHO’s Tedros to declare a public health crisis in the United States or other countries, without consultation.
The proposed changes to the International Health Regulations would cede control to World Health Organization “regional directors.” The regional directors would have authority to declare these types of emergencies, and WHO’s chief could issue an “intermediate public health alert.” The agreement also includes ways to control information about a pandemic.
The World Health Organization covered up for the Chinese Communist Party at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak and should have less power, said Jenny Beth Martin, president of Tea Party Patriots Action.
“There is not a single one-size-fits-all solution to health care in America. There is certainly not a one-size-fits-all solution to health care around the entire world,” Martin said at the press conference.
“What we saw during COVID, as states were able to compete with one another and show the differences in their policies, we saw which policies work the best,” she said. “If we wind up having a one-size-fits-all solution for the entire world, we may never know the solution that actually is the best.”
WHO came under withering criticism for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for failing to send a team to China during the initial spread of the coronavirus that causes the disease, as required by the existing International Health Regulations.
Under the proposed agreement, the U.S. and other member nations would provide financial assistance to developing countries. Critics note that the United Nations continues to classify China as a developing country despite its large economy.
Other provisions of the pandemic treaty would promote “sustainable and geographically diversified production” of vaccines and other pandemic-related products and require spending for research in developing countries.
The agreement would establish a WHO Global Supply Chain and Logistics Network with international requirements for manufacturing and exporting pandemic-related products. It would create a new position called the “secretariat for the WHO pandemic agreement.”
In the past, the World Health Organization and the United Nations have worked against the interests of the United States, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said.
“This agreement would subject the United States to the powers of the World Health Organization without going through what we need to do in the Senate, without the people’s representatives having a voice and ceding our sovereignty to these enemies who are undermining our national security and the interests of the United States,” Roy said.
The Texas Republican later added: “When are we going to stop funding the organizations that are undermining our freedom?”
The White House didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this report.
The post Biden’s Global Pandemic Agreement Empowers WHO, China, Conservatives Warn appeared first on The Daily Signal.
NPR Says They Always Strive To Feature A Broad Range Of Opinions From Slightly Communist To Very Communist | Babylon Bee
WASHINGTON, DC — After being accused by some of lacking viewpoint diversity, leadership at NPR now says that they always strive to feature a broad range of opinions from slightly Communist to very Communist.
“The American public, through an act of Congress establishing NPR, has placed a sacred trust in us to inform them of the broad range of views their fellow Americans hold, from slightly Communist all the way to very Communist,” said NPR CEO Catherine Maher. “We don’t take that trust lightly and we will continue to hold true to our North Star: diversity of views within the very broad, progressive spectrum that covers a wide range of Communist opinions.
The reassuring statement comes at a time when a 25-year NPR veteran editor resigned after he accused the media organization of only catering to a very narrow segment of the population who holds to one very narrow viewpoint.
“We will continue to maintain the quality of our editorial process and the integrity of our journalists, whether they be Social Democrats, Anti-Capitalists, or even Anarcho-Communists,” continued the dear leader of NPR. “Leninists, Bolsheviks, Democratic Party Members, Labour Party Members, cultural Marxists, syndicalists, LGBTQIA2S+ activists, feminists, environmentalists, furries — People from all stripes of progressivism are welcome to contribute here at NPR. You know, some of our younger hires even voted for Bernie Sanders in the last election, can you believe that? Crazy kids!”
At publishing time, the janitor at NPR was seen straightening a giant glorious portrait of Joe Biden hanging on the wall above the newsroom.
World, meet Travis. Travis, meet the world. In this first episode of our new show Travis Interviews the World, we interview some guy named Jordan Peterson.
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Joe Biden Struggles with Takeout Box at Carefully Choreographed Visit to Wawa in Philly…Then Shuffles Away to Get a Milkshake (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit
Joe Biden on Thursday continued campaigning in Pennsylvania and made a stop in Philadelphia.
This is Biden’s last day in Pennsylvania this week before he returns to the White House.
After a gaffe-filled speech to a paltry crowd in deep blue Philly, Biden made a trip to Wawa.
Every moment of Biden’s visit to Wawa was highly choreographed and scripted.
WATCH:
WATCH: Every single moment of Biden’s “visit” to this Philadelphia Wawa was carefully choreographed and scripted — down to the cashier’s tip pic.twitter.com/lIlVvzN7Pm
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 18, 2024
Biden struggled with a takeout box. He gave up and told his handler he was going to go order a milkshake.
“You take that box. I’m gonna go order a milkshake,” Biden said.
WATCH:
Biden struggles to close the takeout box at Wawa, then eventually gives up and tells his handler: “You take that box. I’m gonna go order a milkshake.”
Then he shuffles away (before getting confused once again). pic.twitter.com/6I5V0wW5zZ
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 18, 2024
In contrast, Trump doesn’t need to choreograph his visits to small businesses.
Trump walked into a Bodega in deep blue Harlem, New York on Wednesday to thunderous applause.
PRESIDENT TRUMP – NYC BODEGA – FULL VIDEO pic.twitter.com/4nZ5fCE2Cj
— Steven Cheung (@TheStevenCheung) April 17, 2024
Trump got a warm welcome when he visited a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta last week.
WATCH:
Trump at an Atlanta Chik-fil-A
“How you doing Trump?”
“I’m doing good”
“I love you mayne”
*Man asks for a Maga hat* pic.twitter.com/YcXDNs4tZQ
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) April 10, 2024
The post Joe Biden Struggles with Takeout Box at Carefully Choreographed Visit to Wawa in Philly…Then Shuffles Away to Get a Milkshake (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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