THE WEB OF DYSTOPIAN TYRANNY—The Hunger Games thumbnail

THE WEB OF DYSTOPIAN TYRANNY—The Hunger Games

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By Kelleigh Nelson

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” — Vladimir Lenin

“Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.” — President John F. Kennedy

“For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.” ¯ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Everyone may be called “comrade,” but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.” — Thomas Sowell, 1930 -, American political thinker

In 1952, as John F. Kennedy was campaigning for the Senate, he addressed the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Federation of Labor.  He focused on the expansion of Communism and the priority of containment. The future senator referred to the Communist threat as “an enemy, powerful, unrelenting and implacable who seeks to dominate the world by subversion and conspiracy.”  He asserted that, “All problems are dwarfed by the necessity of the West to maintain against the Communists a balance of power.”  He also pointed out that containment was necessary not only for United States military safety, but also because of the threat Communism posed in “political and economic” spheres.

Here is the full transcript of that amazing speech.

Can you imagine any person running for office, or for that matter, anyone in Congress giving a speech like that today?  Congressman Larry McDonald was the last Democrat who spoke words of freedom.  He was the Chairman of the John Birch Society.

As Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said, “The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”  Do Not Comply!

Compare John Kennedy’s Senate campaign speech to the speeches of the Democrat Party members today.

America’s Communist Infiltration

The slow destruction of a once beautiful and thriving people has been in the works since the first socialists arrived in America in 1824. Robert Owen created the Utopian Socialist Society of New Harmony, Indiana in 1825. He tested some of his writings and speeches in both Scotland and Indiana and his experiments were very influential on Marx, Engels, and other socialists and communists at the time and later on. This led to Owen being mentioned in the Communist Manifesto and would lead to the creation of other utopian societies around the country.

Robert Owen’s influence reached key members of society. In February and March of 1825, Owen gave two speeches to Congress when figures such as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and others were present. Wouldn’t you love to know what our early presidents and founders thought of Owen’s speeches!

In 1848 we were flooded with immigrants from Germany, many of whom were Marxists whose socialism had failed in Germany. By 1861, there were 13 high ranking Marxist officers within the Union Army.  This is documented.

By the 1930s, communists had infiltrated our schools (The Turning of the Tides by former Congressman Paul Shafer and John Howland Snow). Teachers were being taught how to subtly teach Marxism.  Teachers’ unions were started as early as 1916.

From 1950-1954, the public was alerted to growing communism within all segments of our government and it was already late in the game. Senator Joseph McCarthy tried to save the country, but was himself destroyed and his reputation sullied with lies.

Now, Communist China owns most all of America, land, businesses, education, banks, most portions of the government and certainly the military, especially Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, who twice disobeyed the orders of the Commanders in Chief. First the treasonous act with China when Trump was President and his recent refusal to shoot down the Red Chinese spy balloon when Biden ordered it shot.

The doors of our country are now open, not for those with skills to increase America’s greatness, but to the dregs of the underworld, most of whom are young men, gang affiliates, drug runners, child traffickers and more. Millions of illegals have entered America since Biden took office.

We are owned by the enemies of freedom and I cannot get my fellow citizens to call and write their colluding, money hungry, power seeking basturds in DC nor their state legislatures and tell them what we want and don’t want.  Only a handful of folks will let their voices be heard.

Have we heard any politician expose the manifest evils of the Great Reset’s Klaus Schwab, Yuval Harari and the United Nations? These are the globalist organizations whose plans are to reduce the population to serfs and slaves.

They are the new communist slave masters.

Will they even wake up when they’re loaded in the box cars?

It is left to the people.

Culling America’s Breadbox

To say America’s breadbox is declining would be an understatement.

A Texas dairy farm was completely destroyed in a major explosion and 18,000 cattle are dead.  U.S. Beef cattle industry is at the lowest since 1962.

Cattle facilities are exploding everywhere.  An article in To the Point News by Mike Ryan explains what is happening.  If it doesn’t come in for you, join up, as Dr. Jack Wheeler and Mike Ryan consistently score with valuable information.

Belle Carter reporting for Natural News tells us that nearly two in ten cows injected with mRNA die instantly.  For Australian farmers/ranchers to keep their cattle and not go out of business, the government is forcing the mRNA injections containing spike protein on all cattle. Dylan Eleven reporting for Principia-Scientific that out of a herd of 200, 35 cows dropped dead from the mRNA injections.

There have been over 100 food processing plant fires in the last two years. Too many to be coincidental albeit there are around 5300 processing plant fires every year, but we don’t know how many of those process food.

Attorney Thomas Renz reported that the lobbyists for the Cattleman and Pork Associations in several states have confirmed they will be using mRNA vaccines in pigs and cows starting in April, 2023.  Renz states, “No one knows the impacts of doing this but we are all potentially facing the risk of being a #Died Suddenly if we don’t stop this.”

Since 2018, pork producers have been using customizable mRNA-based “vaccines” on their herds, and this has slipped completely under the radar.

Dr. Joseph Mercola’s article on Children’s Health Defense is essential reading. He writes:

As described on Merck’s animal health website:

“A revolutionary swine vaccine platform, SEQUIVITY harnesses RNA particle technology to create customized prescription vaccines against strains of influenza A virus in swine, porcine circovirus (PCV), rotavirus and beyond. It’s supported by a sophisticated dashboard filled with comprehensive data and insights …

“The very first RNA-based livestock vaccine, a swine influenza (H3N2) RNA shot, was licensed over a decade ago in 2012, and was developed by Harris  vaccines. The company followed up with an avian influenza mRNA shot in 2015.  Harris vaccines was acquired by Merck Animal Health later that year.”

Right, and we’re supposed to believe that eating meat from an animal who has been given all these injections won’t hurt the human population?!  Probably a good idea to do as our Jewish brethren do and avoid pork in all its forms.  No more bacon!

Dr. Peter McCullough tells you to do the very same thing in his latest Substack article, Novel Vaccine Technologies in Veterinary Medicine: A Herald to Human Medicine Vaccines.

So, baby back ribs and bacon are gone, and cattle are next.

Depending upon state laws demanding all ranchers and farmers jab their cattle, including their milk cows, which will eliminate butter, milk, buttermilk, cheese, cottage cheese, steaks, prime rib, chuck roasts, hamburgers, and my favorite, ice cream, etc., beef will also become verboten.

From an AP News article, No, farmers aren’t required to vaccinate livestock with mRNA vaccines, “There is no requirement or mandate that producers vaccinate their livestock for any disease,” U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson Marissa Perry said in an email. “It is a personal and business decision left up to the producer and will remain that way.”

Jason Menke, a National Pork Board spokesperson, said in a statement that the “decision to use vaccines and other medical treatments to protect animal health and well-being are made by the farmer under the direction of the herd veterinarian.”

For now, vaccinating cattle is optional, but how many states will enforce a law demanding all cattle and pork be vaccinated for the “public health.”

But hey, we still have chicken!  Whoops!  We don’t!  Over 151,700,000 Killed Birds: Massive Culling Of Chicken Livestock Under Guise Of Avian Flu Mitigation.  A massive fire at an egg farm in Wright County, Minnesota, burned down a barn housing tens of thousands of chickens. This means tens of thousands of panicked hens remained trapped in tiny cages as they were engulfed by flames. In total, around 200,000 lives were lost. Yet according to a farm spokesperson, “no one was injured.”

Hundreds of thousands of birds have been burned alive throughout the country, including the largest egg producing company in Connecticut with 100,000 chickens dead.  Egg prices are at an all-time high.

According to an article by The Guardian published Dec 2022: The World Organization of Animal Health says 140 million birds killed across the world in just one year, including 48 million birds killed in Europe and 53 million in the United States.

The CDC put out a November 3rd, 2022 press release on the destruction of the American food supply:

“Since early 2022, more than 49 million birds in 46 states have either died as a result of bird flu virus infection or have been culled (killed) due to exposure to infected birds.”

Think you’re safe if you’re a vegetarian?  Think again!  WLTreport.com tells us our vegetables may soon contain the mRNA in our salads.  The University of California states, The project’s goals, made possible by a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, are threefold: showing that DNA containing the mRNA vaccines can be successfully delivered into the part of plant cells where it will replicate, demonstrating the plants can produce enough mRNA to rival a traditional shot, and finally, determining the right dosage.

Please realize that mRNA is messing with genome.  The genome is the entire set of DNA instructions found in a cell. In humans, the genome consists of 23 pairs of chromosomes located in the cell’s nucleus, as well as a small chromosome in the cell’s mitochondria. A genome contains all the information needed for an individual to develop and function.

Poisoned Soil, Water and Air

What about fish?  Well, the Ohio River has been turned off for Cincinnati drinking water since the E. Palestine train derailment.  The fish in E. Palestine were all dead.  The poisoned soil from that train derailment has been dumped in Indiana and a truck carrying that soil to other parts of Ohio recently overturned.  Rain will wash that poison everywhere.  And a huge barge with tons of toxic methanol recently sunk, again polluting the Ohio River.

Half of the U.S. investigators fell ill while studying the E. Palestine disaster.  Local and state authorities previously evacuated all residents within one mile of the February 3rd derailment and started a controlled burn of substances on the railcars. Governor Mike DeWine authorized the Norfolk Southern burn.  Those poisons could have been drained from the cars and carried away, saving the air, water and soil and most of all, the residents, their farm animals and pets.

But that’s not all.  One need only look at the massive problems with our oceans. Brazil’s plan to sink a 34,000-ton ship would be an environmental disaster; toxics include, asbestos and hundreds of metric tons of other toxic substances in its electrical wiring, paints, and fuel stores.

Newsweek reported a ship off the coast of Sri Lanka containing 25 tons of toxic chemicals caused significant damage to the planet.

A Nazi shipwreck is leaking toxic chemicals into the sea.  The many planes shot down and ships sunk during WWII, Korean War, Vietnam, and the continuing wars against terror have polluted our oceans worldwide.  Is it any wonder we see beached whales? I’m not saying that’s the cause, but it certainly isn’t from the globalist tax-and-control efforts of those claiming “climate change.”

Hundreds in Richmond, Indiana were forced from their homes when a plastics company continued to burn and toxic plumes of black smoke filled the air.

In Brunswick, Georgia, a massive fire at a resin plant required evacuation of local residents.

According to a new report, 2022 was the worst year for publicly reported fires at waste and recycling facilities in the U.S. and Canada,

The Midwest is farm country, and the soil, water and air is being polluted.  Ask the folks of E. Palestine as well as those around them how safe they feel when no one in the government is doing anything to ameliorate the tragedy allowed by their Governor, Mike DeWine.

There is something you can do to fight this.  So do it!

Conclusion

“Wherever the carcass is, there shall come the vultures … out of the mountain fastnesses, the rocky crags, the vultures of the sky come down to this glittering rottenness in order to devour it. These winged creatures are a kind of avenger and a punisher. They are a judgment upon death and corruption. Just as soon as corruption sets in, these winged monsters appear shrieking and croaking and winging their way to death itself…. Whenever a civilization begins to die morally or spiritually, then there begin to appear vultures. That is the mission of Communism in the world. Communism is the scavenger of a decaying civilization.”  Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Yes, our battle is against communism/fascism; two feathers of the same bird.  It is demonic.  We battle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.  And we’ve surely seen plenty of that wickedness.

Those of us who belong to the Creator, who worship the One True Lord, know His will is life, not death.  In Proverbs 1:33, He tells us, “But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.”

The day will come wherein the evil ones will be exposed. The masks they’ve cloaked themselves with, will be torn away.

“Vengeance is mine,” sayeth the Lord.

©2023 Kelleigh Nelson. All rights reserved.

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Iranian Regime Directly Involved in Poisoning Hundreds of SCHOOLGIRLS thumbnail

Iranian Regime Directly Involved in Poisoning Hundreds of SCHOOLGIRLS

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By The Geller Report

And Biden wants to give these monsters nukes. If the fraudulent regime in the White House continues down these terrible paths, we are on the precipice of real horror.

Today has been the worst day of the alleged “poisonings” so far, with several videos of schoolgirls in different cities reporting breathing issues and being hospitalised. Some schools have shut down.

It’s unclear what exactly is happening, or why.pic.twitter.com/jrh11t9Gcm

— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) March 1, 2023

Iranian regime directly involved in poisoning hundreds of students in effort to stifle protests: report

Attacks appeared to overwhelmingly target schoolgirls

By Peter Aitken | Fox News April 17, 2023:

Iran sees itself as ‘the big dog’ in Middle East: Boykin

More than 300 poisoning incidents have occurred at schools around Iran, which critics argue could not happen without Tehran’s acknowledgment or approval.

“These attacks are most probably designed to punish and scare the Iranian people for the widespread protests that erupted in September 2022 after the murder of Mahsa Amini,” Saeed Ghasseminejad, senior Iran and financial economics adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told Fox News Digital.

The FDD, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan think tank, tracked attacks across Iran and counted 328 chemical attacks as of April 14, sourcing information from local reports and videos posted on Twitter. Most reports included the number of victims, ranging from a dozen to almost 100 in some cases.

Ghasseminejad, who was a prisoner in the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran for opposing the clerical regime in Tehran, squarely blamed the incidents on Iran’s government and argued that such attacks could not have happened – especially in the significant numbers they have – if the government was not at least supportive of them.

“The sustained, sophisticated and widespread chemical attacks against schools, primarily targeting girls, have the regime’s fingerprints on them,” Ghasseminejad said.

“Given the totalitarian nature of the regime in Tehran and its massive investment in and obsession with monitoring and controlling the society, it is preposterous to believe that such attacks could have happened without the green light from the security and intelligence establishment.”

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in March ordered authorities to investigate some of the poisonings, which occurred at girls’ schools, describing them as “noxious fumes” that made the girls sick. Authorities at the time suggested the attacks mainly targeted women’s education, but the FDD report noted at least half a dozen incidents targeting boys’ and mixed schools as well.

This map of Iran shows sites of purported poisonings over the past months, totaling 328 as of April 14, 2023.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Pro-Border Security Sheriff Announces Run for US Senate Against Prominent Incumbent

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By Virginia Allen

Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pinal County, Arizona, a strong advocate for border security, is running for U.S. Senate in 2024.

If Lamb wins the Republican nomination, he will face off against incumbent Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a former Democrat who left the party to become an independent last year.

“Arizona needs a proven conservative fighter that’s going to stand up for the people of Arizona, and honestly, that’s going to fight for the values that we espouse, which is God, family, [and] freedom,” he told The Daily Signal.

The sheriff filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday and announced his campaign in a two-minute video on Tuesday, telling voters, “Washington needs a new sheriff in town.”

“We need leaders in this country that aren’t too politically correct to protect us,” Lamb said in the video, “and that’s why I’m running for the United States Senate.”

If elected, “the first priority is representing the people of Arizona, focus[ing] on what America was built on, which is the Constitution,” he said. “I think if you look at the pressing matter, the kitchen table items for not just Arizonans, but Americans, I mean, obviously, [are] the border crisis [and] fentanyl.”

Lamb is no stranger to the fentanyl crisis in America. As the sheriff of Pinal County, located between Phoenix and Tucson, Lamb regularly deals with drug smugglers and cartel members crossing the border from Mexico and bringing drugs onto his community. He also says the drug crisis in America has affected his own family.

“[O]ur son Cooper struggled with drug addiction. He even spent time in my jail for an issue stemming from fentanyl abuse,” Lamb said, after sharing in the campaign video that his son and 1-year-old granddaughter died in a car crash.

“I know what deadly drugs and the criminals peddling them are doing to families and communities. I know what it did to my family,” the county lawman said.

Lamb is a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s border policies and testified before the House Homeland Security Committee on Feb. 28, raising concerns over a dramatic spike in the amount of fentanyl flooding into his community.

The federal Customs and Border Protection agency has seized 106,000 pounds of drugs, including 11,000 pounds of fentanyl, at the southern border just since the start of fiscal year 2023 on Oct. 1.

Asked how he would respond to criticism over his qualifications to be a senator, Lamb said, “I have run an agency with over 600 employees, a $55 million budget,” referring to his sheriff’s department. “[Pinal County is] the size of the state of Connecticut. I will tell you, it’s bigger than any senator’s office or budget, and I’ve been doing legislation.”

“I’ve worked with Republicans and Democrats … . I think that I bring the most experience when you talk about not just the border, but when you talk about having to work with people, not just in your own county, but on a state level. I think I’ve become uniquely qualified for that,” he said.

Sinema defeated her Republican rival, Martha McSally, in 2018, garnering 50.0% of the vote, with McSally taking 47.6%. Though Sinema has yet to formally announce her bid for reelection, she is raising money for a campaign.

“I’m running my race right now,” Lamb told The Daily Signal, adding, “I’m focused on what I have to do.”

U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., announced in January his plans to run as a Democrat for the Senate seat.

*****
This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.

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Bringing America Back on Course and Defeating the Left

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By Mark Wallace

The last 150 years have been the most amazing 150 years in all of human history.  If we turn the clock back to, say, 1870, we find a world where there were no automobiles, no airplanes, no electric washing machines or gas dryers, and no computers — you get the point.  Economic growth powered by invention, human productivity, and our standard of living has all skyrocketed during the last century and a one-half.

More recently, the prospect for economic growth has dimmed.  International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has predicted that worldwide economic growth will remain below 3 percent in 2023 and that the years 2024-2028 will see similar subpar growth.

Director Georgieva’s predictions are in line with an exhaustive study of American economic growth and the standard of living conducted by Professor Robert J. Gordon for the period 1870 to 2015 and recounted in his magisterial work entitled “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” (published in 2016 by the Princeton University Press).  Professor Gordon divides his analysis into three periods:  1870 to 1939, 1940 to 1969, and 1970-2015.  His general conclusions in his 652-page book (not counting data appendices, index, and bibliography) are that America’s growth got off to an excellent start in the period 1870-1939, went into warp speed from 1940 to 1969, and began a long decline in 1970 to 2015.   He concedes that the post-1969 era was interrupted by a surge of growth attributable to computers and the internet from 1995 to 2004 (what he terms “the revival decade”) but notes that this was insufficient to reverse the overall downtrend that began around 1970.

While Professor Gordon’s analysis of the period 1870 to 1969 is certainly of historical interest, it is his analysis of what began happening in 1970 (and continues all the way to the present day when one extrapolates his analysis) that is of more concern to Americans living in 2023.  In chapter 18 of his book, he refers to “a more pessimistic note about the prognosis for the future of the standard of living based on the power of gale-force headwinds that are currently operating to slow the growth of the standard of living for the majority of Americans.”

Professor Gordon identifies four “gale-force headwinds”:  increased income inequality; the fading role of educational attainment as a creator of productivity growth; shrinkage in hours worked per person (what he calls “the demographic headwind”); and the “fiscal headwind,” where taxes raised to fund entitlement spending will reduce the future growth of disposable personal income. 

He supports his analysis of the post-1969 decline with a mountain of economic charts and data.  For example, on page 609 he displays a chart of the growth of real income in three periods from 1917 through 2013.  From 1917-1948, the average per annum real income grew at 1.11 percent, from 1948 to 1972 at 2.58 percent, and from 1972 to 2013 at 0.48 percent.  For the bottom 90 percent of the population, however, real income rose at 2.65 percent per annum from 1948-1972 but then fell to a negative 0.17 percent from 1972 to 2013.  This is consistent with other sources stating that real wages for average people peaked in the early 1970s and have been declining in fits and starts ever since.

And what does the good professor propose as solutions to rekindle American growth?  Disappointingly, what he serves up to us is a potpourri of warmed-over “progressive” Left nostrums:  raise taxes on the rich, raise the minimum wage, boost the earned income tax credit, pardon prisoners en masse, and let them out of jail and legalization of drugs.

Have things been getting worse for the average guy or gal since 1969 as Professor Gordon contends?  Yes and no. Measured by real income growth, yes.  Measured by standard of living?  That’s more difficult to assess.  The average guy is a beneficiary of improved health care (statins, coronary bypasses, and an entire host of other medical advances) and the general improvement in technology between 1969 and now.  Such advances offset some — but certainly not all — of the effect of a half-century worth of declining wages.

This multi-generational decline in the real income of 90 percent of Americans is something that should be of grave concern to conservatives.

A man who can make a good living with his two hands and his brain is in less need of government giveaways than a man who cannot support his family even though he is working two or three jobs.  Although times have changed between Thomas Jefferson’s era and today, the underlying reasons supporting Jefferson’s belief that the yeoman farmer was the bastion of liberty and the best defense against despotism remain the same.  A man who can raise a family and enjoy a comfortable life on the wages and salaries or small business profits provided to him by reason of a free marketplace has little need of government largesse and therefore will turn away from corrupt politicians promising free handouts.  Of course, there will always be those greedy people for whom the wage or salary or profit they obtain from a free market is insufficient and who will seek government giveaways (it’s called crony capitalism), but they are in a minority.

It can be seen, then, that the person who can adequately support himself and his family with his own labor and intelligence and who does not want or seek government bread and circuses is a nightmare for liberal and progressive politicians.  Such a man has integrity, and corrupt Left-leaning politicians cannot buy his vote with earned income tax credits, Section 8 housing, food stamps, etc.

This brings us to the most important point of this article: the Left (and distressingly some who purport to be on the Right) have embarked on a 50-plus year campaign to reduce salaries and wages of average Americans so that they can make them dependent on corrupt government leaders offering free handouts. Make no mistake about it, the goal of the Left (together with its fellow travelers on the Right) is to destroy American’s middle class and make its former members dependent upon handouts from Leftist politicians.

Reducing the real (inflation-adjusted) wages and salaries of ordinary Americans serves other critically important purposes for the Left and the elites who have joined forces with the Left:  (1) it permits the federal government to engage in massive deficit spending without creating much in the way of consumer price inflation; (2) it permits the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low and to print vast quantities of money, again without unleashing the Inflation Genie.  Average Americans largely spend their salaries and wages on consumer goods (unlike the very wealthy, who spend a larger portion of their income and wealth on investment assets).  Thus, consumer price inflation can be reined in by keeping most average Americans living paycheck to paycheck.

Wages and salaries have been kept reined in by a variety of factors.  A major factor has been the increase in the supply of labor.  According to the St. Louis Fed, 64.8 percent of those between 25 and 54 years of age were in the U.S. workforce in January 1950.  By January 2000 that same percentage had climbed to 84.3 percent.  In January 2023 it was 82.6 percent.  Women entering the workforce have had a dramatic impact.  In 1950, 33.9 percent of women were in the workforce.  By 2000, that percentage had climbed to 59.9 percent (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).  Other factors include the outsourcing of good manufacturing jobs to countries overseas, a decline in the unionized workforce, and trade policies that have rendered America the world’s importer of last resort and have hugely reduced American exports.

Professor Gordon’s income inequality argument is a red herring.  The issue is not how much the corporate CEO is earning, it is what the average American is earning.  The ratio between the two is of little or no importance.  Would you rather live in a society where the median income of the bottom 90 percent is $40,000 and that of the top 10 percent is $100,000 (2.5 to 1) or in a society where the median income of the bottom 90 percent is $80,000 and that the top 10 percent is $1.6 million (20 to 1)?

In summary, we should strive as a society to increase the wages and salaries of average Americans through the operation of the marketplace and thereby reduce (or ideally eliminate) the demand of citizens for government subsidies, handouts, bread, and circuses.  The principal means for accomplishing this is to reduce the supply of labor through strict enforcement of immigration laws, a reduction in the number of legal immigrants, changes in trade policies, the imposition of civil (not criminal) penalties on those who choose to eliminate American jobs through outsourcing to foreign countries and the enactment of fair but labor-friendly laws.

If this effort is successful, we can move toward a society in which government handouts are eliminated or at least greatly reduced, budgets are balanced, the Federal Reserve no longer engages in the printing of money or quantitative easing, and minimum wage laws are extinct because they have become pointless.

TAKE ACTION

As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.

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DeSantis Unveils Bill To Thwart Disney’s Special Privileges

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By The Daily Caller

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced legislation Monday to nullify Disney’s last-minute agreements intended to curb the governor’s newly-formed state control board, which was designed to oversee Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District, the company’s special tax district.

The district had anticipated DeSantis’ signing of legislation that would have revoked the corporation’s self-governing privileges, and enacted a last-minute agreement to give Disney control of the district’s development rights and privileges. The governor announced a bill Monday that will nullify those agreements, as they were filled with legal issues and were not formed with proper notice, according to a press release.

“That’s not going to fly,” DeSantis said in the press conference. “We want to make sure that Disney lives under the same laws as everybody else.”

The agreement, formed on Feb. 8, ensures that the state control board receive consent from Disney before making any changes, undermining DeSantis’ legislation.

🚨🚨 BREAKING: Governor @RonDeSantisFL announces that any agreements the old Disney board agreed to at the last minute “will be revoked” by new legislation.

“The people’s will is established and is upheld.” pic.twitter.com/pK9lgHBLGv

— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) April 17, 2023

DeSantis signed the legislation on Feb. 27 revoking Disney of their self-governing privileges within the Reedy Creek Improvement District, citing that the corporation should abide by the same rules as the rest of the state. The legislation also established a state control board – Central Florida Tourism Oversight District Board – to replace Reedy Creek.

“All agreements signed between Disney and the District were appropriate, and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law,” Disney said in a statement, WKMG reported.

The DeSantis-Disney feud began last year when the corporation came out against the governor’s Parental Rights in Education Bill for being discriminatory, and called for the law’s repeal. CEO Bob Iger slammed the governor’s actions as “anti-business” and “anti-Florida.”

The state control board will meet on Wednesday to introduce initiatives to hold Disney accountable, DeSantis told Good Morning Orlando’s Simon Conway.

Disney did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

MARY LOU MASTERS

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: REPORT: Disney Secretly Conducted A Legal Maneuver To Undermine DeSantis’ Legislation, Protect Special Benefits

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The Marketing Geniuses At Budweiser Forgot One Cardinal Rule thumbnail

The Marketing Geniuses At Budweiser Forgot One Cardinal Rule

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By The Daily Caller

‘This Bud may not be for you.’

Anheuser-Busch InBev is the largest beer maker in the world, producing six of the top 10 beer brands by volume, and enjoying sales of well over $1 billion a year.

Now, in a marketing debacle that will be studied and written about by MBA students for decades, Bud Light has cratered the company’s reputation.

Bud Light had been pure gold in the advertising industry since the 1980s, long before the Spuds McKenzie, the female bull terrier party animal mascot of the 1980s, and the hilarious “Real Men of Genius” ad campaign of the late 1990s became woven into popular culture. Bud Light brand building has been right up there with the NFL, arguably the most successful marketing organization on the planet.

But that was not good enough for Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, the newly named vice president of Bud Light. The image of the company was just too “fratty,” she explained in a recent podcast, during which she insulted the customers that have sustained the brand for decades.

The beer’s new mascot would become a man all dolled up like a preteen girl: Dylan Mulvaney.

Heinerscheid believes she is on the cutting edge because the beer label had been in decline. On the “Make Yourself at Home” podcast she explained how she is on a mission to evolve the brand:

“So I have this super clear mandate. We need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand. And my, what I brought to that, was a belief in ‘OK, what does evolve and elevate mean?’ It means inclusivity. It means shifting the tone. It means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different and appeals to women and to men,” Heinerscheid said.

“And representation is … at the heart of evolution. You’ve gotta see people who will reflect you in the work. And we had this hangover. I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor,” she explained.

And that, beer lovers, is how transgender activist Mulvaney came to be the new face of Bud Light. Mulvaney, a TikTok star and transgender personality who has done incredibly well in the famous-for-being-famous space, has brought his version of come-hither trans sexuality into the brand best known for a low-calorie, low-carb buzz, with notes of hops and malt.

The real marketing men and women of genius over at Budweiser forgot one thing: Don’t hate your customer.

When it launched Heinerscheid as its new VP during the Super Bowl, she explained to Forbes magazine that the 2023 Super Bowl ad, featuring people dancing as they are on a phone call hold, was the company’s new shift to showing real people, especially women.

“This campaign is meant to feel different, to be lighter and brighter, with a confidence and magnetism, and it’s really critical to depict real people and real places,” she told Forbes. “What I need to do to help this brand to evolve … this is my passion point.”

Heinerscheid told Forbes that Bud Light has been “everything to everyone, and as a result, we’ve not been (mindful) about where it shows up.”

Then she spoke to the importance of women. Her top strategic priority was to make sure that women were represented: “Female representation is a personal passion point of mine.”

By April 1, Heinerscheid decided that real people were not the market and female representation was not the priority.

Instead, a wholly manufactured TikTok personality, famous for skipping around a little girl’s bedroom like a pre-pubescent girl, is the real person that represents the brand.

Pro-tip: You’ll never be able to replace all the customers you lose at once with your new target market.

It appears Bud Light is targeting pre-teens, and Dylan Mulvaney does play-act the role of an underage girl. But that is a targeting blunder for another column.

If you’re one of the most successful brands in the history of marketing, and if you’re hating on your existing customer while you search for a better customer, maybe this Bud blunder is on you.

Real Men of Genius and Spuds McKenzie, the campaigns that built the brand, spoke to America with humor and storytelling.

Perhaps it is not just the customer that Bud Light has decided to hate. Perhaps the corporate geniuses, looking for that ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) preferential scoring for investors, have simply decided to hate Americans because they are not woke enough or trans enough for the “evolving” brand.

Good luck with that strategy, geniuses. As for Americans, this Bud may not be for you.

AUTHOR

SUZANNE DOWNING

Suzanne Downing is publisher of Must Read Alaska.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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The Invisible Politicians thumbnail

The Invisible Politicians

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By Bud Hancock

The following definition of politics was taken from several of the top dictionaries in use today:

  • Use of 1intrigue or 2strategy in obtaining any position of 3power or 4control, as in business, university, government etc.
    • 1Intrigue: the use of underhanded 5machinations or deceitful 6stratagems
  • 5machinations: crafty schemes; plots; intrigues
    • 3power: the ability to do or act
    • 4control: the act or power of controlling; regulation; domination or command
    • 6strategems: plans, schemes or tricks for surprising or deceiving an enemy
  • 2strategy: a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result
  • The practice or profession of conducting 8political affairs
    • 8political affairs: exercising or seeking power in the governmental or public affairs of a state, municipality, etc.

 After sixty years of following politics, one premise I have developed in my personal life is this: Money and Politics CANNOT be separated. They fuel each other and trap the participants in a life of greed for power and money…..always more money, because money buys votes.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd president of the US, once stated: “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” Truer words have never been spoken.

Politics is, always has been, and always will be the most corrupt human control system ever conceived. It exists for one reason and ONLY one reason: to enrich those who control the system, and those who allow the system to control THEM, in order to promote the system as a necessary part of human life.

Politics is an international system that works to determine the future of nearly every person on the planet. There are those who believe that politics is simply the American system whereby politicians are either elected or appointed to positions that give them a certain amount of authority (power), or influence, in the decision-making processes that our government uses to run the nation, and while partially true, that  is far from the major truth about politics. While there may actually be some honest, resolute, and moral people who have a real desire to take part in the legislative process of a nation in order to improve life for the populace, they are only a small minority of all who enter politics.

Like every other system, politics has a hierarchical structure that determines just how much power or influence is granted to all who are a part of the system. To truly understand  the system it is critical to see the structure of international politics.

The ‘visible’ politicians, those who publicly run for political office at the local, state and federal levels, are often the only faces or voices of politics that people  see or hear. They are the ones who are contacted by their ‘constituents’ when issues that affect the public are up for debate. But what actual power or influence do they have in directing the policy of a nation? Are they the ones who can direct the outcome of political discourse and make or change policies that affect the whole world?

Hardly. Just as every organization has ‘managers’ at every level, with each level having only a specified amount of authority or influence over the functions of the organization, so the political structure of the world has power levels as well.

Satan initiated the world system of politics when he lied to, and deceived, Adam and Eve and stole their authority in the world and since that time he has tried, somewhat successfully, in the past fifty years, to unite the entire world under one political control organization.

Who Are the Invisible Politicians?

We all know the politicians we can see and hear, even though they seldom have anything to say worth listening to, and in most cases, watching them is like watching a bunch of demons at play. But who are the ‘invisible politicians’ who REALLY control the system?

Let’s examine a premise concerning the financial world, and specifically the banking ‘industry’, shared by most people in everyday life; because of the close connection politics has to money, no part of the financial world can ever be separated from the ‘political world’.

Premise: Banks are good corporate ‘partners’ with the general public whose main aim is to help people better manage their money and become prosperous. This is a false premise, since the banks of the world, especially the central banks of each nation, own nearly everything on earth. Banks have ONE priority: to increase their revenue, and thus, their wealth, at the expense of the public. The people who control banks are some of the ‘hidden politicians’ whose agenda, (though not accomplished by direct involvement in governmental politics, e.g., running for high public office) is as much geared toward total world domination as is that of most visible politicians in their desire for control over their level of authority.

Regional and National banks occupy several higher levels of authority in the world of international politics. The notion of a bank being a “local business” that exists to assist the local populace with their financial needs is a complete fallacy. Most of the small local banks, located in small towns across America, disappeared many years ago, either having gone bankrupt or having been bought by much larger, regional, or national banks. As such, even though they may still retain the local bank name, they are under the complete control of the “parent bank” which determines the monetary policies that guide the operation of the parent and all its subsidiaries.

In the next level above the regional and national banks are the “Central Banks” of the world, the organizations that control monetary policy for the  nations with which they are connected. In the United States, this would be the Federal Reserve Bank and the Federal Reserve Banking system.

The people who run the Federal Reserve Bank and the Federal Reserve Banking system are NOT employees of the US government nor are they elected representatives, chosen by the people to represent their interests. In reality, the Federal Reserve Bank in the United States is not ‘federal’ in any sense, in that it is an independently owned bank that prints its own notes and “loans” them to the United States government to use as a currency. Look at one of the pieces of “money” you may have in your wallet or purse. At the top it states: Federal Reserve Note. It is NOT backed by any gold that may have been owned at one time by the American people, nor is it backed by any other asset. When asked what backs those notes you might hear: they are backed by the “full faith and credit of the United States”. In case you have not been paying attention to the reckless spending of the US Congress for the past 100 years, the United States government is now approximately $33 trillion in debt; so much for the faith and credit issue. Essentially, those notes are not backed by anything, as in NOTHING.

When the United States had a monetary system based on ‘real money’, our US dollar currency,  was backed by gold and silver, and it mattered not how many of those notes were in circulation, since any person holding them could walk into a bank and demand an amount of silver or gold equal to the denomination stated on the note. Since the US went off the gold standard in 1971, the actual dollar value of Federal Reserve notes is determined by how many of them are in circulation, and the Federal Reserve can print them in any quantities they desire to 1), set and control inflation and 2), determine the actual value of our currency (actually, THEIR currency, since the notes are owned by the Federal Reserve system, and NOT by the American people).

The Power Structure

It has long been stated that “Money is Power”, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to separate money from power and vice versa when trying to understand the structure of world politics. The two go hand in hand in the International Political Power Structure.

While the large national banks may appear to be at the pinnacle of the International Political Power Structure, there are other, much more hidden, and far more sinister, entities who occupy that perch. The Central Banks of each nation are close to the top of that structure, but the entity at the top is the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), located in Basel Switzerland, and having branches in Hong Kong and Mexico City.

A quote from an article titled Who Controls The Money? An Unelected, Unaccountable Central Bank Of The World Secretly Does, dated 11/28/2016,  states:

“….the main purpose of the BIS is to guide and direct the centrally-planned global financial system.  Today, 58 global central banks belong to the BIS, and it has far more power over how the U.S. economy (or any other economy for that matter) will perform over the course of the next year than any politician does.

“Every two months, the central bankers of the world gather in Basel for another “Global Economy Meeting.”  During those meetings, decisions are made which affect every man, woman and child on the planet, and yet none of us have any say in what goes on.  The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system”.

Professor Carroll Quigley who taught history at Georgetown University for 35 years, once stated:

“The powers of financial capitalism have another far-reaching aim . . . to create a world system of financial control in private hands, able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the whole world.” (quoted from Quigley’s 1966 book, “Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time”).

Notice who, and whose agenda, is mentioned in his quote: ”the powers of financial capitalism”….. “…control of a world system in private hands”.

But who are these “powers of financial capitalism”? We mentioned the members of the BIS, but who actually controls the BIS?

Per Wikipedia, The BIS was established in 1930 “by an intergovernmental agreement between Germany, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland”. Since its inception in 1930, it has undergone several transformations, such as, from being originally owned by both the member central banks and some private investors, to being wholly owned by the large number of central banks who are BIS members, while at the same time operating in the private markets of the world.

So, the largest, and likely most important financial institution in the world is owned by the central banks of the world, with the BIS (the Central Bank of the central banks) at the top who do not answer to any government, at least not to any large extent.

Politics: the Foundation of the Power Structure

The idea of politics being a ‘necessity’ that allows governments to run properly is one that has been popularized for many decades, even hundreds of years. Unfortunately, that idea, along with the idea that the world MUST have a political system to make things work, is generally accepted as being true, but since politics has been in existence since the creation of man, how would anyone know whether the entirety of world society would decline and fail if politics completely disappeared?

With the current political situation in the world, one should ask the question: “To what extent has politics made life better for the masses of people who live UNDER one or more political systems”? And the reference to “one or more” systems is deliberate. The best-known and most widely accepted ‘system’ is that of the ‘visible’ political system directly connected with governments and their functions. How many benefits have you been aware of that resulted from the role of the ‘visible’ politicians in government? For the amount of money invested by the citizenry to keep a political system functioning, what have you seen in the form of a monetary return from said investments? Of course, those running the ‘visible’ political system MUST periodically provide something that can be seen as beneficial in order to justify their existence, and those minor benefits seem to satisfy most of the voting public.

Politics, by its very definition, is about deception, and deception is based on lies, so most politicians, at least those who remain in that foul game the longest, are those who have learned to lie extremely well and become expert deceivers. They are among the most dangerous visible humans on earth, right up there with mass murderers and child molesters.

But, as dangerous as they are, they cannot hold a candle to the REAL politicians, those who have previously worked diligently to remain ‘invisible’. What we are now seeing is a group of international politicians, mostly those who desire to control the world through financial manipulation, becoming much more open about their plans for us. If one were to fear politicians, they would be among that group.

With what is now known of the ‘invisible politicians’, those who control the top levels of the financial/banking world, can it actually be said that they exist to provide any benefits to the people they claim to ‘serve’? These are the people who, in collaboration with many wholly owned visible politicians occupying positions of power and influence in our government and indeed all the governments of the world, have totally destroyed the United States monetary system. For an encore, they are getting ready, once again in collaboration with the visible politicians, to introduce a digital currency that will be backed, again, by NOTHING, a monetary system comprised of ones and zeros in a huge computer database. If successful, their plan will allow the REAL politicians, the invisible ones, to assume total control over nearly every human being on earth.

Conclusion

The agenda of the globalist politicians is now well-advanced, indicating just how close we are to the end of this age. All the events we are seeing converge upon the scene were foretold in the Bible by the prophets of the Old Testament as well as Jesus Himself (read Matthew 24), so no true believer should be surprised by this.

I am not urging anyone who reads this to become bogged down in fear of what is coming, but to be aware and prepare for it to the extent possible. I strongly urge believers to study God’s word to find out what He said about this particular time in history.

Jesus constantly urged His followers to beware of ANY man (or woman) using lies and deception to gain control of one’s mind and most of the Apostles also warned about the dangers of deception. Paul stated, “Let no man deceive you by any means……”. In today’s language we would hear: “Do not ALLOW any person to deceive you, no matter what you hear them say, or see them do”.

The bankers and their marketing experts use clever wording and catchphrases to lure their victims in and gain control over them through debt. After that ensnarement, it is extremely difficult to break free from their control. I urge all believers to become aware of just how foul and corrupt ALL politics is and to avoid any involvement in any political system, if possible. Instead, allow God’s word to guide you in all that you hear and all that you see. Only by doing so will you be able to avoid the coming deception and remain free from Satan’s traps.

Blessings and Maranatha!

©2023 Bud Hancock. All rights reserved.

TERRORISM: Dairy Farm Explosion Kills 18,000 Cows thumbnail

TERRORISM: Dairy Farm Explosion Kills 18,000 Cows

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By The Geller Report

Another attack on our food supply.

At least 18,000 cattle were killed Monday night when an explosion occurred at the Southfork Dairy Farm in Dimmitt, Texas. This is the deadliest barn fire involving cattle ever, according to the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI).

By Kevin Downey Jr. 4:39 PM on April 13, 2023

The blast occurred in a holding area at the farm where the cows were being kept prior to milking. While some cows were able to escape the fire, many were injured and had to be put down. One employee was critically injured in the blast and is being treated at a nearby hospital.

Brutal Farm Fire Kills 18,000 Cows

The South Fork Dairy Farm — located near Dimmitt, Texas — lost 18,000 cows in what was determined by the Animal Welfare Institute to be the worst farm fire for cows since 2013, when authorities began tracking barn fires.

After a boiler explosion at Shearer’s Foods in Hermiston, Oregon in February, the company laid off its employees. In March, there was a large fire at the Penobscot McCrum potato processing plant in Maine. In April, a private plane crashed into Gem State Processing, a potato processing plant in Idaho. A week later, another private plane crashed into the General Mills plant in Covington, Georgia.

Meanwhile, an April fire at the port of Benicia, California hampered gasoline production. A natural gas pipeline exploded in Michigan in March.

That same month, there was a massive fire at the Taylor Farms food processing plant in Salinas, California. Also in April, the Dufur, Oregon headquarters of Azure Standard, a leading organic food distributor, was destroyed by fire, and another fire destroyed the East Conway Beef & Pork Meat Market in Conway, New Hampshire. Early in May, a chicken farm in Jones County, Mississippi was destroyed by fire. Saladino’s food processing plant in Fresno, California caught fire around the same time. A Walmart Fulfillment Center in Indiana caught fire in late May. Also in late May, a fire at Forsman Farms in Howard Lake, Minnesota killed tens of thousands of chickens. In mid-June, there was a huge fire at the Festive Foods pizza plant in Belmont, Wisconsin.

In Iowa in April, five million chickens were killed after discovery of a single case of avian flu. 22 million chickens have been killed nationwide in an attempt to contain the outbreak. Thousands of cattle died in Kansas in June; their deaths were blamed on the heat, but it was not an unusually hot month, and numerous people with farming experience were skeptical of the official explanation.

Meanwhile, on May 26, a coal train derailed near Gothenburg, Nebraska. On June 1, a train derailed near Lansing, Iowa, with ten coal cars leaving the tracks; the contents of one spilled into the Mississippi River. Another train derailed in Shiner, Texas on June 3, spilling coal in the center of the town. In British Columbia, yet another coal train derailed on June 18, spilling coal from fifteen rail cars. That same day, one more coal train derailed in Lawrence, Kansas, spilling a “large amount” of coal.

Read more.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The only climate change book you need to read thumbnail

The only climate change book you need to read

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By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

A combination of publish-or-perish pressure on scientists, desire for click-bait headlines on the part of the media, and a poorly-informed public may explain the hysteria.

Say the phrase “climate change” to a certain class of generally well-educated and well-placed people, and you will hear how it is the most significant existential threat to humanity, how we should all go around despairing that we as a world community are not doing enough to avert the climate apocalypse that is coming, and that we face either the alternative of doom for humanity or a radical change in political, social, and economic arrangements to avert it. If you think I’m kidding, take a look at publications like the New York Times or The New Yorker or indeed, most mainstream media.

I’ve written here on climate change occasionally, but by and large I have taken an agnostic position on it. A wise teacher I know tells his students that worrying a lot about something you can’t personally do anything about is a waste of time, and that’s why I haven’t expended a lot of mental energy on the topic. But I did come across a reference not too long ago to a book by Steven E. Koonin entitled Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. Having read the book, I’m now convinced that my attitude toward climate change is the right one, and I now have one of the best-placed persons in the world to back me up.

I can’t imagine a better-qualified person to write this book. Koonin’s professional career began at Caltech, where he was a professor of theoretical physics, then vice president and provost for several years. He left academia to become chief scientist for the international energy company BP, and then went into government and was President Obama’s Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy. He now holds positions at New York University. So he is a product of academia, industry, and government, and has seen all three from the inside as a leader and participant.

Perhaps it is his early training as a physicist that makes him cut through the sound bites, breathless stories about polar bears, and even the periodic Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, and go straight to the peer-reviewed, observation-based data and ask the question, “How sure are we that this alleged climate catastrophe is going to happen?” The answer suitable for a 1000-word column is, “Not sure enough to turn the world upside down.” Koonin has never met a piece of hype he couldn’t see through to get to the raw data that it was allegedly based on.

The first part of the book examines the accuracy, consistency, and meanings of the climate data on which the IPCC and other climate-change reports are based. Take rising sea levels, for example, which have inspired pictures of the Statue of Liberty wading in the Atlantic up to her waist. One overarching point he makes in this section is that climate is something that can’t be determined without taking long-term averages, ideally over periods of 20 to 30 years or more, while weather is what’s going on outside your window right now. For one thing, global sea level has varied as much as 100 meters (that’s about 330 feet) over the last half million years, falling as ice ages take up water and rising as they end. We’re currently right at the end of the last melting period, as it turns out. A plot of the last 24,000 years shows a rise of about 120 meters followed by a nearly flat period over the last 5,000 years—in other words, during the historic era. The bottom line here is that it’s much too early to tell if the rise in carbon-dioxide levels due to fossil-fuel use is going to make much of a difference in the average sea level. The true climatological answer won’t be known in any of our lifetimes.

And it’s basically the same or worse for any of the other climate tragedies that have become boogeymen to scare children with over the last twenty years or so. The worst aspect of the distortions and false terrors concerns violent weather: hurricanes, tornadoes, and so on. By two different measures, the frequency of tornadoes in the U. S. is probably going down, not up, although with modern Doppler radars it is easier to detect them than it used to be. And the annual fluctuations in something called the “power dissipation index” in the North Atlantic, which is correlated with hurricanes, are bigger than any so-called upward trend.

After showing how the actual data reveal that the IPCC, governments, and journalists have hyped climate change with cherry-picking, tendentious interpretations, and sometimes outright lies, he examines why this whole mess has come about. He concludes it is a combination of publish-or-perish pressure on scientists, desire for click-bait headlines on the part of the media, and a public that is poorly informed on even basic procedures of science. The “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality of yellow journalism has only gotten worse via the Internet and its penchant for 280-character summaries of topics that deserve a book like this one.

Although Koonin doesn’t mention the following factor, I think a contributing aspect to the climate-change hype is the gradual secularization of Western culture. Modern science arose from the Christian conviction that the universe was designed by an intelligent Being and was therefore capable of being figured out, because it follows logical rules. If most people no longer hold that view, it is an open question as to how long they will insist on looking at the data themselves, as Koonin does, versus being swept up in a public-relations fantasy that is based on greed for power and wealth rather than disinterested respect for knowledge.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of the so-called “climate change deniers” (which does not include Koonin) have a Christian background. Yes, there are Christian ignoramuses too, but just because an idiot takes a certain view of a thing doesn’t mean the view itself is wrong.

Before you listen to another word on climate change, read Koonin’s book. You’ll never think about it the same way again.

This article has been republished from the author’s blog, Engineering Ethics.

AUTHOR

Karl D. Stephan received the B. S. in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1976. Following a year of graduate study at Cornell, he received the Master of Engineering degree in 1977… More by Karl D. Stephan.

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

A fresh look at the scandal of poverty in America, the world’s richest country thumbnail

A fresh look at the scandal of poverty in America, the world’s richest country

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By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

Regardless of its shortcomings, Desmond deserves much credit for telling harsh truths about the lives of the least fortunate members of society.

Poverty, by America
By Matthew Desmond. Crown. 2023. 304 pages

Published to much acclaim in March, Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America focuses on one of the most distinctive aspects of American life: abnormally severe poverty existing alongside abundant wealth.

This sociologist has previously written about aspects of poverty such as the housing crisis which is afflicting poorer Americans.

Poverty, by America is broader in its focus, and consciously echoes Michael Harrington’s ground-breaking 1962 work, The Other America, which captured public attention and inspired much of the action later undertaken as part of President Johnson’s “War on Poverty.”

Though income inequality exists all across the developed world, the human stories he reports emphasise a harsher edge to American poverty.

More than 3.6 million eviction notices are provided to occupants each year in the US, with “eviction movers” being a well-known feature of life.

Absent the stricter employment legislation in place in Western Europe, job security is increasingly hard to find in an environment where permanent unionised positions have been replaced by temporary contracts, and Desmond adds that half of all new positions are eliminated within a year.

America’s social safety net is also more porous and harder to access, meaning that billions of dollars are spent annually on litigation by people seeking to claim benefits. In 2019, almost 400,000 payments were made to parties representing people who had applied for disability.

This book is not called “Poverty in America,” however, as Desmond’s central thesis is that the actions taken by wealthier Americans inflict major harm on the poor.

The payment of low wages allows corporations to increase dividends to shareholders (a category which includes most Americans, who either own stock or have retirement funds), and efforts to change this situation such as Walmart’s decision to raise wages in 2015 can come at a cost in terms of lost market value.

More affluent people can also profit from the range of possibilities offered by the rise of companies like Uber and Amazon, while avoiding ever having to experience the work conditions and wages of those in temporary or precarious employment.

“Fast and cheap – that’s how we prefer to consume in America,” Desmond writes. “But somebody has to pay for it, and that is the rag-and-bone American worker. Poverty wages allow rock-bottom prices. Relentless supervision and control facilitate fast service. The working class and working poor – and, now, even the working homeless – bear the costs of our appetites and amusements.”

Though firmly of the Left, Desmond resists the temptation to lay the blame for this problem at the door of any one political party, instead suggesting that the economic choices of those in the more advantaged classes lie at the heart of the injustices he sees across American society.

Calling for higher taxes and highlighting the degree to which existing tax breaks and benefits are skewed towards those who need help the least, he assails the tendency of some to close their eyes to poverty while shutting themselves off from it within economically segregated communities.

While he describes the significant racial disparities in income, Desmond retains his focus on the core divide between the haves and the have nots, while urging that there be a greater focus on economic inequality, for instance, by calling on businesses that hang Black Lives Matter signs and trans flags to also publicise their starting wages.

Most people are implicated in all of this, and therefore an all-encompassing societal solution is necessary.

“Don’t we benefit when we see our savings go up and up, even when those returns require a kind of human sacrifice? Consumers benefit from worker exploitation, too,” he writes. “We can now, with a few clicks, summon rides and groceries and Chinese takeout and a handyman, all at cut rates. We have become masters in this new servant economy, where an anonymised and underpaid workforce does the bidding of the affluent.”.

Desmond puts forward a range of proposals which he believes could end poverty in America, beginning with income and corporation tax rises aimed at bringing America’s tax revenue in line with Western democracies.

This revenue, he suggests, could then be used to rebalance the social safety net, with an emphasis on universal income support programmes which avoid distinctions between those who qualify for assistance and those who narrowly fall outside the current limits.

Elsewhere, he backs more government spending on public housing, more restrictions on predatory lending practices and reforms to labour laws which would make it easier for collective bargaining to take place across entire economic sectors.

While it is impossible to question the sincerity of his concern for the poor, some of Desmond’s analysis appears shallow.

Surveying the evidence as to whether minimum wage increases create unemployment, he pronounces that any employment effect is “inconsequential.”

If that is true – that raising the price of labour does not lessen demand for labour – one wonders why he does not support far more dramatic minimum wage hikes.

Regarding the decline of labour unions, the author reiterates the conventional left-wing explanation about hostile government action by highlighting President Reagan’s decision to fire striking air traffic controllers in 1981.

The work of Robert Putnam and others has made clear that the weakening of unions forms part of a broader pattern of enhanced atomisation and community decline, where individuals are less likely to join unions, churches or other social institutions.

One interesting parallel between the work of Desmond and that of his crusading forerunner Michael Harrington is the religious background to their activism.

In Harrington’s case, his original inspiration was made clear in his own words, when he wrote that it was “through Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement that I first came into contact with the terrible reality of involuntary poverty and the magnificent ideal of voluntary poverty.”

By the time he published The Other America, the religious faith of this former editor of the Catholic Worker had been replaced by a growing commitment to socialism, but the lasting imprint of Catholicism remained obvious.

Decades later, Christian social activism would play a crucial role in Matthew Desmond’s life, when his family moved to a downtrodden community in Arizona in which his father had been appointed as a pastor.

A more comprehensive analysis of contemporary American poverty would have involved more serious reflection about the degree to which secularisation – and the accompanying tragedy of family breakdown –  has hampered efforts to eradicate poverty in an increasingly prosperous country.

Writing in the early 1960s, Harrington observed that among the poorest in society, “marriage was somewhat irregular,” while adding that it “was not uncommon to meet two or three sets of half brothers and half sisters living under the same roof.”

Even as a lapsed Catholic, Harrington perceptively noted another change already setting in when he described how the social function of churches was increasingly “a phenomenon of the middle class” rather than something which impacted heavily on those at the bottom rung of society.

Decades of social science research by Charles Murray, Putnam and others have made clear how significant this change has been.

Yet Desmond is clearly sceptical, focusing attention on economic rather than social factors and dismissively that the “bourgeois model of the two-parent family is made possible by the same stuff that made the bourgeoisie: money.”

His social liberalism is even more pronounced elsewhere, when he bemoans the existence of pro-life laws in many American states while arguing that “when reproductive choice is constricted, women and their children are often cast into poverty.”

Later on, and without any sense of irony, he laments the fact that poverty means there are “many ‘lost Einsteins’ who would have made enormous contributions had they been allowed to reach their full potential.”

Poverty, by America is nonetheless a thought-provoking book which addresses economic trends and public policy issues far beyond America’s borders.

Regardless of its shortcomings, Desmond deserves much credit for telling harsh truths about the lives of the least fortunate members of society, and more importantly, for asking the awkward questions about the complicity of the comfortable.

AUTHOR

James Bradshaw writes on topics including history, culture, film and literature. More by James Bradshaw

RELATED ARTICLE: Technocracy à la Macron threatens Western democracy

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Time for Anheuser-Busch to Step-Up-To-The-Plate and take on the ‘Dylan Mulvaney Debacle’ Head-On! thumbnail

Time for Anheuser-Busch to Step-Up-To-The-Plate and take on the ‘Dylan Mulvaney Debacle’ Head-On!

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By Dr. Rich Swier

This is the story behind the current Anheuser-Busch/Bud Light debacle.

Apparently some woke MBA kid in a marketing agency in New York saw the publicity that TikTok trans star Dylan Mulvaney was getting at the White House and sent Mulvaney a case of Bud light and a wrapped a can with Mulvaney‘s face on it.

Only “1 can” of Bud Light with the face of Dylan Mulvaney on it!

Then Mulvaney decided to do an unauthorized post and sent it to his/her/its TikTok trans back channel on April Fool’s day. Get the trans joke?  She tried to hurt our manly/womanly, coed, sports oriented men and women beer drinkers.

Then Mulvaney created a “Bud Light Trans” self made post which immediately got picked up on some people’s Facebook, Twitter platforms and it then went viral.

Watch what Dylan Mulvaney posted on Instagram in the below 48 second video:

To date Anheuser-Busch has not produced any Bud Light cans with Mulvaney’s face on them. No one in the chain of command, including North American Zone CEO Brendan Whitworth, knew this was done! BTW, Brenden Whitworth is a former U.S. Marine and served in the CIA.

It’s been a PR nightmare all across the entire U.S., and abroad, since April Fool’s Day.  Again, the problem was with one rogue marketing kid.

Remember this Bud Light trans post was never authorized or paid for by Anheuser-Busch!  Bud Light is still all they have been for last 40 years a strong pro-American company.

Watch this Budweiser commercial to understand:

pic.twitter.com/T3TVGEzIi0

— Budweiser (@budweiserusa) April 14, 2023

Hopefully Anheuser-Busch will fire the woke Bud Light VP? However, she will probably sue and may even win?

Ron Filipkowski posted a video of Donald J. Trump, Jr.’s response to the “Dylan Mulvaney Debacle” asking MAGA beer drinkers to stop boycotting Budweiser:

In a surprise move tonight, Junior announces it is time to end the MAGA Budweiser boycott. pic.twitter.com/srCGl9FTVI

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) April 13, 2023

This is nice but it doesn’t address the fundamental issue – What is Anheuser-Busch going to do to regain the trust of its pro-faith, pro-family, pro-freedom and straight heterosexual customers and their families?

The Bottom Line

The National Legal and Policy Center wrote this in an Apr 17, 2023 article titled As He Pretends Anheuser-Busch is an American Company, CEO Brendan Whitworth Fails Leadership Test by   from the Corporate Integrity Project,

Statement of Peter Flaherty, Chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center:

Anheuser-Busch has finally addressed the controversy that has embroiled the company since April 1 when it centered a Bud Light promotion around transgender “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney.

The only problem is, CEO Brendan Whitworth released a statement Friday addressing the issue by not addressing it, accomplishing nothing but to underscore his own helplessness and guaranteeing that the conflagration will continue.

Whitworth’s statement asserted that “we never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.” But nowhere could he even say what the “discussion” is about, as if the topic was too hot to even mention.

He doesn’t say it was a mistake for a beer company to promote transgenderism, nor does he defend the ad campaign. It is as if he had to say something if only to quiet his coterie of underlings and PR consultants who were no doubt urging him to say something.

He took the faintest stab possible to assuage consumers who might most object to the promotion by saluting “military, first responders, sports fans and hard-working Americans everywhere.” But he could not state the obvious about why all these great people might object to Dylan Mulvaney, namely that men cannot become women, and that it is a folly for anyone, much less a beer company, to advance this lie.

Unfortunate for Whitworth, he is handcuffed by the company’s long association with activists who would turn on him as quickly and eagerly as they have accepted his company’s support and money over the years. Anheuser-Busch gets a perfect 100 score on the Human Rights Campaign so-called Corporate Equality Index, and the company promotes gender ideology in its internal training programs.

Whitworth fails the leadership test. It’s easy to lay claim to effective institutional management when all the choices are good. Real leadership becomes evident, however, when the choices are bad. But maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on poor Whitworth because his authority as CEO is not what is seems.

Whitworth, whose actual title is “CEO North American Zone,” proudly reports that Anheuser-Busch was “founded in America’s heartland more than 165 years ago,” but he does not mention that the company was sold to the multinational InBev in 2008. The company is now known as Anheuser-Busch Inbev SA/NV, and is incorporated and headquartered in Belgium. In addition, CEO Michael Doukeris is a Brazilian citizen.

According the company’s website, nine of its 12 directors are appointed by something called “Stichting Anheuser-Busch InBev,” which it describes as “a foundation organised under the laws of the Netherlands, which represents an important part of the interests of the Belgian founding families of the Company and the interests of the Brazilian families previously shareholders of AmBev.”

So, Whitworth’s real bosses are a group of ultra-rich Europeans and South Americans, who will ultimately act in what they perceive to be their own interests, not those of American beer drinkers. These plutocrats attempt to keep the attention off their wealth by buying off the activists who might challenge it. That is why the company panders to, and bankrolls, a host of woke causes worldwide.

Like Unilever, another Europe-based multinational whose American subsidiary Ben & Jerry’s plunged it into controversy (when it ended ice cream sales in the disputed territories of Israel), Anheuser-Busch InBev abets social and political causes that undermine the cultural values and economic interests of the consumers they purport to serve.

Mr. Brendan Whitworth, CEO North American Zone, its time to fish or cut bait. Take a stand against this transgender attack on your American brand. Time to remember that you were a Marine. Time to remember what you learned in the CIA about dealing with propaganda attacks and how to effectively counter them.

Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature took on Disney, Inc., that sided with the LGBTQIE+ agenda, and their attack on Florida’s parents. Time for Anheuser-Busch to do the same.

It’s past time for you Mr. Whitworth, the Anheuser-Busch board of directors, including its nine Netherlands members, to understand that your in deep dodo right now. Time to stand up for faith, family and freedom. Stand up for American values.

If you, Mr. Whitworth, do not then you are one of them, not one of us.

©2023 Dr. Rich Swier, LTC, U.S. Army (Ret.). All rights reserved.

Warning: SB 7050 Creates Many Problems for Florida’s Current Election System thumbnail

Warning: SB 7050 Creates Many Problems for Florida’s Current Election System

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By Royal A. Brown III

Public confidence in our election process is critical for our Constitutional Republic to remain functioning as it was intended to by our Founding Fathers. The latest proposed Senate Bill 7050 fails to deliver that confidence to Florida’s citizens. Outlined below is a list of major concerns in this bill along with recommendations for amending the bill language to reflect the will of “We the People”. As a State Representative of the People, I hope you will take these points into consideration before casting your vote.

Major areas of concern for Floridians:

  • Public sentiment calls for a return to hand counting as citizens have learned about the vulnerabilities of tabulators.
  • Florida Statute 101.5604 is currently worded in such a way that prohibits hand counting:
  • “A county must use an electronic or electromechanical precinct-count tabulation voting system.”
  • The economic situation of each county is not considered in this statute. County commissioners should be allowed to hand count ballots if they determine this to be the most fiscally responsible course of action for their county. To remedy this, I propose adding an amendment in SB 7050 to strike the prior language and insert the following sentence:
  • “A county may use an electronic or electromechanical precinct-count tabulation voting system or may count ballots by hand at the precinct level.”
  • Lines 2128-2129 are not congruent with Florida statute as the line reads “in any county in which an electronic or electromechanical voting system is used,”. This implies counties are not mandated to use electromechanical voting systems and is inconsistent with the current statute. Further reason to amend the statute as recommended above.
  • The requirements for citizen identification are insufficient.

Lines 436, 437, 2219, & 2220 in SB 7050 allow for retirement center and neighborhood identification, which are not valid, government-issued forms of identification. A bank account could not be opened with these forms of ID, yet they are currently authorized as valid forms of ID to participate in what should be the most secure process in our nation. I propose striking these forms of acceptable ID from the entirety of SB 7050.

Lines 457, 458, 2233-2245 allow for non-parity in voter ID requirements. ID exceptions should be minimal. Not requiring ID for people 65 years and older enables nursing home voter fraud. Lines 2235-2245 include citizens that should be able to produce valid identification.

Vague language in Section 36 facilitates third-degree felony charges to poll watchers.

Proposed statute 104.47 states “It is unlawful for any person to intimidate, threaten, coerce, harass, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, coerce, or harass an election worker with the intent to impede or interfere with the performance of an election worker’s official duties, or with the intent to retaliate against such election worker for the performance of official duties. A person who violates this section commits a felony of the third degree…”

An election worker is defined in lines 2625-2629 as a “member of a county canvassing board or an individual who is an election official, poll worker, or election volunteer in connection with an election conducted in this state.”

The entire section 104.47 should be removed from the bill.

“Election volunteer” is not defined. It may be interpreted to mean any person who is volunteering their time in connection with an election. Does this include poll watchers, political party canvassers, or 3rd party voter registration organization volunteers? It must be defined to include poll watchers and designees authorized by FS101.572(2).

This could be used by an employee of the SOE office against another employee of the SOE office with whom they have a disagreement.

This section equates language with violence and thereby criminalizes speech. Threats are already addressed in FS 836.05, so this section is unnecessary.

Please take action on the above items to restore public confidence in the Florida elections.

©2023 Royal A. Brown. All rights reserved.

Remembering the Murder of Theo van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri in 2004 thumbnail

Remembering the Murder of Theo van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri in 2004

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By Matthys van Raalten

Sharia Replaces Constitution!

Occasionally I take a walk through the Oosterpark, close to where I live. Then I sometimes stop at the monument entitled De Schreeuw (The Scream).

This monument was erected in honor of Theo van Gogh, who was cold-bloodedly murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri in 2004.

Few people today dare to criticize Islam. This is partly due to the fear that was sown with the murder of Van Gogh.

What exactly had Van Gogh done wrong in the eyes of the Muslims? He regularly called Muslims “goat fuckers” on TV. He has made a film with Ayaan Hirsi Ali about violence against women in Islam.

According to Islam you are not allowed to criticize Muhammad. The founder of this primitive religion is seen as the last prophet, and a perfect human being.

Mohammed, of course, was far from perfect. If he were alive today, he would be immediately arrested and imprisoned in a mental institution.

Geert Wilders and myself are among the very few who still dare to criticize Islam openly. Of course you can say, I’ll keep quiet about that primitive religion, then I’ll be safe.

However, do we want to live in a country where you can no longer speak freely? Then Islam wins.

©2023 Matthys van Raalten. All rights reserved.

Former CDC Director Warned Fauci Not to ‘Give Terrorists Recipe’ to Modify Bird Flu to Kill 5%-50% of Infected thumbnail

Former CDC Director Warned Fauci Not to ‘Give Terrorists Recipe’ to Modify Bird Flu to Kill 5%-50% of Infected

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By The Geller Report

Fauci’s nickname – mini-Mengele – is not hyperbolic.

Redfield warned Fauci not to ‘give terrorists recipe’ to modify bird flu to kill 5%-50% of infected

NIH-funded scientists published instructions for making such a pathogen cross the “species barrier” to humans, recounted former CDC Director Robert Redfield.

By Greg Piper, Just The News, April 15, 2023:

Former CDC Director Robert Redfield’s biggest fear for a future pandemic is a genetically manipulated bird flu, given that NIH-funded scientists in 2012 published instructions for making such a pathogen cross the “species barrier” to humans, a highly unlikely result from viral evolution.

“I didn’t think we needed to give terrorists a recipe” for modifying a bird flu to kill 5%-50% of people it infects, Dr. Redfield told “Just the News, No Noise,” recalling his argument to then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci — his future antagonist on COVID origins and gain-of-function research — against publishing the research.

“I think it’s a miracle that no one’s used that yet,” Redfield said. “But I do think we’re at high risk for laboratory-created bird flu that will have high pathogenicity for man,” given the “highly inadequate” biosecurity of dozens of labs handling dangerous pathogens.

The “probability of a spillover event” from a lab “is very, very high,” he warned, “and I suspect that in the next decade we will have, unfortunately, a major pandemic as a consequence of either gain-of-function research or bioterrorism.”

“And this is why I think we need to really look seriously about not only having a moratorium in our own country, but actually having a global moratorium on gain-of-function research until society can decide: Should it really be done? Is the benefit there? And if they decide the benefit’s there, then how do you do it in a safe, responsible and effective way?”

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

Gates, Fauci Funded Experiments on Bird Flu — Will It Be the Next Pandemic?

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

CVS ‘Gender Transition’ Guide: Employees Must Use Preferred Pronouns, Can Use Bathroom Reflecting Identity thumbnail

CVS ‘Gender Transition’ Guide: Employees Must Use Preferred Pronouns, Can Use Bathroom Reflecting Identity

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By The Geller Report

Norming madness.

They may use whichever restroom or locker room they wish regardless of whether the individual identifies as transgender. A target rich environment for pedos and pervs.

CVS ‘gender transition’ guide says employees must use preferred pronouns, can use bathroom reflecting identity

CVS employees may be entitled to medical leave of absence for gender transition treatment, guidelines state

By: Fox Business, April 16, 2023:

EXCLUSIVE: CVS Health’s “gender transition guidelines” for employees requires workers to address people by their preferred pronouns and names and that they may use whichever restroom or locker room they wish regardless of whether the individual identifies as transgender.

In the guidelines obtained exclusively by FOX Business, employees are told they may be entitled to a medical leave of absence “under the Family and Medical Leave Act, state law, and/or CVS Health policy.” Transitioning employees are asked to tell their immediate leaders about their transition so the company “can provide support and to make your transition as smooth as possible.”

“You may also wish to have appropriate medical care to support your transition, including treatments such as hormone replacement therapy and/or gender confirmation surgery,” the guide states.

“During and after the transition has occurred, CVS Health encourages you to continue to partner with your Leader and your Advice & Counsel representative, and to immediately report any issues that you might have with your employment, your work environment, and/or your Leader, co-workers, clients, and customers,” it continues.

In a section titled, “Guidelines for Supporting a Colleague who is Transitioning,” the guide encourages employees to be an ally by asking colleagues to let them know if they say or do anything that makes them uncomfortable. It also urges employees to not make assumptions about a person’s gender.

It says employees should become an ally to make a positive impact on a co-worker’s life, become an inclusive leader, champion and celebrate all aspects of diversity and to show compliance with the CVS Health Equal Employment, Affirmative Action, AntiDiscrimination, Anti-Harassment, and Anti-Retaliation Policy.

CVS Health’s Employment, Affirmative Action, AntiDiscrimination, Anti-Harassment, and Anti-Retaliation Policy says ….

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLE: Washington Passes Bill Allowing Children to Legally Be Taken From Parents if Parents Don’t Consent to Gender Mutilation

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

U.S. Corporations Cut Dividends And Employees While Dumping Billions Into Race-Hustling Groups thumbnail

U.S. Corporations Cut Dividends And Employees While Dumping Billions Into Race-Hustling Groups

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By Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life

In tracking BLM contributions, we found many companies prioritizing ‘racial justice’ to the detriment of shareholders and employees.

Most Americans will remember the first few years of the 2020s for the pandemic, the lockdowns, the layoffs, and the Black Lives Matter (BLM)-fueled riots. Shareholders will also remember them as a tempestuous time for the market. Many companies announced mass layoffs and cuts to dividends and share buyback programs. For example, Disney’s last dividend date was Dec. 12, 2019.

But shockingly, as we’ve shown in our BLM Funding Database, companies contributed or pledged more than $83 billion to the BLM movement and related causes following the death of George Floyd.

In fact, according to a study by McKinsey and Company, our figure is conservative, and companies actually committed more than $340 billion to these causes. As a point of reference, $340 billion is 83 percent of the $411 billion the World Bank estimates is needed to reconstruct Ukraine. It is also greater than the GDPs of 51 African countries.

Our database tracking contributions and pledges to the BLM movement and related causes is replete with companies prioritizing “racial justice” to the detriment of shareholders and employees.

Take, for example, AT&T, the Texas-based telecommunications giant, which in 2021 made headlines for its racist, anti-white so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs.

In June 2020, at the height of the pandemic and riots, AT&T laid off 3,400 employees and shut down more than 250 of its retail stores. And in 2022, AT&T cut its quarterly dividend from $0.52 per share to $0.2775 per share to redirect cash flows toward righting its stretched balance sheet and revitalizing its stagnant legacy businesses.

The company’s dividend payments were substantially less than its adjusted earnings-per-share before the nearly 50 percent cut and were closer to figures from before cell phones were ubiquitous, back when the company was still advertising long-distance calls for 10 cents a minute.

While shareholders were understandably frustrated by the news, they should be furious to learn that all the while AT&T committed more than $3.1 billion toward racial justice.

In the wake of Floyd’s death, AT&T donated no less than $21.5 million to organizations advocating for racial justice, including the NAACP, National Action Network, Equal Justice Initiative, and Color of Change — all affiliated with BLM.

AT&T also committed $10 million “to create economic opportunities and foster upward mobility for Black and other underserved communities” and $3 billion toward a two-year supplier diversity initiative to “drive diversity and inclusion across our business and communities.” (In 2021, the company reportedly surpassed its goal by $100 million.)

But that’s not all. AT&T orchestrated additional racial justice initiatives to “move the needle on advancing economic opportunity, overcoming systemic racism educational barriers and law enforcement reform.”

These included a new Business Roundtable initiative to “push for public policy changes to deliver equal justice outcomes for all” at the national, state, and local levels and a founding partnership with OneTen, a race-based, discriminatory hiring platform which aims to “hire, promote, and advance one million Black individuals who do not have a four-year degree into family-sustaining careers over the next ten years.”

The company even held an essay contest for black “future makers,” that doled out $104,596 in prizes. Entrants were judged on their “commitment to pushing the culture forward and uplifting the Black Community” (50 percent), their “potential to inspire” (25 percent), and, lastly, their “persuasiveness/writing quality” (25 percent).

It’s unlikely that AT&T’s commitments provided solace to its shareholders or laid-off employees. Nor did they better prepare the company to weather hard times. Maybe the company should have focused less on left-wing politics and more on its flagging business.

AT&T was not the only company to place racial justice before the well-being of shareholders and employees. To name but a few more examples:

Boeing, the aerospace company and defense contractor, laid off 26,000 employees and suspended dividends while “investing” more than $15 million “to support racial equity and social justice.”

General Motors, the automotive conglomerate, suspended its dividend and share buyback programs while donating $10 million to organizations promoting so-called inclusion and racial justice.

Uber, the rideshare upstart, laid off 6,700 employees while pledging $61 million to so-called racial-equity nonprofits and redistributive initiatives.

Bed Bath & Beyond, the home goods retailer, suspended both its dividend and share buyback program while pledging $1 million in products to the NAACP, again, an official partner of the BLM Global Network Foundation.

UPS, the global shipping and logistics company, suspended its stock buyback program while contributing $10.7 million to “racial justice” organizations, including the NAACP, LCCHR, and LCCRUL.

Tens of millions of hardworking Americans lost their jobs during the pandemic. Others, especially retirees, struggled as well to make ends meet. Yet all the while, these and other corporations transferred more than $340 billion to anti-American radicals and their pet causes.

By bending the knee to BLM, the groundwork was laid for future left-wing violence and extortion — paid for by you, the American people. Are corporations ashamed of this? If not, they should be.

*****
This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.

Advocates Say WPATH Could ‘Come Crashing Down’ As Judge Demands Treasure Trove Of Internal Documents thumbnail

Advocates Say WPATH Could ‘Come Crashing Down’ As Judge Demands Treasure Trove Of Internal Documents

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By The Daily Caller

The World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) is facing a potential bloodbath, advocates say, after an Alabama judge subpoenaed a treasure trove of documents from the organization as part of an ongoing lawsuit over the state’s laws on transgender treatments.

WPATH is a leading advocate of child sex changes, recently pushing to remove any minimum age requirement to undergo sex change surgeries or cross-sex hormone therapy. Amy Tishelman, the author of the “Child” chapter in the 8th edition of WPATH’s guidelines, said she changed the guidelines so doctors wouldn’t “be sued because they weren’t following exactly what we said.”

U.S. hospitals such as Johns Hopkins, Stanford and Brigham and Women’s use WPATH’s guidelines to guide their own practice of treating transgender-identifying children.

A federal judge in Alabama requested WPATH supply documents pertaining to its guidelines for child sex changes in March. Plaintiffs suing the state of Alabama over its restrictions of child sex changes repeatedly referred to WPATH’s guidelines in their argumentation.

During a similar lawsuit in Florida, a district court in March ordered WPATH, the Endocrine Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to comply with a subpoena of all documents related to their guidance for transgender-identified kids. An amicus brief filed April 7 on behalf of the attorneys general (AGs) for 17 states highlighted the stark contrast between transgender guidance — especially for minors — in Europe with that of the medical establishment in the U.S. The brief also claimed the medical organizations in question are activist in nature.

AGs for 17 states blasted medical orgs like @wpath for putting “politics over science” in their trans guidance in an amicus brief.

“Moreover, there is particular reason to be suspicious of the interest groups in this case.”@Dylan_Housman @DailyCaller https://t.co/9ve78eIA6N

— Sarah Weaver (@SarahHopeWeaver) April 11, 2023

“I think there’s a good chance that the whole thing will come crashing down when the data are out there,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, board chair of the medical group Do No Harm, told The Daily Caller, “and that they really know that there’s no good scientific basis for this out there and they’re just going ahead and implementing an ideology rather than rigorously defined medical treatment.”

“The bottom line is the truth is now coming out, the writing’s on the wall,” January LittleJohn, a parental advocate, told The Daily Caller. “And the truth is coming out at that all of the times where they were relying on this garbage evidence, this very low quality evidence, they were doing these interventions on children with nothing to back it up. And then you have the American Academy of Pediatrics, the AMA, The Endocrine Society all blindly following these guidelines. And now they’re being held accountable.”

WPATH set standards of care for those with a “eunuch” gender identity in 2022, recommending castration as a treatment option. Recommended treatments options included hormone suppression, orchiectomy (removal of the testicles) to stop production of testosterone, orchiectomy with or without penectomy to alter the body to match their self-image and orchiectomy followed by hormone replacement with testosterone or estrogen. In creating these guidelines, WPATH used information from the Eunuch Archive in setting these standards of care, which the medical organization itself described as “filled with fantasy,” containing stories of child castration, pedophilia and sexual torture.

WPATH has also been accused of censoring viewpoints from doctors who believe that children are being rushed into sex changes. In Alabama, the judge asked for information related to how the WPATH treated differing medical opinions on child sex changes.

Dr. Stephen B. Levine, a psychologist known for his work on human sexuality and chair of WPATH’s standards of care committee from 1997-98, filed expert opinion in the ongoing lawsuit between WPATH and Florida in April.

A federal judge has ordered The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to provide internal docs on its guidance on trans-identifying children.

What’s going to be revealed in the docs? 👀

Story via @CoreyWriting and @DailyCallerhttps://t.co/2iNdSEJjZP

— Sarah Weaver (@SarahHopeWeaver) March 31, 2023

“WPATH claims to speak for the medical profession; however, it does not welcome skepticism and therefore, deviates from the philosophical core of medical science,” he said. “There are pediatricians, psychiatrists, endocrinologists, and surgeons who object strongly, on professional grounds, to transitioning children and providing affirmation in a transgender identity as the first treatment option.”

“So the question is, are they allowing people that are rigorous investigators to do this?” Goldfarb told The Daily Caller. “Or are they simply taking people who have set up gender clinics, and they said, yeah, you’re an expert because you’re on our side. And that’s what needs to be clarified.”

AUTHOR

SARAH WEAVER

Social issues reporter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Plastic Surgeon Promotes ‘Eunuch’ Gender Identity, Citing WPATH Guidelines

DeSantis Admin Issues Statement On Trans Teacher Accused Of Threatening Middle School

EXCLUSIVE: Pennsylvania Gender Clinic Used Thousands Of Taxpayer Dollars To Train Mental Health Providers

Black FSU professor accused of fabricating data to push white racism narrative exits in disgrace

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘Brace For F*cking Impact’: Border Agents Are Being Told Very Little To Prepare For The End Of A Major Trump-Era Order thumbnail

‘Brace For F*cking Impact’: Border Agents Are Being Told Very Little To Prepare For The End Of A Major Trump-Era Order

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By The Daily Caller

  • Border Patrol agents are saying they aren’t getting much information regarding preparations for a major surge in illegal immigrants when Title 42, a major Trump-era expulsion order, ends May 11 and fear that chaos could ensue as a result, according to agents and internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
  • Title 42 was enacted to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and has resulted in the expulsion of more than 2.5 million illegal migrants at the southern border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics.
  • “There are thousands and thousands just waiting for Title 42 to end. I would say a fear is that the Biden admin has no clue just how bad it’s going to get. We can barely actively patrol the border now. When Title 42 ends, all of our resources, all of our little manpower that we do have, are going to be focused on processing. Field work will nearly cease to exist in my opinion,” one Border Patrol agent working along the southern border told the DCNF.

Border Patrol agents are being given limited word on how to prepare for a flood of illegal immigrants when Title 42, a major Trump-era expulsion order, ends May 11, according to two agents who spoke anonymously with the Daily Caller News Foundation and an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo.

President Joe Biden set the expiration of the COVID-19 emergencies, including Title 42, for May 11. The agents working the frontlines of the southern border had said they had very limited instructions about handling an expected surge of illegal immigrants come Title 42’s end and basically were just being told to mentally ready themselves for the worst in conversations with the DCNF.

One agent working along the southern border, who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak, told the DCNF that the extent they were told about preparations was just to “brace for fucking impact” and to prepare to “weather the storm.”

With Title 42 in place, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has had record migrant encounters, with more than 2.3 million in fiscal year 2022 and more than one million between October and February.

A recent internal directive sent to some Department of Homeland Security officials that the DCNF exclusively obtained instructed agents to have “efficient cadence” for credible fear interviews (CFIs) to screen asylum claims and/or statements of fear of persecution, torture or similar threats.

“Due to the expected lifting of the currently operative CDC order, USBP and component partners must have an efficient cadence in place to be prepared to ramp up to USCIS conducting up to 1,000 CFIs per day in USBP’s short-term holding facilities for NCs across the Southwest Border,” the internal memo stated.

A second agent working along the southern border told the DCNF that it’s just a wait and see game, adding that there’s concern authorities won’t have the capacity or bandwidth to handle what’s to come.

“Most of the time, we are just told that Title 42 will end eventually and to be mentally prepared for the influx of migrants when it does. Regular line agents don’t seem to be offered an outline or plan as to how we will actually deal with the large numbers at the processing level,” the second agent said.

“Our facilities aren’t designed for large quantities of people. They are temporary housing facilities. When Title 42 is lifted, we will process them under immigration law, which governs when the migrants should be deported, detained, etc. We must also comply with U.S. asylum law, which will allow migrants to claim asylum, even when they entered illegally,” the second agent said.

The Biden administration is ignorant to the issue of an impending influx of illegal immigrants, the second agent explained.

“There are thousands and thousands just waiting for Title 42 to end. I would say a fear is that the Biden Admin has no clue just how bad it’s going to get. We can barely actively patrol the border now. When Title 42 ends, all of our resources, all of our little manpower that we do have, are going to be focused on processing. Field work will nearly cease to exist in my opinion,” the second agent said.

Republican states have challenged the Biden administration’s previous attempts to end Title 42, but the latest end to the public health emergency hasn’t faced any legal flack. DHS predicted that the end of Title 42 would usher in up to 14,000 illegal immigrants per day at the southern border,  a source familiar with the preparations told CNN.

To address the surge in anticipation of Title 42’s looming expiration, the Biden administration announced new measures in January to allow migrants amenable to the public health order opportunities to have an exception granting them entry via a phone application known as CBP One or through an airport on the grounds of humanitarian parole.

“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to prepare for the end of the Title 42 public health order, which is currently the subject of multiple court orders, and a return to processing all noncitizens under the Department’s Title 8 immigration authorities,” DHS said in January.

DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Investigative reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Border Authorities Warn Of Greater Surge In Chinese Illegally Crossing Into US, Reveal Smuggling Routes

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Screw Budweiser Beer — Here are the 21 Best Beers You Can Buy Online thumbnail

Screw Budweiser Beer — Here are the 21 Best Beers You Can Buy Online

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By Matthys van Raalten

I can imagine that you don’t want to drink Budweiser any longer. Their apology is fake.

May I suggest to you Dutch beer as an alternative? Heineken is the best, and Grolsch is also damn tasty!

100 meters from my home in Amsterdam you can find this windmill (click here to view a picture). Inside is a beer brewery. Many tourists from all over the world visit this place.

Hope to see you there also one day.

From domestic to imported, not all of the best brews are impossible to find.

Firestone Walker Pivo Hoppy Pils

“Bone dry and hop-driven, Pivo delivers zippy effervescence and earthy bitterness along with inviting aromas of fresh cut flowers and lemon candy.”—Greg

“American brewer Matt Brynildson of Firestone Walker added his touch to Czech pilsner by hopping it up, California style.  One of the best widely-available American takes on Czech pils, a style that is best drunk fresh.”—Tom

Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold Lager

CREDIT: GREAT LAKES BREWING CO.

“This is a balanced brew that delivers a nuanced interplay of bready malt and herbal hops. Dortmunder Gold is clean, refreshing and crushable, even at nearly 6% ABV.”—Greg

Oskar Blues Dale’s Pale Ale

“Malt-driven notes of caramel and toast provide a rich backbone to this hoppy ale. Expect waves of piney, citric and resinous hop flavors along with a bold and bitter finish.”—Greg

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

“This classic beer was one of the first hoppy beers many people ever had, and remains the definition of the West Coast pale ale style.  Refreshingly bitter, with balanced malt. Great with spicy food. It is the one beer that is always in my refrigerator.”—Tom

Bell’s Two Hearted Ale IPA

“Two Hearted explodes out of the glass with fruity aromas of orange peel, grapefruit and tangerine, underpinned by a bit of pine. The body is lean and balanced while showing a restrained bitterness that makes this IPA eminently drinkable.”—Greg

Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing IPA

“Sierra Nevada’s entry into the crowded field of hazy IPAs is remarkably consistent, widely available, and downright delicious. Creamy, slightly sweet and softly bitter, this brew is chock full of juicy fruit flavor, with pineapple, apricot, and citrus notes throughout.”—Greg

Lagunitas DayTime IPA

“Not just a low-calorie brew, Lagunitas DayTime IPA has remained impressive since its debut back in 2010. Full flavored and hop forward, this IPA brings bold citrus hop character along with a refreshing malt base.”—Greg

Orval Trappist Ale

“The only dry-hopped Trappist ale, this refined Belgian brew is in a class by itself. A touch of Brettanomyces yeast gives the flavor profile a distinctive lift and contrast to the pale roasted malt and soft astringency of the hops. This beer ages well.”—Tom

Petrus Aged Pale

“Aged in massive oak barrels called foeders, this Belgian pale ale takes on tart quality from the microbiota living in the wooden barrel staves. Unlike American style pale ales, this is not characterized by hoppy bitterness, but rather a dry, complex bite that recalls Champagne.”—Tom

Dupont Saison Dupont Ale

“Brewed by Brasserie Dupont in the Belgian countryside near France, Saison Dupont is the benchmark farmhouse ale that inspired brewers the world over. Peppery hops in the nose and palate and rich, fruity esters define this brew, whose name means “season.” This style was brewed for consumption during the hot summer months when brewing was historically not possible.”—Tom

Westmalle Trappist Tripel

Now 19% Off

“This Belgian Trappist abbey invented the triple style, a golden ale with fruity esters originally brewed for sale to support the abbey’s operations. Westmalle is the first notable triple and certainly the best widely-available triple, with notes of stone fruit. This has a dry, hoppy finish—not sweet like many imitators.”—Tom

Allagash White

“For 25 years, Allagash White has remained the benchmark for Belgian-style Witbier in the US and beyond. Bright, thirst quenching and slightly sweet, this wheat brew combines warm spices with a lemony tang and gentle peppery bite.”—Greg

“Brewed with a touch of orange peel and coriander in the classic Belgian Wit style, this hazy wheat ale is even better than the originals brewed in Belgium. Soft on the palate but not flabby, Allagash White is super refreshing and low enough in alcohol to have a few.”—Tom

Dogfish Head Seaquench Ale

Now 23% Off

“SeaQuench fuses all sorts of zesty lime (black limes, lime peel, lime juice) with a generous dollop of coriander, plus sea salt, and layers it atop a clean, wheaty base to create the quintessential year-round crusher.”—Greg

Victory Sour Monkey

“Though this remix clocks in at a big 9.5% ABV, the tantalizing tartness keeps everything tangy and bright, while aromas of banana, rum, apple, lemon, and clove bring complexity to the beer.”—Greg

Monk’s Cafe Flemish Sour Ale

“Brewed by Van Steenberge outside of Ghent, Belgium, Monk’s Cafe Flemish Sour Ale is a definitive ‘oude bruin’ or Flanders red beer.  Evoking a cherry Warhead with lactic sourness and a touch of malt sweetness, this is a great introduction of the vast array of beers broadly classed as ‘sour.’”—Tom

Trappistes Rochefort 8

“Rochefort 10 is often named among the ‘Best Beers in the World,”‘ but the 8 has perhaps even more nuance. Brewed in a Belgian Trappist monastery, this is a high-alcohol, bready, and rich brew with caramelized toffee notes. “—Tom

Deschutes Black Butte Porter

“Rich, yet restrained, Black Butte delivers bold notes of chocolate, licorice, fig and burnt caramel, all in a silky smooth package.”—Greg

Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout

“Rich with oats added to the mash, this silky-smooth stout is dry, bracing and classically English. A stalwart that will never go out of style.”—Tom

Cigar City Brewing Maduro Brown Ale

“This now classic Brown Ale is creamy and round on the palate with a dry, bittersweet finish; nutty malt flavors, punctuated by notes of coffee and cocoa, give way to an earthy, herbal hop character.”—Greg

Best Low Calorie Beer

Guinness Draught

“The key to finding a low-calorie beer isn’t looking for mass produced ultra-lights, which rely on brewing adjuncts like rice to produce thin, quickly made, flavorless beer. Instead, look for correctly made full-grain bill beer that is low in alcohol, like Brasserie de la Senne’s Taras Boulba. This is a sessionable Belgian Pale Ale brewed in Brussels, 4.2% ABV, and 135 calories per 12-ounce bottle. It is super dry, aromatic, and absolutely delicious. If a mass produced, widely available beer is required, the Irish dry stout Guinness is about 125 calories per 12 ounces and also about 4.2% ABV.”—Tom

Dogfish Head World Wide Stout

“This seasonal stout is all about sitting by the fireplace on a snowy evening and enjoying this massive beer out of a snifter. This is all about the copious amount of they malt use. Notes of espresso and bittersweet chocolate come through when served at cellar temperature. This beer ages extremely well.”—Tom

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Dangremond is a Contributing Digital Editor at Town & Country, where he covers men’s style, cocktails, travel, and the social scene.

©2023 Matthys van Raalten. All rights reserved.

Society-Wide Lack of Restraint a Cause of Mass Shootings: Mohler thumbnail

Society-Wide Lack of Restraint a Cause of Mass Shootings: Mohler

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By Family Research Council

Only two weeks after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, another mass murderer killed six people and wounded nine at a shooting at Old National Bank in Louisville, Ky. The incident was “absolutely horrifying and frightening,” Dr. Al Mohler, president of Southern Theological Seminary in Louisville, said on “Washington Watch,” but that should make it a call to action for Christians.

Mohler, whose predecessor’s son-in-law died in the Louisville shooting, diagnosed the tragedy as a symptom of “restraint being lifted off” of American society; “you see it just about in every dimension of life.” “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice said that “it seems like almost daily something like this is taking place,” these “extreme acts of violence taking place across the country.”

“There’s only one explanation for this, and that is premeditated violence carried out with a murderous rampage. There is no other factor here,” said Mohler. He warned against the attempts of secular society to reduce a mass shooter’s moral culpability to either socioeconomic factors or mental infirmity; neither explanation, he argued, applied in this case. “Many people want to reduce all sin and wrongdoing, even criminal behavior to some kind of socioeconomic explanation,” he added. “That’s basically all a secular society has.”

But Mohler said the real root cause is the same affliction we all suffer from. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” said the Lord through Jeremiah (17:9). “If it turns out someone says this is ‘just this’ or ‘just that,’ I think we as Christians know that is not plausible,” Mohler summarized.

“As we’re watching more of these events take place all across the country,” Hice agreed, “we can’t blame it all on guns. We can’t blame it all on mental issues. There is a heart issue that must at some point be addressed.”

“When you look at … both the Old and the New Testaments, there’s plenty of evidence to the fact that one of God’s great gifts to humanity is restraint. And when those restraints are taken off of a society, horrible things happen,” Mohler continued. “When you look at the entire structure of biblical morality and biblical law, if you begin to unravel things over here, the unraveling is going to take place over [t]here as well.”

After recounting how a Sodom-esque crime unraveled into civil war, the book of Judges concludes, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25). David’s last words poetically celebrate restraining authority, “When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth” (2 Samuel 23:3-4). Paul wrote, “Rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain” (Romans 13:3-4).

For decades, Americans “have been unraveling the entire moral fiber, the moral structure of Western civilization … that’s based upon very clear biblical principles of morality,” Mohler went on. “Eventually, you end up with people who basically demonstrate what it looks like for a restraint to be gone, for inhibitions to be gone, and for people to follow example after example of horrifying behavior. … If God’s restraining grace is taken away from a society, the list of horrible things happening just continues.”

Mohler insisted the “break down of order and … restraint” is “not just in terms of giant crimes,” but it “gets all the way down to the way parents deal with children, the way that the schools deal with students. … Frankly, you look at America’s major cities, [and] you don’t see much restraint about anything.” Paul warned that “in the last days … people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:1-4).

Mohler said the digital revolution and especially social media was instrumental in creating the conditions for people to cast off restraint. “It used to be that people were told, ‘think before you say something. Take responsibility for your words. Don’t say anything you don’t want to live with the rest of your life,’” he said. But now, “it’s an unmitigated … just sheer express. It is just absolute, uncontrolled, rampag[ing] emotion.”

Hice agreed, “It’s so easy just to throw out emotions” on social media. “And that certainly is fuel to the fire of extremism and whatever other isms we want to talk about.”

Given the societal ills we face, “we do not have a toolkit of policies with which to respond to this,” explained Mohler. “We as Christians understand that there is no solution for the basic problem of the human heart that comes from within ourselves, or that can be arranged by society. … Policies and laws? They can suppress, to some extent, the full expression of human evil. But the problem is in the heart and the only solution for the problem in the heart is the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

So, “what we have is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Mohler said. “The gospel of Jesus Christ is first and foremost about how sinners are saved from our sin through the blood atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ and the full justification of sins that comes to those who, by faith, come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.”

This means that “we have to return to first principles biblically,” Mohler argued. “We as Christians don’t have anywhere else to go anyway. The Christian church doesn’t have some kind of ‘policy exit’ from theology. … The New Testament gives us our agenda, that is, to preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, to build godly families, to build churches, and through that, to help bear witness to Christ.”

“But the larger society benefits by the presence of Christians and by the influence of Christianity,” Mohler added, because Christians “also have the sure biblical knowledge that the way you build a civilization is with healthy marriages based in a mother and a father and a husband and a wife who love each other and are devoted to each other; having children and raising them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; building a society, a civilization based upon consistency with God’s law and God’s command; and seeking human flourishing in such a way that we know can only come by obedience to the Word of God and can only come by God blessing and providing restraint and protection.”

“As we look at a more radically secularizing society, it’s not just a challenge to us evangelistically,” said Mohler.” It’s a challenge to us just with the breakdown we see in the order around us.” Proverbs states, “Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law” (29:18).

“The answer for Christians has to come back to the gospel of Jesus Christ and our eager witness to the fact that there is no rescue from sin but Jesus,” Mohler concluded. For this purpose, even the apostle Paul said his powers were insufficient apart from the power of God, “not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5).

In keeping with Paul’s recognition of his own weakness, Mohler urged Christians to pray. “Our priority,” he said, “has to be to pray that God’s grace and mercy will be evident, especially in a situation such as this, and that Christ’s people will be deployed as agents of grace … that Christian parents will teach their children, Christian pastors will teach their congregations, and all of us will together learn by the spirit and the word what it means to be faithful Christians in such a difficult age.”

“God put us here in this time by his sovereignty for a purpose,” said Mohler. “Let’s pray we’ll be faithful to that purpose.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©2023 Family Research Council

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

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