Editors’ Note: This week, we published a four-part series on the necessity of beauty across contexts: art, homemaking, architecture, and education. This series critically examines the role of beauty in renewing culture. This is the fourth and final essay, in which Nathaniel Peters explores how the study of the humanities can be a path to spiritual growth.
The earliest Christian sources seem skeptical of the value of what we would now call humanistic learning. St. Paul asks: “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (I Corinthians 1:20) And in his Prescription against Heretics, Tertullian describes Paul’s encounter on the Areopagus with a human wisdom corrupted and divided into heresy. “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” he writes, “What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?” Some Christians share these concerns today and fear that studying the humanities can damage one’s faith, while others question their usefulness for the rest of life. But a deeper look at scripture and Christian history can help us understand why and how to study the humanities fruitfully.
In Genesis 1:27–28, Adam and Eve are created in the image of God and told to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it. But the first activity we see Adam perform is in Genesis 2:19, where God has formed the animals and brought them to Adam “to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.”
Adam’s first activity—the first thing he does in the image of God and as part of his vocation as steward of creation—is to name the animals. Names are important in the Old Testament. They are a sign of who you are and what God made you to be. Abram becomes Abraham, the father of many nations, and Jacob becomes Israel, he who wrestles with God. In the act of naming, Adam helps order the animals toward his own comprehension and toward the glory of God, bestowing a kind of dignity on them.
In the Gospel of John, as in Genesis, we are taught that the world is created by God. The Word is God, and is with God, and is God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. This gives us a picture of the relations between the Word and the Father. Words exist primarily in our minds, so the Word exists eternally in the mind of the Father. And creation is a kind of outpouring from God according to the Word or idea that exists in his mind. Creation comes into being according to the Word. This means that the world is ordered and united, and that people made in the image of God can understand both. When we combine these ideas from Genesis and John, we get the following key points. First, our knowing and understanding is an essential human activity, part of what it means to be made in the image of God. Second, our knowing of creation is a participation in God’s knowing of creation, the very knowing that made the world and sustains it in being. To put it another way, we were made by God to know and love the truth—both himself as Truth itself, and also the many truths about the things he made. And our knowledge of the truth makes our minds operate in tune with God’s. Third, the truths that we know are ultimately united in the world, as they are united and ordered in the mind of God, and therefore the truth as we apprehend it is one and unified. Truth can’t contradict truth; it can illuminate it in a new way, or correct something we incorrectly think, or teach us to hold something we rightly think with greater nuance and clarity. But if our right understanding is a participation in God’s knowledge of himself and creation, it is not fragmented.
It’s important to acknowledge that this is not how elite, secular universities see the pursuit of knowledge, nor how they see the relations of the disciplines to one another. It’s much more common to have people siloed in their particular fields of study. We come to certain conclusions in physics, others in literature, and still others in philosophy, and we never try to fit them into an overarching framework. But Christianity gives us a reason and framework for the search for truth and the life of the university.
So why should a Christian study? Because by doing so, you do what God made human beings to do. You participate in the knowledge of God, imitate God, and hopefully come to understand better the world God made—maybe God himself.
Why then should we study the humanities? The humanities are ways of coming to know the truth about ourselves, the world, and God through art, music, literature, history, philosophy, theology, etc. At its best, the practice of writing well or producing art is a kind of co-creation of beauty, or a discernment of the order of truth in an aspect of human life or the world. And this is something that we not only have an ability but also a desire to do. In his address “Learning in Wartime,” C. S. Lewis writes:
An appetite for these things exists in the human mind, and God makes no appetite in vain. We can therefore pursue knowledge as such, and beauty as such, in the sure confidence that by so doing we are either advancing to the vision of God ourselves or indirectly helping others to do so. Humility, no less than the appetite, encourages us to concentrate simply on the knowledge or the beauty, not too much concerning ourselves with their ultimate relevance to the vision of God. That relevance may not be intended for us but for our betters—for men who come after and find the spiritual significance of what we dug out in blind and humble obedience to our vocation. This is the teleological argument that the existence of the impulse and the faculty prove that they must have a proper function in God’s scheme. . . . The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us.
Lewis’s point is this: God wouldn’t give us a desire for something, and an ability to do it, for no reason. God made us desire beauty and knowledge and gave us the ability to delight in them. If we’re given the opportunity to do so, we should glorify him by pursuing and enjoying them.
But aren’t many parts of the humanities a partial or entire rejection of God? A Christian isn’t going to model himself on Achilles or Aphrodite—or Nietzsche for that matter—so why read the Iliad or the Genealogy of Morals? Augustine and the monks of the Middle Ages give us a good example in this regard. Many of them approached classical authors with the perspective of the Israelites in Exodus. When God tells Moses from the burning bush to lead his people out of Egypt, he says that each woman shall ask her neighbors for jewelry and clothing, and they will put them on their sons and daughters, “and so you shall plunder the Egyptians” (Ex 3:22, 12:36).
This image of plundering the Egyptians became the image for how Christian authors would take the best of pagan literature and philosophy captive and, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:5, make it obedient to Christ. So, for example, St. Boniface, the monk who evangelized Germany, wrote a handbook on Latin poetic meter and a treatise on grammar. In The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, Jean Leclercq writes:
As he brings this prologue to an end, St. Boniface explains why he placed at the head of his treatise, in a circle, a cross and the name of the Lord Jesus: just as the whole Old Testament led to Christ and already contained, under veiled images, the realities of the mysteries of salvation, all the good that can be found in reading and “scrutinizing” the grammarians, poets, historians, and the writings of both Testaments must be referred to Christ in accordance with the advice of St. Paul: “Try everything, keep what is good.”
Rabanus Marus, a ninth-century monk and bishop, used a different Old Testament metaphor to describe this kind of humanistic study. According to the principle in Deuteronomy 21:11–13—that an Israelite could, under certain conditions, marry a pagan woman taken in battle—Rabanus writes: “This is what we customarily do, and what we ought to do, when we read pagan poets, when books of worldly wisdom fall into our hands. If we meet therein something useful, we convert it to our own dogma.”
Many monastic thinkers demonstrated a kind of optimism in their interpretation of pagan authors, even to the point of seeing them as authorities who cannot err, deceive, or contradict themselves. This required a good deal of allegorizing in some cases. Ovid and Horace were not naughty love poets, some Christian authors thought, but moralists who intended to teach chastity and lawful love. Ovid was thought to have become a Christian on his deathbed, and Virgil’s Eclogues prophesy the coming of Christ. Leclercq notes that Ovid, Horace, and Virgil “belonged to these men as personal property; they were not an alien possession to which to refer and quote with reverence. . . .” Thus, in the tympanum of the twelfth-century Abbey of Vézélay, Christ is depicted as sending the apostles forth to evangelize and convert the nations of the world, some of whom are depicted with various deformities and diseases as described by Herodotus. The monks read Herodotus, and they used his history as a way to show the healing power of the Gospel as it spread throughout the world.
So, why should a Christian study the humanities? Because even in authors who were not Christian, or who were opposed to Christianity, there are gems of beauty and truth that you can cherish and enjoy and think about with respect to Christ. Let me be clear: I would advise that students follow Lewis and pursue their studies for their own sake, not for the sake of explicitly referring everything they learn back to Christ in their papers. But we should think about Mozart, Virginia Woolf, and Herodotus and ask where they fit into our understanding of the world God made. What insights can they offer us? What beauty of theirs can we cherish that we couldn’t otherwise? How can Nietzsche help us understand what the world would look like without Christ?
Let me also propose that Christians should study the humanities because study can be a means of spiritual growth. At the beginning of Romans 12, Paul urges us to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. He then writes: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Of course our mind is transformed by what we study, but also by how we study.
Before embarking on his public ministry, Jesus spent forty days wandering and praying in the desert. At certain points in our studies, we can find ourselves in a similar state. I found writing a dissertation to be much more of a spiritually purifying process than I had expected—a process of stripping away my desire for the prestige and easy, quick achievement in which I found meaning, and of making me confront who I thought I was and what I was trying to do. In Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life, Zena Hitz writes:
Intellectual life turns out to be a sort of asceticism, a turning away from things within ourselves. Our desires for truth, for understanding, for insight are in constant conflict with other desires: our desires for social acceptance or an easy life, a particular personal goal or a desirable political outcome. Hence the retreat that intellectual work requires does not function only as an escape. It is also a place of salutary distance, a place to set aside our agendas to consider things as they really are. When we think and reflect, we struggle to allow our desire for truth to prevail over the desires that conflict with truth. We push aside the soft barriers and chip away at hard accretions of wishful thinking. It is for this reason that intellectual life is a discipline: the product of hard work and practice in a certain sort of self-denial.
When we do our intellectual work well, our study can become a kind of spiritual discipline. We are forced to put our desire for the truth—capital and lowercase T—ahead of our desire for getting a good grade, saying the thing that will make us more popular with our professor or our friends, or achieving another thing that serves as the means of achieving another thing. And when our study becomes difficult, we are forced to ask ourselves why and for whom or what we are working.
As I mentioned above, the goal of our study should be a more accurate apprehension of reality and the one who made it. That can be hard work from which we easily shrink. Hitz thinks about this problem by focusing on Augustine’s distinction between curiositas and studiositas, two kinds of restlessness that she translates as “love of spectacle” and “seriousness.” Love of spectacle flits from object to object seeking the titillation of bare experience—the dopamine hits of the gladiatorial games, cockfights, and pear-stealing. By contrast, seriousness pushes past the surface of things to what is more real. It stays focused on what matters most and moves the inquirer to order his life according to those things. Hitz writes: “I understand the virtue of seriousness to be a desire to seek out what is most important, to get to the bottom of things, to stay focused on what matters. Whereas the lover of spectacle skims over the surfaces of things and is satisfied with mere images and feelings, the serious person looks for depth, reaches for more, longs for reality.” This longing for more reality should be the goal of our study, and it makes sense as a goal for a Christian because we should long for the one who is the ground of reality.
Let me offer one related thought. Today in universities, we are very focused on lived experience as a source of authority, especially the experiences of people who have been historically marginalized or discriminated against, such as women and ethnic or sexual minorities. Experience gets invoked as a kind of trump card, sometimes against the Bible and the ways in which Christians have traditionally interpreted it. But experience is never neutral; it’s always formed by particular ideas and observed through particular lenses. Frequently, our current appeals to experience appeal to an experience as shaped by ideas hostile to Christian faith. But the great figures of Christian history were so immersed in faith, and in the tradition and doctrine of the Church, that they experienced life through it. It’s not that they let the Bible squash their own experience or identity; rather, they let it shape who they understood themselves to be and what their place in society was. I would encourage the same of us. We should desire to be so suffused with the beauty of worship and the words of scripture, so shaped by prayer and study, that when we reflect on our own growth and experience, we read not the passing things of our age but the enduring truths of God.
The last reason why a Christian should study the humanities is to cultivate a disposition of wonder, thanksgiving, and praise. These are the proper responses of rational creatures to the creator God. We should study so that when we encounter an equation or sculpture of great beauty, or an exquisitely crafted sentence, our response is one of praise or thanksgiving. So often in the academy, we’re trained to critique, to put ourselves over another author or book or work and make judgments from a position of superiority. This is necessary at times, but when it becomes our default, it can keep us from enjoying a work and allowing it to move us. A properly Christian kind of study leaves room for that vulnerability and enjoyment, for cultivating wonder and praise. After all, praise of God is at its heart restating the truth about who God is and what he has done. Study of the truth should lead to richer, more sustained praise.
So, why should a Christian study the humanities? Because it’s what God made us to do. Because by doing so we do participate in God’s knowing of the world and can thereby come to understand him. Because by study we can better understand scripture and our experience of God. Because it lets us enjoy non-Christian beauty and truth in the light of Christ. Because it can be a means of spiritual growth and shape our experience of the world. And because it can move us to praise God who is the Truth itself.
Image by qunica.com and licensed via Adobe Stock.
Authored by David Williams via RealClearEnergy,
Electric vehicles (EVs) may be the most subsidized product in America. Federal taxpayers shell out $7,500 every time a new eligible electric vehicle is purchased (usually by wealthy buyers). State and local taxpayers chip in an additional $1,500 for each EV purchase. Then, there’s the tens of billions of dollars “invested” by policymakers into building EV plants. Even these bank-breaking concessions aren’t enough to please the Biden administration. Recently finalized EV tax credit rules expand eligibility for the subsidy while maintaining bizarre trade sourcing rules likely to lead to further tariffs from China. It’s time for President Biden and lawmakers to ditch protectionism and finally end EV subsidies.
From the start, President Biden’s fumbling approach to EV subsidies has harmed the economy without bolstering ecology. In 2022, the chief executive declared, “[t]hanks to American ingenuity, American engineers, American autoworkers… if you want an electric vehicle with a long range, you can buy one made in America.” Prices were already through the roof, with taxpayers being asked to shoulder these pricy purchases. Kelley Blue Book estimates that the average price of a new EV is more than $65,000, compared to $48,000 for gas-powered cars. Biden imposed requirements that EVs must undergo “final assembly in North America,” contributing to even higher prices for taxpayers and consumers.
Biden’s rules make production cost-prohibitive by restricting the foreign mineral inputs (e.g., graphite) that could go into tax credit-eligible EVs. The administration has since reversed course and allowed for a grace period for graphite sourcing. However, the new rules, “introduce a stricter test for measuring whether 50% of the vehicle’s critical minerals come from the United States or a free trade agreement partner...[requiring] automakers to more precisely account for the value added at each step of the supply chain.” The net effect of all these confusing new rules is to expand the number of vehicles eligible for EV tax credits, while increasing compliance costs. And, of course, this cost will be passed onto taxpayers and consumers.
Instead of tethering absurd rules to a complex and costly program, the Biden administration should start from scratch and axe the tax credit. EV subsidies are showered onto the wealthiest Americans at the expense of their poorer neighbors. According to a 2023 analysis of California EV purchase patterns by the news outlet CalMatters, “Most of the median household incomes in the top 10 [zip codes with the highest share of EVs] exceed $200,000, much higher than the statewide $84,097. Typical home values in those communities exceed $3 million, according to Zillow estimates.” In comparison, “electric cars are nearly non-existent in California’s lowest income communities: only 1.4% of cars in Stockton’s 95202, where the median household income is $16,976, and 0.5% in Fresno’s 93701, where the median is $25,905. Most are plug-in hybrids, which are less expensive.” This study’s findings are consistent with earlier, multi-state surveys. A 2018 study by Dr. Wayne Winegarden of the Pacific Research Institute found, “79% of electric vehicle plug-in tax credits were claimed by households with adjusted gross incomes of greater than $100,000 per year. Households with incomes greater than $50,000 per year claimed 99% of the credits.”
This stunning regressivity ensures that subsidies are a net-negative for ecology. Wealthy Americans primarily purchaseEVs as secondary cars, keeping them in the garage for occasional outings. EV owners are largely still using conventional cars, and there’s less-than-hoped-for substitution between gasoline and electricity. As a result, extra pollution is generated via increased EV production without corresponding decreases in driving emissions. One 2022 Harvard study suggests, “foregoing gasoline in favor of volts may actually increase, not lower, overall emissions in some cases.” This is far from the outcome envisioned by “green” activists and policymakers.
The Biden administration and lawmakers ought to seriously rethink adding more fuel to the dumpster fire of EV subsidies. Struggling Americans shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill for these over-hyped toys for tycoons.
David Williams is the president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
Cardiologist and New York Times columnist Sandeep Jauhar has published a piece advocating that doctors and bioethicists be empowered to force treatment on some patients. He writes in the context of wanting to compel hospitalization on a schizophrenic patient with serious heart problems. From “Doctors Need a Better Way to Treat Patients Without Their Consent:”
According to New York law — and the law of other states — such involuntary treatment would require a court order. As doctors, we would have to plead our case before a judge. But was a judge without medical or psychiatric expertise the best person to decide this man’s fate?
In this case and also more generally, I think the answer is no. The law ought to be changed to keep such decisions in hospitals — in the hands of doctors, medical ethicists and other relevant experts.
How would that work, exactly?
A better system for determining whether a patient should be treated over his or her objection would be a hospital hearing in which a committee of doctors, ethicists and other relevant experts — all of whom would be independent of the hospital and not involved in the care of the patient — engaged in conversation with the medical team and the patient and patient’s family. Having hearings on site would expedite decisions and minimize treatment delays. The committee would make the final decision.
Are you kidding me? I am sorry, but expert committees are not to be trusted to impose their values on unwilling patients.
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Nor should we be sanguine that times have changed so dramatically from the bad old days that independent oversight can be mothballed, as Jauhar would have us believe:
But though medical practice is by no means perfect, times have changed. The sort of abuse dramatized in the 1975 movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” with its harrowing depiction of forced electroconvulsive therapy, is far less common. Doctors today are trained in shared decision-making. Safeguards are now in place to prevent such maltreatment, including multidisciplinary teams in which nurses, social workers and bioethicists have a voice.
I have represented the wife of an incompetent patient in front of such a “committee” as a lawyer, and it seemed like a monoculture. Not that members are badly motivated. But they tend to share the values and morals of the sector in which they practice their professions. These may differ dramatically from those of the patient and family. Indeed, if family is available, why should they not be appointed to make the decision — as in a conservatorship — rather than strangers? Or a public advocate if no family member or close friend/associate/pastor/priest is available?
Here’s the nub of the problem. The right to decide is power, which always requires checks and balances and even nonexpert perspectives. But in Jauhar’s vision, diverse values would be mostly absent:
Of course, such a committee would have to be granted immunity from legal liability (as with judges in our current system), so that experts would be willing to serve and speak candidly. Patients’ interests could be safeguarded by requiring the committee to publish its reasoning. Periodic audits by a regulatory body could ensure that the committee’s deliberations were meeting medical and ethical standards.
In the event that the committee could not reach a consensus on the best course of action (or if there were allegations of wrongdoing), then the parties involved could appeal to a judge. But that would be the exception rather than the rule.
Oh, please. Private deliberations are the rule with bioethics committees. No real written record. Adding in audits that would mostly never be read or acted upon absent a significant scandal would not provide the kind of oversight required to protect incompetent patients.
But forcing treatment on unwilling people is not the main problem that vulnerable patients face. Rather, doctors refusing treatment they or their family want is the real danger — known in bioethics vernacular as “futile care.” Jauhar has previously written that he believes doctors should have the right to pull the plug against the desires of patients, as I discussed in an earlier post about one of his previous columns:
The doctor may think that living longer provides “no benefit” and limit treatment even though the patient/surrogate/family does. That’s not a medical decision, it is a value judgment.
So in a situation of life and death — Jauhar believes the doctors’ values should trump those of the patient — presumably, even if stated by a competent patient or instructed in an advance directive.
It is worth noting that Jauhar doesn’t think Christian- and Hippocratic oath–believing doctors should have conscience rights, such as refusing to participate in abortion. From his earlier NYT piece:
Doctors have an obligation to adhere to the norms of their profession. In my view, as long as treatments are safe and approved by medical organizations, doctors should have limited leeway in refusing to provide them.
How are these seeming contradictions to be reconciled? For medical-establishment types like Jauhar, the values they hold should prevail in patient-care disputations and professional decisionmaking, whether it is forcing treatment on unwilling patients, refusing wanted life-sustaining treatments, or forcing MDs and other medical professionals to provide interventions that violate their religious or moral beliefs.
No thank you. Checks and balances and outside oversight — even if adversarial at times — are crucial to maintaining the dignity and individual rights of patients and thwarting the imposition of a technocracy in which the rules of the medical road would be imposed on us all by committees, bioethicist “experts,” and the values embraced by the elite.
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exeptionalism.
The post No, Doctors Shouldn’t Make Treatment Decisions for Incompetent Patients appeared first on LifeNews.com.
Commodity trader Pierre Andurand appeared on Bloomberg's Odd Lots to discuss his bullish bet on cocoa markets and the future direction of physical markets amid severe droughts plaguing vast farmlands in West Africa. He's still bullish on cocoa prices, with an upside price target of $20,000 a ton later this year or next because continued droughts will spark a "massive supply shortage this year."
Andurand's discussion with Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal comes after cocoa prices had two of the largest single daily declines ever in recent weeks as liquidity evaporated from the market.
And Rabobank analyst Paul Joules told clients the bull rally has likely peaked.
However, Andurand, founder of Andurand Capital Management LLP, known for his oil and energy trades, told the Odd Lots hosts that his bullish cocoa bets from March paid off when prices skyrocketed north of $12,000. He believes there is potential for further upside as extreme global deficits of the bean loom.
"Basically, we have a massive supply shortage this year. I mean, we see production down 17% relative to last year. Most analysts out there have it down 11%, but that's because they tend to be very conservative. You know, they have lots of clients and they don't want to to worry the world, so they come with relatively conservative estimates," he explained, adding, "We're in a situation where we might actually run out of inventories completely."
Andurand continued, "This year we think we will end up with a with an inventory-to-grinding ratio — so inventory at the end of the season — of 21%."
"For the last 10 years, we've been between 35% and 40%. Roughly at the previous peak in 1977, we were at 19%," he said.
The International Cocoa Organization tracks inventories of unprocessed cocoa, which can serve as a cushion when there's a shortfall in supply. However, the lower the inventory-to-grinding ratio drops, the less of a buffer there is. When the stock-to-grinding ratio crashed in 1977, cocoa prices soared to $5,500, or on an inflation-adjusted basis today, $28,000.
Andurand warned the ratio could collapse to as low as 13%, adding, "That's when you really have a real shortage of cocoa beans. You can't get it. And that's when the price can really explode."
An elderly pro-life grandma is one of several pro-life advocates who will be thrown in federal prison for peacefully protesting abortion.
Joan Andrews Bell, a gentle giant known by many as a sweet grandmas who fights for little babies, was 24 years old and shocked when the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision paved the way for legalized abortion in the U.S.
The Biden administration has thrown yet another pro-life American in prison for protesting abortion. Thanks to Joe Biden’s politicized Justice Department, pro-life advocate Joan Andrews Bell has been sentenced to 27 months in prison under the FACE Act just for engaging in a peaceful protest inside an abortion center.
Those pro-lifers on trial conducted a rescue at the Washington Surgi-Clinic operated by the notorious late-term abortionist Cesare Santangelo who was busted by a LiveAction undercover investigator for admitting that he would not help a child with life-saving efforts if he or she survived a late-term abortion. He emphatically stated that a nearby hospital’s efforts to save the life of a child he was trying to abort was “the stupidest thing they could have done.”
The rescuers were given 115 aborted babies by the driver of a medical waste van outside Santangelo’s late-term abortion facility. The babies were well-developed – second and possibly third trimester. Their remains are still in a vault at the D.C. medical examiner’s office.
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In October 2020, about two months after the remains were obtained, the nine pro-lifers blocked the entrance of the abortion facility and protesting abortion. Darnel filmed the protest he participated in alongside Handy and the other convicted activists.
However, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton nominee, would not allow the video to be used as evidence. She also prohibited the defendants from arguing their actions were protected by the First Amendment or were committed in defense of a third person, unborn children.
According to Terrisa Bukovinac, another pro-life activist who has been posting updates from the courtroom, Bell’s family “cried tears of joy that the sentence wasn’t longer,” while Marshall provided a doctor’s note indicating that she needs a hip replacement due to extreme osteoporosis.
Martin Cannon, an attorney with the Thomas More Society, which represented Handy, told CNA that they will likely be appealing “most if not all” of the sentences. Any appeals in these cases would go to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
“Right now, they’re all convicted felons and that’s worth fighting over,” Cannon said.
Cannon said he is optimistic they will be able to lessen the sentences. He also pointed out that these cases, especially the sentencing of elderly women and men to years in prison, will bring attention to how the FACE Act is being abused to target pro-lifers.
“I think that this overreach by the federal government, the conviction of these people, is … going to galvanize people,” he said. “It certainly has not discouraged our clients. It is going to galvanize the pro-life world and give it energy.”
Bell has long been a pro-life champion.
Bell was 24 years old and shocked when the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision paved the way for legalized abortion in the U.S. She became even more appalled when she saw how little the church spoke up for the rights of children in the womb. To Bell, it was eerily reminiscent of the lack of action initiated by Christians in response to the atrocities of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Her lifetime of passive resistance has been built upon her Catholic upbringing and belief in the sacredness of human life. Her means of resistance was always peaceable, compassionate, and respectful toward those whose actions she opposed. For Bell, it was simply not possible to do nothing about “the worst mass murder of all.”
If the pro-life advocates were environmental activists or a leftist supporting Hamas, their sit-in at an abortion business would have earned her a misdemeanor charge and maybe a small fine. But because she is a pro-life advocate protesting abortion, the Biden administration used the FACE Act to prosecute her for supposedly blocking access to abortion.
Even though the law, which abrogates the free speech rights of pro-life Americans, has rarely been used, the Biden administration pushed for putting several pro-life advocates in prison for over a decade for protesting abortion. Biden officials misused the law to push for the highest penalties, reserved for violent criminal behavior, to prosecute peaceful pro-life Americans who merely exercised their free speech rights.
Lauren Handy, a Catholic, is a well-known pro-life voice on the political left. She was the primary organizer and leader of the peaceful protest sponsored by Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising that led to the ongoing court cases.
In a statement before the ruling, Handy shed some perspective on being jailed for her pro-life activism.
“It has been close to 9 months since I was abruptly ripped from my community. This has led me to think long and hard on what to say about my sentencing today in federal court. Some drafts were angry and righteous while most were just a tearstained longing for my loved ones back home. Yes, this time has been challenging but I refuse to be jaded. Why? Because life goes on… even in jail. So I might as well continue to love and cry and scream and dance. That is joy. The feeling of being fully alive without shame. Which is something no court can take from me. So today, I am at peace with myself and my future. I will go into court with my head held high and my heart open.”
PAAU condemned the ruling today, telling LifeNews that Handy has been wrongly sentenced to 4 years & 9 months in federal prison for an act of peaceful civil disobedience to prevent federal crimes such as partial birth abortion and infanticide.
The condemnation of the ruling was swift.
“Today’s outrageous 57-month sentence for a progressive pro-life activist is a stark reminder: Biden’s DOJ is fully weaponized against pro-life American citizens, and they are using the FACE Act to do it,” Rep. Chip Roy said in a statement. “House Republicans should defund the DOJ weaponization, repeal the FACE Act, and stand up for the freedoms that we campaign on.”
Caroline Smith, Executive Director of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising said, “The abortion industry wants to scare, intimidate, fear-monger, and isolate us. But what they don’t know is we have a radical hope that goes beyond the concrete walls of both prisons and abortuaries. I believe the oppression that the DOJ is expressing right now will absolutely backfire on them in the near future. Oppression always backfires, especially when your motivation is blood money. Abortion is murder, and fetuses are people, and nothing will stop Rescue.”
PAAU Founder Terrisa Bukovinac said “Today the Biden Administration and Merrick Garland’s DOJ have reached a new level of tyranny. There is no other social justice movement in our nation who’s activists are subject to years in federal prison for nonviolent resistance. This blatant viewpoint discrimination has incalculable consequences for babies, their parents, those who defend them, and for peaceful activists across movements worldwide. I continue to stand by Lauren and the other 8 defendants who risked their freedoms to stand in defense of the least of us.”
A total of 10 pro-life advocate face the federal criminal charges after they were arrested and indicted for allegedly violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) in 2020 at the Washington Surgi-Clinic in Washington, DC. That’s a late-term abortion facility suspected of breaking federal law by performing partial birth abortions and illegally allowing babies born aluive after failed abortions to die.
The defendants – often called “rescuers” by fellow members of the pro-life movement – partook in a 2020 peaceful protest against a notorious Washington, D.C. abortuary that performed late-term abortions.
Last year, all nine were found guilty of violating the controversial Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. They each face a sentence of up to 11 years in federal prison. The FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act prohibits individuals from attempting to injure, intimidate, or interfere (by use of force, threat of force, or physical obstruction) with anyone obtaining or performing an abortion.
The indictment in the case says that on Oct. 22, 2020, 10 individuals “conspired with one another and with others known and unknown to obstruct access” to the Washington Surgi-Clinic in Washington, D.C.
“It was the purpose of the conspiracy to create a blockade to stop the clinic from providing and patients from obtaining reproductive health services,” the indictment alleges. The indictment says the defendants used “deception” to gain access to the clinic, used “force” to enter, and barricaded themselves inside with “ropes and chains.”
A video of the rescue shows the pro-life advocates praying and singing inside the abortion facility and refusing to leave so abortions could end the lives of unborn children.
Stephen Crampton, senior counsel for the nonprofit legal firm Thomas More Society, says the cases are clearly political persecution.
“They waited a year and a half to file this action,” Crampton said. “If indeed this was some sort of dire offense and the defendants ought to be incarcerated, why in the world, does the government wait a year and a half to file the charges?”
“The climate activists were out there [in D.C.] gluing their hands to the streets, shutting down traffic and everything, you think there’s any chance the feds are going to prosecute those people or try to put them in prison for 11 years?” he asked.
He also told Fox News that finding a fair jury was practically impossible considering that D.C. is the “most pro-abortion city in America.”
The pro-lifers on trial conducted a rescue at the Washington Surgi-Clinic operated by the notorious late-term abortionist Cesare Santangelo who was busted by a LiveAction undercover investigator for admitting that he would not help a child with life-saving efforts if he or she survived a late-term abortion. He emphatically stated that a nearby hospital’s efforts to save the life of a child he was trying to abort was “the stupidest thing they could have done.”
Lauren Handy and Herb Geraghty cited those videos as the reason for the rescue and protest at the abortion business because of the concern babies might be left to die. They chained themselves to the entrace of the abortion center in an attempt to stop abortions.
A pro-life advocate says the charges are wrong because the protests were non-violent.
Caroline Taylor Smith, executive director of PAAU told LifeNews, “This overreaching of power and authority by Biden’s DOJ is egregious and must be stopped. Nonviolent prolife actions should not be a federal crime, and peaceful people with a desire to save lives should not be jailed for over a decade. Some of these Rescuers could be facing death by incarceration. We must repeal the FACE Act now!”
Jonathan Darnel, one of the four pro-life Americans Biden is targeting in this second trial, plead not guilty to the charges.
“I am definitely not guilty of the charges leveled against me, which is rather ironic that I should find myself in this position,” Darnel told Fox News Digital in an interview. “Nevertheless, if a jury finds me guilty of FACE even erroneously, it would be an honor because the kids are worthy of protection.”
Senior Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotely a Clinton nominee, is presiding over the hearings, which are slated to take place at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia just a few blocks from the U.S. Supreme Court. The sentencings will continue on Wednesday, May 15, with Herb (born Rosemary) Geraghty at 9:00 a.m., Jonathan Darnel at 11:00 a.m., Jean Marshall at 1:30 p.m., and Joan Andrews Bell at 3:00 p.m. On Friday, May 17, the judge is scheduled to sentence Heather Idoni at 9:30 a.m.
Kollar-Kotely was also originally going to sentence the final defendant, Paulette Harlow, on Friday. However, Harlow’s sentencing was postponed until two weeks later on Friday, May 31, at 1:30 p.m.
Last year, former President Donald Trump promised to support “political prisoners” if he’s elected president. During the Family Research Council’s “Pray, Vote, Stand Summit” in Washington, D.C., Trump vowed to get innocent Americans out of jail for standing up for their beliefs while criminals run rampant.
“I am announcing that the moment I win the election, I will appoint a special task force to rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who has been unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration,” Trump said.
Trump referenced the convictions of pro-life advocates who now face as many as 11 years in prison for rescuing babies from abortions at a late-term abortion business in Washington D.C.
“If we stand together in this fight, we’re going to defeat Crooked Joe Biden; if he runs — will he make it to the starting gate?” Trump said.
The post Pro-Life Grandma Thrown in Prison for 27 Months for Protesting Abortion appeared first on LifeNews.com.
Authored by Charles Bell via RealClear Wire,
Overshadowed by Hamas’s attack on Israel, the release of the congressionally mandated Strategic Posture Commission (SPC) report heralded the arrival of an American nuclear Zeitenwende – a sea change setting us on a new course. By issuing consensus recommendations for significant changes to the size and composition of the deployed nuclear forces of the United States, the bi-partisan members of the SPC signaled that we have crossed the Rubicon from the post-Cold war nuclear order to the terra incognita of two peer nuclear adversaries’ intent on brandishing their growing nuclear weapons capabilities to overthrow the rules-based international order. The SPC commissioners warn that this “new global environment is fundamentally different than anything experienced in the past,” constituting “an existential challenge for which the United States is ill prepared, unless its leaders make decisions now to adjust the U.S. strategic posture.”
It would be difficult to exaggerate the extent to which the SPC’s consensus conclusions have reoriented the nuclear debate, shifting the focus away from how to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. strategy and towards a focus on how to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the strategies of our adversaries (by building a nuclear posture that will credibly deter them). In doing so on a bi-partisan basis and by articulating comprehensive recommendations to address “this unprecedented two peer threat,” the SPC commissioners can legitimately lay claim to having produced the most important national security document of the post-Cold war era.
Nevertheless, the SPC’s recommendations have not received the widespread, public attention that they urgently require. This inattention needs to be quickly remedied, lest we fail to garner the essential public support necessary to ensure the United States creates a strategic posture capable of preventing great power military conflict.
One of the many strengths of the SPC report is to remind us of a salient reality that we too often lost sight of during the long period of great power geopolitical quiescence following the end of the Cold war: the rules-based internal order is, at its core, predicated on the strength of the U.S. strategic posture - and especially the credibility of the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent. Thus, a failure to ensure that the U.S. nuclear deterrent remains credible is likely to cause the unraveling of our alliances, a nuclear “proliferation cascade,” and the demise of the international order that has kept the peace for over three quarters of a century.
The SPC emphatically states that allowing this to happen “is not an option.” Instead, the commissioners argue that “[m]odifications to both strategic nuclear forces and theater nuclear forces are urgently necessary,” particularly considering the “increased role of nuclear weapons in the strategies and tactics of our adversaries.”
Accordingly, the SPC recommends increasing the numbers of deployed strategic nuclear weapons in the land, air, and sea legs of the U.S. strategic triad by the placing more nuclear warheads on ICBMs and SLBMs and producing more nuclear-armed, air-launched cruise missiles. Also recommended is rendering U.S. strategic forces more survivable by deploying mobile ICBMs, placing a portion of the bomber fleet on alert, and increasing the number of ballistic missile submarines.
The SPC commissioners place particular emphasis on the need to enhance U.S. theater nuclear capabilities, an imperative rendered even more urgent because “China is adopting an expanded theater nuclear war-fighting role” and in light of “Russia’s increasing reliance on nuclear weapons…” In response, the SPC recommends that “U.S. theater nuclear forces should be urgently modified in order to: Provide the President a range of military effective nuclear response options to deter or counter Chinese of Russian limited use in theater.” These changes in the U.S. theater nuclear posture are deemed essential if the U.S. is to maintain the flexible response options required to credibly extend nuclear deterrence to our allies.
Given the significance that the SPC attaches to maintaining the credibility of the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent, it is important to emphasize the degree to which the problem of ensuring the credibility of the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent was a vexing conundrum for U.S. strategists throughout the Cold War, particularly as the Soviet Union became a true peer nuclear power with an assured second-strike capability that negated U.S. nuclear superiority.
In the very near future, the U.S. will confront the even more difficult problem of having to extend nuclear deterrence to our allies in the face of not one, but two, peer nuclear powers. In this future, enhanced theater nuclear forces, along with more robust strategic nuclear forces, will be critical to the U.S.’s ability to deter opportunistic – or planned simultaneous - aggression in two theaters and “to compensate for any conventional shortfall in U.S. and allied non-nuclear capabilities.” Enhanced U.S. nuclear capabilities are critical to reassuring our allies, who “perceive that the risk of Russian and Chinese aggression and potential nuclear employment has increased; and thus, U.S. nuclear and conventional capabilities are increasingly important for credible extended deterrence.”
The SPC’s emphasis on the importance of both nuclear and conventional forces points to yet another strength of the SPC, which is to embed the imperative of strengthening the U.S. nuclear posture within the broader imperative of strengthening all aspects of the U.S. strategic posture from cyber to space to missile defense - and integrating these elements of deterrence into a whole of government approach. At the same time, the SPC emphasizes that the “U.S. nuclear posture composes the foundation of U.S. military strength, and therefore the foundation of the U.S. strategic posture.” No matter how capable U.S. conventional forces may be, if the U.S. does not deploy nuclear forces capable of credibly deterring adversary use of nuclear weapons, we run the risk of adversaries believing that they can gain advantage by using nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict that they are losing.
The overriding challenge before the United States is how to implement the SPC’s recommendations. This will require bringing to the attention of the broader body politic that, in the words of the SPC, the “new global environment is fundamentally different than anything experienced in the past, even in the darkest days of the Cold War.” It is an environment in which 35 years of U.S. nuclear restraint has gone unreciprocated; in which “China is pursuing a nuclear force build-up on a scale and pace unseen since the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race” (but this time without the U.S. racing); in which Russia continues to build on its advantage in theater nuclear forces while issuing explicit nuclear threats; and in which our allies fear that U.S. extended nuclear guarantees to their security are eroding.
Given this “dramatic change in the overall strategic setting,” we must recall that deterrence does not supply its own efficacy; it must be tailored “to decisively influence the unique decision calculus of each nuclear-armed adversary.” Building a strategic posture capable of deterring war will not be cheap; but it would be “far more expensive to fight such a war.” Or as former Secretary of Defense Mattis pithily remarked: “America can afford survival.”
If there is a dominant theme that pervades the SPC, it is a palpable sense of alarm: “The challenges are unmistakable; the problems are urgent; the steps are needed now.” We ignore the SPC’s cri de coeur at our peril.
Charles Ball served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Threat Reduction and Arms Control from 2018-2021 and is a retired Reserve Naval Intelligence Officer. The views expressed are solely his own.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have just suffered their biggest 'friendly fire' disaster to date during military operations in northern Gaza. In a Wednesday incident, a pair of Israeli tanks targeted a building which was serving as a forward operating HQ for their own troops.
Five Israeli soldiers were confirmed killed in the incident which happened in Jabalia. An additional seven troops were wounded, with three listed in serious condition.
Illustrative image: Israel Defense Forces
Soon after it happened social media images from Israel showed that there was a significant medical evacuation underway, with military helicopters seen transporting wounded to hospitals inside Israel.
The tanks had reportedly been taking heavy fire just before the friendly fire incident, with the Jerusalem Post providing the following details:
Tank Unit 82's soldiers said that they saw a potential threat, the barrel of a weapon, emerge from the three floor battalion headquarters, which was only 10-20 meters away from them. The soldiers hit by the tank were from Unit 202 is a Haredi-integrated unit.
It was unclear why they did not recognize the battalion headquarters. However, the IDF said that the tanks had taken over the junction in Jabalya around 9:00 am and that the Battalion headquarters deputy commander had only arrived many hours later.
On Thursday the IDF listed the young troop deaths - which included an officer with the rest being among enlisted ranks - as follows: Capt. Roy Beit Ya'akov, 22, from Eli; Staff Sgt. Gilad Arye Boim, 22, from Karnei Shomron in Samaria; Sgt. Daniel Chemu, 20, from Tiberias; Sgt. Ilan Cohen, 20, from Carmiel; and Staff Sgt. Betzalel David Shashuah, 21, from Tel Aviv.
While it's still under investigation, another local media outlet reported the following:
The tank forces had arrived at the area in the morning, and several hours later, the paratroopers reached the area and established a post in the building. Later in the evening, another group of paratroopers reached the area and notified two of the tanks there that they were entering the building.
Likely this will further energize angry anti-Netanyahu protesters who say he has not done enough to actually get the Israeli hostages back, but instead has prioritized the brutal fight to eliminate Hamas.
Earlier in the Gaza operation, the IDF admitted that many of its troops were being killed by friendly fire in the tight urban setting. It was a shocking admission at the time:
Of the 105 Israeli soldiers killed to date in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s ground offensive against Hamas, which began in late October, 20 were killed by so-called friendly fire and other accidents, according to new data released by the IDF on Tuesday.
Thirteen of the soldiers were killed by friendly fire due to mistaken identification in airstrikes, tank shelling, and gunfire.
One soldier was killed by gunfire that was unintended to hit them, and another two were killed by accidental misfires.
Two soldiers were killed in incidents involving armored vehicles running over troops. And two soldiers were killed by shrapnel, including from explosives set off by Israeli forces.
In another somewhat recent tragic incident three hostages were able to get free from their Hamas captors in Gaza and emerged from a building waiving white flags, but they were shot by Israeli troops who reportedly mistook them for enemy militants.
In a tragic friendly fire incident on Wednesday, two IDF tanks mistakenly fired on a forward battalion headquarters in Jabalya, northern Gaza, killing five soldiers and injuring seven. Learn more: https://t.co/BLbYkrbY5o pic.twitter.com/mswtXkwbek
— The Jerusalem Post (@Jerusalem_Post) May 16, 2024The latest IDF data indicates: "Of the 278 Israeli soldiers killed in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s ground offensive against Hamas, which began in late October, at least 49 were killed by friendly fire and in other accidents."
Some regional observers believe that casualties among the IDF are much higher than being reported. As for Israel, it says it has killed over 14,000 Hamas militants since Oct.7.
Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Federal prosecutors have charged a recently discharged U.S. Marine with making threats to attack white people in a mass shooting.
The Department of Justice building in Washington on Feb. 9, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
On Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey announced the arrest of Joshua Cobb, 23, on a single-count indictment of transmitting an interstate threat over the internet. According to a complaint filed in the case, Mr. Cobb authored a social media post on Dec. 17, 2022, indicating his interest in inflicting mayhem “on the white community.”
The author of the Dec. 17, 2022, social media post states, “I want to cause mayhem on the white community. The reason i specifically want to target white people is because as a black male, they will NEVER understand my struggles.”
The post’s author goes on to state he has already begun planning the attack, which he intended to carry out somewhere in New Jersey at some point in 2023, though he had not chosen an exact time.
“I have not chosen a exact date but I am going to be sure it is close to an important holiday to their race. I have a location in mind already which I have frequented for the past year and I am certain nobody there is armed to be able to stop me from spraying them to the ground,” the suspect’s social media post continues. “I have already acquired 2 of the 4 firearms I plan to use for my attack, and I also know my entry and exit points already after the mayhem.”
The social media post was published under the handle “NearbyUserl0l.” Investigators determined that social media activity was associated with an internet protocol (IP) address matching the Trenton, New Jersey residence in which Mr. Cobb resided at the time.
Federal prosecutors allege Mr. Cobb made subsequent posts on a second social media platform in the Spring of 2023, expressing homicidal ideations. A May 2023 social media post states, “Imagine the rush you’d feel while shooting some [expletive] up. Probably could get literally high off the adrenaline alone. I’d probably OD on my own adrenaline after the 10th body goes down.” Another May 2023 post states, “I hope I do progress into a serial killer because I [expletive] hate life man... But one day everyone will suffer. I promise I will make everyone feel my [expletive] pain. My deep, sincere, raw, & sharp pain.” Prosecutors say Mr. Cobb’s posts also indicated a plan to “continue training and buying more ammunition” until the day he could carry out his attack.
Mr. Cobb joined the U.S. Marine Corps and entered basic training in June 2023. The Marine trainee completed his basic training in September and was given a period of post-basic leave. He arrived at another duty station, the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms (Twentynine Palms), in California in February of this year.
Investigators eventually caught up with Mr. Cobb last month while he was still stationed at Twentynine Palms. They seized and searched his phone, finding additional notes he allegedly made in May 2023 expressing further homicidal ideations.
The federal complaint indicates that FBI agents interviewed Mr. Cobb at the Marine Corps in April after they had seized his phone. The complaint states that during his interview, Mr. Cobb described to FBI agents his ideas for carrying out mass shootings, including one idea he had to shoot up a gym called New Jersey Strong, believing he could carry out the attack at the gym’s peak hours and then easily escape. Mr. Cobb described a second idea of attacking a grocery store because those are “almost always crowded.”
Mr. Cobb allegedly told FBI agents he specifically thought of targeting an Aldi’s grocery store in Robbinsville, New Jersey, “cause it was like one of them grocery stores like where you just see all these [expletive] rich-[expletive] white people.”
Mr. Cobb allegedly told FBI agents a third idea he had was to simply “go into like a rich white area and just like start shooting.”
During the April interview, Mr. Cobb allegedly suggested an affinity for the suspects in the 2018 Parkland High School shooting in Florida and the 2022 shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. In the latter of those two shootings, federal prosecutors have alleged the shooter posted a manifesto expressing a desire to specifically target a black community. Despite their differing racial motives, Mr. Cobb said he “liked the element of surprise and style” of the 2022 Buffalo supermarket attack.
Mr. Cobb was discharged from the Marine Corps sometime after his April interview with the FBI.
NTD News reached out to a pair of public defenders assigned to Mr. Cobb’s case for comment, but they did not respond by press time.
Mr. Cobb faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
From NTD News
ABC’s The View was pulsing with anti-Catholic bigotry during Thursday’s show, as pretend-moderate co-host Sara Haines lashed out and smeared Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker and his Catholic faith as “extremists” and “cult-like.” His crime? Giving a commencement address at Catholic, Benedictine College where he talked about – among other things – how some women find fulfillment in being homemakers. In addition, “comedian” Joy Behar claimed he had “big mother issues.”
Haines’s bitter anti-Catholic hatred gushed like a firehose. She claimed that Butker was a member of “a very extreme religion” because he attended “the traditional Latin mass,” which she treated like a separate sect of Catholicism. Without evidence, she claimed he was practicing something “cult-like and extremist like some religions in the Middle East and Asia.”
She then proceeded to lecture Butker about how he doesn’t “walk with Jesus” and oppressed people:
So, what I can say to him, as a Christian, is if you’re using this to oppress people or hold them down you’re not walking with Jesus. If you are using the religion, if you’re more obsessed with the religious rituals and practices than you are with the word of Jesus, you’re not walking with Jesus. And if you’re using it for the judgment of others and as a weapon to beat people down you’re also not walking with Jesus.
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“So, I would really encourage him, really encourage him to find the best parts of faith and not diverge into extremist beliefs,” she chided.
Faux-conservative co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin got in on the Butker bashing (likely because he also made a joke about her idol Taylor Swift, referring to her as ‘my teammate’s girlfriend’). She chastised him for daring to talk about politics in his commencement address, as many speakers do. She decried how he called out President Biden, but then she turned around and whined that he didn’t say anything against former President Trump:
…he steps further by wading into the political. He took a swipe at Joe Biden, he brought up DEI, which has nothing to do with anything I’ve ever read in scripture, and then he leaned really heavily into talking about, like, the ideal man and being a godly man, an example; missed the opportunity to talk about the man who might be the leader of the free world, Donald Trump, and his many shortcomings.
Behar chimed in to diagnose Butker with Freudian “mother issues.” Without evidence, she claimed he was big “angry” because his “super-duper,” “very accomplished physicist” mom was “probably” not home “because she was busy with her career.”
Also, without evidence, she claimed he had “nothing but disdain” for Swift because he told the joke. “So get a therapist!” she shouted.
Their cognitive dissonance was deafening. Later in the show, they brought on actor Nick Offerman and his female farmer friend. They praised how she went from working in the world of fine art to being a farmer and… a homemaker. “Her masterpieces are on the dinner table or in their kids’ values rather than on a canvas,” Offerman touted, after mocking Butker earlier in the interview.
Shockingly, the only person making a lick of sense on the entire set was moderator Whoopi Goldberg. She pointed out the obvious that Butker was “at a Catholic College. He’s a staunch Catholic. These are his beliefs and he’s welcome to them.”
Goldberg compared Butker with the saga of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. “The same way we want respect when Colin Kaepernick takes a knee, we want to give respect to people whose ideas are different from ours,” she argued.
“So, I’m okay with him saying whatever he says and the women who were sitting there, if they take his advice, good for them, they’ll be happy. If they don’t, good for them, they’ll be happy a different way. That’s my attitude,” she declared.
LifeNews Note: Nicholas Fondacaro writes for Newsbusters, where this originally appeared.
The post The View Host Sara Haines: Harrison Butker’s Pro-Life Christian Views are Like a “Cult” appeared first on LifeNews.com.
A team of Goldman analysts led by Jan Hatzius found that domestic migration trends from big cities continued through mid-2023. This trend, initially sparked by virus fears and remote working, was further fueled by rising violent crime in urban areas. People sought peace and quiet, moving to suburbia and rural areas for more land and larger homes.
"The recent surge in immigration into the US is now well known. But newly released county-level population estimates from the Census reveal another major migration trend: domestic emigration from large cities," Hatzius told clients on Wednesday.
Goldamn's chief economist said - that most cities - with populations over a million - "experienced population growth nearly 1% below the pre-pandemic trend over 2019-2023 cumulatively, while all but the most rural counties experienced above-trend population growth."
Here's more color on the findings:
First, the most urban Tier 1 counties, which include cities such as Kansas City, New Orleans, and Cleveland, experienced population growth nearly 1pp below the pre-pandemic trend over 2019-2023 cumulatively, while counties in Tiers 2-7, which include cities such as Ann Arbor in Tier 2, Santa Fe in Tier 3, and Juneau in Tier 5, experienced population growth 0.4pp above the pre-pandemic trends on average over that period (Exhibit 1).
The rise of remote and hybrid work arrangements made it easier for workers to relocate away from offices that might have tied them to city centers prior to the pandemic. We noted previously that the share of US workers working from home at least part of the week peaked at 47% at the height of the pandemic and has now stabilized at around 20-25%, well above the pre-pandemic average of 2-3%.
Hatzius' team also revealed that government county-level population data showed domestic migrants were leaving big cities in droves (about 750k in 2021, 650k in 2022, and 550k in 2023). More than half of them moved to areas between 250k to 1 million. This outflow comes as the Biden administration facilitated the greatest illegal alien invasion this nation has ever seen, piling migrants into crime-ridden progressive cities.
Given the strong positive population trends outside large cities, Hatzius' team determined housing markets were hotter in suburbia:
"Stronger population growth outside the Tier 1 counties has meant somewhat faster house price appreciation relative to pre-pandemic trends compared to the Tier 1 counties."
The bad news is that housing prices in suburbia are unlikely to return to pre-Covid levels.
There is a massive contrast between Joe Biden and Donald trump on abortion – as Biden advocates abortions up to birth while Trump allows states to protect babies from abortions.
But there is another huge divide between the candidates.
While Biden’s administration is aggressively putting pro-life Americans in prison for peacefully protesting abortion, Trump says he would poissibly pardon them as president.
Trump has promised to support “political prisoners” if he’s elected president. This is an important pledge pro-life Americans will appreciate given how Joe Biden has put pro-life advocates in prison for rescuing babies from abortion.
Trump announced last Fall that, if elected, he will create a special task force specifically designed to review cases of Biden’s “political prisoners.”
During the Family Research Council’s “Pray, Vote, Stand Summit” in Washington, D.C., Trump vowed to get innocent Americans out of jail for standing up for their beliefs while criminals run rampant.
“I am announcing that the moment I win the election, I will appoint a special task force to rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who has been unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration,” Trump said.
Get the latest pro-life news and information on X (Twitter). Follow @LifeNewsHQ//
Trump referenced the convictions of pro-life advocates who now face as many as 11 years in prison for rescuing babies from abortions at a late-term abortion business in Washington D.C.
“If we stand together in this fight, we’re going to defeat Crooked Joe Biden; if he runs — will he make it to the starting gate?” Trump said.
“To reverse these cruel travesties of justice, tonight I’m announcing that the moment I win the election, I will appoint a special taskforce to rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who’s been unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration … so that I can study the situation very quickly and sign their pardons or commutations on day one,” the president said. “Never again will the federal government be used to target religious believers.”
Targeting believers threatens the very essence of the United States, said the former president.
“For nearly 250 years, our nation has been propelled by the power of prayer and guided by the hand of God in Heaven. It was faith that led the Pilgrims across the perilous seas of Plymouth Rock. They came to Plymouth Rock, and that was a long, arduous, and deadly journey. It was faith that moved our Founding Fathers to change history forever and proclaim that our rights do not come from anywhere other than from our Creator. And it was unflinching faith that inspired generations of pastors and patriots, chaplains and soldiers, farmers, workers, laborers, and pioneers to make America the greatest country in the history of the world.”
“It was God-fearing patriots like you who built this country, and it is God-fearing patriots like you who are going to save our country,” Trump added. “Americans of faith are not a threat to our country; Americans of faith are the soul of our country.”
“Through four magnificent years, I was proud to be your relentless champion for freedom, for life, for liberty, and for the great biblical traditions of Western civilization,” he said.
The post Donald Trump May Pardon Pro-Life Americans Joe Biden is Putting in Prison appeared first on LifeNews.com.
Authored by Zachary Steiber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Poll workers sort out early and absentee ballots at the Kenosha Municipal building on Election Day on Nov. 3, 2020, in Kenosha, Wis. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming that Wisconsin’s requirement for witnesses to sign for absentee voters clashes with federal law.
The claims by plaintiffs, four voters represented by Democrat firm Elias Law Group, are based on faulty interpretations of the law, according to U.S. District Judge James Peterson.
The challengers said the Voting Rights Act unilaterally bars requiring absentee voters to prove their qualifications, making the Wisconsin requirement illegal. The act states in part that “no citizen shall be denied, because of his failure to comply with any test or device, the right to vote in any federal, state, or local election conducted in any state or political subdivision of a state.” It defines “test or device,” in part, as any requirement that makes a person “prove his qualifications by the voucher of registered voters or members of any other class.”
However, that interpretation of the federal law is not correct, Judge Peterson said in his May 9 ruling.
“Plaintiffs say that Wisconsin law requires the witness to do more than ensure that the voter followed the proper procedure in preparing the ballot; rather, the witness must also certify that the voter is eligible to vote,” he said. “But that interpretation is inconsistent with the text and purpose of the statute, and it is inconsistent with how the law has been interpreted since it was enacted. Even the plaintiffs themselves do not say in their declarations that they believe they need to find a witness who can certify their qualifications to vote.”
In Wisconsin, any qualified voter who is “unable or unwilling” to vote in person is eligible for an absentee ballot. The law states that among requirements to vote by mail, another adult must observe the voter filling out the ballot and signing a statement that reads, in part, that “the above statements are true and the voting procedure was executed as there stated.”
As the “above statements” include the attestation from the voter that he or she is a resident of Wisconsin and entitled to vote in the state, plaintiffs said the requirement is illegal under federal law.
However, government officials argued that the witnesses only confirm the second part of the statements, which states that the voter certifies that he or she showed the enclosed ballot to the witness and that he or she marked the ballot and placed it in the envelope without assistance.
“If defendants are correct, there would be no violation of the Voting Rights Act. As other courts have held, a witness does not vouch for a voter’s qualifications by simply confirming with a signature what he or she observed,” said Judge Peterson, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
He said that the phrase “the above statements” is ambiguous but that the plaintiffs’ interpretation “simply does not make any sense.”
If they were correct, “every witness would have to determine the voter’s age, residence, citizenship, criminal history, whether the voter is unable or unwilling to vote in person, whether the voter has voted at another location or is planning to do so, whether the voter is capable of understanding the objective of the voting process, whether the voter is under a guardianship, and, if so, whether a court has determined that the voter is competent,” according to Judge Peterson.
“If plaintiffs’ interpretation were correct, it would mean that countless absentee ballots over decades were invalid because the witness certified that the voter was qualified to vote and met the other requirements in the first voter certification, even though the witness had no basis for such a certification,” he said.
The challengers never provided evidence of any witnesses being penalized for not confirming a voter’s qualifications, and the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s guidance does not mention witnesses taking any steps to confirm voters are eligible to vote, the ruling noted.
The lawsuit also stated that the witness requirement violates the Civil Rights Act, which bars people from “[denying] the right of any individual to vote in any election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting, if such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under state law to vote in such election.”
The Wisconsin Elections Commission, the defendant, declined to comment.
The law group did not return an inquiry.
The organization Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, which lodged an amicus brief in support of the government in the case, welcomed the ruling.
“It’s essential that people voting by mail follow the law in doing so, and Wisconsin has implemented a witness signature requirement that helps ensure they do just that,” Derek Lyons, president of the group, said in a statement. “This case marks another example of liberal activists’ transparent and shameful efforts to co-opt important civil rights legislation for their partisan agendas.”
On March 21, 2024, the New Hampshire House passed assisted suicide House Bill 1283 by a vote of 179 to 176 based on support from Libertarian Republicans. The assisted suicide bill was referred to the Senate where it was stopped on May 16, 2024 by a vote to 17 to 7 to send the bill for further study.
Adam Sexton reported for wmur.com that:
After an emotional floor debate on Thursday morning, New Hampshire state senators voted 17-7 to further study a bill that would legalize “medical aid in dying,” or assisted suicide, in New Hampshire.
Get the latest pro-life news and information on X (Twitter). Follow @LifeNewsHQ//
The legislation, which already passed the New Hampshire House by a narrow margin, would allow a terminally ill adult patient of sound mind with fewer than six months to live to be prescribed a lethal cocktail of drugs, which they would self-administer to die by suicide. But now, the bill will be sidelined, likely until the next legislative session.
The President of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Gordon Friesen, sent members of New Hampshire’s Senate his article titled: A call to defeat New Hampshire assisted suicide House Bill 1283 (Link).
LifeNews.com Note: Alex Schadenberg is the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and you can read his blog here.
The post New Hampshire Senate Kills Bill to Legalize Assisted Suicide appeared first on LifeNews.com.
President Donald Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen had his "knees chopped out" by Donald Trump's defense attorneys in cross-examination during Trump's 'hush money' trial.
Photo: justin lane/Shutterstock
Cohen was grilled by Trump attorney Todd Blanche about a pivotal phone call that connected Trump to allegations that he approved reimbursements to pay porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election. In one exchange, Blanche accused Cohen of lying about speaking with Trump on the phone in October 2016 to reassure his boss that he was handling the payment to Daniels.
Blanche then confronted Cohen with text messages that contradicted the lie - revealing that Cohen in fact spoke with Trump's bodyguard, Keith Schiller.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche grilled him about a pivotal phone call that had connected President Trump to the allegations at the center of the case. He accused Mr. Cohen of calling the former president’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, to complain about harassing phone calls—not to disclose an update on a plan to purchase the silence of Ms. Clifford.
Mr. Cohen said that the prank calls were a part of the conversation with Mr. Schiller.
“Now your memory is that you were testifying truthfully on Tuesday, and you had enough time to update Mr. Schiller about all the problems you were having with these harassing calls?” Mr. Blanche asked him.
“I always run everything by the boss immediately,” Mr. Cohen said. “It could’ve just been me saying, ‘everything’s been taken care of, it’s been resolved.’”
“That was a lie. You did not talk to President Trump that night,” Mr. Blanche said. “You can admit it.” “No sir, I can’t,” Mr. Cohen said. “Because I’m not sure that’s accurate.”
“This jury doesn’t want to hear what you think happened,” Mr. Blanche said. -Epoch Times
Cohen appeared blindsided by the line of questioning, and wavered in his recollection of the phone call before blurting out "I believe I was telling the truth!"
Blanche then slapped Cohen around for telling Congress that he didn't want to work in the Trump administration - only to be confronted with conversations in 2016 in which he expressed disappointment that he was overlooked for the role of Trump's chief of staff.
Cohen also lied about seeking a pardon from Trump, for which his attorneys later had to issue a statement to correct the record.
After Cohen had his ass handed to him, CNN pundits were beside themselves.
"It was incredible...lawyers want to build a box around the witness & slam it shut--that's what Todd Blanche did to Cohen...it was an extraordinary cross...Cohen was cornered in...a lie," said host Anderson Cooper.
Anderson Cooper was left stunned by Trump's attorney's cross examination of Michael Cohen
"It was incredible...lawyers want to build a box around the witness & slam it shut--that's what Todd Blanche did to Cohen...it was an extraordinary cross...Cohen was cornered in...a lie" pic.twitter.com/WKnKCs8TkU
The network's top legal analyst said "I don't think I've ever seen a star witness get his knees chopped out quite as clearly and dramatically as what just happened with Michael Cohen."
CNN legal analyst: "I don't think I've never seen a star cooperating witness get his knees chopped out quite as clearly and dramatically as what just happened with Michael Cohen." pic.twitter.com/NcghETrUIJ
— MAGA War Room (@MAGAIncWarRoom) May 16, 2024Rep. Matt Gaetz says Cohen was "dog walked through the series of lies he has told."
The alleged "crime" by President Trump is made up!
No other American in the country would be charged with this type of crime.
I watched Michael Cohen get dog walked through the series of lies he has told. There is literally no branch of government that he has not lied to. pic.twitter.com/Fi1GpbCF13
Fin...
Sponsor him by making a donation to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
Sponsor Alex and help the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition continue it's life-saving work.
Authored by Salena Zito via RealClearPolitics,
NEWTON SQUARE, PA – In childhood, Tasliym Morales was always interested in civic affairs, so it was no surprise to those who knew her that as soon she turned 18, she registered to vote. What did take her family and friends aback, however, was the political party affiliation she chose.
“Republican,” she says with a broad smile.
The striking mother of six is sitting at the head table of the Delaware County Republican Party chairman’s dinner, dressed in a rich red jacket topping a paisley dress discussing her reasons for choosing the Grand Old Party when most of her peers and family – Morales is black – were Democrats.
Explaining her choice is still amusing to her. “Democrats, reporters, strategists often come to our county because of how important the vote is here in determining which way Pennsylvania will go in big elections and often assume all black women are Democrats,” she explained of the Philadelphia collar county she calls home.
“I understand why because let’s be honest, many educated black women are Democrats,” she added. “However, I think more and more people of all colors are starting to vote for what is best for their personal lives and what is best for their community. Even more importantly, people are starting to vote like the other members of the community, rather than vote one way because of the color of their skin.”
Seated across the table from Tasliym was Alfe Goodwin, a former Philadelphia police officer and U.S. Army veteran who holds a doctorate degree in public policy and is running against incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon in Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District.
Goodwin, whose parents labored in the civil rights movement in Philadelphia in the 1960s, said she was initially a Libertarian and became drawn to the Republican Party because of a sense of purpose she felt among fellow members.
A shift in the polls toward Donald Trump among black voters has been met largely with skepticism by the national press and dismissed by talking heads on cable news – perhaps because they don’t know any person of color in their social or professional circle who would ever consider voting Republican.
Late last month, a Gallup survey found Democrats’ lead over Republicans among black Americans had dropped by 20 percentage points in the past three years.
Muhlenberg College political science professor Chris Borick said that in a swing state like Pennsylvania where polls show a tight race between Trump and President Biden and everything is decided within the polling margin of error, “no party can afford to lose even the smallest amount of their reliable voting bloc.”
“You cannot take any of your coalition for granted, this can be a problem for Joe Biden but also Bob Casey Jr. in the Senate race,” Borick said.
Pennsylvania is a prime example. Four years ago, Biden carried more than 90% of the black vote in the state according to exit polls. Black women that year gave Biden an impressive 94% of their vote, a number that secured the 20 critical electoral votes needed for him to win the state.
Monday’s New York Times/Siena Pennsylvania poll showed some interesting nuggets; voters like Morales and Goodwin are starting to show up in the numbers.
Morales, 41, explains the generational shift among black voters has been incremental, “But it has been moving for a while,” she said. “As a woman of color, I sit in Republican spaces so they can see me, hear me, and understand me.”
The issues that drive her are no different than those of her white or Hispanic neighbors. “I don’t like my whole check going to taxes,” she said. “I hate that people cannot freely express themselves religiously without retaliation. I don’t like that tolerance is one-sided.”
Morales said the first Republican she voted for was for George W. Bush, and she did it twice. Disapproving of Sarah Palin, she did not support John McCain in 2008 but voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
In 2020, she could not bring herself to vote for Biden or Trump. “I couldn’t do it again,” she said of Trump. “The crazy thing is I agree with him on a lot of issues; I just hate his deliverance and disposition.”
Although Morales was a Nikki Haley fan and is undecided about the top of the ticket, her down-ballot support for Republicans is unwavering, “Dave McCormick? Yes he has my vote.” she said of the Republican businessman who is challenging Sen. Casey.
Youngstown State University professor Paul Sracic notes that 2024 is shaping up as a very close contest that will be decided by perhaps fewer than a couple hundred thousand votes, maybe less, in a handful of states – with the two candidates’ records on the economy looming over the election.
“Voters, regardless of race, have two recent economic records to compare,” Sracic said. “The perennial question for an incumbent is ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ In 2024, Trump can add to that, ‘When I was last president…’”
At the same time, each major party is relying on a coalition of voters whom they have come to take for granted – perhaps at their peril. “If any part of that coalition were to switch sides, even in small numbers, it could change the result of the election. For example, if Republicans were to lose even a small percentage of evangelical voters, it could make a huge difference in the outcome,” Sracic said.
A similar dynamic exists for Democrats with various demographics, especially African American voters. “If we are talking about the potential voting behavior of middle-class black women, why wouldn’t we think that they might be responding to the same economic variables, and making the same comparisons, as middle-class white voters,” Sracic added.
Michele Reynolds agrees. In an interview in March, the first African American woman elected as a Republican in Franklin County to the Ohio state Senate said black middle-class or working-class voters have the same economic problems as their white neighbors.
Reynolds, who was hosting an event for Bernie Moreno in a former church in a working-class black neighborhood in Columbus, said no matter what color you are, the economy is failing middle America, “And people are looking at the message that everything is fine and they know it is not because they have to pay the bills,” she said.
While Trump holds a sizeable lead over Biden in Ohio in the RealClearPolitics Average, Reynolds warns that it is the Ohio Senate race between Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and Republican businessman Bernie Moreno where the black voters, men and women, could change everything for who holds the majority in the Senate come next January.
The event for Moreno that Reynolds held was filled with black, white, and Hispanic voters looking for someone to hear their concerns. Nanette Taylor, a local entrepreneur, handed people Moreno signs as they left. “Events like this go unnoticed,” she said. “We are tucked away off the highway and not many people are paying attention. Then when Election Day [comes] and what most folks thought would happen doesn’t, they wonder how did we miss that?”
Salena Zito is a reporter for the Washington Examiner, Wall Street Journal contributor, and co-author of “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.”
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.
Adam Sexton reported for wmur.com that:
The President of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Gordon Friesen, sent members of New Hampshire's Senate his article titled: A call to defeat New Hampshire assisted suicide House Bill 1283 (Link).
The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged above the historic 40,000 mark in late morning and early afternoon trading. Euphoria was high as bulls celebrated Dow 40,000. This week's gains across broad equity indexes were primarily driven by a cooler April CPI print and dismal retail data on Wednesday, along with cooling Philly Fed data, surprisingly weak home-building activity, and a flat industrial production report on Thursday. The macro-intensive week puts the economy potentially on a soft-landing approach, with the Federal Reserve likely to start cutting interest rates in the second half of the year. However, around 1300 ET, broad selling pressure hit US equity indexes, pushing them flat to red for the session. The Dow has since lost the 40,000 mark.
The S&P 500 flirted with the 5,300 level for most of the session. Walmart surged to a record as earnings guided higher as wealthy consumers traded down to the big box retailer, driving sales higher.
Matt Maley at Miller Tabak + Co told Bloomberg that the stock market experienced a breakout to all-time highs this week, though it might be time for a short-term "breather" before further gains are seen.
The GameStop and AMC Entertainment Holdings short squeezes by Roaring Kitty faded into the end of the week.
Long-short hedge funds were hit hard on Monday and Tuesday as the most shorted stocks, including meme stocks like GME and AMC, surged higher. However, as the rally in these heavily shorted stocks reversed, hedge funds have managed to recover most of their recent losses.
"Our HF VIP vs. Most short (GSPRHVMS Index) is +215bps today, now down only -2.5% in the last five days. As of Tuesday, this was down as much as -12%. This feels much more orderly (Unwinds of macro hedges)," Goldman's Chloe Garber wrote in a midday note.
Here are some of Garber's key observations in markets today via the bank's trading desk:
All micro today: WMT +6% on EBIT upside and sales at the high end of the range; DE -3% on a Q2 beat but full year cut; UAA (+66bps) went from -15% to green on the day… shorted name/ one of the worst guides of the EPS season so far. Goldman thinks the stock went green because ppl aware of the consumer pressures at this point.
45% of the total market volume so far today is in <$1 stocks (CRKN, GWAV, FFIE, SINT stick out specifically. This compares to YTD average of ~12% for <$1 stocks. Clearly a knock-on effect associated w/ meme stock activity.
Volumes elevated today +30% vs the rest of the week, with S&P top of book tracking higher as well. The floor is skewed +8% better to buy today led largely by LO buying.
LOs most active in tech and macro products on the buy side, vs selling cons discretionary. HFs also much better buyers with demand concentrated in macro products, HC, Industrials, and Tech. HFs are selling Fins, staples, and Energy.
The macro-intensive week has sent the Citigroup Economic Surprise Index to its lowest level since September 2022, as economic data increasingly prints to the downside as the economy slows.
After all this data, yields on 10-year US Treasuries are marginally higher on the session, trading around 4.37%.
Chris Zaccarelli at Independent Advisor Alliance said, "Breaking the 40,000 barrier is a big psychological boost for the bulls as round numbers hold special significance in people's hearts and minds."
Goldman's Chris Hussey writes in a midday note, "As for markets, the equity market continues to like what it's seeing in the data -- data that is pointing to a decidedly 'soft' landing and not the 'strong' landing that many had started to worry about through March."
Interest-rate swaps showed traders have priced in just two Fed rate cuts by the end of the year. Probabilities at the moment have the first cut at 86.5% in September.
The gap between 2-10 year yields inverted further, approaching the 200-day moving average of around 41bps.
"The re-establishment of a disinflation trend in the coming months should allow the Fed to start easing policy in September," Solita Marcelli, chief investment officer for the Americas at UBS Global Wealth Management, wrote in a note.
Taking a look at GS' latest earning results as 88% of total S&P 500 market cap has reported:
60% beat earnings by at least 1 standard deviation of analyst estimates (vs. 15 year average of 48%) and 10% of companies missed earnings by at least 1 standard deviation of analyst estimates (vs. 15 year average of 13%). Consensus expected EPS to grow by 3% at the start of 1Q reporting season. With reporting season almost complete, EPS growth year/year is tracking at +6%.
Chart of the day via GS are energy companies saw the largest increase in AI mentions on earnings call vs the prior quarter.
Let's not forget while this is happening...
Dow hits 40,000 on the day the Citi economic surprise index dumps to the lowest level since Sept 2022 pic.twitter.com/QJQj2Fmbws
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 16, 2024The Vix has tumbled to its lowest intraday level since December.
Bloomberg outlines one of the most notable Vix option trades today:
Earlier, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warned that persistent inflation will surprise markets, which is an ominous sign for corporate bond markets.
Ending with S&P500's daily RSI approach 'overbought' levels...
It's all or nothing for Dow 40,000. Will the level be sustained, or is this a 'kiss of death'?
Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
(Illustration by The Epoch Times, Nathan Worcester/The Epoch Times, Getty Images)
PHOENIX, Ariz—Matthew Martinez bounded from map to map, a broad smile on his face.
He pointed out important areas of Arizona and Wisconsin—“super chase” jurisdictions scattered throughout the two battleground states.
Behind him, a few other Turning Point Action staffers were working at a bank of computers.
In the organization’s Phoenix headquarters, the workforce skewed young, in keeping with Turning Point’s focus on organizing and activating young conservatives. Mr. Martinez, a leader of the “Chase the Vote” initiative, is just 23.
He was okay with a journalist photographing his meticulously subdivided maps.
“I’m proud of this operation,” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Martinez was showing off the fruits of years of planning by his conservative organization, now ready for the 2024 cycle.
Using a relatively simple equation, Turning Point Action is going after crucial wards and precincts in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan. To pull it off, they’re hiring hundreds for a full-time “ballot-chasing army.”
Their goal: turn out Republicans who sat out the last two presidential elections. That includes more positive messaging around early voting and absentee voting.
Turning Point Action’s chief operating officer, Tyler Bowyer, told The Epoch Times his organization was “handed the playbook” they’re using by “defectors from the Left.” He declined to provide any names.
According to Mr. Bowyer, the strategy is downstream of the successful “Colorado model” that Democrats and liberal activists used to flip Colorado from red to blue.
“This is no secret. The Democrats have done this,” Mr. Martinez said.
A view of Turning Point Action's Chase the Vote maps for greater Milwaukee, Wisconsin on May 10, 2024, at the organization's headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona.
Many of the areas the group is targeting are in deep red territory—for example, Rep. Eli Crane’s (R-Ariz.) district, rated solidly Republican by the Cook Political Report, or Waukesha County, Wisconsin, where President Donald Trump claimed 60 percent of the vote in 2020.
But others are well within Blue America, like chunks of Dane County, home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. President Joe Biden claimed more than 75 percent of the vote there in the last presidential election.
For those used to politicians contesting competitive purple zones, the approach can seem a little counterintuitive.
While Turning Point Action spokesman Andrew Kolvet said the group is concerned about races “up and down the ticket,” the Chase the Vote strategy seems geared towards winning the presidency, with a few Senate races rendered more competitive in the process.
“We may not flip Dane County, but we can definitely flip the state if we make sure that Republicans turn out to vote in Dane County,” Mr. Martinez said of the “super chase” districts in that area.
“We need ten groups, a hundred groups doing similar things,” Mr. Kolvet said, stressing that Turning Point Action must steward its resources efficiently.
The project is much bigger than a row of colorful maps in Turning Point Action’s HQ, located a few feet away from the headquarters of its sister organization, Turning Point USA. For one thing, they’re chasing a lot of money.
Turning Point Action aims to raise $108 million for Chase the Vote. Mr. Kolvet said the organization has already raised tens of millions of dollars and described the $108 million figure as “aspirational.”
The initiative also aims to make GOP voters more comfortable with early voting, absentee voting, and other alternatives to same-day voting. After the controversial 2020 election, that might prove difficult. Yet, signals from the top could smooth the path.
“Absentee voting, early voting, and election day voting are all good options. Republicans must make a plan, register, and vote!” President Trump posted on Truth Social on April 19.
Election official Paula Volpiansky (L) signs voters' sealed absentee ballots as a witness at the Madison Central Public Library on the last day of early voting in Milwaukee, Wis., on Nov. 6, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
With less than half a year to go before Election Day, President Biden is facing headwinds, including Democratic infighting over Israel and historically low approval ratings. Recent polling from the New York Times and Siena College showed former President Trump ahead in five of six battleground states by margins as wide as 12 percent in Nevada and 10 percent in Georgia.
Yet, more than a few metrics favor the Democrats, at least for now.
Read more here...
A heralded Catholic football player defends traditional moral values at a Catholic college—how novel—and within no time he’s being bashed all over the place. Had he endorsed transgenderism, or Hamas, he would now be praised to high heaven.
The man is Harrison Butker, the phenomenal kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs.
Butker is not in the news for his athletic heroics but because he gave a commencement address at Benedictine College in Kansas on May 11 that espoused traditional Catholic values. He has been criticized by the NFL, slammed on social media and is the subject of a change.org petition (it claims to have 100,000 signatures).
The attack has three targets: Butker, Benedictine College and Catholicism. Make no mistake, the war on Butker is driven by anti-Catholicism.
Butker has been condemned for his remarks about women, abortion, President Biden, Gay Pride Month, gender ideology, and the emasculation of men. Those who signed the petition don’t want to debate his remarks—they want him fired. “We call upon the Kansas City Chiefs management to dismiss Harrison Butker immediately for his inappropriate conduct.”
Spoken like true fascists. Moreover, they are plain dumb: they don’t know the difference between speech and conduct.
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Butker spoke positively about moms who elect to work at home taking care of their children.
“I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you…Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world. But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.
“I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and a mother. I’m on this stage, and able to be the man I am, because I have a wife who leans into her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”
He ended this part of his speech noting how blessed he is to have a wife who embraces “one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”
For this, Butker has been accused of wanting to put women back in “the kitchen.” Mike Freeman at USA Today was apoplectic, saying, “Her vocation? Really? Did I slip and fall into a time machine and travel back to the 1950s?”
In fact, Butker actually speaks for most moms.
In a Gallup poll released in 2019, 50 percent of women with children under age 18 said they would prefer to stay at home; 45 percent disagreed. To those on the left, this is bad news. The French feminist, Simone de Beauvoir, spoke for many when she said, “Women should not have that choice [of staying at home to raise their children], precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” So much for being “pro-choice.”
“Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.” Well said. But to those who like abortion, this is grounds to fire him.
Butker referenced Biden when he took him to task for making the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally. Good for Butker. He was also right to call attention to the “deadly sins” associated with Pride month. His reference to “dangerous gender ideologies” was understated—we are dealing with a child abuse crisis.
To say that we need to fight against “the emasculation of men” is good advice. The feminization of society is not a good omen. For this we can thank the schools, the media and the entertainment industry.
“These are the sorts of things we are told in polite society to not bring up.” Butker nailed it again. His courage and his commitment to Catholicism is laudatory.
Regarding the latter, it is risible to read Toriano Porter’s column in the Kansas City Star ripping Butker’s sincerely held beliefs and then conclude that although he doesn’t “know much about Catholicism,” his stinging remarks are “not an attack on religion—not even close.” The reason he felt obliged to make this defensive quip is precisely because he knows how guilty he is.
The Associated Press (AP) let the cat out of the bag altogether.
It unleashed a string of red flags about Benedictine College being “part of a constellation of conservative Catholic colleges that tout their adherence to church teachings and practice—part of a larger conservative movement in parts of the U.S. Catholic Church.” This comes on the heels of an AP story sounding the alarms about the growth of orthodox Catholicism.
AP’s idea of a good Catholic college is Georgetown—it has two pro-abortion clubs on campus and has a segregated graduation ceremony for transgender students.
LifeNews Note: Bill Donohue is the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
The post Harrison Butker is Right: Abortion is Bad, Traditional Families are Good appeared first on LifeNews.com.
Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller, head of the Duquesne Family Office, sees the artificial intelligence bubble as overextended. He has slashed some of his holdings in "Magnificent Seven" technology stocks, including Nvidia. He's not alone. Other notable fund managers and company insiders are jumping ship and unloading their shares.
A recent 13F filing reveals that Druckenmiller's family office sold over 441,000 shares of Nvidia Corp. in the first quarter, reducing its stake to only 176,000 shares, or worth just about $158 million. Since 13F filings are backward-looking, the firm may have further divested or adjusted those holdings since the first quarter.
We suspect Druckenmiller has not added to his Nvidia holdings.
Early last week, the billionaire investor appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box," explaining that his exposure to Nvidia was reduced after it went from $150 per share to $900 in just over a year.
"I'm not Warren Buffett," Druckenmiller emphasized, noting, "I don't own things for 10 or 20 years. I wish I was Warren Buffett."
Druckenmiller said that when Microsoft-backed ChatGPT soared in popularity, he doubled down on his Nvidia position because it was an obvious no-brainer.
"Even an old guy like me could figure out what that meant," he said, adding the AI boom is likely a "mega-trend like we've never seen," with the potential to be bigger than the internet.
Druckenmiller concluded: "I just need a break. We've had a hell of a run. A lot of what we recognized has become recognized by the marketplace now."
Besides Druckenmiller, 13F filings showed David Tepper slashed his holdings in Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms. David Bonderman's Wildcat Capital Management sold Meta stock, bringing his position to $23.7 million. Michael Platt's BlueCrest Capital Management dumped Nvidia and Amazon.
It wasn't just high-profile fund managers selling tech stocks. Insiders were, too...
Source: Bloomberg
Let's also remind readers of Druckenmiller's comments on CNBC last week, where he rated Bidenomics as an "F." This is an ominous sign that his outlook on the US economy is far from optimistic.
Investor Stanley Druckenmiller on Bidenomics: "If I were a professor, I'd give them an 'F'." pic.twitter.com/WfsU4ecO6y
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) May 7, 2024Smart money doesn't want to be caught standing in the game of Fed chair Jerome Powell's musical chairs when the music stops.
Harrison Butker, a three-time Super Bowl-winning kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, slammed Joe Biden during a commencement speech at Benedictine College recently that has gone viral on social media.
Butker and the college are both Catholic and the NFL player ripped Biden for being a hypocrite – claiming to be Catholic while ignoring the pro-life teachings of the Catholic Church.
The Chiefs player said, “Our own nation is led by a man who proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the Sign of The Cross during a pro-abortion rally.”
“He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I’m sure to many people it appears you can be both Catholic and pro-choice,” Butker added.
The NFL today distanced itself from Butker’s comments.
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“Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity. His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger,” said NFL DEI officer, Jonathan Beane. “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”
In his remarks, Butker also urged the Christian church to stand up stronger for Christian values.
“We need to stop pretending that the church of nice is a winning proposition,” Butker said. “…We must always speak and act in charity. But never mistake charity for cowardice.”
He continued: “The world around us says that we should keep our beliefs to ourselves whenever they go against the tyranny of diversity, equity and inclusion. We fear speaking truth, because now, unfortunately, truth is in the minority.”
The post Kansas City Chiefs Kicker Harrison Butker Condemned Abortion and the NFL is Not Happy appeared first on LifeNews.com.
A sizable surveillance aerostat owned by the US military crashed on Wednesday near the town of Rmelan in Syria's northeastern Al-Hasakah province.
Footage on social media showed the aerostat descending from the sky and, subsequently, its debris on the ground close to Rmelan, which was also near a US base. Allegedly, US fighter jets were seen flying over the vicinity during the event.
The US maintains several illegal bases in Syria, including the one in Rmelan, primarily in the northeastern provinces of Al-Hasakah and Deir Ezzor, as well as Al-Tanf in the southeast, purportedly to combat ISIS remnants.
Several local sources said the spy balloon crashed due to a technical malfunction, while others indicate that unidentified culprits shot down the aerostat. The Pentagon has yet to comment.
The US initially introduced aerostats to its Syrian bases years ago, although they were considerably smaller than the one that crashed near Rmelan.
The significant size of this aerostat indicates it likely carried sophisticated surveillance equipment, potentially including aerial radar systems.
US spy balloon shot down near Rmelan in NE Hasakah, #Syria. https://t.co/0XGm0zT2rF pic.twitter.com/OBiw1zbj2x
— tim anderson (@timand2037) May 16, 2024The day prior, the Lebanese group Hezbollah carried out multiple operations against Israel, including the downing of an Israeli surveillance balloon in the south of Lebanon and the demolition of the launching base and the control equipment utilized for its operation.
Hezbollah has been launching daily assaults on Israeli military installations since October 8, in solidarity with Gaza and in support of Palestinians. It has pledged to persist until the war on Gaza is stopped.
Hezbollah announced that it targeted and destroyed an Israeli balloon used to spy on Lebanon over the Israeli settlement of Adamit.
Through close surveillance, the group was also able to determine and target the spy balloon’s control center, which appeared to have been in a… pic.twitter.com/1NLKV82beN
Hezbollah said, "After tracking the movement of the spy balloon to monitor and spy on Lebanon and after determining its control center, our fighters targeted it with missiles."
For much of the past decade, gold bugs religiously tracked the physical gold inventory located in the various gold vaults that make up the Comex system, eagerly awaiting the day when there would be more deliverables (via paper shorting of gold) than physical in storage, sparking a historic, Volkswagen-like short squeeze. Well, the day of a historic Comex short squeeze finally arrived... only it wasn't in gold but in the far less precious metal that is copper.
It all started one month ago, when we reported that in an attempt to enforce sanctions against Russia that actually worked (as opposed to the joke that is the western "oil embargo" now openly breached by absolutely everyone), the "US, UK Banned Deliveries Of Russian Copper, Nickel And Aluminum To Western Metals Exchanges." There, in our conclusion, we wrote that "history has taught us that the market will price in some “full-sanction” risk premium which when combined with the current macro bid (reflation narrative, electrification, "copper is the first AI commodity" etc.) means we expect a complex wide rally." Little did we know how truly historic said rally would be just one month later.
As anyone who has been following the recent moves in the price of copper - which is hitting daily record highs - knows by now, a massive dislocation between the prices for copper traded in New York and other commodity exchanges has rocked the global market for the metal and prompted a frantic dash for supplies to ship to the US.
The source of the disruption, as Bloomberg reports, is a record short squeeze that has driven up copper prices on the Comex exchange to the point where the premium for New York copper futures above the London Metal Exchange price has rocketed to an unprecedented level of over $1,200 per ton, compared with a typical differential of just a few dollars.
The blowout in that price spread has wrong-footed major players from Chinese traders to quant hedge funds, all of whom are now scrambling for metal that they can deliver against expiring futures contracts!
Adding fuel to the fire, the surge in the price is not just driven by technicals but also reflects the surge of interest from speculators after forecasts that long-term copper mine production will struggle to keep pace with demand. We have discussed the fundamental case for copper in "The Copper Supply Shortage Is Here", and most notably in "the Next AI Trade" where we said that copper is starting to show signs of what Goldman has called "AI exposure" considering it is an essential material to produce power, and added that Goldman recently has gone full-bore pushing for copper (see the following note from Goldman S&T "Turning Copper into Gold" available to professional subs).
While less important than the LME, Comex, which is part of the CME Group, is a key playground for investors, some of whom have used the exchange to build up large bullish bets on copper in recent months
“The broader story is that there are new investment funds that are boosting their exposure to copper for a multitude of reasons, and while that’s a global trend, a huge amount of that investment has been heading to Comex,” said Matthew Heap, a portfolio manager at Orion Resource Partners, the largest metals-focused fund manager.
As shown in the charts above, while copper prices had been rising for months, this week’s spike was specific to the Comex and the most-active futures contract for July delivery. By Wednesday, the July price had soared as much as 10%, touching a record high for that contract, even as the global benchmark contract on the LME traded broadly flat. The move, Bloomberg reports citing numerous traders and brokers, was a classic short squeeze as market participants who had placed bets on the Comex contract moving back into line with prices on the LME and in Shanghai, the other global copper benchmark, were forced to buy those positions back as prices rose, creating a vicious cycle and sending the price to a record.
Indeed, as Colin Hamilton, managing director for commodities research at BMO Capital Markets, said the spread of more than $1,000 a ton between Comex and London was “something never seen previously,” adding that “there has been a squeeze on short positions into contract expiry, exacerbating the move.”
In yet another example of hedge funds and other traders being too smart for their own good (i.e. a replay of the original GameStop short squeeze), they had taken the other side of the bullish trades on Comex, betting on narrowing differentials between the contracts in New York, London and Shanghai, or between New York contracts for different delivery dates, often with massive leverage. With prices on the Shanghai Futures Exchange relatively depressed, some Chinese physical market participants had also sold on the LME and Comex, with plans to export.
Putting this all together, and on Wednesday morning, the July Comex copper contract soared to a record $5.128 a pound ($11,305 a ton), also trading at a record premium above the September Comex contract — a monster backwardation that is hallmark of a short squeeze.
While the spike was driven by short covering rather than any overall physical shortage, traders and brokers say, but it has shined a light on relatively tight supplies in the US copper market, just as we warned a month ago in "The Copper Supply Shortage Is Here. Case in point, inventories tracked by the Comex currently total 21,066 short tons, while LME inventories in the US are just 9,250 tons. For comparison, annual US copper demand is almost 2 million tons. Traders say solid demand, and shipping issues at the Panama and Suez canals, have left the market tight. Indeed, US copper imports year-to-date are down 15%, according to consultancy CRU Group.
“We continuously monitor our markets, which are operating as designed as market participants manage copper risk and uncertainty,” the CME said in a statement.
Of course, as our readers know too well, short squeezes are nothing new in commodity markets, and they often prompt a mad scramble to find supplies of raw materials that underpin paper contracts. The most recent and vivid example is the Nickel short squeeze of March 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to a huge shortage in the market, and a staggering surge in the price which nearly bankrupted one of China's biggest commodity traders and the LME itself.
A similar squeeze took place in 2020, when Covid locked down much of the world, and gold traders raced to ship metal to address a similar dislocation between New York and London bullion prices. And in 1988, a short squeeze in aluminum led some traders to load the metal into jumbo jets — a highly unusual and costly mode of transport for industrial raw materials — in order to get it on to the LME as soon as possible.
The current Comex copper squeeze has triggered a similar dash to send copper to the US: Chinese traders have spent the past 24 hours calling around shipping companies to try to secure transit to the US, according to people familiar with the matter.
Traders and miners in South America have also raced to boost their US shipments. According to Bloomberg, Chilean copper-mining giant Codelco is directing all of its available volumes to the market and also negotiating with customers to postpone some sales so that it can maximize deliveries.
That said, there are tentative signs that the squeeze is easing: the July copper contract edged lower on Thursday morning after coming off its highs from Wednesday, while the premium over cash copper on the LME narrowed to $573 a ton — although still a historically elevated level.
There may be further relief ahead, as investors with bullish positions via commodity indexes are set to start rolling their copper positions in early June, providing an opportunity for traders with short positions to defer delivery, potentially easing the backwardation. Still, it remains unclear if that will be enough to resolve the squeeze ahead of the expiry of the July contract, which goes into delivery at the start of that month. And any attempts to provide further metal to the US to ease the squeeze may face challenges: Chinese traders seeking to transport metal to the US have found that shipping schedules are fully booked, with the earliest available shipping slots from Shanghai to New Orleans at the beginning of July, said Gong Ming, analyst with Jinrui Futures Co.
Adding to the plight of those caught out by the squeeze is the fact that much of the copper inventories outside the US is from brands that aren’t deliverable against Comex futures. For example, more than 80% of the 94,700 tons of copper on the LME at the end of April was produced in Russia, China, Bulgaria or India — countries whose copper isn’t deliverable on Comex as we reported a month ago, in a development that has eventually cascaded into today's historic squeeze.
And while substantial inventories have built up in China in recent months, traders estimate that only about 15,000 to 20,000 tons of that could be delivered against Comex futures.
“We do not think the physical arbitrage activity will be sufficient by the July expiry to close the arb on the near month. There is not enough material and not enough time,” said Anant Jatia, chief investment officer at Greenland Investment Management, a hedge fund specializing in commodity arbitrage trading.
“However, physical traders are currently heavily incentivized to move copper into the US and over time the arb market will stabilize.”
As for gold bugs, watching with sheer shock - and outright jealousy - the epic squeeze roiling the less precious metal, all they can hope for is that one day the massive paper shorts on the comex will lead to a similar meltup in gold. All that may be needed is a pair of enterprising Hunt Brothers for the new millennium to pull it off.
Three-time Super Bowl Champion Harrison Butker is the latest target of the Woke Mob. His offense? Butker, a Catholic, spoke about Catholicism at a Catholic school’s graduation ceremonies. Clearly he now must be canceled. Of course it’s more complicated than that. Butker specifically spoke of those aspects of Catholicism that we’re not supposed to talk about—such as a woman’s primary vocation…
With the World Health Organization’s (WHO) annual World Health Assembly less than two weeks away, a burgeoning array of lawmakers, state attorneys general, and international leaders are voicing forceful opposition to a WHO-proposed “pandemic agreement” over concerns that it infringes on national sovereignty, violates the Constitution, promotes abortion, and will likely lead to increased censorship of public health debates, among other issues.
Last week, the WHO announced in a press release that it was making “steady progress” on the proposed pandemic agreement as member states continue “intensive negotiations” ahead of the 77th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, which is scheduled to last from May 27 to June 1.
But observers are noting that the process of drafting the agreement, which analysts have emphasized is actually a binding treaty, has been entangled in controversy and ambiguity from the beginning. “[T]hose drafting this agreement, they missed their deadline,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins pointed out during Tuesday’s edition of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.” “… [T]hey’re working now to cobble something together in the 11th hour. This really kind of marks this whole process. It’s been going on for almost two years, a lot of it behind closed doors, a lot of it just constantly changing. It’s hard to get a grasp on exactly what they’re going to propose.”
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) concurred. “[T]here are some other member nations [that have] express[ed] their explicit reservations prior to what we’ve seen the White House do most recently.” He went on to highlight a letter sent to President Biden last week signed by himself and 21 other state attorneys general opposing the White House’s plan to sign the treaty. “[It puts] the WHO and President Biden on notice that there are significant legal flaws here, aside from the fact that it’s a terrible policy position [and is a] slouch towards a one world government.”
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Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are also in staunch opposition to the U.S. entering into the treaty. Earlier this month, the entire Senate Republican Conference demanded that the Biden administration withdraw from the treaty, citing a “[substantial] increase [in] the WHO’s health emergency powers” and “intolerable infringements upon U.S. sovereignty.” House Republicans such as Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) have also expressed their opposition to the treaty citing the WHO’s failures during the COVID pandemic, with Biggs introducing legislation co-sponsored by 17 congressmen to withdraw from the agreement.
In addition, international leaders in the U.K. declared their intention to reform the WHO in the wake of the controversial treaty. On Monday, former Brexit leader Nigel Farage announced the launch of the international organization Action on World Health with the goal of changing the WHO “to respect national sovereignty, stop interfering in people’s lives, and abandon the frankly terrifying pandemic treaty.”
Attorney General Bailey expanded on the repercussions of the treaty during Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.”
“The World Health Organization, which has traditionally been an advisory body, is attempting an unprecedented power grab that would actually create the authority within the WHO to enforce pandemic regulations,” he explained. “And what our experience in COVID-19 taught us is that the worst of the worst of tyrannical tendencies of the progressive Left come out when there’s a perceived or actual emergency, like a pandemic. And so movement towards a one world government [like] WHO’s response to COVID … was abominable at best. These kinds of unilateral tendencies to consolidate power in an international organization is not only unconstitutional and illegal, but is immoral as well.”
Bailey further detailed the legal problems presented by the treaty.
“[T]he United States Constitution does not give any authority to the federal government to delegate its responsibility for public health policy with either the World Health Organization or to take that authority away from the states,” he observed. “[T]he structure of our government matters under our constitutional democratic republic, and the 10th Amendment clearly states that any authority not given to the federal government or denied to the states is enjoyed by the states and the people of the states. And so neither Joe Biden nor even the Congress could delegate this authority to an international body that would seek to enjoy any authority over the people of the United States of America.”
“We will continue to fight back and ensure that our constitutional rights here in America and in the state of Missouri are scrupulously protected,” the Missouri attorney general concluded. “It’s in times of perceived emergency that we must be most vigilant in our protection of our constitutional liberties.”
LifeNews Note: Dan Hart writes for the Family Research Council. He is the senior editor of The Washington Stand.
The post Opposition to Pro-Abortion WHO Pandemic Treaty Grows as World Health Assembly Approaches appeared first on LifeNews.com.
Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,
I’ve previously said that gold could reach $15,000 by 2026. Today, I’m updating that forecast.
My latest forecast is that gold may actually exceed $27,000.
I don’t say that to get attention or to shock people. It’s not a guess; it’s the result of rigorous analysis.
Of course, there’s no guarantee it’ll happen. But this forecast is based on the best available tools and models that have proved accurate in many other contexts.
Here’s how I reached that price level forecast…
This analysis begins with a simple question: What’s the implied non-deflationary price of gold under a new gold standard?
No central banker in the world wants a gold standard. Why would they? Right now, they control the machinery of global currencies (also called fiat money).
They have no interest in a form of money they can’t control. It took about 60 years from 1914–1974 to drive gold out of the monetary system. No central banker wants to let it back in.
Still, what if they have no choice? What if confidence in command currencies collapses due to some combination of excessive money creation, competition from Bitcoin, extreme levels of dollar debt, a new financial crisis, war or natural disaster?
In that case, central bankers may return to gold not because they want to, but because they must in order to restore order to the global monetary system.
That scenario begs the question: What is the new dollar price of gold in a system in which dollars are freely exchangeable for gold at a fixed price?
If the dollar price is too high, investors will sell gold for dollars and spend freely. Central banks will have to increase the money supply to maintain equilibrium. That’s an inflationary result.
If the dollar price is too low, investors will line up to redeem dollars for gold and then hoard the gold. Central banks will have to reduce the money supply to maintain equilibrium. That reduces velocity and is deflationary.
Something like the latter case happened in the U.K. in 1925 when it returned to a gold standard at an unrealistically low price. The result was that the U.K. entered the Great Depression several years ahead of other developed economies.
Something like the former case happened in the U.S. in 1933, when FDR devalued the dollar against gold. Citizens weren’t allowed to own gold, so there was no mass redemption of gold. But other commodity prices rose sharply.
That was the point of the devaluation. Resulting inflation helped lift the U.S. out of deflation and gave the economy a boost from 1933–1936 in the midst of the Great Depression. (The Fed caused another severe recession in 1937–1938 with their customary incompetence.)
The policy goal obviously is to get the price “just right” by maintaining the proper equilibrium between gold and dollars. The U.S. is in an ideal position to do this by selling gold from U.S. Treasury reserves, about 8,100 metric tonnes (261.5 million troy ounces), or buying gold in the open market using freshly printed Fed money.
The goal would be to maintain the dollar price of gold in a narrow range around the fixed price.
What price is just right? This question is easy to answer, subject to a few assumptions.
U.S. M1 money supply is $17.9 trillion. (I use M1, which is a good proxy for everyday money).
What is M1? This is the supply that is the most liquid and money that is the easiest to turn into cash.
It contains actual cash (bills and coins), bank reserves (what’s actually kept in the vaults) and demand deposits (money in your checking account that can be turned into cash easily).
One needs to make an assumption about the percentage of gold backing for the money supply needed to maintain confidence. I assume 40% coverage with gold. (This was the legal requirement for the Fed from 1913–1946. Later it was 25%, then zero today).
Applying the 40% ratio to the $17.9 trillion money supply means that $7.2 trillion of gold is required.
Applying the $7.2 trillion valuation to 261.5 million troy ounces yields a gold price of $27,533 per ounce.
That’s the implied non-deflationary equilibrium price of gold in a new global gold standard. Of course, money supplies fluctuate; lately they’ve been going up sharply, especially in the U.S.
There’s room for debate about whether a 40% backing ratio is too high or too low. Still, my assumptions are moderate based on monetary economics and history. A dollar price of gold of over $25,000 per ounce in a new gold standard is not a stretch.
Obviously, you get around $12,500 per ounce if you assume 20% coverage. There are many variables in play.
This model is also straightforward. It relies on factors we learned about in our first week of Intro to Economics — supply and demand.
The most significant development on the supply side is the decrease of new mining output. As the chart shows below, mine production of gold in the U.S. has been decreasing steadily since 2017.
These figures reveal a 28% decrease over seven years, at the same time gold prices were rising and miners were motivated to expand output.
That’s not to argue that the world has reached “peak gold,” (output could expand in future for a variety of reasons). Still, my contacts in the mining community consistently report that gold is becoming more difficult to source and the quality of newly discovered ore is low-to-medium at best.
Flat output, all things equal, tends to put a floor under prices and to support higher prices based on other factors.
The demand side is driven largely by central banks, ETFs, hedge funds and individual purchases. Traditional institutional investors are not large investors in gold. Much of the demand from hedge funds is conducted in derivatives such as gold futures.
Derivatives generally don’t involve physical delivery of gold. They involve “paper gold” that far exceeds the actual, physical gold supply. It’s this paper gold market that accounts for volatility in the gold market, not gold itself.
Meanwhile, central bank demand for gold has surged from less than 100 metric tonnes in 2010 to 1,100 metric tonnes in 2022, a 1,000% increase in 12 years. Central bank gold demand remained strong in 2023 with 800 metric tonnes acquired through Sept. 30.
That puts central bank gold demand on track for a new record. There’s no sign of that demand slowing in 2024.
Overall, the picture is one of flat supply and increasing demand, mostly in the form of official purchases by central banks.
Finally, a bit of elementary math is helpful in understanding how the dollar price of gold can move past $25,000 per ounce in the next two years. For this purpose, we’ll assume a baseline price of $2,000 per ounce (although gold has been in the $2,300 range lately with no signs of falling back to the $2,000 level).
But for our purposes, we’ll keep it simple.
A move from $2,000 per ounce to $3,000 per ounce is a heavy lift. That’s a 50% increase and could easily take a year or more. Beyond that, a further increase from $3,000 to $4,000 is a 33% increase: another large rally. A further gain from $4,000 per ounce to $5,000 per ounce is a further gain of 25%.
But notice the pattern. Each gain is $1,000 per ounce, but the percentage increase drops from 50% to 33% to 25%. That’s because the starting point is higher while the $1,000 gain is constant. Each $1,000 jump represents a smaller (and easier) percentage gain than the one before.
This pattern continues. Moving from $9,000 per ounce to $10,000 per ounce is only an 11% gain. Moving from $14,000 per ounce to $15,000 per ounce is only a 7% gain. Gold can move 1% in a single trading day, sometimes 2% or more.
As an extreme example, a move from $99,000 per ounce to $100,000 per ounce is about a 1% move. Those $1,000 pops get even easier as we approach my calculated gold price of $27,533.
The lesson for you as an investor is to buy gold now.
As prices continue to rally, you’ll get more gold for your money at the outset and high-percentage returns as gold rallies from a lower base. Toward the end of the long march past $25,000 per ounce, you’ll have bigger dollar gains because you started with more gold.
Others will jump on the bandwagon, but you’ll already have a comfortable seat.
Seeking to stave off the increasingly perilous threat posed by Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Joe Biden’s campaign positioned the president as a moderate who “doesn’t support full-term abortions” — a claim pro-life advocates call deceptive. The assertion also clashes with Biden-aligned super PACs portraying RFK Jr. as a supporter of “national abortion bans.”
Kennedy said he supported a woman’s right to have an abortion “even if it’s full-term” on the May 8 episode of “The Sage Steele Show.” Kennedy also threw his support behind sweeping, top-down national legislation that would impose abortion-on-demand on all 50 states, telling the former ESPN host, “I wouldn’t leave it to the states.” RFK Jr.’s comments echoed an interview he gave last month to Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, in which he revealed that he viewed decisions about whether to have an abortion at “eight months” as morally “nuanced and complex.”
The Independent candidate’s most recent comments drew instant fire. Kennedy “would use the power of the federal government to wipe out protections for life in the states and impose unlimited abortion on demand all the way up to ‘full term,’ as he puts it, everywhere in America. That makes him unacceptable to millions of pro-life voters nationwide,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has exposed himself as a true extremist. He is no different from Joe Biden or Kamala Harris when it comes to supporting brutal abortions at any time for any reason, even when babies in the womb feel pain, with zero limits or exceptions.”
Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, agreed Kennedy’s apparently full-throated endorsement of abortion “is the position of Joe Biden, the Democrat Party, and the abortion industry. RFK Jr is just being less deceptive about it.”
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But the Biden campaign apparently saw Kennedy’s abortion remarks as an opportunity to contrast himself with his former Democratic rival. “The president doesn’t support full-term abortions, as he’s made clear many times. He thinks Roe [v. Wade] got it right,” Lauren Hitt, a senior Biden campaign official, told Fox News.
Experts say the Biden-Harris campaign is playing fast-and-loose with the facts. “President Biden’s views on killing unborn children have changed so often throughout his political career it’s not shocking his campaign is trying to say that he doesn’t support full-term abortions,” Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. In fact, Senator Biden once voted for a Right to Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and voted both for and against federal funding of abortion. “Unfortunately, that all changed when he thought that, to achieve political power, he needed to endorse killing unborn children until the moment of birth,” said Szoch.
“President Biden is trying to build his campaign around the popularity of Roe,banking on the fact that the majority of Americans don’t recognize the companion cases of Doe v. Bolton and Casey v. Planned Parenthood effectively allowed abortion through birth,” Szoch told TWS. In theory, Roe allowed regulation of abortion after viability. But the Supreme Court’s opinion in Doe v. Bolton, decided the same day as Roe, held that women have the right to an abortion if their “health” is threatened; and the health of the mother includes “all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age — relevant to the wellbeing of the patient.” In practice, abortionists could terminate an unborn child’s life for any reason. “Roe had wide-open exceptions allowing late term abortion on healthy babies as Biden and his team know full well,” noted Dannenfelser in a social media post on X.
As president, Joe Biden has implied Roe did not go far enough toward legalizing late-term abortions. Biden has endorsed the so-called “Women’s Health Protection Act” (WHPA), which would erase the 1,381 pro-life laws enacted while Roe remained a controlling legal precedent. “If passed, this act would prevent states from protecting the unborn in any way — including from being aborted just minutes before birth or from being aborted based on their sex, race, or diagnosis of a genetic abnormality,” Szoch told TWS. “If anyone wants proof of that happening, just take a look at the evidence collected from Cesare Santangelo’s abortion business, just blocks from the White House, where over 100 unborn babies were recovered after being aborted. Several of those babies’ bodies indicate that they at minimum were victims of abortion long after viability and may have been victims of infanticide.”
RFK Jr. did not say whether he would favor the WHPA or the Reproductive Choice for All Act (S. 317), supported by Senators Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). The latter bill would allow the state to protect unborn children after the point of viability, provided it does not impose an “undue burden” on the right to abortion and does not threaten “the life or health” of the mother.
The Biden-Harris campaign has increasingly felt the heat from Kennedy, the scion of one of the nation’s most powerful Democratic dynasties. Democratic super PACs MoveOn.org, Future Forward, American Bridge, and Clear Choice are weighing how much money they should spend spiking RFK Jr.’s Independent presidential bid.
But the Biden campaign’s decision to paint RFK Jr. as a radical pro-abortion candidate conflicted with the message of other Democrats and Biden-aligned PACs that have said Kennedy is too conservative, especially on abortion. During the same Fox News story in which Biden’s campaign opposed “full-term” abortions, a Democratic National Committee (DNC) spokesperson told Fox News that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “can’t be trusted to stand up for reproductive freedom.” DNC communications adviser Lis Smith added, “With reproductive freedom under attack, we need leaders who will stand strong for women.”
Biden’s forces have been beating this drum for months. Matt Bennett, president of the liberal group Third Way, wrote off RFK Jr. as “a right-wing crank.” Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) — which has endorsed Biden-Harris for reelection — has taken out advertisements in Michigan and Wisconsinattempting to link RFK to “national abortion bans,” stating, “Kennedy Jr. and Shanahan would put your reproductive freedom at risk.”
That theory came from another apparently botched Kennedy interview. Last August, Kennedy told NBC News, “The decision to abort a child should be up to the woman during the first three months of life.” Although he said he only favored laws protecting life “once a child is viable outside the womb,” he appeared to endorse national legislation preventing abortions after 15 or 21 weeks. Within hours, his campaign claimed Kennedy “misunderstood” the question and that his “position on abortion is that it is always the woman’s right to choose.” RFK Jr.’s rhetorical backing of “full-term” abortions contradicted his comments to his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, who had told Steele roughly a week before Steele’s RFK Jr. interview, “My understanding is that he absolutely believes in limits on abortion, and we’ve talked about this.”
After the latest controversy, RFK Jr. pivoted to a more popular view, allowing for states to protect life after the point of viability. “I think there’s a compelling argument that the state has an interest in protecting a fully-formed fetus. I absolutely think that that argument is very convincing,” RFK Jr. told Steele earlier in the interview.
Kennedy tried to clarify his stance yet further last Friday on social media. “I support the emerging consensus that abortion should be unrestricted up until a certain point. I believe that point should be when the baby is viable outside the womb,” but “I would allow appropriate restrictions on abortion in the final months of pregnancy, just as Roe v. Wade did.”
Kennedy further explained his modest abortion evolution on “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast” on Wednesday, May 15. “There’s no way that you can change my mind by calling me names, or by criticizing me, or by marginalizing or vilifying me, but you can always change my mind with facts,” said Kennedy. “My assumption was that any abortion that occurs in the ninth month” — at which point “you’re basically killing a child,” Kennedy said — involved only “instances where the mother’s life was at stake or there was some other overwhelming medical issue involved.” He had also told Shapiro, “There’s always some kind of extenuating circumstances” for late-term abortions.
“But then I learned I was wrong, that there are actually a huge amount, comparatively, of elective abortions at that time,” said RFK Jr. As this author has noted, a study from Diana Greene Foster and Katrina Kimport, both of whom support abortion-on-demand, concluded that “data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”
“My belief is that, at that time you’ve got a fully-formed, viable child. The state has some interest in protecting that baby,” said Kennedy.
“Mr. Kennedy’s position, as posted on X, is perfectly clear — no restrictions until the point of viability outside the womb,” a spokesperson for Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign told the Washington Examiner.
In fact, both Biden and Kennedy have staked out a position at odds with the majority of Americans. Polls have shown for decades that the vast majority of Americans oppose late-term abortion. Two-thirds of Americans said abortion should not be legal after the first trimester, according to a 2023 Marist poll. Fewer than one in five Americans said an abortionist should be able to end the life of an unborn child at any stage of pregnancy, with “no exceptions,” according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey.
As president, Joe Biden has never enumerated a single abortion he would oppose or pro-life bill he would sign.
RFK Jr. has also spoken of abortion in softer, more compassionate tones than the Biden campaign. “Every abortion is a tragedy. Many of them leave permanent trauma on the woman,” Kennedy told Steele. “I don’t think it’s ever okay.” On social media, Kennedy noted, “Sometimes, women abort healthy, viable late-term fetuses. These cases of purely ‘elective’ late-term abortion are very upsetting.”
Instead of backing pro-life legislation, Kennedy touted his “More Choices, More Life” plan. “The centerpiece of More Choices, More Life is a massive subsidized daycare initiative,” declares Kennedy on his website. “[W]e will pay 100% of care for the three million children under five who live beneath our poverty line. And we will cap the cost at 10% of family income for everyone else.” He would also increase the Child Tax Credit. Such a plan would “reduce abortions — by choice, not by force,” he contended.
Biden, too, has supportedgovernment-funded, universal pre-K — which has been associated with negative outcomes for children — and expanding the CTC.
Unlike Biden, Kennedy promised to streamline the U.S. adoption process and aid homes for expectant mothers struggling to care for their children.
The Biden campaign’s decision to attack Kennedy’s abortion position from both sides coincides with polls that show RFK Jr. potentially costing the Democratic candidate critical support in swing states. Republicans, too, have worried that Kennedy’s populist rhetoric may undercut their candidate in the fall. For his part, Kennedy has challenged Biden to drop out of the race and revealed that the Trump campaign approached him numerous times about becoming Trump’s vice president in 2024.
In addition to Kennedy, Biden faces third party challenges on the Left from Green Party candidate Jill Stein and professor Cornel West. “The more exposure these guys get, the better it is for us,” Trump ally Steve Bannon told The New York Times.
Aside from RFK Jr., Donald Trump faces no meaningful Independent challenge. The Constitution Party has nominated Randall Terry for president.
LifeNews Note: Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
The post Joe Biden and RFK Jr. Support Abortions Up to Birth, Neither Should Get Your Vote appeared first on LifeNews.com.
A senior DEI adviser to US Navy Admiral Lisa Franchetti has admitted in undercover footage that woke initiatives would evaporate if a "world war" breaks out, and that military colleagues think Diversity Equity and Inclusion is a "waste of time."
In undercover footage obtained by Louder with Crowder, Navy Senior Chief Thomas Riggs, who says he leads the military branch's DEI initiatives despite calling it irrelevant, revealed that many of his colleagues frown on the military's emphasis on wokeism.
"Diversity, equity, inclusion? Yeah, of course, they [military colleagues] think it's a waste of time. Except my boss, I mean, Lisa, the admiral, she doesn't think it is. She likes it. But secretly, everybody else is like eh," said Riggs. "You know what's going to happen when the first missile hits the first side of the first DEG [Guided Missile Escort Ship]? What's it going to matter? It won't. Diversity, equity, inclusion. It'll just be out the window."
Riggs also said that the most dangerous threat facing America today is China.
"Soon as China invades -- when China invades Taiwan. None of this is going to matter. That's what they're saying to me about my program," he said, adding that he thinks Donald Trump will win the November election.
"I think he will win [the election]. I think he will. I think he's going to win hands down.
BREAKING: Top DEI Advisor to @USNavy Admiral Lisa Franchetti Tells Undercover Journalist “China” is The United States Biggest Threat and That Woke Initiatives Will Be Gone if a ‘World War’ Breaks Out; Says Military Colleagues Think DEI is a “Waste of Time”; Believes Trump Will… pic.twitter.com/BrWh9Zkqfq
— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) May 16, 2024"Unless something happened…Like he goes to jail or something like that, or somebody kills him. I mean, I hate to say it, but, you know, that's kind of the only way he's -- I mean, people don't have a lot of faith in Biden."
"If we have a Republican in office, it will bolster our military…and I'm a Democrat. But I'm just -- from a strictly military standpoint, Republicans are always better for military."
Where's the lie?
That said, if Trump is reelected, Riggs said his job will be to slip DEI into the military in a more covert way.
"My job will still exist [if Trump is elected]. It's just like I was telling you -- DEI wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to come out and say I'm a DEI practitioner. It's like, now I can say -- I would just say I'm an Equal Opportunity advisor. Big climate specialist. And I would," he said.
"Like I told you, I'd skirt around DEI…would have to be a play on words, I would never be able to come out and say it. People would be like, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.’ There's no such thing as DEI anymore," Riggs continued.
"When I came into the program, I wrote an essay on white privilege in the United States military. I was able to get the job that I've gotten by talking about white privilege."
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
Have a Florida condo? Can you afford a $100,000 or higher special assessment for new safety standards?
After the collapse of a Surfside Building on June 24, 2021that killed 98 people, the state passed a structural safety law that is now biting owners.
Not only are insurance rates soaring, but owners are hit with huge special assessments topping $100,000.
The Wall Street Journal reports New Florida Law Roils Its Condo Market
Condo inventory for sale in South Florida has more than doubled since the first quarter of last year, to more than 18,000 units. While the sharp rise in Florida home insurance costs is driving some to sell, most of the units on the market are in buildings 30 years or older. Under the new law, buildings must pass milestone structural inspections no later than 30 years after they are built.
In Miami, about 38% of the housing stock is condos, the highest of any major metropolitan area in the U.S., according to Zillow. Of those buildings, nearly three-quarters are at least 30 years old. For those that have large repairs looming, many owners are scrambling to sell before Jan. 1 when building reserves must be fully funded to be in compliance with the law.
“I think this is just the beginning,” said Greg Main-Baillie, an executive managing director at real-estate firm Colliers, who oversees 40 condo renovation projects across the state.
Owners are struggling to find all-cash buyers because mortgage lenders are increasingly unwilling to take on the risk associated with these units. “It’s not the buyers that aren’t qualifying,” said Craig Studnicky, chief executive at ISG World. “It’s the buildings that aren’t qualifying.”
State law previously allowed condos to waive reserve funding year after year, leading many buildings, including the nearly 50-year-old Cricket Club, to keep next to nothing in their coffers. Now, about 40 units in the building of 220 are listed for sale but are seeing little interest.
“These units are practically being given away,” said Sari Papir, a retired real-estate agent who has lived in the Cricket Club with her partner Shaul Szlaifer since 2018. “Even if we found a buyer, what could we buy with the pennies we’d receive for our unit?”
Some are worried developers may already be purchasing condos in the building for a potential takeover, where a developer tries to gain control of a building to knock it down and build a newer, more luxurious one. These condo terminations are happening up and down the state’s coastline. While the rules can vary by building, if enough people vote to sell their units, the others have to follow along.
Those who cannot sell and don’t have the special assessment, will be evicted and their units seized for whatever the Associations can get for them.
South Florida listings have doubled in the past year to over 18,000. Few of those units will sell, and those that do sell will be at a huge haircut.
The Journal noted the plight of Ivan Rodriguez who liquidated his 401K to buy a condo for $190,000. He then faced a $134,000 special assessment. Eventually he sold the unit for $110,000.
Auto insurance is up more than 20 percent from a year ago. In many places, private home insurance isn’t available at all. Consumers are steaming.
Insurance data from the BLS, chart by Mish
On February 17, 2024 I asked Got the Insurance Blues? Auto and Home Insurance Costs are Soaring
Car insurance is on an amazing run. For 13 straight months, insurance is up at least 1.0 percent. For 20 straight months car insurance is up at least 0.7 percent.
Home insurance, if you can get it at all from any private insurer, is also rising at a fast clip.
If you live in a flood zone, hurricane zone, or fire zone, insurance may be very difficult to get.
Citing wildfire risk, State Farm will not renew policies on 30,000 homes and 42,000 business in California. Blame the state, not insurers.
On March 26, I noted Proposition 103 Backfires, State Farm to Cancel 72,000 California Policies
Proposition 103 limited the annual increases of insurance companies. State Farm responded by cancelling 72,000 policies.
Carmen Balber, the executive director of Consumer Watchdog, said “The industry is not going to start covering Californians again without a mandate.”
“That is why we think the legislature needs to step in and require insurance companies to cover people.”
Force companies to cover people. What a hoot. The insurers would all leave and everyone would be on the “FAIR” plan.
Think!
Think carefully about where you want to live. And if it’s a condo, you better be prepared for huge special assessments.
And most of all, know your builder. For discussion, please see America’s Homebuilder: D.R. Horton Homes Falling Apart in Months
The Peruvian government has officially categorized transgender and intersex people as "mentally ill," which the health ministry says is the only way that Peru's public health services could guarantee "guarantee full coverage of medical attention for mental health," The Telegraph reports.
Conditions now recognized as mental health disorders include transsexualism, dual role transvestism, gender identity disorder in childhood, other gender identity disorders, fetish transvestism, and egodystonic sexual orientation."
The classification aligns closely with the the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which classifies "gender dysphoria" as a mental disorder.
Peru's decree follows the release of the 10th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) by the World Health Organization.
"From the review of the ICD-10 diagnoses included in the Essential Health Insurance Plan, related to the condition, person with a mental health problem, the omission of seven (07) ICD-10 diagnoses has been identified," officials wrote (translated). "In this sense, it is necessary to modify the Essential Health Insurance Plan incorporating seven (07) ICD-10 diagnoses."
There has been high levels of homophobic, transphobic and gender violence in Peru Credit: Fotoholica Press
The Health Ministry (MINSA) later released a statement saying that these individuals should not necessarily undergo "reconversion therapies."
Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who notably killed Bud Light's brand, fled to Peru "to feel safe" in the wake of a national boycot of the brew. He's thus far been silent on the matter.
Authored by Alan Dershowitz via The Gatestone Institute,
If you were flipping between CNN and Fox News following the cross-examination of Stormy Daniels in the New York criminal case against former President Donald Trump, you would have had the impression that the CNN commentator, who professed to be reporting what happened in the courtroom, described a completely different event from what the Fox News reporter, who was also in the courtroom, described. It was as if they had seen two different witnesses and two different lawyers.
The CNN commentator reported that Daniels had done a great job holding up against the incompetent cross-examination of Trump's lawyer. The Fox News commentator reported that the extraordinarily effective Trump lawyer had totally destroyed Daniels' credibility. Who were you to believe? The CNN commentator was an experienced lawyer who was purporting to describe accurately what had happened without bias or subjectivity. The Fox News commentator was a former judge and prosecutor with vast experience, who also claimed to be describing the cross-examination without bias. Neither of the commentators even pretended to paint a gray picture. One was starkly black, the other unambiguously white. No nuance in either account.
If the trial had been televised, the dominant color would have been gray. Perry Mason cross-examinations rarely occur in real life, and witnesses like Daniels rarely emerge unscathed from cross-examinations even by mediocre lawyers.
We, the American public, however, have been denied the right to judge for ourselves how the case against the once and possibly future president is going. We cannot judge the credibility of witnesses, the fairness of the judge or the effectiveness of the lawyers. We must depend on the subjective and generally biased accounts of often partisan "reporters."
Polls following the OJ Simpson case suggested that those who personally watched the trial on TV were less surprised by the not guilty verdict than those who only read about it in the media, which generally described it as an open and shut case and predicted a guilty verdict. They downplayed or omitted the gaps in the prosecution case and the mistakes made by prosecutors that may have led jurors to find reasonable doubt.
The same may be true of the Trump case, except that everyone is seeing the case through the prism of the reporters, rather than with their own eyes. Those who get their "news" from anti-Trump sources will be surprised and outraged if there is an acquittal or hung jury in this "strong" case. Those who get their "news" from pro-Trump sources will be surprised and outraged by a conviction in this "weak" case.
The result of making us rely on partisan secondary sources rather than our own direct observations is inevitable distrust in the justice system. If "Sunlight is the best disinfectant," lack of visibility is a major source of distrust.
Every important trial involving public figures should be televised. Now the trial of Senator Robert Menendez is starting. It, too, should be publicized so that the public can see how the judiciary deals with an important case involving a member of the legislative branch. Even the Supreme Court now permits live audio broadcasts of important appellate cases. Hopefully, they will soon allow telecasting since there is little difference between listening and seeing the justices and the lawyers.
The framers of the Constitution intended all judicial proceedings to be public – no secret trials. At the time of the framing, public meant open to print journalists. Today, public means audio and video publication.
The New York trial of Trump is a national scandal. There is no real crime. The judge has allowed testimony that is highly prejudicial and irrelevant. He has made numerous unfair rulings, of which the prosecution has taken advantage. The public has the right to see this abuse with their own eyes, so that we all can judge for ourselves and not allow possibly biased reporters to judge for us.
Now the government's star witness is testifying. Michael Cohen's credibility promises to be a key factor in the jury's deliberation. Every citizen should have a right to make his or her own assessment of his credibility or lack thereof.
There is no good argument for allowing CNN to tell us whether he is believable, when we might come to a different conclusion based on direct observation with our own eyes.
Trump-hating Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney says President Joe Biden should have "immediately" pardoned former President Donald Trump as a power play to look like "the big guy."
"[Biden] should have fought like crazy to keep this prosecution from going forward," Romney told MSNBC. "It was a win-win for Donald Trump."
"You may disagree with this, but had I been President Biden when the Justice Department brought on indictments, I would have immediately pardoned him. I’d have pardoned President Trump," he added. "Why? Well, because it makes me, President Biden, the big guy and the person I pardoned a little guy."
According to Romney, President Lyndon B. Johnson set the precedent for such a move, and that Biden could have urged New York prosecutors in the hush money case to drop the charges.
"I have been around for a while. If LBJ had been president and he didn’t want something like this to happen, he’d have been all over that prosecutor, saying, ‘You better not bring that forward or I’m gonna drive you out of office,’" said the Utah Republican.
Romney also slammed Republican Trump loyalists for showing up to the courthouse to show support for the former president.
"I think it’s a terrible fault for our country to see people attacking our legal system — that’s an enormous mistake," Romney continued. "I think it’s also demeaning for people to quite apparently try and run for vice president by donning a red tie and standing outside the courthouse. It’s just — I’d have felt awkward."
Of note, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) have all attended court this week. Trump VP hopefuls Doug Burgum and Vivek Ramaswamy have also shown up.
On Thursday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) joined the action.
Trump has more Republican lackeys, including Gaetz, dressed in Trump costumes behind him in court today pic.twitter.com/PHETnzAZsA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 16, 2024Standing back and standing by, Mr. President. pic.twitter.com/gGPeTLtWmv
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) May 16, 2024
By Michael Every of Rabobank
Stocks up, Stonks up, bonds up, gold up, crypto up, and copper up to a new record high. Almost everything rocketed after US CPI came a slither lower than expected --and 30 minutes earlier than scheduled on the BLS website, which markets looking only at Bloomberg didn’t notice(!)-- but with no decline in crucial core services from near 5% y-o-y, even as retail sales came in much weaker. So, more stagflation overall really, but that’s markets in the free world now, as traders priced in the Fed cuts in September and December which our Philip Marey was already calling.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Blinken played ‘Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World’ in Kyiv as Russia rocketed Ukraine and took even more territory from it: the situation there officially remains “worrying.” That’s after humiliating US retreats from Afghanistan and Niger, ally Colombia moving out of the US orbit, Venezuela moving armed forces to the border of Guyana’s oil-rich region of Essequibo; White House calls of a calm Middle East pre-October 7, as war there now goes on, with US forces regularly struck by pro-Iran militias; Iran cooperating with North Korea more; and Filipino (with a US defence treaty) and Chinese flotillas in another tense stand-off in the South China Sea. Realpolitik is saying, “OK, boomer” to those who cover Neil Young.
In the EU, there was an attempted assassination of Slovakia’s pro-Russia Prime Minister Fico, who is still in critical condition: the alleged culprit is a liberal, pro-EU poet. In the Netherlands, the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders announced a coalition government with the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the New Social Contract party (NSC), and the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), though Wilders will not be PM, just éminence grise. Near the EU, Moldova signed an agreement with it on cooperation in security and defence: but the EU almost certainly won’t defend it from Russia. The ‘free world’ keeps rocking.
In the US, we are promised Biden-Trump debates on 27 June and 10 September in a new format with no studio audience or third-party candidates: cynics will say markets must therefore stay bid until July at least. Regardless, both men at the debate mean huge fiscal deficits ahead, and the latest tariffs show markets will get ‘Triden’ or ‘Brump’. The ‘free markets world’ keeps rocking too.
More so as China suggested it may institute what I always said was the inevitable endgame for its housing market: using state funds to buy up millions of unwanted homes, and turning them into social housing, effectively nationalizing it. A flurry of related questions remain, including the staggering price tag, but the overall plan is clear: houses are for living in, not speculation, and Chinese capital will be freed up from mortgage lending to focus on (military) industrial production.
And what has the free world got to offer by contrast? In Australia, a housing auctioneer bewails the barista who serves him his coffee has to work for 45 years just to get a deposit. Even the Prime Minister is kicking a tenant out of his rental property because he can cash in on higher house prices. In short, housing is for speculation and not for living in; and western capital is tied up in mortgage lending instead of focusing on (military) industrial production.
This underlines how radically Western policy needs to change. After all, Russia is now spending 8.7% of GDP on defence: economists who pooh-poohed war in early 2022 might note that’s FIVE ‘Italys’, with far higher purchasing power parity. President Putin is talking ‘guns or butter’ choices and appointed an economist as defence minister to make the war economy run more efficiently. The West can’t work out just guns, butter, or housing, let alone ‘guns or butter or housing’.
Linking this all up, the brilliant and needling ‘Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World’ was an attack on the worst side of free-market America that was a global hyperpower that didn’t look after its own poor well, not a way to praise it. Just read the lyrics or watch the video:
“There’s colors on the street; Red, white, and blue
People shuffling their feet; People sleeping in their shoes
There’s a warning sign on the road ahead; There’s a lot of people saying we’d be better off dead
Don’t feel like Satan, but I am to them; So I try to forget it any way I can
Keep on rockin' in the free world (x4)
I see a woman in the night; With a baby in her hand
There's an old street light; Near a garbage can
Now she put the kid away and she’s gone to get a hit; She hates her life and what she’s done to it
There’s one more kid that’ll never go to school; Never get to fall in love, never get to be cool
Keep on rockin' in the free world (x4)
We got a thousand points of light; For the homeless man; We got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand
We've got department stores and toilet paper; Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people says keep hope alive; Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive
Keep on rockin' in the free world (x4)”
If Neil Young were to update the lyrics today, he might add something about Stonks and crypto perhaps, but an awful lot of it still stings as it is: even more so as America is no longer a hyperpower, and others keep on rocketing the free world.
The Pentagon announced Thursday that its floating pier built for Gaza aid has finally been completed and installed. Badly needed humanitarian aid, especially food, will begin being delivered by ships imminently.
The completion comes more than two months after President Biden first unveiled the plan, and has been fraught with challenges including inclement weather as well as threats on Hamas against any potential foreign troop presence.
On this latter point, Navy Vice Adm. Brad Cooper of Central Command, said that "protection of U.S. forces participating is a top priority. And as such, in the last several weeks, the United States and Israel have developed an integrated security plan to protect all the personnel."
Image source: US Central Command (CENTCOM)
He added, "We are confident in the ability of this security arrangement to protect those involved." Israel's military will provide security on the shore while the USS Arleigh Burke and the USS Paul Ignatius patrol waters just off the coast.
US CENTCOM has further confirmed, "Trucks carrying humanitarian assistance are expected to begin moving ashore in the coming days." The military statement added, "The United Nations will receive the aid and coordinate its distribution into Gaza."
Overseeing and handling the inbound humanitarian aid itself will be the UN's World Food Program.
Israel's military commented that "We have been working for months on full cooperation with (the U.S. military) on this project, facilitating it, supporting it in any way possible."
Some humanitarian aid organizations and leaders have still criticized the costly pier project, questioning why Israel doesn't just let overland convoys into the Gaza Strip:
Because land crossings could bring in all the needed aid if Israeli officials allowed, the U.S.-built pier-and-sea route "is a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist," said Scott Paul, an associate director of the Oxfam humanitarian organization.
One recent issue to arise is the increased number of attacks by Israeli settlers on aid trucks and convoys. Israeli media has confirmed these attacks, including the below:
Israeli settlers block an aid truck for Gaza and beat up the driver unconscious pic.twitter.com/vHsss3oTvF
— What the media hides. (@narrative_hole) May 16, 2024Several examples of such filmed attacks on aid convoys have been widely circulating over the last days...
“This driver thought he could bring rice to Gaza. Everything here is on the floor” In a video posted on social media, an Israeli settler expresses joy while recording footage of destroyed aid intended for Gaza. Israeli settlers attacked the truck and destroyed the aid they were… pic.twitter.com/7HwtvFyfCX
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) May 16, 2024The US military has further described of what comes next as follows: "Trucks carrying humanitarian assistance are expected to begin moving ashore in the coming days." The statement added: "The United Nations will receive the aid and coordinate its distribution into Gaza."
Authored by Caden Pearsen via The Epoch Times
Hunter Biden lost his bid to halt his tax evasion district court proceedings in California on Wednesday after the Ninth Circuit declined to hear his appeal.
District Judge Mark Scarsi denied Mr. Biden’s motion for a stay of proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California pending the outcome of his appeal. The stay had been requested on May 10 after Mr. Biden filed his interlocutory appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit panel ruled in favor of the special counsel and dismissed Mr. Biden’s appeal.
This rendered moot a motion filed by Mr. Biden’s lawyers on Tuesday asking the judge for an expedited hearing on his motion to halt proceedings or, alternatively, for the judge to consider his written motion without hearing oral arguments.
“Because the panel’s order moots Mr. Biden’s motion, the Court grants the application to rule on shortened time and denies the motion,” Judge Scarsi wrote in his order on Wednesday.
Judge Scarsi’s order stated that his prior orders and the trial schedule would remain in place, and that the court would hear any further requests to modify the pre-trial schedule at a conference on May 29.
Mr. Biden, who had argued that the district court’s jurisdiction had been divested once he filed his interlocutory appeal, filed his motion for a stay after the judge wrote in a May 9 order that failing to do so would be “at his own peril.”
Special Counsel David Weiss, who is prosecuting the case on behalf of the government, opposed Mr. Biden’s bid to halt proceedings while waiting to hear the outcome from the Ninth Circuit. He argued that any “problems” with scheduling conflicts in both Mr. Biden’s California tax evasion case and his Delaware gun charges case “are entirely of his own making.”
In his brief asking for an expedited hearing filed on Tuesday, Mr. Biden’s lawyers told Judge Scarsi that he wasn’t aware that failing to file a motion to stay pending appeal would be “at his own peril,” and that he promptly filed his motion to stay the next day after the judge’s order came down.
In requesting an expedited hearing, Angela Machala and Abbe Lowell, the lawyers representing Mr. Biden, had sought to address scheduling conflicts in pretrial proceedings that threatened to emerge due to potential appeals court proceedings and an upcoming trial on June 3 in his Delaware case.
The lawyers argued that Mr. Biden was not to blame for the overlap in the separate court proceedings.
Specifically, Mr. Biden’s lawyers asked that a hearing on his motion to stay take place before a pretrial conference scheduled for May 29 to comply with court rules on when hearings can be set.
This potential conflict was rendered moot by the Ninth Circuit’s ruling on Wednesday. Similarly, the Third Circuit, where Mr. Biden had taken his Delaware appeal, also dismissed his motions.
Mr. Biden had previously argued that the district court had been divested of its jurisdiction when he filed an appeal with the Ninth Circuit. This claim was disputed by the special counsel.
On May 9, Judge Mark Scarsi stated that the court “has not vacated the pretrial schedule, and absent a request for [a stay], Mr. Biden ignores the Court’s orders at his own peril.”
In response, Mr. Biden filed his motion for stay pending appeal the next day. In that filing, he maintained his position that the court had been divested of jurisdiction by the act of filing his interlocutory appeal.
Mr. Biden’s lawyers argued that he was not at fault for “creating the crisis” that led to their requesting the stay, nor did the scheduling conflict come about “as a result of excusable neglect.”
In contrast, the special counsel sought to counter these arguments on Tuesday, arguing that “the defendant’s ‘hardship’ is one he has created for himself.”
The Epoch Times contacted Mr. Biden’s attorneys for comment.
Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank needs to spend long weekends at his thoroughbred horse breeding farm in steeplechase country in upper Baltimore County to reflect on what has happened to the sportswear company over the past decade. Once a star of the apparel industry, UA is now undergoing a restructuring as its share price plunged to 2010 levels.
Let's skip the fourth quarter fiscal 2024 report and focus on the restructuring plan and the dismal outlook for the year.
UA's Board of Directors approved a restructuring plan estimated to cost about $70 million to $90 million - including employee severance and benefits costs.
Up to $50 million in cash-related charges, consisting of approximately $15 million in employee severance and benefits costs, and $35 million related to various transformational initiatives, and
Up to $40 million in non-cash charges comprised of approximately $7 million in employee severance and benefits costs and $33 million in facility, software and other asset-related charges and impairments.
This year's fiscal outlook is beyond bleak and outright horrible, with demand expected to implode across the North American segment.
Here are the highlights of the outlook:
Revenue is expected to be down at a low-double-digit percentage rate. This includes an expected 15 to 17 percent decline in North America as the company works to meaningfully reset this business following years of heightened promotional activities, particularly in its DTC business and a low-single-digit percent decline in its international business due to more conservative macro consumer trends and actions to protect the brand strength it has built.
Gross margin is expected to be up 75 to 100 basis points compared to the prior year, driven by a material reduction in promotional and discounting activities in the company's direct-to-consumer business and product costing benefits.
Selling, general, and administrative expenses are expected to be down 2 to 4 percent.
Operating income is expected to be $50 to $70 million. Excluding the mid-point of anticipated restructuring charges, adjusted operating income is expected to be $130 to $150 million.
Diluted earnings per share is expected to be between $0.02 and $0.05. Adjusted diluted earnings per share is expected to be between $0.18 and $0.21.
Capital expenditures are expected to be between $200 to $220 million.
Plank commented on the outlook:
"Due to a confluence of factors, including lower wholesale channel demand and inconsistent execution across our business, we are seizing this critical moment to make proactive decisions to build a premium positioning for our brand, which will pressure our top and bottom line in the near term.
"Over the next 18 months, there is a significant opportunity to reconstitute Under Armour's brand strength through achieving more, by doing less and focusing on our core fundamentals: driving demand through better products and storytelling, running smarter plays like simplifying our operating model and elevating our consumer experience. In parallel, we're focused on cost management and implementing the strategies necessary to grow our brand and improve shareholder value as we move forward."
And, of course, to ensure the company's stock doesn't go to zero, the Board of Directors authorized the repurchase of up to $500 million of UA's outstanding Class C common stock.
Shares initially opened at 2010 lows.
...have since found a panic bid on the buyback announcement.
Sigh, Plank.
In response primarily to Kristor and Bonald, we have:
“I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor heights, nor depths, nor any other thing in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39
First Corinthians 13 – possibly the most profound and beautiful passage anywhere, including all philosophy and all literature.
The story of the Prodigal Son. God as the Father who forgives the truly repentant son and welcomes him home. I remember identifying with the “good” son as a kid and feeling a bit resentful on his behalf.
I was lost but now I am found. (Luke)
Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.
To which we can add:
Matthew 18:21-35
21Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” 22Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
23″Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. 26″The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27The servant’s master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go. 28″But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. 29″His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back. 30″But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. 32″Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. 35″This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
On pain of contradiction, given the injunction concerning forgiveness and avoiding hypocrisy on the topic, it cannot be God who casts you into hell forever and ever to be tormented for all eternity. Kristor’s position seems to be that we cast ourselves into that hell if we desire non-being. By doing this, we are seeking to avoid the love of God but have this love nonetheless thrust upon us. An eternal hatred of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful would seem to have man standing toe to toe with God with an infinite capacity for suffering. I take our finitude as axiomatic. On the other hand, I read of the “homeless” drug addicts of San Francisco – homeless because they choose to be as near as possible to their dealers – and because they have alienated all their friends and family. One wonders about the limits of their hedonism/masochism. I have no particular problem with a self-created hell, but one where if one asks to be rescued from it, that call will be answered.
There is a rather strange YouTube channel called Shaman Oaks. He interviews people who have had near death experiences. Around 30% of them go to hell. They are there for a very long time. There many of them are raped and otherwise maltreated. One woman found herself abducted in a kind of human trafficking; occupying a desolate house in a desertscape. She would be prostituted out to whoever turned up. In an act of defiance, she started singing either a hymn or a Christmas carol. She was told to stop immediately. Instead, she prayed to Jesus to rescue her and he did. Similar things happened to a man. Jesus took him in his arms and flew him to the Heavenly City. As he did so, he realized that Jesus loved him the most of any human being. But, he also realized that each one of us is also his favorite.
It seems to be a near universal that the key scenes of our life flash before us as we are about to die. Upon death, there is a life review where we are asked to judge ourselves, partly to learn from our mistakes. We experience things from the point of view of those we interacted with, which would be truly educational. It seems like any illusions one suffered from about the point of life and what kind of person one was would be removed.
At the core of a belief in God lies intuition. There are no arguments for the existence of God that can convince skeptical non-believers. It is not something that can be imposed upon anyone. That is generally true of argument in general. Arguments are only necessary if someone does not already agree with us and clearly other people are often impervious to our arguments as we are impervious to theirs. Since there are contradictions within the Bible one can only resolve them through intuition and argument. The injunction to forgive and the parable of the Prodigal Son are not consistent with a hell and eternal suffering imposed by God. Self-imposed, perhaps.
I know of no philosopher who simply adopts someone else’s point of view. One reads and studies and picks and chooses from the thoughts and advice that one reads. Maybe sometimes it is simply that one is not ready for a truth yet. The Bible is filled with different and conflicting ideas. Much of it must also be interpreted. The parables of Jesus in particular. In a Bible study group I led many decades ago, an old lady joined us for one meeting. Upon listening to us speculate about the meaning of a particular passage she said, “I don’t want to listen to you. I want the priest to provide us with the definitive meaning.” She didn’t seem to realize that he was just another man like the rest of us. Bring ten priests together and the chances are you will have ten varying interpretations. There is no literalism to be found. Christian fundamentalists claim to be literal but they pick and choose like the rest of us – or rather members of their denomination do and then claim it to be the infallible word of God.
According to this concordance, among the evangelists, it is Matthew that emphasizes eternal damnation. https://www.openbible.info/topics/eternal_damnation_in_hell
Revelation dwells on the topic a lot. But, Revelation is also the most florid, over-the-top and psychedelic of the Bible chapters. It barely squeaked in as part of a very human horse trading. Interestingly, Matthew is also the most florid among the evangelists. Mark, the driest and most minimalist. John the most beloved among intellectuals and the last gospel to be written. Luke is interesting as containing stories not found in the other gospels, I think specifically about Paul’s conversion and the martyrdom of St. Stephen.
The concordance has things like Romans – “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” John 3:6 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Mark 9:43 “And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.” I notice that a lot of the references to hellfire emphasize that the fire is unquenchable, which is not the same as the torment itself being eternal.
If the Scripture were reliable in some simple manner, it would not be possible for people to quote back and forth competing scriptural passages. I knew a former Anglican minister who had lost his faith. Jehovah’s Witnesses came to his door and they had a scripture battle on his doorstep.
Bonald writes, “Claims of inerrancy have been made both for Scripture and for the Church as custodian of Tradition, and one can see why. If we may pick and choose, we might as well throw out the whole thing altogether and cease to claim divine authority for our own imaginings.”
Instead, the Church picks and chooses for us. I do not claim divine authority. I come from five generations of Anglican ministers with degrees in philosophy and theology. I feel like one of those dogs who have been bred for a specific purpose like a pointer – pointing at the body of the animal the hunter has just killed, or a retriever. I seem to have exactly the same mental strengths and weaknesses as my father. If I have any talent, it is in philosophy. And regardless of ability, I also have an unquenchable curiosity and sense of wonder. I am happy to worship the same God as you but regard doctrine as a matter debate. Philosophers are inherently heretical. Theologians, less so. At one point, I thought I would study the theologians only to discover that they were very much second-rate philosophers and returned back to the study of philosophy.
My father wrote a book called, The Stephen Experience (available on Amazon!) It was a transcription of what an acquaintance said while in a series of trances spanning several years, supposedly channeling St. Stephen the First Christian Martyr. He regarded it as his life mission to publish it only to find that about one copy per month was sold. “St. Stephen” advised his listeners not to regard what he said as a matter of authority but to judge it yourself. If it is found to be of use keep it. If not, reject it.
I had a rather charming student last semester who asked, “Is it really necessary to do all this thinking?” The answer is no. Women, in particular, seem more inclined to allow themselves to be told what to think and to be happy not asking too many questions. And the student was indeed a woman. Evolutionary psychology suggests that women have evolved to be led – usually by men. They are, on average, more agreeable than men and thus more conformist. When conservatism is dominant, they tend to be ultra conservative. When the winds of history change and Woke progressivism is in the air, they tend to be the most unquestioningly woke and progressive. The Woke and progressive are infamously immune to accusations of contradicting themselves because thinking is not really what they are interested in doing. My own very intelligent mother could not care less about the ultimate nature of reality and most even intelligent women seem to share this disposition. A religiously minded sister is also anti-philosophical.
Roy Baumeister in an interview said that he knew many smart women scientists. Their presence was fine so long as male scientists set the tone. When men were asked whether a scientist’s goal should be truth, or avoiding pursuing topics that might have some detrimental impact on some group or other, or whether “It’s complicated,” most women scientists chose, “It’s complicated.” The men largely opted for truth. When too many scientists are women they abandon truth and start engaging in cancel culture. The main science journals like Science and Nature, the main medical journals The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine, have all been corrupted and compromised by political correctness in this manner.
Bonald is right that thinking for yourself is socially destructive. That is where Vico thinks the so-called Age of Men leads. He also points out that knowing this does nothing to obviate the problem. Naïve unquestioning of authority cannot be regained once it has been lost.
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
Tesla is renting parking lots to store thousands of vehicles. This helps explain the mass layoffs.
Please consider Tesla’s Storing Unsold Inventory In An Abandoned Mall Parking Lot
Parking lots full of Tesla vehicles are becoming impossible to ignore as the electric automaker seemingly can’t sell enough cars and trucks to match its rate of production. According to its own figures, the electric automaker produced 46,561 more vehicles than it delivered to customers during the first quarter of 2024. Where are all these cars going? Parking lots at its factories, malls and airports.
Recent drone footage from the automaker’s Fremont, California factory shows that cars are still rolling off the assembly lines at a high rate to fill the site’s lots. Things aren’t different on the other side of the Atlantic. Neuhardenberg, a small town in Germany of less than 3,000 residents, is complaining about the noise Tesla transporters are making as the company parks cars at the nearby regional airport.
From the above link …
The residents of Neuhardenberg and the surrounding communities are annoyed by the traffic noise: many trucks loaded with Tesla cars drive across the streets to the airport where the cars are stored. It should continue like this at least until June.
Around Neuhardenberg the rural peace is over: columns of trucks from the Tesla factory in Grünheide thunder across the streets several times an hour. The reason: Since last summer, the nearby regional airport has been used as a parking area for Tesla vehicles.
The contract between Tesla and the airport operator runs until June 2024. It is still unclear whether it will be extended. The people of Neuhardenberg will have to continue to adapt to the trucks.
On April 15, I noted Elon Musk Fires 10 Percent of Tesla Workforce, Prepares for “Next Phase of Growth”
Preparing for Growth
Preparing for growth by firing working is like trying to lose weight by stocking the pantry with more potato chips.
On May 6, I commented Another Round of Mass Firings at Tesla, Sales Must Be Imploding
Tesla announced yet another round of layoffs today. News came in the typical way, an email starting “Dear Employee”. It seems “Dear Ex-Employee” would be more fitting.
Ever since 2016, Musk has been promising “Full Self-Driving FSD” within a year.
Clearly this is 4-D chess … in an attempt to hide the vaporware. Full Self Driving (FSD) is nonexistent, but promised “next year”, every year since 2016.
I’m old school and don’t know 4d chess but Tesla is fascinating with it entering the quadrillion dollar robotaxi segment in 3 months and undergoing another road of layoffs while fsd is the future of passenger cars too. Almost like it’s all vaporware and $tsla makes things up https://t.co/HnT9EhYtm4
— jbulltard (@jbulltard1) May 6, 2024Musk labels his offering as FSD right now despite numerous complaints from the Department of Transportation. The term is ridiculous at present.
If the Biden administration did not want this so badly, FSD may have been pulled.
Musk statements are no longer best viewed as excessive hype, but rather tiresome lies.
For four years running, Musk promised to make 50,000 electric semis. Tesla delivered a grand total of 100.
The cybertruck is a joke. I expect musk will abandon it. 50,000 semis a year. Forget about it.
Elon Musk has bet it all on the EV taxi despite the fact its FSD is true vaporware.
Please note Ford Loses $132,000 on Each EV Produced
The good news was Ford sales were down 20 percent holding the losses to $1.3 billion.
The Chinese automaker BYD (Build Your Dreams) announces a 700-mile range PHEV that will be built in Mexico, this year.
That 700-mile range includes the gas engine. I do not have specks on the EV milage stand alone.
For discussion, please see BYD Unveils the “Shark” a Plug-in Hybrid Pickup Truck Built in Mexico
Meanwhile, Back in Mexico
Back in Mexico, Tesla, Ford, Nissan, and other automakers have announced the construction or expansion of facilities.
Despite everyone rushing to Mexico to build the cars and Trucks that we need to reduce fossil fuel consumption, Biden is going to quadruple taxes on them.
Let’s see how good these vehicles are before we go gaga over them. But at least they aren’t vaporware.
Here’s the final irony Biden Wants EVs so Badly That He Will Quadruple Tariffs on Them
As a result, US consumers will overpay so much, that few people will want them despite huge subsidies. This is why you lose $132,000 on each EV.
