There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
Judges 4:8 — If Deborah won’t go with him, Barak refuses to obey a direct command from the LORD. In contrast, Daniel stood alone (Daniel 6:13).
Luke 22:36, 38, 49, and 51 — What is the normally peaceful Jesus doing telling His people to buy swords? And what about when He finally tells His people to put down their sword? In Matthew, Jesus comes across as “anti-sword” (Matthew 26:51-52), so why the contrast here in Luke 22?
Jesus, the omniscient One, knew His enemies would be coming with swords (Luke 22:52), and He was demonstrating that His followers also had weapons – not to mention that His twelve legions of angels had weapons (Matthew 26:53). It is clear that no man took Jesus’ life from Him (John 10:18), but that He laid it down, just as He told Peter to lay down the weapons (Luke 22:51, Matthew 26:52).
Psalm 94:7 — What does God call those who think He cannot see or regard something? Psalm 94:8 says He calls them “brutish and fools.”
Proverbs 14:4 — A verse of encouragement to young mothers who are discouraged over their house being a mess because of their toddlers.
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Flaming gas crater known as the “Door to Hell” In Darvaza, Turkmenistan; image from Shutterstock.com
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Hell isn’t trending nowadays. Other than irreverent statements such as the offhand reference, “What the hell,” the dismissive idiom, “Go to hell,” the weather observation, “It’s hotter than hell,” or the flip comment, “I’m bored as hell,” we don’t hear much anymore about the topic of eternal damnation.
It’s difficult to find anyone who wants to talk about hell because we think that most of us are pretty good overall. After all, nice people aren’t actually going to end up in some hard-to-believe-it’s-really-true everlasting lake of fire, right?
Kids say the darndest things.
Some years ago, I was teaching a second grade Sunday school class, and we were discussing the passage where Nicodemus comes to visit Jesus in the middle of the night. I explained to the students how the Pharisees heaped unbearable laws upon the people that were not given by God. After sharing with the children that God’s law guides Christians in daily living, I asked them, “What does the law tell unbelievers?” One boy raised his hand and declared, “That they’re going to hell!”
The boy’s honesty and candor surprised me at first, and his response also made me wonder: why does a young child accept something that is so difficult for many adults to reconcile in their minds? It was refreshing to hear someone—even if it was an eight-year-old kid—speak about hell without being embarrassed by it.
If I close my eyes, maybe it’s not really there.
The Bible clearly teaches about God’s wrath and the reality of hell. Jesus didn’t seem to have a problem with discussing these topics, warning people about hell on numerous occasions during his earthly ministry. With so much focus today on how Jesus will make our lives better here on earth, it doesn’t seem like our eternal state—much less God’s glory—is of much concern to some Christians anymore.
In his book Heaven, author Randy Alcorn cites a survey that concludes: “for every American who believes he’s going to hell, there are 120 who believe they are going to heaven” (p. 23). Alcorn contrasts this result with Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:13-14:
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
The math just doesn’t add up. In this passage, Jesus is clearly indicating that there will be more people in hell than in heaven. Yet, I can’t remember ever going to a funeral or memorial service where people thought the deceased person was now in hell—not ever. Why do so many people, even some who claim to be Christians, refuse to accept the reality of hell when the Bible teaches it?
OpenBible.com lists 100 passages on hell, including the following from the book of Revelation:
And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:15)
It seems odd that such a prominent topic in the Bible is so infrequently discussed in churches today. The sad fact is that many pastors are hesitant to talk about the doctrine of hell anymore because they know people don’t really want to hear about it.
More and more, churchgoers are seeking community, ways to improve their lives and help others, and support through difficult times—and these are all good things. It’s easy to understand why church leaders wouldn’t want to scare off people by bringing hell into the conversation. Talking about eternal damnation with seekers who are interested in how Christianity can make their lives better just doesn’t seem like a good idea.
We think only really bad people should go to hell.
The truth is that we don’t like the doctrine of hell. It doesn’t seem fair to us that God would send nice people to hell for eternity just because they made a few mistakes. After all, “Who doesn’t mess up here and there?” “Why does God have to be so harsh?” “Doesn’t he see my heart and know how hard I am trying?”
The problem is that we don’t get it. We don’t get how holy God is, and we don’t get how sinful we are. Isaiah got it when he saw a vision of the Lord in his glory. He cried out,
And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isa. 6:5)
Isaiah saw his own sinfulness. He saw his total inadequacy to stand before God. He understood that he needed to be cleansed so he would not be destroyed by God’s utter goodness and purity.
We find another such example in the Gospel of Luke. When Peter witnessed the miracle of the great catch of fish:
But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5:8)
And when we get it—when we realize that there is nothing about us that is untouched by our depraved nature and how impossible it is for us to stand before God on our own merits—this is when we run to the foot of the cross and cling to Christ, our only hope.
Some Christians think it is best to put off discussing this difficult topic with unbelievers. If only we can first get people to experience Christ’s love in one-on-one relationships and then in a church community that cares for and supports them, we can teach them about the more difficult Christian topics of judgment, wrath, and hell at a later time. But when is the right time?
If we pass off Christianity as the best way to happiness now, what if people find an alternative way they like better for improving the quality of their lives and healing their brokenness? What if they never take the reality of hell seriously because the Christians they know don’t seem to take it seriously?
Eternity lasts a long time.
The issue is not whether or how God’s love can make our lives more fulfilled. The issue is that our sin offends God, separates us from him, and places us under his judgment. Avoiding the subject of God’s wrath or softening its severity does not make it go away.
In fact, the stakes here could not be higher: if the Bible is true, those who are not trusting in Christ alone as their savior are not going to heaven—no matter how much they think they are. If we really care about the people God brings into our lives, we should be prepared to lovingly explain the Bible’s teaching on hell as God gives us the opportunity. We do non-Christians no favors by acting as though the doctrine doesn’t exist.
For the sake of those we are trying to help, we have to be honest with ourselves about exactly what we’re attempting to achieve when we try to make the gospel more appealing. How we present the gospel certainly matters. The apostle Paul sets a strong example for us regarding always being as relational as possible (1 Cor. 9:19-23). He also tells us to be winsome (Col. 4:6). Still, we must consider that some well-meaning attempts to smooth over the parts of the Bible that make us uncomfortable contain, at their root, a sense of shame regarding the difficult truths of the gospel.
I’m not advocating a return to fire-and-brimstone sermons or standing on street corners with threatening signs about hell and damnation. I am pleading the case that one of the most loving things we can ever do is to help people understand that they cannot create their own reality of the afterlife in their minds. Thinking something is true doesn’t make it so. People need the truth about God, themselves, and what is going to happen after they die. In short, they need the gospel.
Out of the mouth of babes he has prepared praise.
On another Sunday at church, I asked the children in my class, “What did Jesus do for us that we couldn’t do for ourselves?” A little boy named Oliver raised his hand quickly and answered with confidence: “He was perfect!”[1] Such glorious truth in those three words. Jesus, the perfect atoning sacrifice for our sins and the perfectly obedient Son of Israel, fulfilled all the law’s demands on behalf of everyone who trusts in him alone for salvation.
Because of God’s unfathomable love in Christ, sinners who deserve hell are now at peace with God through the perfect completed work of their Lord Jesus Christ, growing together with each other in grace and knowledge of him as they await a glorious eternity in his presence. Well spoken, Oliver, well spoken, indeed.
[1] Oliver’s response reminds me of the children who praised Jesus as he entered the temple and Jesus’ response: “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” (Matt. 21:16).
Shallow M5.8 earthquake hits Hualien, Taiwan A shallow earthquake registered by the USGS as M5.8 hit eastern Taiwan’s Hualien County at 14:11 UTC (22:11 LT) on April 22, 2024, at a depth of 11.8 km (7.3 miles). This is the second strongest aftershock of the April 2 M7.4 earthquake after M6.4 on April 3.
Shallow M6.1 and M6.0 earthquakes hit Taiwan within 6 minutes Two strong earthquakes registered by the USGS as M6.1 and M6.0 hit Taiwan within 6 minutes on April 22, 2024 — at 18:26 UTC and 18:32 UTC, respectively. The agency is reporting a depth of 10.7 km (6.6 miles) for the M6.1 quake and 10 km (6.2 miles) for the second quake. Preliminary data shows epicenters at a distance of about 20 km (12.4 miles).
Softball-sized hail causes extensive damage in Rock Hill, South Carolina A powerful storm rolled over South Carolina on April 20, 2024, bringing strong winds, heavy rain, and golf to softball-sized hail. The storm system affected the larger areas of Lancaster and York counties but focused its most intense effects in northeast-central York County, causing significant structural damage and power outages.
Iran-Linked Iraq Militia Says It Is Resuming Attacks On US Forces The prior period of constant attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria which corresponded with the opening first half of Israel’s operations in Gaza could soon resume, after a Sunday incident saw at least five rockets fired on an American base in northeastern Syria.
NATO country prepares population for war Lithuania is establishing permanent military training centers that will operate nationwide to prepare personnel to serve in the rear during war, Defense Minister Laurynas Kasciunas told reporters on Friday.
NC Court Rules Federal PREP Act Protects Forced Vaccination… A North Carolina Court of Appeals found that a clinic, where personnel gave a 14-year-old boy a COVID-19 shot without his consent or parental consent, was protected by the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act). The court concluded that the Guilford Board of Education, which hosted the clinic, was also covered by the PREP Act…
25 Ways The U.S. Is Being Destroyed — Explained In Under 2 Minutes You probably know each of these 25 things already, but there’s something very powerful about seeing it all together in one place and run through in less than 2 minutes… “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32
PARENTAL WARNING: Popular Kids TV Show Introducing “Lesbian Moms” If you’re a parent or grandparent, you probably know about the kids TV show “Bluey”… Since its debut in 2018, Bluey has become a critically acclaimed show, gaining popularity worldwide after its addition to Disney+ in 2019. So what do you do when you’re widely loved by parents and children alike? You use that fame to push the LGBTQ agenda, of course!
New Wonder Woman comic slammed for promoting ‘anti-Christian and anti-conservative’ message For years, mainstream American comic books have been used with increasing brazenness as a vehicle for creators’ left-wing politics, with the current run of DC Comics’ Wonder Woman pitting the iconic heroine against a new villain whose machinations present a barely veiled indictment of Christian conservatism.
Israelis overwhelmingly support the airstike in Syria’s Damascus The majority of Israelis support the Damascus strike, which Israel has not claimed responsibility for, according to a new survey by The Israel Democracy’s Institute’s Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Police Research published on Sunday.
“Weekend At Bernie’s Economy”: Joe Biden, Seeking Another Term, Wheels Out The Corpse Of The U.S. Economy When I was a kid, “Weekend at Bernie’s” was one of my all-time favorite movies. In that film, two guys worked really hard to convince everyone that their boss was still alive so that they wouldn’t get into trouble. I remember laughing throughout that entire movie. Today, the Biden administration is working really hard to convince all of us that the U.S. economy is still alive, and that isn’t funny at all.
Which Major City Will Completely Collapse First – Los Angeles, Chicago Or New York City? In 2024, virtually all major U.S. cities have certain things in common. First of all, if you visit the downtown area of one of our major cities you are likely to see garbage, human excrement and graffiti all over the place. As you will see below, some of our core urban areas literally look like they belong in a third world country. Most of our politicians don’t seem too concerned about doing anything to clean up all the filth, and so it shouldn’t be a surprise that rat populations are absolutely exploding all over the country.
“The general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.” —James Madison (1787)
Fellow Patriots, on this day in 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt created the Medical Reserve Corps, the first component of a reserve force for each military branch. What began as 360 medical professionals grew into what today is more than 700,000 reservists across all branches. —Mark Alexander
In yet another effort to buy votes, our decrepit president is shoveling “green” billions into low-income communities.
Douglas Andrews
Yesterday marked the 52nd annual celebration of Earth Day, and we’ll forgive you if you missed it. The commie commemorative just doesn’t seem to have the same je ne sais quoi that it used to.
Still, that didn’t stop Joe Biden from taking full advantage. He marked the event by announcing a $7 billion federal grant boondoggle for solar projects that will “serve” low- and middle-income housing communities. In addition, our decrepit president announced plans to expand his American Climate Corps training program for “green” (read: government-subsidized) job opportunities.
As NBC News reports: “The grants are being awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency, which unveiled the 60 recipients on Monday. The projects are expected to eventually reduce emissions by the equivalent of 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and save households $350 million annually, according to senior administration officials.”
Three-hundred and fifty million annually? Spread across some 900,000 homes in low-income and disadvantaged communities? Wow, that’s roughly $400 per lucky household. Of course, that pittance isn’t nearly enough to offset the ravages of Bidenflation, but it’s the thought that counts.
And, hey, what better way to celebrate Vladimir Lenin’s birthday? And what better way for Biden to reconnect with and energize not only the urban poor, whose support he’s been bleeding of late, but also to reinvigorate the Jew-hating pro-Hamas youth vote, which might be growing impatient with his student loan transfer vote-buying scheme?
What’s the source of all this taxpayer-funded largess? The 60 gifts came from Biden’s redistributionist Solar for All program, which is part of the administration’s $27 billion “green bank” slush fund. It was created in 2022 when the Democrat-controlled Congress rammed through its deceitfully named $370 billion Inflation Reduction Act. The slush fund is intended to buy votes under the guise of reducing climate and air pollution while shoveling money to, in NBC News’s words, “neighborhoods most in need, especially disadvantaged and low-income communities disproportionately impacted by climate change.”
As for Earth Day itself, proponents appear to be trying a different tack this year, as their annual Thunbergian scolding and doomsaying don’t seem to be doing the trick. Don’t worry, they seem to be saying, be happy.
Here, for example, is what Hannah Ritchie, a senior researcher at Oxford who studies sustainability in relation to climate change, told her fellow travelers at USA Today: “People assume that in the 50 years since the first Earth Day we’ve made no progress. That we’re in a worse position now than we were in the 1970s, that there’s no point to environmental action.”
USA Today’s Elizabeth Weise picks up where Ritchie left off: “Quite the opposite is true. Climate-friendly advances that would have seemed impossible even 10 years ago are now commonplace. And three times in the past 50 years humanity has faced — and fixed — massive, man-made global environmental issues. This Earth Day, some climate scientists think climate change could be added to the list.”
Weise’s unbridled optimism seems to know no bounds. She adds: “But there’s something else happening that doesn’t get as much notice but is very hopeful. Experts — including the International Energy Agency — say that global carbon dioxide emissions will probably peak next year and certainly by 2030, using a scenario based on current policy settings.”
This, we suppose, is better than indoctrinating our children and causing young people to reconsider having kids due to their gloomy outlook for the future of planet Earth.
You might wonder, though, whether Wiese might want to curb her enthusiasm. After all, if there’s too much good news about the environment, then the green movement can’t dupe politicians and soak the American people as effectively as it might under the alarmist outlook that has defined Earth Day since its inception. Because if there’s one thing we need to remember about the “green movement,” it’s that green is the color of money.
Furthermore, the green movement can’t supply the world with sufficient energy. As economist Stephen Moore told Fox Business yesterday, “If we continue to shut down coal plants, not allow LNG terminals, not build nuclear power plants,” we’ll usher in an era of energy scarcity. Wind and solar, after all, are vastly inferior technologies when it comes to energy density. “But,” says Moore, “we have the capacity to lower our energy prices by an all-in energy policy.”
“If I sound a little frustrated,” Moore concluded, “I am. Because we have more energy than any other country in the world.”
He equivocates about the anti-Semitic protesters swarming college campuses while bailing them out for student loans.
Nate Jackson
Shout “Death to America,” get student loan “forgiveness” from Uncle Joe Biden. That seems to be the new reality in Clown World.
It’s not so simple, of course, and it would be here that the Leftmedia “fact-checkers” would jump in and say, There’s no evidence that any protesters received forgiveness for student loans.
Fact-checkers, however, exist to obscure the truth. In this case, the truth is that Biden hopes to win the votes of people on college campuses or with recent college degrees, and one method for doing so is to buy them off by transferring their student loan balances to taxpayers. How “generous.”
The connection with pro-terrorist protesters on college campuses is that Biden is threading a difficult needle with his administration’s policy toward our old ally, Israel. You’d think that when Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered hundreds of Jews on October 7, the reaction would be universal condemnation.
It was. Except some of that condemnation was aimed at Israel.
Why? It’s thanks to the Marxist oppressor/oppressed dialectic with which college kids today are indoctrinated. That miseducation is why, as The Washington Post’s Philip Bump notes, “Younger voters are demonstrably more sympathetic to the Palestinians in Gaza than are older Americans, and many see Biden’s loyalty to Israel as a moral failure.”
If Biden’s policy is a “moral failure,” that justifies all sorts of rebellion against it. That’s why full-grown toddlers throw terrorist tantrums and block critical roads and bridges.
As for similar protests gripping our nation’s elite universities, our Emmy Griffin first covered them Friday, saying, “The barbarians are within the Ivy League gates.” Indeed they are, and they continue to spread their hate — students, professors, and administrators alike.
It’s been an eventful few days at Barack Obama’s alma mater, Columbia University, with more than 100 arrests and a move to hybrid classes for the rest of the semester. Raucous protests and subsequent arrests spread to New York University, Yale, Harvard, and elsewhere.
As protesters not only expressed support for the “global intifada” launched by Hamas terrorism — er, the “sacrificial spirit of the Palestinian freedom fighters” — but also harassed Jews and blocked them from accessing buildings or classes, one New York Times headline on the protests focused on “dancing and pizza.”
One man’s vile, hate-filled protest is another man’s pizza party.
That’s not as bad as Joe Biden, though. He claims he was inspired to mount a third presidential campaign because of Donald Trump’s “very fine people” remark at Charlottesville.
That was a big lie, of course, though Biden just had his own “very fine people” moment.
“I condemn the anti-Semitic protests,” he told reporters. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
“There is, however, a key difference” between Trump’s comment and Biden’s, writes David Harsanyi. “Trump’s garbled line was almost surely not aimed at tiki-torch neo-Nazis. Believe what you like about Trump’s motivations, but he also later unequivocally condemned the white supremacists on more than one occasion. Biden, on the other hand, can’t even get himself to call out Brownshirts without throwing them a bone.”
Officially, the White House only really condemned the anti-Semitism spreading like gangrene on college campuses in a Passover press release that had more to say advocating the two-state solution Palestinians keep rejecting than it did condemning the ugly Jew hatred in America.
That’s typical. Whenever Democrats do muster enough courage to denounce anti-Semitism, it’s usually watered down by also including racism and all their favorite “phobias” — Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, ad nauseam.
Biden shared the stage Monday with one of the leading anti-Semites in Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She declared, “It is especially important that we remember the power of young people shaping this country … as we once again witness the leadership of those peaceful, student-led protests on campuses like Columbia, Yale, Berkeley, and many others.” You know, places where “peaceful” students were arrested.
After she spoke, Biden told attendees to “listen to that lady.”
AOC can be called a lot of things, but few would accuse her of being a lady.
Speaking of anti-Semitic Squad members, Ilhan Omar’s daughter was among those suspended and detained at Columbia. Omar claims it was among the many protests throughout history that were “co-opted and made to look bad.” Trying to cast anti-Semitism caught on video as a conspiracy theory takes — to borrow a great Hebrew/Yiddish word — some real chutzpah.
That word goes a long way to explaining the entire pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic movement in America.
Trump trial continues, Jew-hating Squadster steps in it, New York wind farm fails to launch, and more.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Cross-Examination
Trump trial continues amid gag-order threats: As former President Donald Trump returns to court today in his hush-money trial in Manhattan, the focus is not on the prosecution’s unfortunately named witness, David Pecker, but rather on accusations from snowflake prosecutors themselves — including hard-left DA Alvin Bragg — that Trump has violated Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order 10 times. (Translation: Trump has exercised his First Amendment rights 10 times.) And so, a thin-skinned pro-Biden judge will likely do the prosecution’s bidding and warn Trump that he could go to jail for 30 days and be fined $10,000 if he keeps saying unkind things about them. This judge, though, is on thin ice if he wants a conviction and wants it to stick. The gag order “is objectionable in two ways,” as former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy told Fox News. “First … it creates this uneven balance, where people can talk about [Trump], and he can’t talk about them. … There’s an election going on here, and Trump is in a situation where everyone he is competing with in the contest is able to talk till their hearts’ content about all the allegations, and he can’t speak about them. That’s a problem not for the administration of justice; that’s a problem for the principle that the public should have robust debate in connection with a political campaign and that we want our elections decided at the ballot box and not the courtroom.” Apparently, Judge Merchan doesn’t understand that there are other constitutional considerations that he must abide by within his courtroom, even if he and his Demo-fundraising daughter don’t like the defendant.
Jew-hating Squadster steps in it: Someone should’ve advised Jew-hating Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Somalia) to sit this one out. Alas, though, the Pride of Minneapolis couldn’t help herself, so she came to the “defense” of her fellow Jew haters there on the Columbia University campus to decry the real villains of the Mostly Peaceful™ protests. “Throughout history,” the historian Omar intoned, “protests were co-opted and made to look bad so police and public leaders would shut them down. That’s what we are seeing now at Columbia University. The Columbia protesters have made clear their demands and want their school not to be complacent in the ongoing Genocide in Gaza. Public officials and media making this about anything else are inflaming the situation and need to bring calmness and sanity back.” So, you see, it’s not the Jew-hating pro-Hamas thugs who are to blame for “inflaming the situation” there at Columbia, but rather the “public officials and media.” Incidentally, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, was among the rabble who were suspended and detained last week for their hate-filled activities on campus.
SHOCKER: Student loan scams are on the rise: Actions have consequences, even for decrepit Democrat presidents, and Joe Biden’s vote-buying student loan transfer scheme is no exception. Indeed, Biden’s continuing promises to unconstitutionally “forgive” the debts of deadbeat borrowers are coinciding with an increase in scams about just that very scheme. As the Washington Examiner reports: “The Federal Trade Commission is warning about scammers targeting people with promises to cancel their student loans, and critics say President Joe Biden fueled the fire himself. Biden has been pledging to cancel student loans since the 2020 presidential campaign and has rolled out a wide range of programs and proposals toward that end. While his actions so far have affected 4.3 million of the 44 million people with student debt, his headline-grabbing announcements have created an expectation that scammers are eager to exploit.” And so, it appears that yet another act of naked government redistributionism has attracted the attention of opportunistic fraudsters. Who could’ve imagined?
Mistrial declared for AZ rancher: After days of deliberation, the judge in the second-degree murder trial of Arizona rancher George Alan Kelly declared a mistrial after the jury was unable to reach a decision. Kelly was accused of killing a Mexican national illegally in the country who was found shot to death on his property. According to Kelly, who had repeatedly reported the problem of illegal aliens on his land, he shot his rifle in the air to scare them off. Later, when he called the sheriff to report the incident, a dead Mexican national was found on his property. The prosecution argued that Kelly’s rifle was the weapon used to kill him. The defense contended that the Mexican national had a history of being deported, was known to have been involved in drug running, and was likely a victim of one of the drug cartels. The prosecution had earlier offered Kelly a deal to plead guilty to one count of negligent homicide, which he rejected. The state will now decide if it will seek a retrial or drop the issue.
NYC high school soccer game canceled due to migrants: At a field in East Harlem, two high school boys soccer travel teams showed up for a scheduled game only to have it canceled due to a group of migrants who refused to leave the field. Erik Johansson, coach of one of the boys’ teams, observed, “I directly asked them to leave, and some of them kind of took it into consideration, but then four or five of them said, ‘You know what, f**k it, we don’t have to leave, we can do whatever we want.’” The game was scheduled for 5:00 PM, and roughly 40 high school boys showed up in uniforms ready to play. Despite this, the African migrants who spoke little English refused to leave, even after the police showed up. With the conflict escalating and time for playing the game running out, Johansson and the other coach agreed to cancel the match. “Even when the game is over,” he explained, “you don’t know if they’re waiting for you, so even if the cops kicked them out, it may not be over. So we just all agreed, this is too dangerous.” Johansson, who hails from Sweden, noted, “I have seen this before, [and] I know how bad it can get.”
New York wind farm fails to launch: New York hit another setback for its planned offshore wind farm as the state’s Energy Research and Development Authority pulled out of contract negotiations with three different wind developers over turbine maker GE Vernova’s announcement that it could not provide 18-megawatt turbines. When the offshore wind farm project had first been drawn up, it was based on GE’s plan to produce 18-megawatt turbines. However, the company has since downgraded the size of the turbines it will produce to a maximum of 16.5 megawatts due to the high cost of repairs for the bigger turbines. GE’s renewable energy business lost $1.44 billion last year. So, despite massive federal government handouts from the Biden administration for its green energy agenda, the costs are so prohibitive that it is effectively impractical. Furthermore, this is despite New York regulators agreeing to pay a price of roughly $150 per megawatt hour to wind farm developers. To put that in perspective, the cost of natural gas-generated power comes in at around $30 per megawatt hour. New York residents will be forking out more of their hard-earned dollars to pay for leftist politicians’ enforcement of their climate cult ideology.
SHOCKER II: Self-checkout thefts are on the rise: Speaking of the ingenuity, opportunism, and irrepressibility of America’s criminal class, it seems that all those self-checkout lines in the big-box grocery stores might be coming up on their freshness date. As CBS News reports: “Walmart is joining the ranks of retailers rethinking self-checkout, with the industry giant in the process of removing the self-service lanes at a store in Missouri. The return to registers staffed by humans at the Walmart store in Shrewsbury, a suburb of St. Louis, comes a month after Target announced only those buying 10 items or less could use the self-checkout lane at its stores, and Dollar General reduced self-checkout at thousands of its locations.” The latter didn’t mess around with half-measures. Instead, it removed the self-checkout option entirely at 300 locations most plagued by shoplifters. In a perverse way, it’s hard to blame folks, especially given how much more it costs to fill up a grocery cart in Joe Bidenflation’s America.
Israel’s intel chief resigns: On Monday, Major General Aharon Haliva announced his resignation from serving as Israel’s head of military intelligence. Haliva pointed to Hamas’s surprise terrorist attack on October 7 and his failure to prevent it as the reason for his resignation. “The intelligence directorate under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with,” Haliva explained. “I carry that black day with me ever since, day after day, night after night. I will carry the horrible pain of the war with me forever.” Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant accepted Haliva’s resignation and thanked him for his 38 years of service. The timing of and the unprecedented scope of Hamas’s terrorist attack against Israel on October 7 has given rise to a number of dubious conspiracy theories seeking to explain how the Israeli government could have been caught so off-guard. A number of other Israeli intelligence and security officials are expected to resign in the coming days and weeks. Meanwhile, Israel continues its war in Gaza as it works to bring justice and wipe out Hamas.
Headlines
Judge rules against NY attorney general, says Trump’s $175 million judgment bond will stand (Fox News)
Columbia professors declare solidarity with student protesters and call for Minouche Shafik’s resignation (Washington Free Beacon)
Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters arrested at Yale, NYU (Washington Post)
Harvard suspends pro-Palestinian student group (National Review)
Supreme Court rejects Kari Lake’s voting machine lawsuit (Washington Examiner)
PA middle school girl confronts school board when they ignore warnings of trans student assaulting others (RedState)
Satire: Columbia University students reject a two-campus solution (Babylon Bee)
A Volkswagen plant in Tennessee becomes the first such facility in the South to vote to join the UAW.
Thomas Gallatin
The third time is apparently a charm for the United Auto Workers.
After having twice rejected unionization, workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, just voted overwhelmingly to unionize. This marks the first such success for the UAW in the South and comes after the 4,300 workers at the VW plant voted against unionization in both 2014 and 2019. Remarkably, nearly three-quarters of the plant workers voted in favor this time around.
UAW President Shawn Fain celebrated the victory, suggesting it was a harbinger of things to come for unions in the historically anti-union South. “Many of the talkingheads and the pundits have said to me repeatedly, before we announced, that you can’t win in the South,” Fain said to cheering workers after the vote was announced. “But you all said, ‘Watch this.’ You all moved the mountain.”
Joe Biden was quick to jump on the unionization bandwagon. “Let me be clear,” he said, “to the Republican governors that tried to undermine this vote: there is nothing to fear from American workers using their voice and their legal right to form a union if they so choose.”
Leftmedia outlets also jumped aboard, implying that the southern states’ anti-union resistance had finally been broken. The New York Times headline read, “Could the Union Victory at VW Set Off a Wave?” NPR announced, “Volkswagen workers vote yes to unionizing, igniting UAW’s push to organize the South.” CNN trumpeted, “Volkswagen workers vote overwhelmingly to join the UAW, giving the union a groundbreaking win.”
It’s happening! they say.
But is it really? The truth, both for the UAW’s victory in Chattanooga and the Leftmedia’s pro-union sentiments, isn’t what it seems. This union victory had much more to do with crony capitalism and autoworkers voting to save their jobs than it did with any true expansion of unionization into the deep red South.
To that first point, thanks to Biden’s anti-fossil fuel agenda, the auto industry in America is being pressed into pumping out electric vehicles for a supposed electric-dominated future. Via EPA emissions regulations along with government subsidies, automakers are effectively seeking to go where the government money is.
The Chattanooga VW plant happens to manufacture the company’s electric SUV, known as the ID.4. VW will get big bucks from the government for pumping out these EVs, which of course means job security for workers at the plant. The vote to unionize was, in many ways, a vote to keep their jobs. Indeed, unlike the previous two organization votes, VW did not seek to initiate any real campaign against unionization. VW likely wanted this outcome because of its own bottom line.
The trouble is that Americans aren’t embracing EVs. In fact, that reality may be why VW wanted this to happen. Every EV maker across the country, including America’s number one EV maker, Tesla, is bracing for rough waters ahead.
Energy journalist Robert Bryce, who recently reported “Tesla In Turmoil: The EV Meltdown In 10 Charts,” puts it this way:
Tesla is the bellwether for the EV business, and it’s in trouble. Last week, the company announced it was laying off more than 10%, or about 14,000, of its employees. The move comes after a quarter during which the company missed delivery expectations and just before it reveals its quarterly profits on Tuesday. Here’s what Wired wrote last Thursday about Tesla’s situation: “Demand is dropping for electric cars in the U.S. and Europe, just as competition in China intensifies and workers revolt in Europe. Investors are worried.”
If Tesla is in trouble, then the rest of the struggling EV industry must be in panic mode. The EV bubble seems near bursting, as it remains little other than a luxury novelty accessory for those with enough disposable income to spend on such things. For the rest of America, EVs simply are too expensive and do not meet their practical demands for daily life.
Meanwhile, the UAW is celebrating a “big” win, even as labor unions across the country continue to shrink — down in 2023 to their lowest level on record. Just 10% of American workers are unionized, as the UAW is facing a decertification election this week at a Nissan plant in New Jersey, and workers at a Penske Truck Rental are looking to decertify from the International Association of Machinists in both Minnesota and Tennessee.
And what of the widely celebrated workers strikes that led to the so-called big win for the UAW over the Big Three automakers last year? As a result, some 18,000 workers may soon get their walking papers.
While Biden and the Leftmedia may be celebrating a historic union victory in the South, those workers at Chattanooga’s VW plant may soon come to regret their vote.
The Left is taking away protections from women, but they aren’t the only ones hurt by this.
Emmy Griffin
The Biden administration has been in the process of rewriting Title IX with several troubling “fixes.” Some of those rewrites were officially codified last week. Most importantly, gender identity will now be included as protected under Title IX. This essentially eliminates women’s protections … which was the initial impetus for the law back in 1972. Biden should know — he was there.
Riley Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer for the University of Kentucky and an activist for women’s rights, laid it out plainly regarding the Department of Education’s going ahead with enforcing the sexual harassment and discrimination aspects of the changes:
The Biden Admin has just officially abolished Title IX as we knew it. Now, sex = gender identity.
In a nutshell, the new rewrite means:
— men can take academic AND athletic scholarships from women — men will have FULL access to bathrooms, locker rooms, etc — men could be housed in dorm rooms with women — students and faculty MUST compel their speech by requiring the use of preferred pronouns
If the guidelines above are ignored or even questioned, then YOU can be charged with harassment.
The most cowardly aspect of this whole thing is that Team Biden is waiting to make the sports changes until after the November election. Democrats know this will hurt them politically because virtually no sane person wants it. It caters to a very small and delusional/brainwashed group of young men who have a very high chance of growing out of it anyway. In the meantime, because they declare they are actually female, the Left is taking away protections from women and girls.
The full depths of how grossly unjust and evil these moves are cannot be adequately expressed. I am a former high school and college athlete, and now, as the mother of two little girls, the prospect of having their future opportunities quashed because of this feckless president and his radical left flank is infuriating.
Should Joe Biden be reelected in November and these rules and proposed changes not be reversed, my girls will not have the freedom to have a locker room or bathroom that is safe for them. My girls will not have a fair chance to learn to play a sport or to excel with other girls. Their risk of serious injury is exponentially higher, and their opportunities for scholarships and awards are slashed. This is the very opposite of justice.
But women aren’t the only ones hurt by this. Because of the new rules on sexual harassment and discrimination, men’s due process and free speech rights are also compromised. They will have no way to defend themselves against false accusations of sexual harassment and rape. Everyone’s First Amendment rights are infringed because of forcing people to use “preferred pronouns.”
Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, excoriated the Biden administration: “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.”
Biden is using a 20-80 issue to push us all to believe that he is a great “civil rights” president. His version of empathy is making this country a worse place for everyone.
While the 18-year-old student in this latest case was purportedly enrolled in a local high school, she had not attended classes in person since the fall of 2022. Since then, she had participated in a “virtual learning program” when not hospitalized. Per a local news report, “The Associated Press says court records show the teen was hospitalized in December 2022 after threatening to ‘shoot up a school,’ and the following month clinicians reported that the teen was talking about ‘suicide by cop.’”
That same local news report also noted that Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich used the occasion to wax political. “Hopefully, it inspires people to make more investments in the mental health of our community because I think we’ve identified this as a lacking space for a long time,” said Elrich. “This could be a wake-up call that we need to take it more seriously now.” Elrich, a Democrat, also praised Maryland’s gun-grabbing efforts, noting, “Maryland has some of the strictest gun laws, and it may be a helpful thing that he [sic] found our gun laws an impediment to getting armed.”
There are a couple of things to ponder with this case. If you consider that the student’s plot has been incubating since the point at which she decided to make her feelings known via her “manifesto” — in her case, a third-person narrative and a technique to work out a plot and eventually gain fame after the act similar to that of the Covenant School killer — there was plenty of time to secure a gun.
What’s more chilling and enlightening, though, is how the would-be assailant sought fame and compared herself to others in her school. “Truthfully, would rather become a serial killer than a mass shooter. Serial killers are romanticized a lot more. They get tons of love letters and Netflix documentaries about them. Mass shooters are brushed off unless they are truly unique or good-looking,” court documents read. “It’d be hard to tell me apart from the hundreds of other Asian guys at my school in police lineup. My school is mostly Asian and white. It’s in upper-middle-class Rockville. It’s a suburban city in Maryland where almost everyone goes to college.”
So instead of standing out for academics or athletic prowess, something told this girl — who, by the mugshots provided, had obtained a somewhat masculine appearance and manner of dress — that she needed to rebel by acting out as a boy and emulating a transgender school shooter. While we haven’t heard from the girl’s parents, it’s apparent they tried to give her help, but perhaps those “helpers” tried to make her more secure in a transgender identity rather than encourage her to work her way out of it. (As in most states, so-called “conversion therapy” is against the law in Maryland — a major irony in the age of “gender-affirming” care.)
Worse still, though, are the enablers in the press and judicial system. Readers may have noticed that the accused was commonly referred to in news reports by male pronouns and her assumed name rather than her birth gender and given name. And when pressed on the subject, Elrich snapped: “Why are you focused on it being a transgender is beyond me. It is not a news story. It is not a crime to be transgender.”
Indeed, it’s not a crime to be “transgender,” and no one said it is. But it’s a symptom of a mental disorder that has led to shootings and murders often enough to become a red flag and worthy of investigation. Perhaps it was only this young lady’s conscience that won out and stopped her before she went too far, as she wrote: “I do recognize that my plan is fully unethical. It’s selfish and evil.”
Regardless of the reason she held off, it was sheer luck and timing that saved students at the accused’s high school. Next time, we may not be as fortunate.
Editor’s Note: Each week we receive hundreds of comments and correspondences — and we read every one of them. Click here for a few thought-provoking comments about specific articles. The views expressed therein don’t necessarily reflect those of The Patriot Post.
An Attack on DEI Is ‘An Attack on Democracy’ — Twice-failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams says an attack on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is an attack on democracy.
Curb-Stomp the IRS — It’s been a catastrophe for decades: an ocean of red tape consuming three cities’ worth of man hours to comply with.
The U.S. vs. China Battle for AI Dominance — Patrick Bet-David explores how these global giants are pushing the boundaries of technology, and what it means for the future of global power dynamics.
“We will be producing the weapons that the Iranians use to defeat Vladimir Putin.” —Senator Bob Casey (D-PA)
The BIG Lie
“Putin does what he would like to do: kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance. That’s what Trump really wants. … He sees Putin, he sees Xi [Jinping], he sees Kim Jong Un in North Korea. Those are the people he is modeling himself after.” —Hillary Clinton
Non Compos Mentis
“I condemn anti-Semitic protests. … I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” —Joe Biden
Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes
“It is especially important that we remember the power of young people shaping this country today … as we once again witness the leadership of those peaceful, student-led protests on campuses like Columbia, Yale, Berkeley, and many others.” —Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)
Belly Laugh of the Day
“It’s Joe Biden that’s standing for peace — and a lasting peace at that — and it’s the Republicans that frankly would stoke the flames of war in the Middle East.” —Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D)
For the Record
“[Biden] subscribes to the idea that if you parry enough blows, eventually the man who is pummeling you will recognize the error of his ways and move on. He believes that a combination of economic penalties and shaming or embarrassing or chastising rogue regimes in the fictional court of international public opinion will lead to peace. He is wrong. Biden’s reluctance to unleash our allies — what the press calls his fear of escalation — has produced the disaster in Afghanistan, the slow-motion advance of Russia in Ukraine, the standstill in Gaza, and a Greater Middle East where Hezbollah, Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq, and the Houthis do as they please. And there are eight months left in his term.” —Matthew Continetti
“The way to reestablish deterrence is to ignore the arms of the octopus and go straight for its head. Take away something Iran’s leaders hold dear — their nuclear program. By destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, you not only exact a heavy cost for the regime’s malign behavior. You guarantee Israel’s security.” —Matthew Continetti
“Ukraine and Israel and Taiwan did not start any of these fights. Their only ‘crime’ is existing and looking like awfully appealing targets to men such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, and Iranian ayatollah Ali Khamenei.” —Jim Geraghty
More Belly Laughs
“People understand that it’s Joe Biden that stands for American values.” —Gov. JB Pritzker
“Joe Biden is a terrific debater.” —Gov. JB Pritzker
Dumb & Dumber
“The attack on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — DEI — is an attack on democracy, it’s an attack on education, it’s an attack on how our economy works.” —failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
“I have stayed in the Congress because I’ve got three little kids, I’ve got $75,000 in student loan debt, and we have childcare costs.” —Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA)
Upright
“The threat facing our country is from the far-Left and the drift that’s been occurring toward really a socialistic system and one that brooks no opposition, that cancels people, that has only one viewpoint taught in colleges, that tries to push parents out of the picture when it comes to the education of their children. It’s a heavy-handed bunch of thugs, in my opinion, and that’s where the threat is.” —former Attorney General Bill Barr
“Time to make crime illegal again.” —Elon Musk
Insight
“Education is the best provision for old age.” —Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Former Arkansas Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee told Newsmax on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal trial in New York City is a ploy by Democrats “to attack a political opponent using the gears of government.”
Today’s 20-min top headline news brief includes
• As Passover begins, anti-Israel protestors clash with cops at NYU.
• Ilhan Omar’s daughter claims she’s homeless after being arrested for anti-Israel protest at Columbia.
• Donald Trump speaks about his trial and more.
• Trump attorney Alina Habba on Trump Organization fraud case, ”The people see what’s going on here.”
• Newsmax host Eric Bolling: Raging lunatics are struggling to hide the truth on Trump.
• Biden delivers remarks on abortion in Tampa Florida today.
• Clothing retailer Express files chapter 11 amid high costs and high crime.
Listen to Newsmax LIVE and see our entire podcast lineup at http://Newsmax.com/Listen
What you see happening right now in New York City. It all started at Columbia University way back in the early 1980’s. Obama was my Columbia U classmate. And now it’s all full circle back to our roots (excuse the pun).
Columbia University is the canary in the coal mine.
George HW Bush talked about “1,000 points of light.” Obama uses “1,000 points of destruction” to achieve his goal- the intentional destruction of America.
You can see it all happening just blocks apart right now – all built around Columbia University and NYC.
Upper Manhattan is where the anarchy at Columbia is on display. The Jew-hatred. The America-hatred. The hatred of capitalism. The desire to destroy the greatest nation in world history, ever blessed by God.
And then a few miles south to lower Manhattan is the courtroom where a rigged communist show trial is happening to destroy the greatest symbol of everything Obama hates- President Donald J. Trump.
SYNERGY: Columbia U and New York City. That’s where Obama and I learned the plan to destroy America- called “Cloward-Piven.”
I have a unique understanding of Obama. Not only was he my college classmate, I’ve studied him for most of my adult life. You want to understand what makes Obama tick? Read 452 pages of my #1 bestselling book from 2013, “The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide.”
Here is what I see happening right now…
Obama is the real President of the United States. Unelected. Yet he holds all the power, calls all the shots for his brain-dead, dementia puppet Joe Biden.
The rigged election; the open borders; the Green New Deal; DEI and Critical Race Theory; transgender brainwashing of your kids at school; the weakening of our military; the division and hatred; the crime wave created by radical leftist prosecutors who let every criminal go free; the weaponization of government; the 86,000 new IRS agents; the massive spending and debt, leading to massive inflation, which murders the middle class.
Everything bad and evil happening for the past 3 ½ years- it all started with Obama’s presidency.
Obama honed these skills at Columbia. Then he sharpened them for eight years as president. Now he has perfected and accelerated them as the “shadow president” – the man behind puppet Biden.
Everything happening in NYC right now…has Obama’s fingerprints all over it.
The anarchy at Columbia U. That’s Obama.
The hatred for America. That’s Obama.
The hatred for capitalism. That’s Obama.
The hatred for President Trump and the communist show trial rigged to destroy him. That’s Obama.
The hatred for Jews (and anyone in power). That’s Obama.
By the way, don’t take my word for it. Even ultra-liberal, lifelong Democrat, and former Obama supporter Alan Dershowitz recently said Obama hates Israel and the Jews. He called Obama “despicable.” He blames Obama for the antisemitic, anti-Israel and anti-American attitudes in this country today.
Alan, welcome to “Wayne’s World.” This is exactly what I’ve been saying about Obama since my college classmate was campaigning for President in 2007.
One more thing Obama is great at- painting everyone who disagrees with his plans to destroy America as a “racist.” You know the real definition of racist? Anyone winning an argument with a communist.
This is all Cloward-Piven.
The main tool of Cloward-Piven was to get the whole country on welfare and food stamps, so the country would be overwhelmed. This creates so much debt, the economy implodes, the country collapses and in this mess, America is reborn as a socialist/communist utopia.
Obama started all of that during his presidency. The spending, taxes and debt exploded. Even though Obama’s friends and donors got filthy rich on Wall Street, Main Street was decimated. By some measures, Obama’s economy was worse than the Great Depression.
Under Obama the number of Americans on welfare, food stamps and a thousand other government programs exploded to well over 100 million.
Then he passed Obamacare to solve a problem that never existed. Healthcare spending exploded. More Americans dependent on government, more debt, more inflation to wipe out the middle class.
But now Obama has perfected his craft.
If you can’t get everyone on welfare, just open the border and wave in the whole poverty-stricken world. Plus the added benefit of all the sick and pregnant of the world to add more massive spending, healthcare spending, welfare and debt until the economy is overwhelmed and America collapses.
Meanwhile you also completely change the demographic makeup of America and replace American citizens with foreign sheep who vote 100% Democrat to keep their welfare checks coming.
And boy did Obama sharpen his use of government as a weapon. I’m a witness. As president he used the IRS to try to destroy me personally.
Today he has weaponized every agency of government and funded 86,000 new IRS agents- many with guns. He uses the DOJ and FBI to destroy President Trump, J6 protestors and soon everyone who stands in the way of the final destruction of America.
Obama and his Marxist comrades use a government partnership with media and social media to push propaganda and misinformation out to the public 24/7, and to censor, silence and ban anyone who tells the truth.
And then there’s the radicalized lynch mobs used as Obama’s army to create chaos and crisis. Today he is behind the anarchy and unrest of this radical anti-Israel, pro-Hamas movement.
Soon the real “Obama Army” will appear- 20 million new illegal aliens- most of them criminals and military age males.
The Trump persecution. The rigged Trump trials. The Jew-hatred. The America-hatred. The open border empowering a foreign invasion. The insane welfare, spending and debt. Exploding healthcare costs.
It’s all Obama on STEROIDS.
It all started at Columbia U. That’s the centerpiece of the attack on Trump, America, capitalism and Jews right now.
It’s all come full circle.
HOT OFF THE PRESSES: Watch Wayne’s brand new TV Show, “The ROOT Reaction” weeknights at 10 PM ET/7 PM Pacific on Real America’s Voice TV, and Wayne’s weekend “America’s Top Ten Countdown” on Saturdays at Noon ET/9 AM PT on Real America’s Voice TV. Watch at RealAmericasVoice.com, or at Rumble, Roku, Pluto, Apple, Dish TV Ch 219, or go to RootforAmerica.com to watch.
CANAAN — Though villagers continued to notice mounting tensions and frequent disagreements between his sons, Abraham reports he’s pretty sure this feud between Ishmael and Isaac will blow over soon.
The revered patriarch brushed off concerns about the ongoing conflict between his sons and said he was confident that this would only be a temporary squabble and would not linger into the future.
“I don’t think it will be a long-term thing,” Abraham said of the friction. “They’re half-brothers, and these types of family fights pop up from time to time. It’s pretty common, I think. I mean, it’s not like it’s something that’s going to be carried on by their descendants and remain an issue for thousands of years. That’d be ridiculous.”
The household staff remained unconvinced. “It seems pretty serious,” said one servant. “I literally heard Ishmael say ‘I’m going to teach all my kids to hate your kids and have them pass it down from generation to generation.’ They can’t agree on anything. Ishmael can’t even sit at the dinner table without starting an argument and screaming ‘Death to Isaac! Death to Isaac!’ I don’t expect this to go away anytime soon, but hey, their dad seems to think it’ll be fine.”
Despite the constant bickering, Abraham was optimistic. “This will all just fade away,” he said. “Someday, we’ll all sit back and laugh about them not getting along. It’ll be hilarious.”
At publishing time, Abraham had planned to placate his sons and ease tensions by offering them a two-tent solution with a corresponding peace accord.
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.
According to a new article by Seymour Hersh, CIA Director William Burns traveled to Kiev earlier this year to ask Zelensky to stop skimming so much off the top of US aid money. Apparently his top generals were angry that he was skimming more than they were! Meanwhile Congress voted to send $60 billion MORE to the corrupt regime. With the money approved, calls are now going out for Western TROOPS to be sent to Ukraine. Also today: Trump’s alleged “hush money” is “election interference”?
Appearing on a podcast with Marc Elias, the Democrat super-lawyer who laid the legal groundwork for vote-by-mail in 2020 & was involved in the “Steele Dossier” purchase, Clinton suggested that “Putin does what [Trump] would like to do. Kill his opposition.”
According to Hillary, who helped France murder Gaddafi (after he wanted a mere 5 billion euros / year to stop illegals from flooding into Europe), Trump “really” wants to “imprison his opposition, drive journalists into exile, rule without any check or balance.”
“We have to be very conscious of how he sees the world because in that world, he only sees strong men leaders. He sees Putin. He sees Xi. He sees Kim Jong Un in North Korea,” the failed presidential candidate continued. “Those are the people he is modelling himself after and we’ve been down this road in our, you know, world history. We sure don’t want to go down that again.”
According to Hillary, if Trump “ever gets back near the White House again, it will be like having a dictator. I don’t say that lightly. Go back and read Project 2025. They’re going to fire everybody. The person in the government who knows about the next pandemic? Get rid of him.”
Why Israel succeeded: a look at the weapon Israel used to penétrate Iran’s air defenses around their air bases and large nuclear facilities, showing Iran that Israel can hit them any time; why Iran failed: Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein of the Simon Wiesenthal Center tells CBN News he believes the protection of Israel against Iran’s recent major attack was “nothing short of a miracle of Biblical proportions,” and while he says we should give credit to the IDF and Israel’s allies, believers also saw the hand of God at work; also in our lead story: United Nations investigation shows UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) was pivotal in radicalizing generations of Gazans to hate Israel; as Jews celebrate Passover this year, they also remember those still held hostage by Hamas; in the US, Jewish students face threats as pro-Palestinian protests spread on leading college campuses; how Arkansas is working to keep their Jewish communities safe amid rising antisemitism; and the steps being taken to make sure US elections this fall are safe and secure.
Jan Markell spends the hour withMichele Bachmann. We may be in the most prophetic hour of our lifetime. Our U.S. Administration is on “team Iran” and not “team Israel.” This has terrible consequences for America. It places both Israel—and America—in the center of the storm today.
The majority of respondents to a recent poll do not believe that former President Donald Trump will get a fair trial in New York City, which began with opening statements on Monday.
Trump is currently facing 34 counts of doctoring his financial documents to hide payments to his former attorney Michael Cohen in 2016, which prosecutors claim ultimately went to former porn star Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair she had with Trump years earlier.
More than half of the poll’s respondents, 51%, said it is not likely that Trump will see a fair trial in Manhattan, including 31% of survey takers who say a fair trial is “not at all likely,” according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released Monday. Roughly 42% of respondents claimed that it is likely he will get a fair trial, including 27% who say it is “very likely.”
How many Americans say they attend religious services each week?
How many actually do?
According to Gallup polling, 21 percent of us say we attend religious services every week; 41 percent say they attend at least monthly.
However, the data says otherwise.
Devin Pope, a business school professor at the University of Chicago, studied cell phone geodata from over two million Americans to examine their behavior with respect to religion. He found that only 5 percent attended services weekly, and only 21 percent attended monthly. As an article reporting Pope’s study headlined, “People who say they go to religious services weekly are probably lying.”
The story raises a cultural question: Why would so many people claim to attend religious services so much more often than they actually do?
Religion is twice as popular as sports
According to Gallup, about three in four Americans identify with a specific religious faith. Religious commitment therefore outranks a number of other significant identifiers in our culture:
28 percent of Americans identify as Democrats, 28 percent as Republicans, and 41 percent as independents.
37 percent of us say we follow sports extremely or somewhat closely.
In an ever more secularized society, why is it still appealing for so many Americans to claim a religious identity and even to say that they often attend religious services?
British atheist Richard Dawkins made headlines recently by claiming to be a “cultural Christian.” He meant that he appreciates the contribution of Christianity to his country’s history and cultural heritage and prefers the Christian tradition to Islam or other options.
I think Dawkins speaks for many. Religiosity still equates to cultural, moral, and traditional values in our society.
But religiosity is not enough to meet the challenges we face today.
“A hedge against bad things”
In his brilliant exposition, Why Politics Fails, Oxford professor Ben Ansell identifies one of the greatest values of democratic governance: “There’s nothing . . . that guarantees democracies get good politicians. But at least ‘the people’ will be able to throw them out if they’re terrible.”
Democracy’s greatness lies in the fact it is a hedge against bad things. (Its record in assuring good things is decidedly more mixed and contestable.) The ability to fire people is essential to political competition. If a politician or a party screws up or starts looking out for its own interests more than the interests of the voters, the ability to kick them out is essential. This was among the greatest innovations in human history. Monarchs and aristocracies can get selfish and self-absorbed. Indeed, they always do eventually. Politicians are prone to the same tendencies. But in a democracy, you can get rid of them without swords or guns.
While we can be grateful for democracy’s ability to remove bad leaders, Ansell is right: democracy cannot guarantee good leaders. The people we vote into office next will be just as fallen and flawed as the ones they replace.
And religiosity cannot make up the difference.
Only one of the 469 members of the current US Congress admits to being religiously “unaffiliated,” while 87 percent claim to be Christian and another 6 percent say they are Jewish. America has never elected an avowed atheist as president.
How is the religiosity of our leaders working out for us?
Cultural Christianity is a contradiction in terms
We experience the transforming power of Christianity not by identifying with it as a religion but by experiencing the living Christ personally. Saul of Tarsus was changed not by changing his religious identity from Jewish to Christian but by meeting the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. He would later explain this reality to the rest of us: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
This is how all relationships work. Marriage changes your life not because you are “married” but because you commit your life to your spouse and they to you. The same is true with parenthood, education, or employment—it is not identifying with the institution but experiencing the relationship it offers that matters.
However, this is especially true with Christianity. Unlike your spouse or parents, your Lord lives in you by his Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:16). Unlike your employer or professor, Jesus has the divine power to forgive your every sin (1 John 1:9) and to transform your character into his (Romans 8:29).
Here’s the bottom line:
Cultural Christianity is a contradiction in terms, but biblical Christianity transforms culture.
When last did the living Lord Jesus change your life?
NOTE: Did you know that Denison Forum is a nonprofit ministry fully supported by readers like you? So, when you request one of our books—like our just-released and updated edition of Between Compromise and Courage—you’re supporting our calling “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph 4:12). Get your copy of our new book today; impact believers across the world tomorrow.
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