“It’s hardly a surprise that the corporate media have rushed to the defense of President Biden pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announced last week by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. More surprising is the absurdity of the arguments they offer on his behalf. For years, his denials notwithstanding, Biden knew his son ran an international enterprise whose only real service was selling access to the Vice President of the United States to foreign entities who hoped to procure favorable policy decisions from the Obama administration. This operation generated at least $20 million that was doled out to nine Biden family members, yet we are asked to believe that the “Big Guy” didn’t get a cut.
CNN, for example, insists there is no evidence that he “personally received any money.” The network’s fact-checkers evidently need to see a cancelled check made out to “Joe Biden” by an Oligarch who has helpfully written “bribe” on the memo line. The public is more sophisticated. A significant plurality of voters believe that Biden has accepted bribes. A recent Yahoo/YouGov survey asked this question (48F): “Do you believe that Hunter Biden funneled millions of dollars to his father in a long-running scheme to help Joe Biden profit off of his position?” Fully 45 percent of registered voters answered, “Yes.” These aren’t “MAGA extremists.” Indeed, 41 percent of Independents answered, “Yes.”
Moreover, they have many sound reasons for doubting the President’s veracity and suspecting him of engaging in impeachable offences. On August 24, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) released a list of 16 instances of Biden lying to the American people about his knowledge of his family’s influence peddling schemes. Last week, Chairman Comer released an additional list of evidence showing that Joe Biden’s involvement in these illegal schemes was anything but passive. Meanwhile, Special Assistant to the President Ian Sams issued a memorandum to the corporate “news” media effectively commanding them to scrutinize Republicans with even more animus than is their standard practice:
—
Mr. Sams hasn’t done his boss any favors here. In one stroke he has confirmed the incestuous relationship that exists between the White House and the media while preemptively destroying the credibility of any defense the latter might produce on Biden’s behalf. As to the 14-page appendix Sams provided along with his peremptory memo, it amounts to little more than a collection of recycled White House talking points and quotes from old “news” stories published by the very outlets he urges to “ramp up” their coverage of Republicans. Ironically, the only interesting news produced by the appendix is that Hunter Biden’s “money guy,” Eric Schwerin, managed Dad’s finances while he was Vice President.
Fox News reports, “House Democrats acknowledged Wednesday that Hunter Biden’s then-business partner, Eric Schwerin, handled President Biden’s finances for the duration of his vice presidency.” Sams was foolish enough to mention Schwerin’s interview with the House Oversight Committee in his index, and reporters from Fox confirmed that Schwerin did indeed act as bookkeeper for then-Vice President Biden from 2009 to 2017. It’s no mere optics problem for Hunter Biden’s business partner to manage the Vice President’s finances for eight years. Yet, on ABC’s “This Week,” host Jonathan Karl asked Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) if it was premature to begin an impeachment inquiry. She responded as follows:
—
The facts are everywhere. There are text messages, there are emails, there are witnesses, there are whistleblowers, there are meetings, there are phone calls, there are dinners … And the inquiry, my understanding is, as you said earlier, gives us expanded subpoena powers. I want the bank records of Joe Biden. All of that should be on the table to prove out the allegations in the SARS reports. We’re talking about a significant sum of money. We are talking about bribery. And in the Constitution, Article 2, Section 4, that is the basis for impeachment.
—
It is indeed. This situation is, to coin a phrase, worse than Watergate. It’s not about a bungled burglary and a clumsy cover-up. It is also far more egregious than lying under oath about a tawdry sex scandal involving a White House intern. It is without question far worse than a single phone call with a Ukrainian comedian cum President about the corrupt dealings of a former Vice President and his degenerate offspring. Finally, for anyone with an IQ exceeding single digits, it’s more dangerous than a rushed impeachment for incitement of insurrection that failed to meet the legal definitions of “incitement” or “insurrection.”
In order to believe that Biden is innocent of taking bribes for favorable foreign policy decisions, we must ignore his own words, his son’s text messages and emails, all the “spontaneous” meetings, all the whistleblowers and witnesses, and the need for more than 20 shell companies to launder and distribute loot among family members who have no demonstrable skills. Finally, we must believe that $20 million — and probably much more — has been lavished on all of these people except the only one possessed of the power to make it rain.”
DESANTIS: "The US Senate just eliminated its dress code because you got this guy from Pennsylvania [Fetterman] – who's got a lot of problems […] he wears, like, sweatshirts and hoodies and shorts […] We need to be lifting up our standards in this country, not dumbing down." pic.twitter.com/IZDlkmPcPA
Schumer proves once again he is an absolutely horrible Majority Leader. What a disgrace and disrespect to the institution. Get dressed for work people, it’s not that hard. https://t.co/grrVGogDTF
Here we have an armed man arrested at a RFK Jr. event — that is, a potentially horrific situation involving the son of the assassinated Sen. Robert Kennedy — and the Biden regime REFUSES to provide RFK Jr. with secret service protection! How dare RFK Jr. challenge the Biden…
“Here we have an armed man arrested at a RFK Jr. event — that is, a potentially horrific situation involving the son of the assassinated Sen. Robert Kennedy — and the Biden regime REFUSES to provide RFK Jr. with secret service protection! How dare RFK Jr. challenge the Biden regime and the Democrat Party establishment! And what is their excuse? They provide none! And the vast majority of the Democrat Party media don’t give a damn. Don’t talk to me about MAGA violence when we see this, massive crime in the streets, murder rates skyrocketing, months of deadly riots by the Democrat Party militia, Democrat prosecutors refusing to prosecute, Democrat judges refusing to incarcerate, and on and on. And recall how these reprobates downplayed the would-be assassin he traveled across the country intending to take our Justice Kavanaugh. The party of hate, mayhem and violence is and always has been the Democrat Party. “
“Days after President Joe Biden bypassed the congress to approve a $6-billion ransom payment to Iran, the Mullah regime has taken another Western national hostage as part of its ongoing ‘hostage diplomacy,’ media reports say.
On Saturday, Iran’s Islamic Guard (IRGC) disclosed that it has taken yet another Westerner in its custody, less than a week after Biden White House agreed to pay $6 billion for the release of 5 U.S. hostages. The media reports did not specify if the captive is a U.S. or a European national.
“The Biden administration has cleared the way for the release of five American citizens detained in Iran by issuing a blanket waiver for international banks to transfer $6 billion in frozen Iranian money,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday.”
—
“The Times of Israel reported the latest IRGC arrest:
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said Saturday they arrested a man with dual citizenship on allegations of “attempted rioting and to cause disruptions” in the city of Karaj, west of the capital Tehran.
The suspect was found to be in possession of “several smartphones and dollars of significant value,” the IRGC said, according to a report by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
It was unclear which nationality aside from Iranian the suspect held. Several capitals have accused Iran of practicing “hostage diplomacy” — arresting Western nationals to obtain concessions such as the release of detained Iranians abroad.
Iran has upped security and conducted a wave of arrests in the country’s Kurdish region on suspicion of “planning to create chaos” and producing content to serve “hostile media” on the anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini.
Reports on social media suggest that the Mullah regime may have taken additional U.S. and European hostages as dissidents across the country mark the first death anniversary of Mahsa Amini, a 21–year-old Iranian women who died in custody of the Morality Police for violating the hijab law:”
The Islamic republic of Iran has apparently taken 3 NEW hostages from US, UK and Germany the same week that Biden released six billion USD to the regime. The hostages were all involved in the #WomenLifeFreedom movement. Here are their forced confessions: pic.twitter.com/2UhvJDlIwZ
“Getting a cold sucks. Sometimes you even think you are going to die. At least if you are a man. If you are a woman you soldier on as if nothing is wrong.
At least that is what women tell me. Men are babies, women are tough as nails. Who am I to disagree (if I value my life)?”
NBC News: "Doctors say they're finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish Covid from allergies or the common cold"https://t.co/rqIdKvOlBn via @nbcnews
“As the CDC and the public health establishment keep pushing dire warnings out to the public and begging people to get vaccinated, the actual disease has done what almost all respiratory diseases do: become less dangerous.
That’s not due to some version of compassion on the part of the virus. There is no “Oops, my bad” thinking on the part of this nasty little strain of RNA or DNA. It’s just evolution at work. Some of that evolution is found in our immune system, and some in the virus itself.
Viruses that kill large numbers of their hosts are less fit than those that don’t, and Darwin himself will tell you that evolution tends toward the fitter varieties of organisms (or kinda sorta organisms, in the case of viruses). If a virus keeps killing off its hosts then it won’t spread well. This is why Ebola outbreaks don’t go very far, even in places with horrible healthcare systems. It kills too quickly to spread far and wide. There is an animal reservoir out there where the virus doesn’t kill at all, and that is the ideal host for it.
The 1918 flu wasn’t wiped out by antivirals or a vaccine; it mutated away from being so deadly. That is what happens.
What? Did you think some medical miracle happened? The 1918 flu was vastly more deadly than COVID-19, although you would never know it from the coverage. COVID was nasty and nobody wanted to die, but by any measure–the absolute number of deaths, the relative number of deaths, or pick some other metric, COVID was pretty mild compared to a really bad flu year. It just was.
COVID-19 killed 7 million people out of 8 billion. The 1918 flu killed 50 million people, out of perhaps 1.8 billion people. Do the math. COVID was nothing compared to the 1918 pandemic. And while the flu stuck around, the deaths plummeted.
This is a very inconvenient truth for the pundits, who need you to be very scared. It makes them powerful and important. A cold virus doesn’t.
But COVID has turned into a cold, almost indistinguishable from other viruses or even allergies.
“Just about everyone who I’ve seen has had really mild symptoms,” Eiting said of his urgent care patients, adding, “The only way that we knew that it was Covid was because we happened to be testing them.”
I went into an emergency room that was packed about a year ago. The wait was the longest I had ever experienced, by a factor of 6. When I was finally talking to the doctor I asked whether COVID was the reason and his answer was “sorta.” He hadn’t seen a COVID patient in weeks the hospitalization was so rare; it was the loss of staff that was killing them, and that dated to COVID layoffs.
Most people don’t know this but COVID policies led to massive layoffs of staff–most hospital functions ceased as nonemergency care was stopped. A lot of staff were laid off, and many never came back. It was a public policy disaster. If you think health care has gotten worse it’s because it has, and you can thank the shutdown fanatics for that.”
“In 2022 alone, The View cohosts were forced to issue nearly 40 apologies, clarifications, and legal disclaimers for statements they made on the air. So much for the “intelligent debate” the journalist Barbara Walters envisioned when she created The View in 1997.
The list of statements for which Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, and their colleagues have apologized (or issued clarifications in response to threats of legal action) is nothing short of astonishing.
• Comparing Christianity to a “mental illness.”
• Claiming Supreme Court justices Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas have been “credibly accused” of sexual assault.
• Suggesting the Holocaust was “not about race.”
• Asserting that neo-Nazi protesters outside a convention in Florida belonged to a conservative student organization.
• Repeatedly “misgendering” former male athlete Caitlyn Jenner.
• Using a racial slur—”gypped”—to criticize Donald Trump and his supporters.
• Offending nurses by suggesting nursing is “not a real talent.””
“Three years after “defund the police” became a BLM rallying cry, San Francisco and other Bay Area cities are still trying to recover from the brief popularity that phrase once had with mayors and city councils. San Francisco is still down hundreds of police officers and has come up with a new plan to attract more recruits: Go to Texas.
The San Francisco Police Department is visiting four Texas university campuses through September as part of new recruiting efforts to find candidates outside of California.
For the first time, police officer candidates will be tested outside of California, with a written test, a physical ability test and an oral interview.
An announcement was made on X a couple weeks ago.”
‼️🚨SFPD IS COMING TO TEXAS🚨‼️
Come join the San Francisco Police Department for ONE DAY TESTING!
“You really have to soak in the comedic aspect of far left San Francisco going to bright red Texas to try to find officers. For six years, San Francisco had banned business with Texas.”
—
“Speaking of bad decisions haunting the Bay Area, Alameda County’s progressive district attorney Pamela Price is doing her best to win people over, but even the SF Chronicle admits it’s not going over very well.
The town hall, held at a church, was billed as an opportunity for residents to get to know Price and “talk together about her successes and challenges.” But even before I got inside I could sense the atmosphere would be tense: Several dozen protesters were waving signs at a nearby stoplight, one of which read, “PRICE-LESS CORRUPTION.”…
The energy shifted palpably, however, when Price began talking about restorative justice as an alternative to incarceration.
“It’s about making sure that victims have the opportunity to hold the person who hurt them accountable,” she said, but was cut off by people booing and screaming, “That’s a lie!”
The author of the piece, Emily Hoeven, writes that it would be great to live in a world where incarceration wasn’t necessary but unfortunately, that’s not the one we’re in. But Pamela Price just carries on as if we’re already living in that world.
This whittling down of the traditional criminal justice system without a backup plan — while charging offenders as if that plan were already in place — is a recipe for disaster. Until Democrats acknowledge this, they will lose ground with Californians, many of whom feel unsafe amid a level of violent crime that hasn’t been seen in more than a decade.
We’ve written about Price several times this year. In July the Oakland NAACP blasted her in a letter blaming her for failing to keep residents safe.”
I have respect for this house rep and like him but we cannot continue down this road. Nobody is going to die over a shut down. They shut down American businesses and schools for 2+ years and didn't give a crap about the consequences. Shut it down until the bills can be written… https://t.co/uZQlfmmY9m
“The poverty rate in the United States increased last year, the first increase in 13 years, according to the Census Bureau.
In 2022, the poverty rate was 12.4%, up 4.6% from 2021, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which looks at government programs and tax credits designed to help low-income families, according to the census.
The expiration of pandemic programs, including refundable tax credits and stimulus payments, at the start of 2022, led to an increase in the SPM over the official poverty rate, the census reported.
The poverty rate among children saw a sizeable increase, more than doubling from 5.2% in 2021 to 12.4% last year, census data shows.”
“While I sometimes dislike Moore’s tendency to go for the applause line, there’s another example that deserves to stick to its target: his reminder that Christians have a “mission field” and not an earthly “battlefield.” That’s absolutely correct, and it has many implications. . . .
.
I take Moore to be saying we should stop trying to put together a political coalition that can successfully unite a highly pluralistic American society through laws. Instead, we should refocus our efforts on treating our own country as a mission field and strengthening our work of discipleship and sanctification. One can always object that the real situation is a both/and, but Moore (and others) suggest the fireworks, power struggles, and horse-race aspects of politics take attention away from the primary spiritual mission and maybe even compromise it. It’s difficult to argue to the contrary.”
Kizzie, thank you for sharing, not sure I’d read that piece before, I may have but it was good to see it here.
Another portion I appreciated from the article:
______________
~ Another valuable point Moore makes is that secularization isn’t exclusively a threat from the left. Evangelicals are trained to see secularization as a left-wing phenomenon. To be fair, it has mostly taken that shape over the last few decades. However, as democratic constitutionalism has become less and less stable, secular voices from the right have emerged with the same kind of intensity we’re accustomed to seeing on the left. The right-wing version often looks like a form of ethnic nationalism. Religion might be included, but more on the basis of tradition and identity rather than truth and an encounter with the living God. … ~
_______________________
The siren-call of power and secular/political influence via figures who may even claim to know Christ (they may or may not, we are reminded to be wise as serpents) emerges in all periods and cultures. And the church, unfortunately, isn’t always vey immune to that.
Thanks again for posting this. I also don’t agree with everything Moore has said, but he hits the mark on some of these issues. We don’t have to agree with *everything* someone says (in fact it’s not likely that we will if we’re being thoughtful and discerning) to give credit to the things they get right.
AJ – Regarding that tweet from David French that you shared the other day, I agree that it was sarcastic, unkind, and unfair.
Sadly, those kinds of posts/comments are easier to recognize and denounce when they come from someone we already dislike or disagree with, but not as easy to recognize or denounce when they come from someone on “our side”. A post I was reading earlier today, about how our brains automatically differentiate between “Us” and “Them”, pointed out:
“Among the most pro-social things we do for ingroup members is readily forgive them for transgressions. When a Them does something wrong, it reflects essentialism—that’s the way They are, always have been, always will be. When an Us is in the wrong, however, the pull is toward situational interpretations—we’re not usually like that, and here’s the extenuating circumstance to explain why he did this. Situational explanations for misdeeds are the reason why defense lawyers want jurors who will view the defendant as an Us.”
Reading that, I thought of how we see this all the time in comments and posts on social media, especially in relation to political or social issues.
I also was disappointed in the tweet by David French (though his words on the brief clip Kizzie posted were excellent and solid biblical reminders to all of us — though we will stumble and fall, even he who spoke them in this case, in my view).
We all cross the line — maybe more often on hot-topic social media threads than elsewhere or otherwise so caution there is always advisable — but when we do we should be quick to repent (including publicly). So a followup tweet apologizing is what I hope to always see. It happens. But we are not to just let it slide and give ourselves a pass.
Repentance is a daily and even moment-by-moment calling for believers, not a one-time-only gesture. It keeps many of us quite busy if we’re having a faithful day.
AJ – From what I understand the increase in child poverty has to do with the House’s failure to renew a temporary child benefit passed during Covid. I’m back to work and have less time to double check but my understanding is it’s a legislative failure not an executive.
The Republican outrage on the dress code has more to do with Fetterman than concern with decorum. Fetterman’s shtick has always been his every man appeal and the hoodie and shorts are part of it. As long as Republicans tolerate the behaviour of Gaetz, Broebert and Jordan outside the House, they can’t complain about shorts and hoodies.
Wandering Views 
“What We Must Believe to Believe Biden Is Innocent
Is it plausible that the real rainmaker of Biden, Inc. was the only one who didn’t get paid?”
https://spectator.org/what-we-must-believe-to-believe-biden-is-innocent/
“It’s hardly a surprise that the corporate media have rushed to the defense of President Biden pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announced last week by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. More surprising is the absurdity of the arguments they offer on his behalf. For years, his denials notwithstanding, Biden knew his son ran an international enterprise whose only real service was selling access to the Vice President of the United States to foreign entities who hoped to procure favorable policy decisions from the Obama administration. This operation generated at least $20 million that was doled out to nine Biden family members, yet we are asked to believe that the “Big Guy” didn’t get a cut.
CNN, for example, insists there is no evidence that he “personally received any money.” The network’s fact-checkers evidently need to see a cancelled check made out to “Joe Biden” by an Oligarch who has helpfully written “bribe” on the memo line. The public is more sophisticated. A significant plurality of voters believe that Biden has accepted bribes. A recent Yahoo/YouGov survey asked this question (48F): “Do you believe that Hunter Biden funneled millions of dollars to his father in a long-running scheme to help Joe Biden profit off of his position?” Fully 45 percent of registered voters answered, “Yes.” These aren’t “MAGA extremists.” Indeed, 41 percent of Independents answered, “Yes.”
Moreover, they have many sound reasons for doubting the President’s veracity and suspecting him of engaging in impeachable offences. On August 24, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) released a list of 16 instances of Biden lying to the American people about his knowledge of his family’s influence peddling schemes. Last week, Chairman Comer released an additional list of evidence showing that Joe Biden’s involvement in these illegal schemes was anything but passive. Meanwhile, Special Assistant to the President Ian Sams issued a memorandum to the corporate “news” media effectively commanding them to scrutinize Republicans with even more animus than is their standard practice:
—
Mr. Sams hasn’t done his boss any favors here. In one stroke he has confirmed the incestuous relationship that exists between the White House and the media while preemptively destroying the credibility of any defense the latter might produce on Biden’s behalf. As to the 14-page appendix Sams provided along with his peremptory memo, it amounts to little more than a collection of recycled White House talking points and quotes from old “news” stories published by the very outlets he urges to “ramp up” their coverage of Republicans. Ironically, the only interesting news produced by the appendix is that Hunter Biden’s “money guy,” Eric Schwerin, managed Dad’s finances while he was Vice President.
Fox News reports, “House Democrats acknowledged Wednesday that Hunter Biden’s then-business partner, Eric Schwerin, handled President Biden’s finances for the duration of his vice presidency.” Sams was foolish enough to mention Schwerin’s interview with the House Oversight Committee in his index, and reporters from Fox confirmed that Schwerin did indeed act as bookkeeper for then-Vice President Biden from 2009 to 2017. It’s no mere optics problem for Hunter Biden’s business partner to manage the Vice President’s finances for eight years. Yet, on ABC’s “This Week,” host Jonathan Karl asked Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) if it was premature to begin an impeachment inquiry. She responded as follows:
—
The facts are everywhere. There are text messages, there are emails, there are witnesses, there are whistleblowers, there are meetings, there are phone calls, there are dinners … And the inquiry, my understanding is, as you said earlier, gives us expanded subpoena powers. I want the bank records of Joe Biden. All of that should be on the table to prove out the allegations in the SARS reports. We’re talking about a significant sum of money. We are talking about bribery. And in the Constitution, Article 2, Section 4, that is the basis for impeachment.
—
It is indeed. This situation is, to coin a phrase, worse than Watergate. It’s not about a bungled burglary and a clumsy cover-up. It is also far more egregious than lying under oath about a tawdry sex scandal involving a White House intern. It is without question far worse than a single phone call with a Ukrainian comedian cum President about the corrupt dealings of a former Vice President and his degenerate offspring. Finally, for anyone with an IQ exceeding single digits, it’s more dangerous than a rushed impeachment for incitement of insurrection that failed to meet the legal definitions of “incitement” or “insurrection.”
In order to believe that Biden is innocent of taking bribes for favorable foreign policy decisions, we must ignore his own words, his son’s text messages and emails, all the “spontaneous” meetings, all the whistleblowers and witnesses, and the need for more than 20 shell companies to launder and distribute loot among family members who have no demonstrable skills. Finally, we must believe that $20 million — and probably much more — has been lavished on all of these people except the only one possessed of the power to make it rain.”
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But muh norms! they cry, while destroying them…..
All for the oaf from PA.
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I guess in Biden’s mind one more dead Kennedy is no biggie.
“Here we have an armed man arrested at a RFK Jr. event — that is, a potentially horrific situation involving the son of the assassinated Sen. Robert Kennedy — and the Biden regime REFUSES to provide RFK Jr. with secret service protection! How dare RFK Jr. challenge the Biden regime and the Democrat Party establishment! And what is their excuse? They provide none! And the vast majority of the Democrat Party media don’t give a damn. Don’t talk to me about MAGA violence when we see this, massive crime in the streets, murder rates skyrocketing, months of deadly riots by the Democrat Party militia, Democrat prosecutors refusing to prosecute, Democrat judges refusing to incarcerate, and on and on. And recall how these reprobates downplayed the would-be assassin he traveled across the country intending to take our Justice Kavanaugh. The party of hate, mayhem and violence is and always has been the Democrat Party. “
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Wow. Didn’t see this coming…. 🙄
Said no one with a functioning brain….
This is why you don’t negotiate with terrorists.
“Days After Biden Approves $6 Billion Ransom Deal, Iran Takes Another Westerner Hostage
President Trump: ‘How much of a kickback does Crooked Joe Biden get?’”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/09/days-after-biden-approves-6-billion-ransom-deal-iran-takes-another-westerner-hostage/
“Days after President Joe Biden bypassed the congress to approve a $6-billion ransom payment to Iran, the Mullah regime has taken another Western national hostage as part of its ongoing ‘hostage diplomacy,’ media reports say.
On Saturday, Iran’s Islamic Guard (IRGC) disclosed that it has taken yet another Westerner in its custody, less than a week after Biden White House agreed to pay $6 billion for the release of 5 U.S. hostages. The media reports did not specify if the captive is a U.S. or a European national.
“The Biden administration has cleared the way for the release of five American citizens detained in Iran by issuing a blanket waiver for international banks to transfer $6 billion in frozen Iranian money,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday.”
—
“The Times of Israel reported the latest IRGC arrest:
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said Saturday they arrested a man with dual citizenship on allegations of “attempted rioting and to cause disruptions” in the city of Karaj, west of the capital Tehran.
The suspect was found to be in possession of “several smartphones and dollars of significant value,” the IRGC said, according to a report by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
It was unclear which nationality aside from Iranian the suspect held. Several capitals have accused Iran of practicing “hostage diplomacy” — arresting Western nationals to obtain concessions such as the release of detained Iranians abroad.
Iran has upped security and conducted a wave of arrests in the country’s Kurdish region on suspicion of “planning to create chaos” and producing content to serve “hostile media” on the anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini.
Reports on social media suggest that the Mullah regime may have taken additional U.S. and European hostages as dissidents across the country mark the first death anniversary of Mahsa Amini, a 21–year-old Iranian women who died in custody of the Morality Police for violating the hijab law:”
—
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Poor things….
And they had such big plans…. more lockdowns, more masking, more voting shenanigans….
“Pundits disappointed that COVID now indistinguishable from colds and allergies”
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/09/19/pundits-disappointed-that-covid-now-indistinguishable-from-colds-and-allergies-n578948
“Getting a cold sucks. Sometimes you even think you are going to die. At least if you are a man. If you are a woman you soldier on as if nothing is wrong.
At least that is what women tell me. Men are babies, women are tough as nails. Who am I to disagree (if I value my life)?”
“As the CDC and the public health establishment keep pushing dire warnings out to the public and begging people to get vaccinated, the actual disease has done what almost all respiratory diseases do: become less dangerous.
That’s not due to some version of compassion on the part of the virus. There is no “Oops, my bad” thinking on the part of this nasty little strain of RNA or DNA. It’s just evolution at work. Some of that evolution is found in our immune system, and some in the virus itself.
Viruses that kill large numbers of their hosts are less fit than those that don’t, and Darwin himself will tell you that evolution tends toward the fitter varieties of organisms (or kinda sorta organisms, in the case of viruses). If a virus keeps killing off its hosts then it won’t spread well. This is why Ebola outbreaks don’t go very far, even in places with horrible healthcare systems. It kills too quickly to spread far and wide. There is an animal reservoir out there where the virus doesn’t kill at all, and that is the ideal host for it.
The 1918 flu wasn’t wiped out by antivirals or a vaccine; it mutated away from being so deadly. That is what happens.
What? Did you think some medical miracle happened? The 1918 flu was vastly more deadly than COVID-19, although you would never know it from the coverage. COVID was nasty and nobody wanted to die, but by any measure–the absolute number of deaths, the relative number of deaths, or pick some other metric, COVID was pretty mild compared to a really bad flu year. It just was.
COVID-19 killed 7 million people out of 8 billion. The 1918 flu killed 50 million people, out of perhaps 1.8 billion people. Do the math. COVID was nothing compared to the 1918 pandemic. And while the flu stuck around, the deaths plummeted.
This is a very inconvenient truth for the pundits, who need you to be very scared. It makes them powerful and important. A cold virus doesn’t.
But COVID has turned into a cold, almost indistinguishable from other viruses or even allergies.
“Just about everyone who I’ve seen has had really mild symptoms,” Eiting said of his urgent care patients, adding, “The only way that we knew that it was Covid was because we happened to be testing them.”
I went into an emergency room that was packed about a year ago. The wait was the longest I had ever experienced, by a factor of 6. When I was finally talking to the doctor I asked whether COVID was the reason and his answer was “sorta.” He hadn’t seen a COVID patient in weeks the hospitalization was so rare; it was the loss of staff that was killing them, and that dated to COVID layoffs.
Most people don’t know this but COVID policies led to massive layoffs of staff–most hospital functions ceased as nonemergency care was stopped. A lot of staff were laid off, and many never came back. It was a public policy disaster. If you think health care has gotten worse it’s because it has, and you can thank the shutdown fanatics for that.”
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Hacktastic!
https://freebeacon.com/media/watch-the-ladies-of-the-view-deliver-their-most-cringeworthy-apologies/
“In 2022 alone, The View cohosts were forced to issue nearly 40 apologies, clarifications, and legal disclaimers for statements they made on the air. So much for the “intelligent debate” the journalist Barbara Walters envisioned when she created The View in 1997.
The list of statements for which Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, and their colleagues have apologized (or issued clarifications in response to threats of legal action) is nothing short of astonishing.
• Comparing Christianity to a “mental illness.”
• Claiming Supreme Court justices Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas have been “credibly accused” of sexual assault.
• Suggesting the Holocaust was “not about race.”
• Asserting that neo-Nazi protesters outside a convention in Florida belonged to a conservative student organization.
• Repeatedly “misgendering” former male athlete Caitlyn Jenner.
• Using a racial slur—”gypped”—to criticize Donald Trump and his supporters.
• Offending nurses by suggesting nursing is “not a real talent.””
So. Much. Cringe.
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Hahaha.
California is desperate. 🙂
“The Bay Area is still struggling to recover from ‘defund the police’ (now they’re hoping Texas can help)”
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/09/18/the-bay-area-is-still-struggling-to-recover-from-defund-the-police-now-theyre-hoping-texas-can-help-n578984
“Three years after “defund the police” became a BLM rallying cry, San Francisco and other Bay Area cities are still trying to recover from the brief popularity that phrase once had with mayors and city councils. San Francisco is still down hundreds of police officers and has come up with a new plan to attract more recruits: Go to Texas.
The San Francisco Police Department is visiting four Texas university campuses through September as part of new recruiting efforts to find candidates outside of California.
For the first time, police officer candidates will be tested outside of California, with a written test, a physical ability test and an oral interview.
An announcement was made on X a couple weeks ago.”
“You really have to soak in the comedic aspect of far left San Francisco going to bright red Texas to try to find officers. For six years, San Francisco had banned business with Texas.”
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“Speaking of bad decisions haunting the Bay Area, Alameda County’s progressive district attorney Pamela Price is doing her best to win people over, but even the SF Chronicle admits it’s not going over very well.
The town hall, held at a church, was billed as an opportunity for residents to get to know Price and “talk together about her successes and challenges.” But even before I got inside I could sense the atmosphere would be tense: Several dozen protesters were waving signs at a nearby stoplight, one of which read, “PRICE-LESS CORRUPTION.”…
The energy shifted palpably, however, when Price began talking about restorative justice as an alternative to incarceration.
“It’s about making sure that victims have the opportunity to hold the person who hurt them accountable,” she said, but was cut off by people booing and screaming, “That’s a lie!”
The author of the piece, Emily Hoeven, writes that it would be great to live in a world where incarceration wasn’t necessary but unfortunately, that’s not the one we’re in. But Pamela Price just carries on as if we’re already living in that world.
This whittling down of the traditional criminal justice system without a backup plan — while charging offenders as if that plan were already in place — is a recipe for disaster. Until Democrats acknowledge this, they will lose ground with Californians, many of whom feel unsafe amid a level of violent crime that hasn’t been seen in more than a decade.
We’ve written about Price several times this year. In July the Oakland NAACP blasted her in a letter blaming her for failing to keep residents safe.”
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Shut. It. Down.
https://twitter.com/SNAFU21/status/1703890271891767541?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1703890271891767541%7Ctwgr%5Ec922deaf44f0ad3269da6d7d7210b15d2e1ed96e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fgrateful-calvin%2F2023%2F09%2F19%2Fshut-it-down-trends-on-twitter-as-republicans-introduce-continuing-resolution-n2387437
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Yay Bidenomics!
“The poverty rate in the United States increased last year, the first increase in 13 years, according to the Census Bureau.
In 2022, the poverty rate was 12.4%, up 4.6% from 2021, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which looks at government programs and tax credits designed to help low-income families, according to the census.
The expiration of pandemic programs, including refundable tax credits and stimulus payments, at the start of 2022, led to an increase in the SPM over the official poverty rate, the census reported.
The poverty rate among children saw a sizeable increase, more than doubling from 5.2% in 2021 to 12.4% last year, census data shows.”
—-
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“While I sometimes dislike Moore’s tendency to go for the applause line, there’s another example that deserves to stick to its target: his reminder that Christians have a “mission field” and not an earthly “battlefield.” That’s absolutely correct, and it has many implications. . . .
.
I take Moore to be saying we should stop trying to put together a political coalition that can successfully unite a highly pluralistic American society through laws. Instead, we should refocus our efforts on treating our own country as a mission field and strengthening our work of discipleship and sanctification. One can always object that the real situation is a both/and, but Moore (and others) suggest the fireworks, power struggles, and horse-race aspects of politics take attention away from the primary spiritual mission and maybe even compromise it. It’s difficult to argue to the contrary.”
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/losing-our-religion/
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Kizzie, thank you for sharing, not sure I’d read that piece before, I may have but it was good to see it here.
Another portion I appreciated from the article:
______________
~ Another valuable point Moore makes is that secularization isn’t exclusively a threat from the left. Evangelicals are trained to see secularization as a left-wing phenomenon. To be fair, it has mostly taken that shape over the last few decades. However, as democratic constitutionalism has become less and less stable, secular voices from the right have emerged with the same kind of intensity we’re accustomed to seeing on the left. The right-wing version often looks like a form of ethnic nationalism. Religion might be included, but more on the basis of tradition and identity rather than truth and an encounter with the living God. … ~
_______________________
The siren-call of power and secular/political influence via figures who may even claim to know Christ (they may or may not, we are reminded to be wise as serpents) emerges in all periods and cultures. And the church, unfortunately, isn’t always vey immune to that.
Thanks again for posting this. I also don’t agree with everything Moore has said, but he hits the mark on some of these issues. We don’t have to agree with *everything* someone says (in fact it’s not likely that we will if we’re being thoughtful and discerning) to give credit to the things they get right.
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Along with being “wise as serpents”, let’s not forget the “harmless as doves” part of that.
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AJ – Regarding that tweet from David French that you shared the other day, I agree that it was sarcastic, unkind, and unfair.
Sadly, those kinds of posts/comments are easier to recognize and denounce when they come from someone we already dislike or disagree with, but not as easy to recognize or denounce when they come from someone on “our side”. A post I was reading earlier today, about how our brains automatically differentiate between “Us” and “Them”, pointed out:
“Among the most pro-social things we do for ingroup members is readily forgive them for transgressions. When a Them does something wrong, it reflects essentialism—that’s the way They are, always have been, always will be. When an Us is in the wrong, however, the pull is toward situational interpretations—we’re not usually like that, and here’s the extenuating circumstance to explain why he did this. Situational explanations for misdeeds are the reason why defense lawyers want jurors who will view the defendant as an Us.”
Reading that, I thought of how we see this all the time in comments and posts on social media, especially in relation to political or social issues.
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I also was disappointed in the tweet by David French (though his words on the brief clip Kizzie posted were excellent and solid biblical reminders to all of us — though we will stumble and fall, even he who spoke them in this case, in my view).
We all cross the line — maybe more often on hot-topic social media threads than elsewhere or otherwise so caution there is always advisable — but when we do we should be quick to repent (including publicly). So a followup tweet apologizing is what I hope to always see. It happens. But we are not to just let it slide and give ourselves a pass.
Repentance is a daily and even moment-by-moment calling for believers, not a one-time-only gesture. It keeps many of us quite busy if we’re having a faithful day.
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It’s why humility is such an important trait to look for in our political leaders (where, sadly, it’s often in short supply).
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AJ – From what I understand the increase in child poverty has to do with the House’s failure to renew a temporary child benefit passed during Covid. I’m back to work and have less time to double check but my understanding is it’s a legislative failure not an executive.
The Republican outrage on the dress code has more to do with Fetterman than concern with decorum. Fetterman’s shtick has always been his every man appeal and the hoodie and shorts are part of it. As long as Republicans tolerate the behaviour of Gaetz, Broebert and Jordan outside the House, they can’t complain about shorts and hoodies.
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Oh, I knew it would somehow be R’s fault.
Nothing is ever Biden’s fault. The buck always stops somewhere else.
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