PAULA BOLYARD: This Is Not The America I Know: Dozens of FBI Agents Raid Home of Catholic Pro-Life Activist as Children Scream in Terror.
Related: Majority see FBI as Biden’s ‘personal Gestapo’ after Trump raid.
Remember, Biden’s own press secretary says that if you disagree with the majority, you’re an extremist!
Also, let’s publicize the names of those agents. There’s no privacy right in raiding people’s homes.
I HOPE THAT’S TRUE BUT I’M HONESTLY A BIT SKEPTICAL: NASA declares SLS tanking test a success.
AD ASTRA: SpaceX’s Florida launch seen as far as New York, Massachusetts. “People reported seeing the launch as far as Cape Cod in Massachusetts as well as New York, New Jersey and Maryland — sharing pictures on social media of the rocket in the sky. SpaceX has launched more than 3,340 satellites into low-Earth orbit with 2,499 operational, according to an online tracker. Last weekend, SpaceX launched 34 satellites into low-Earth orbit with AST SpaceMobile’s BlueWalker 3 satellite.”
REMEMBER, GREENS WANT YOU TO SUFFER: “This was part of an effort to appease the green parties in government, who have been notable for their long-standing opposition to nuclear power.”
THAT’S BEEN AMPLY DEMONSTRATED IN THE PAST: Woke ‘Teacher of the Year’ proves NY’s educrats don’t care about actual education.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Countertop Nugget Ice Maker. #CommissionEarned
FIRST PUTIN, NOW THE MULLAHS:
JAMES MEIGS: Why Fauci Became a Bobblehead.
Fauci seems to have concluded that he is synonymous with science itself. “It’s easy to criticize,” he complained on Face the Nation last year, “but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science.” Note to reader: No one “represents” science. Science is a radically transparent system of inquiry, debate, and a willingness to challenge received wisdom. As soon as any individual claims the authority to speak for science as a whole, that person is doing the opposite of science.
Today, there is reason to believe that Covid-19, as devastating as it was, did less damage to our society than our ham-fisted overreaction to the disease. Fauci and his public health colleagues were enthusiastic cheerleaders for the policies that inflicted this damage. The social, medical, and economic aftershocks will reverberate for decades to come. It’s tempting to lay the blame here all on Fauci, to assume that his personal moral shortcomings created this mess. I don’t think that’s right. By all accounts, Fauci is a well-meaning official who really believes he’s doing what’s best for the country. But so what? Well-intentioned people can do just as much damage as malevolent ones, sometimes more.
No. The real problem here is power. Fauci simply has had far too much of it for far too long. When the Good Saint Anthony retires in a few months, this administration (or, more likely, one that follows) would be smart to ensure that the next NIAID director operates on a much shorter leash. We would all do well to recognize that appointing “czars” in times of crisis always backfires in the end. And it’s fundamentally un-American.
Flashback: Fauci and other health ‘experts’ are messing up monkeypox just as they did COVID, Ebola and AIDS.
LET THE COMMENTING BEGIN: 9 mm vs. .45 ACP–A Different Kind of Comparison.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR CANADA: Parents and Students Protest Transgender Teacher With Huge Fake Breasts.
DUMBEST GUINNESS RECORD EVER: Teen puts 22 socks on one foot in 30 seconds for Guinness record.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Ford’s Latest Supply-Chain Problem: a Shortage of Blue Oval Badges. “The shortage is impacting Ford’s popular F-Series pickup trucks, the people said. Ford executives had considered some workarounds, such as 3-D printing the insignia until the permanent ones could be obtained, some of the people said. But they didn’t feel the printed substitutions would meet the bar on quality, these people said…A Michigan-based supplier that has made badges for Ford in the past had to limit operations in August, after disclosing to Michigan regulators it had discharged industrial chemicals into a local sewer system, according to city and state officials. The supplier, Tribar Technologies, Inc., specializes in decorative exterior trim for automotive, including making badges and lettering for vehicles. The company’s website shows it has made the insignia for Ford models previously, including the 2021 F-150 pickup truck.”
YOU SHOULD HAVE ONE, BUT PREFERABLY ONE THAT WORKS: Officials issue warning after carbon monoxide detectors fail to alarm. “Consumers should immediately stop using HECOPRO digital display carbon monoxide detectors because they can fail to warn about the presence of the dangerous gas, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said.”
RIP: Louise Fletcher: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s Nurse Ratched dies aged 88.
Flashback: Kathy Shaidle in 2012: Nurse Ratched, My Hero: 4 Female Movie Villains I Love.
JOE BIDEN TOLD US COVID IS OVER: Chicago and suburbs reach low risk level for COVID-19 as new cases, hospitalizations decline.
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Joe Biden’s Old Man Filter Goes Haywire Again: “Biden with his arm around Elton John: ‘It’s all his fault we are spending $6 billion in tax payer dollars on HIV and AIDS this month.’”
SLEEP IS VITAL: Getting enough sleep key to a healthy immune system.
JUST A REMINDER: I get paid based on ad revenue now, so if you wouldn’t mind whitelisting InstaPundit if you run an ad blocker that would be great. Or some people hit the PayPal donation button, which is also great.
Some people have asked how to send a donation by check; you can send those to 118 N. Peters Rd. #12-230, Knoxville TN 37923. If you do, please make it out to me, Glenn Reynolds, not to “InstaPundit.” (Bumped).
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Stacey Abrams Bursts Through Wall Like Kool-Aid Man To Tell Overjoyed Mother That The Heartbeat Sound She’s Hearing Is Fake.
MCDONALD’S TO FACE $10B LAWSUIT ALLEGING BIAS AGAINST BLACK MEDIA COMPANIES:
A $10 billion lawsuit against McDonald’s will be allowed to proceed after a federal court denied the company’s motion to dismiss and sided with media tycoon Byron Allen, who is alleging that the corporation allocates less ad funding to black-owned media.
Allen will be allowed to try and prove the franchise discriminates against black-owned media, thus violating federal civil rights laws, a federal district court in California ruled last week.
“This is about economic inclusion of African American-owned businesses in the US economy,” Allen said in a press release Tuesday. “McDonald’s takes billions from African American consumers and gives almost nothing back. The biggest trade deficit in America is the trade deficit between white corporate America and black America, and McDonald’s is guilty of perpetuating this disparity.”
Allen alleges that the company placed his networks, which include the Weather Channel and Comedy.tv, to an “African American tier” that receives less funding. The lawsuit claimed black people represent 40% of fast-food customers, but McDonald’s spent 0.3% of its $1.6 billion U.S. ad budget in 2019 on black-owned media, according to the press release.
When then-CEO Steve Easterbrook said in 2015 that he wanted to transform the corporation into a ‘modern, progressive burger company,’ apparently, he wasn’t kidding.
HILLARY IS RIGHT: Abortions should be as hard to obtain as AR-15s. “I’m here to tell Mrs. Clinton that these terms are acceptable. Abortions nationwide should be as easy as obtaining an AR-15. The pro-life movement should begin working on implementation immediately.”
WELL, FETTERMAN ALWAYS IS CRINGEY: Oz releases his medical records and Fetterman’s response is… cringey.
STAY COMFORTABLE: Dickies Men’s Loose-Fit Cargo Work Pants. #CommissionEarned
CRIME SQUAD, EPISODE 2: New video from Reason TV.
KEN BURNS’S ANGRY NEW FILM: The director acknowledges The US and the Holocaust was inspired by America First.
Explicitly acknowledging that he was inspired to make the film by the rise of the America First movement, Burns said, “I have been making films for almost 50 years about the US, and also about us. When anyone tells you there’s a ‘them,’ that’s authoritarianism. All such distinctions are biological, scientific and political fictions. They are designed to create grievances.” Burns has regularly denounced Donald Trump, saying that his presidency took the country backwards, and has now attacked Ron DeSantis, saying that the Florida governor’s scheme to send migrants to Martha’s Vineyard* was “basically saying that you can use a human life… and to put it in the position of becoming a political pawn in somebody’s authoritarian game.”
Note that while Burns is using “America First” as an attack on The Bad Orange Man and those eeeeevil Rethuglicans, the original America First group was a broad coalition of ideologies: “Like any mass political movement, America First was an amalgamation of groups and fellow travelers who sometimes shared little more in common than an opposition to America’s entry into the war. The ranks of the antiwar movement included pacifists and communists (at least until Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941), wild-haired liberals, straight-laced conservatives and everything in between.”
The Times of Israel interviewed historian Rafael Medoff on Sunday: PBS Holocaust documentary perpetuates well-worn myths to glorify FDR, says historian.
Early in his new film “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” documentarian Ken Burns claims the United States admitted more Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany than any other country on Earth.
The problem with this statement, according to historian Rafael Medoff, is that it flies in the face of publicly available data on refugees from that period.
Clocking in at six hours, “The U.S. and the Holocaust” begins airing on PBS this week. In recent press interviews, Burns said he attempted to handle Roosevelt “more critically” for “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” compared to the previous, somewhat glowing treatments of FDR in his other documentaries on the period.
Calling Burns “seriously mistaken” about the issue of Jewish refugees, Medoff told The Times of Israel that the discrepancy is connected to several other “well-worn myths” that appear in “The U.S. and the Holocaust.” These myths, said Medoff, run the gamut from why the US could not rescue Anne Frank to Roosevelt’s role in the “St. Louis” affair, alongside the perennial debate on bombing the tracks to Auschwitz.
* * * * * * * *
You were one of the historians consulted on a new Jerusalem memorial to James G. McDonald, the first ambassador of the US to Israel. As the key adviser to President Roosevelt on refugee issues, McDonald resigned his position in 1935 out of frustration for being unable to convince FDR and other leaders to take action. Why would Burns omit McDonald from a film focused on refugees?
More than a decade ago, the US Holocaust Museum published McDonald’s diaries. Subsequent research by the Wyman Institute revealed that McDonald had been much more critical of Roosevelt’s refugee policy than the editors of the diaries had acknowledged. So when the museum decided to start creating exhibits and programs promoting the notion that FDR tried to rescue the Jews, McDonald’s story became a problem — it contradicted the museum’s new narrative. McDonald was completely omitted from the museum’s 2018 exhibit on “Americans and the Holocaust” — despite the museum director’s explicit written promise to the McDonald family that he would be included.
Ken Burns has said his film is based on that exhibit, and the museum’s staff members were his consultants, so it appears that Burns’s omission of McDonald is consistent with the museum’s approach.
It’s tragic that the exhibit and the film would exclude this noble American statesman, whose efforts to help the Jews deserved to be highlighted, not ignored.
From an earlier Times of Israel article quoting Medoff on James McDonald: New Evidence Shows FDR’s Bigotry Derailed Many Holocaust Rescue Plans.
Flashback: New Documents Reveal FDR’s Eugenic Project to ‘Resettle’ Jews During World War II. As the Holocaust raged, the American president secretly asked his government to study the possible resettlement of remaining European refugees in Africa and South America. His goal: for Jews to be ‘spread thin all over the world.’
* I too confuse Martha’s Vineyard and Auschwitz. Notice that Burns isn’t angry with President Biden for re-opening the floodgates on illegal immigration — and turning illegal immigrants into political pawns in the first place, but he’s quite cross with DeSantis for exposing the utter hypocrisy of the Martha’s Vineyard wine and cheese lawn sign crowd:
As Karol Markowicz writes: DeSantis was right to send migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. We need to bring border crisis to Democrats.
Earlier: Sanctuary Cities Seethe as Illegal Immigrants Actually Arrive.
The surest sign that public policies are simply virtue signals is when the messages don’t cost anything. The easiest way to tell when that signal starts to fail is to watch politicians flounder as the costs start to rise and voters demand relief.
It was free—and meaningless—for progressive churches to post banners calling themselves “nuclear free zones” during the Reagan era. Their dwindling congregations loved it. It was free, after George Floyd‘s murder, to post woke catechism signs on your front lawn, proclaiming “In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal” and so on. Maybe the neighbors gave you high-fives. And for years it has been free for deep-blue cities to proclaim themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. That’s changing now that voters want some sanctuary for themselves.
Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.
These progressive bastions were silent when the Biden administration flew planeloads of illegal immigrants to suburban airports in the middle of the night. TV coverage was prohibited, and the arrivals were secretly dispersed. Abbott’s buses, by contrast, arrive downtown greeted by local TV crews. Now you can hear the politicians screech.
Why, it’s as if: Democrats Discover Only The Federal Government Can Solve The Border Crisis.
YAWN: Socialist students hold ‘We Won’t Go Back’ march. Dozens of angry students. Well, a couple of dozen. And they’re dumb enough to think that socialism represents some sort of progress, when it’s a failed 19th century ideology.
SCHEDULED FOR 7:32 PM: Watch SpaceX launch another 52 Starlink satellites, land rocket tonight. It’s news that this is routine.
IT’S BEEN A ZOMBIE FOR DECADES. LET IT DIE. Inside the struggle to reinvent ‘SNL’ as nine actors exit before premiere.
HMM: If the ‘My 401k’ trend is ANY indication, Democrats are in seriously DEEP crap come November (here are some of the ANGRIEST tweets).. “There’s a reason Democrats want us focused on abortion and made-up fascism and NOT the economy.”
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Who’s our real president? Joe Biden — or the staffers who keep walking back his comments?
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Climate protester set himself on fire at tennis match and instantly regretted it.
A UK climate protester literally put his skin in the game when he ran onto a tennis court before Roger Federer’s final match at O2 Arena in London and set himself on fire. That was surely meant as a sign of his absolute commitment to the cause but apparently no one had told him that fire is hot.
Wearing a white T-shirt reading “End UK Private Jets,” the protester, a young man, appeared on the court during the afternoon singles match between Stefanos Tsitsipas and Diego Schwartzman. Sitting down near the net on Schwartzman’s side of the court, the man briefly set fire to his right arm, and to the court, as security officials ran toward him.
The protester appeared to immediately regret the decision to set fire to himself, and quickly put out the flames with his left hand while a small fire burned on the court next to him. A staff member smothered the on-court fire with a suit jacket while the protester calmly waited to be removed.
Once the fire was out, and with Schwartzman keeping a safe distance, three security guards carried the man off the court to a chorus of boos from the crowd.
The whole thing only lasted about 30 seconds and accomplished nothing.
Michael Shellenberger has a thread on the intersection of apocalyptic environmentalism and exhibitionist narcissism that’s well worth a read:
In contrast, in the sixties, protestors who self-immolated were made of much sterner stuff:
NOT THERE YET: Tropical Storm Ian forecast to hit Cayman as hurricane on Sunday. Flights have been canceled, but the pics my friends there are posting on social media this morning still look calm and beautiful. The calm before the storm.
DON’T FORGET HUBBLE: The incredible images of deep, deep space produced by the James Webb telescope have captured the imagination of the world, and for good reason. But its predecessor, the Hubble Telescope, did some rather amazing stuff, too, as seen this morning on HillFaith in the short video “Of Fingerprints and Galaxies.”
SHAMELESS: California is withholding standardized test results until after Election Day.
As always, when they’re hiding stuff, it’s not because it’ll make them look good.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Bogs Waterproof, Snow and Rain Boots. #CommissionEarned
ROD DREHER: Sex With Children: The Gender Ideology End Game.
Irene Montero, a Communist who is the Minister of Equality in the left-wing Podemos government in Spain, says the quiet part out loud: that equality means children have the right to have sex if they want to. Here’s the clip, in Spanish, but with English subtitles (turn on the CC on the YouTube frame):
This is it. This is the end game of these queer theorists and gender ideologues: the sexualization of children. It was always going to end up here. This is what all these drag queen story hours mean, and these “family-friendly drag shows”. It’s all about sexualizing children and grooming them to become prey for pedophiles — sorry, “Minor-Attracted Persons.”
Exit questions: “Did they even go this far in Weimar Germany? How much more of this are we prepared to tolerate?”
DAN MITCHELL IS HAPPY WITH LIZ TRUSS’S START: The Much-Needed Reincarnation of Thatchernomics.
DECLINE IS A CHOICE: The Chevy Camaro Dies in 2024, Will Be Replaced by Electric Sedan.
Currently, the two-door, gas-fed Chevy Camaro is without a future. But it has a futuristic replacement, according to Automotive News. That replacement is an all-electric sedan. Commence double takes, spit takes, and hot takes. At least the four-door that’s slated to succeed the Camaro is billed as a “performance” sedan.
General Motors is of course in the midst of a huge transition toward electric vehicles. By 2035, the automaker hopes to go all-electric, no longer selling gas- and diesel-powered cars, trucks, or SUVs. Read between the lines, and GM isn’t merely tearing up its internal combustion lineup and starting over, nor will it blindly adhere to its 2035 goal if the market hasn’t shifted to support such a move—i.e., the all-electric gambit is a goal, not a promise, and if buyers aren’t ready for only EVs, GM may still provide gas- and diesel-fed vehicles to meet demand.
Flashback: Biden seeks to make half of new U.S. auto fleet electric by 2030.
Which isn’t very surprising for an administration staffed, from the (figurehead) top on down with Obama administration retreads.
TRANSLATION: GET READY FOR FUNEMPLOYMENT: Google CEO Pichai tells employees not to ‘equate fun with money’ in heated all-hands meeting.
Flashback: Google needs a new CEO, but dumping Sundar Pichai is not enough.
I just had a peek at a new book by a friend, and one of our top contributors at The Stream, the gifted Mark Judge: The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi. For its intrinsic merits, and for the story it tells about the dangerous attacks on freedom that we all face, it deserves to become an instant best-seller.
I barely knew Mark Judge, except as an arts columnist, before he became the target of a skilled, professional hit job. Or not the target exactly, so much as the patsy whom cynical politicians hoped to use (and if need be destroy) in order to take out their actual target, Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. I offered Judge this endorsement for his book:
I was tempted to compare Mark Judge to Lech Walesa or Vaclav Havel. They were likewise targeted for personal destruction by regimes that perverted their countries’ constitutions, and were desperate to cling to power. But that isn’t entirely apt. Both Walesa and Havel at some point consciously chose to enter political activism, to pick up a stone and challenge Goliath.
Mark Judge never did. He just went to high school, struggled with alcoholism, and wrote a memoir about it. That’s it.
But highly paid professional opposition researchers hired to stop the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh at any cost came across Judge’s name. They pored over his memoir’s details, and used it as a ‘story bible’ for the attack on Kavanaugh. Then they used every weapon, legal and illegal, in their arsenal to try to force Judge to somehow help them credential their fiction.
He stood firm, which shocked them. The truth prevailed for a change. And after the Dobbs decision, we live in a new and better America. In large part, we have my friend Mark Judge to thank. I hope every American reads this book, and profits from the example of his courage.
Read the whole thing.
LISA SCHIFFREN: Manipulating Our Kids for ‘Social and Emotional’ Purposes.
GRIM MILESTONE WATCH: The Dow Drops Below 30,000.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average had a bad morning today and lost nearly 700 points, putting it below 30,000 for the first time in almost two years.
Between the Fed’s monetary policy and continued concerns over inflation, traders could send stocks into a bear market. If the Dow closes below 29,439.72, it would be the first such instance since the Covid recession.
Do the numbers signify a global bear market?
Business surveys Friday showed economic activity in Europe declined sharply in September, highlighting how growth outside the U.S. has also been knocked off course. Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar is experiencing a once-in-a-generation rally that threatens to worsen the slowdown in global growth and effectively export inflation around the globe.
Central banks around the world, including policy makers in Norway, Switzerland and South Africa, have lifted borrowing costs. The global commitment to policy tightening has further eroded hopes among investors for a soft landing, or only a modest hit to growth instead of a full-blown recession.
“All central banks are singing from the same hymn sheet: They’re trying to get on top of inflation no matter what,” said Antoine Bouvet, a senior rates strategist at ING. “The Fed set the tone very clearly…they will continue regardless of the economic pain inflicted on the economy.”
The pan-European Stoxx Europe 600 slid 2.3%, dropping to its lowest level since December 2020.
Usually, when stocks fall, bonds offer a haven to nervous investors. But prices have been dropping for both this year, an unusual coupling that highlights just how anxious many buyers are, and how starkly different the investing environment has been in the first nine months of the year. Yields on the 10-year Treasury and two-year Treasury once again roamed near levels not seen in more than a decade.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose to 3.695% this week, notching an eighth consecutive week of gains. Two-year Treasury yields climbed to 4.212%, the highest since October 2007. Yields rise as bond prices fall.
“The Dow Is 1,400 Points Lower Than When Biden Took Office,” the Daily Wire notes.
Exit question: Is Team Biden purposefully grinding down the middle class?
I REMEMBER WHEN WHISTLEBLOWERS WERE MEDIA HEROES: FBI whistleblower paying the price for exposing unjust ‘persecution’ of conservative Americans.
Bombshell allegations by FBI Special Agent Steve Friend contained in a whistleblower complaint filed late Wednesday with the Department of Justice inspector general reveal a politicized Washington, DC, FBI field office cooking the books to exaggerate the threat of domestic terrorism, and using an “overzealous” January 6 investigation to harass conservative Americans and violate their constitutional rights.
Friend, 37, a respected 12-year veteran of the FBI and a SWAT team member, was suspended Monday, stripped of his gun and badge, and escorted out of the FBI field office in Daytona Beach, Fla., after complaining to his supervisors about the violations.
He was declared absent without leave last month for refusing to participate in SWAT raids that he believed violated FBI policy and were a use of excessive force against Jan. 6 subjects accused of misdemeanor offenses.
This American hero, the father of two small children, has blown up his “dream career” because he could not live with his conscience if he continued to be part of what he sees as the unjust persecution of conservative Americans.
“I have an oath to uphold the Constitution,” he told supervisors when he asserted his conscientious objection to joining an Aug. 24 raid on a J6 subject in the Jacksonville, Fla., area. “I have a moral objection and want to be considered a conscientious objector.”
Friend, who did not vote for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, said he told his immediate boss twice that he believed the raid, and the investigative process leading up to it, violated FBI policy and the subject’s right under the Sixth Amendment to a fair trial and Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.
If he’d refused to raid illegals under Trump, he’d have his own MSNBC show.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Who’s our real president? Joe Biden — or the staffers who keep walking back his comments?
CHANGE: DoD to end procurements of geosynchronous missile-warning satellites. “Over the coming years DoD will start transitioning to a proliferated architecture of smaller satellites in lower orbits, officials said.”
PRESIDENT COMIC RELIEF: ‘She was 12, I was 30’: Biden leaves viewers stunned in teachers speech. “The audience of teachers and union members laughed and cheered at the bawdy remark. The White House did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for clarification on what the president meant.”
FROM THE EARLY HUNTERBIDENIAN PERIOD: Scientists discover earliest remnants of opium use.
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY: That Is a Ring Doorbell AND He’s Happy to See You. “On this week’s Florida Man Friday, we have a stolen scooter rage incident, how not to knock on someone’s door, and you don’t even want to know how Michigan Man plays 160 degrees of Kevin Bacon.”
IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Global warming may increase risk for heart failure.
MOBSTERS WITH BETTER SUITS: WEF Mafioso Threatens Climate Annihilation, Demands $2 Trillion as Protection Money.
READER FAVORITE: Merrell Men’s Moab 2 Vent Mid Hiking Boot. #CommissionEarned
RETIREES ACCOUNT FOR HALF OF ALL CAMPAIGN DONATIONS: That’s the claim of Insider’s Madison Hall, based on FEC data compiled by opensecrets.org, who points out that:
“For years, retirees supplied about $1 in every $10 that federal-level political candidates raised from those contributing more than $200. But since the 2016 election cycle, they’ve represented an ever-greater share of politicians’ campaign haul. By the 2020 election cycle, retirees accounted for more than $1 in every $5, amounting to more than $378 million.”
HOW ABOUT PAUL THE APOSTLE? If I were asked to name the top 10 most influential people in the ancient world, Jesus Christ obviously would be on top of the list. Who would be second? Neither Julius Caesar, nor Alexander the Great, not Solomon, and not his father, King David, though these, plus Aristotle, Augustine, Plato and Thucydides, would definitely be somewhere on the list.
No, my choice for second on the list of the top 10 most influential people in the ancient world would be a guy I believe has long been rather profoundly underrated, Paul the Apostle. I explain why today on HillFaith. Who would be your choices?
THE DUKE TRUSTEE PUSHING GENDER INSANITY: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently signed legislation that will effectively put legions of people arrested for violent crimes in his state back on the streets almost as soon as the handcuffs click.
Guess what else Pritzker is behind? If you have elementary school age kids, they may already have been influenced by this guy. The Carolina Journal’s David Larsen explains how in “The Billionaire Duke Trustee Behind The Remaking of Gender.”
EVEN IF IT WERE, I’M STILL NOT DOING IT: Is swimming in ice water good for you? Sorry to throw cold water on your wellness claims.
BUT HE’S A REPUBLICAN, SO IT WILL PROCEED, AT LEAST UNTIL NOVEMBER 8: WaPo: Career prosecutors tell DoJ they have no viable case against Gaetz.
COOLING THE MARK: Vox: Will the polls be wrong again this year?
DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: ‘Godzilla’ lizard found climbing on Florida home’s window.
RUSSIA MOBILIZATION BLUES: Grumpy Old Men, Grumpy Old Tanks, Grumpy Ethnic Minorities.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Ex-smokers cut risk of dying early by adopting healthy behaviors, study says.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why ‘Gutfeld!’ Matters Even More Than Conservatives Think. “It’s clear other networks could have served up their own ‘Gutfeld!’-like show but refused to engage with Red State USA. They left money on the table and continue to do so by failing to clone the ‘Gutfeld!’ model.”
MARK JUDGE: When Sting Put on the Ring: More Wisdom From a Holy Pastor.
Dear Mark,
I watched the “Synchronicity” concert on HBO the other night. I’m sorry to have to tell you that I was disappointed in Sting, though I thought the other two guys in the band were outstanding. I am afraid that your hero was a bit burnt out, perhaps from the bizarre lifestyle that superstars can get into. Especially when they are touring. Sting looked bloated and acted sloppy. It seemed to me that for the most part he was not interested enough in his songs to try and do them with all his attention. I wonder if Sting hasn’t been slipping on the Ring lately — and you know what happens to those who try to use the Ring.
Just before sitting down to write you I listened to a few numbers from the tape you made — songs like Don McLean’s “Crossroads” and George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness” — and they sent me on a train of thought — about pain. It just so happens that one of the songs Sting did well was “King of Pain.” Then there’s the piece by Don McLean — “Can you find my pain? Can you heal it?” What is this pain they are talking about, Mark? Do you know? I know a little bit about my own, and I know that everyone has it — but I know that each person’s pain is as personal as their name. And I know that it’s worse to try and cover it and hide from it than accept it.
I was very happy that you saw the movie Gandhi, and even happier that you were impressed by it. Gandhi could live as he did because deep down he had accepted the pain without protest. And he could do so because he found a Life strong enough to absorb the pain without needing to resist — and being able to live that way is what I call salvation. In case you’re wondering, I am driving at something. It’s the Eucharist.
I was fascinated that you asked me if I was still going to Mass — and because of that I can’t help mentioning it in connection with these other things. How do you think Gandhi could ever walk around the way he did and see people as he saw them and treat them as he did? For myself I am sure it was not simply because he was a very strong individual with great moral character. I am sure that is was because he was in touch with God. Like Jesus, it wasn’t just at his death that he offered the sacrifice of his life.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Gandhi wasn’t a saint, he was a lawyer. Literally. And if you look at famous statements of his, it’s obvious, like when he was asked what he thought about Western civilization and responded that it would be a good idea. This was basically a sham: Indian civilization, of course, possessed all the flaws of Western civilization in spades — it was no stranger to imperialism, mass slaughter, exploitation, slavery, etc. — but Gandhi knew how that remark would strike his Western audience, which knew little of Indian history, and used that ignorance to put the knife in. That’s what an advocate does, but I wouldn’t exactly call it saintly.
MARC THIESSEN: If the pandemic is ‘over,’ so is Biden’s authority to forgive student debt.
Of course. Hence: Democrats Hit the Airwaves to Walk Back Biden’s Pandemic Admission.
SAY ANYTHING: Newsom’s Abortion Tourism Ad Campaign Quotes Scripture.
OH: Covid-tracking program lacked bare minimum cyber protections. “The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) failed to implement basic protections against hackers when it developed a system to track covid-19 data in 2020, according to an internal watchdog report it never made publicly available.”
LINCOLN BROWN: Reason # 190,732,584 Not To Trust the Legacy Media, Including the Associated Press. “The Associated Press covered the incident in which Shannon Brandt ran down 18-year-old Cayler Ellison in North Dakota. But as obedient lapdogs, or maybe because the organization’s reporters and editors are so compromised by propaganda and an inflated sense of self-worth, they omitted something. See if you can spot it.”
DEAL OF THE DAY: Slim Minimalist Front Pocket RFID Blocking Wallet. #CommissionEarned
(Via Google Translate.)
RELIABLE DEFENDERS OF PRIVILEGE: Harvard student newspaper denies 82 percent liberal faculty is a problem.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE TEXAS SOCIAL MEDIA ANTI-CENSORSHIP CASE. Without even reading 113 pages!
HOW CAN YOU GO ON STRIKE WHEN YOU DON’T PRODUCE ANYTHING OF VALUE? Socialist students prepare to strike for abortion access on Oct. 6.
FINALLY, SOME PROGRESS ON INSTITUTIONAL RACISM? Affirmative Action Cases Lead What Could Prove Another Momentous Supreme Court Term.
WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE, THE BIDEN DOJ? Hong Kong Man Arrested for “Sedition” While Mourning Queen.
NOW IS IT A RECESSION? Where Have All The Ships Gone? “As of Sept. 21, 2021, there were 132 cargo ships at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Dozens of container ships were anchored or adrift off the coast. As of Aug 30, 2022, that number has dwindled to only 8 ships waiting off Southern California. The end of goods backing up in ports on the west coast is a sign we are moving on. Danielle DiMartino Booth recently stated, ‘We have never seen the collapse of the magnitude that we are witnessing in imports. That is always a tail-tale sign that you are already looking through the rear-view mirror at recession.'”
EVER HEARD OF MADISON GRANT? Probably not, as he is one of the forgotten Progressive Republican leaders of the post-Civil War period in the U.S. who helped advance multiple causes, including Eugenics, “Nordic” racial purity and what is today known as “going Green” environmentalism.
Yes, environmentalism. Capital Research Center’s (CRC) Hayden Ludwig explains in an important review of a book you won’t find on the New York Times best-seller list:
“Grant, for instance, was one of the pioneers of the modern environmental movement. He loved nature and sought to use federal law to preserve America’s natural beauty and wildlife — the genesis of the national parks and many of the zoos we enjoy today. Grant practically saved the bison with help from his close friend Theodore Roosevelt. He also helped preserve Northern California’s endangered redwood trees. One tree, the ‘Madison Grant Tree,’ was even dedicated to this fierce conservationist. The tree was removed in 2021.
“But he also wanted to use government force to preserve ‘Nordic’ racial supremacy in America. Grant led the campaign to exterminate sickly infants, forcibly sterilize the ‘unfit,’ enact race-based immigration laws, and deport black Americans to Africa. As with many of his contemporaries, Grant was convinced that conservation and eugenics—the Darwinist pseudoscience of ‘beautifying’ the human race through selective breeding— ‘were two sides of the same coin.’ Saving the ‘master race’ from extinction was merely an extension of saving plants and animals.”
In other words, Madison Grant would be a far-left progressive Democrat in today’s political debates.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: MSM Fact Checkers Are Paste-Eating Idiots, Exhibit A. “In a sane world, the presumption would be that a real fact checker would possess some knowledge that could be applied to his or her craft. We’re talking about 21st-century corruptocrat media, however, so one would be wrong.”
KURT SCHLICHTER: Of Course Ron DeSantis Will Run…and He May Very Well Win.
AARON SIBARIUM: Taking woke Starbucks to court.
MORE NEWS FROM UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS LITTLE ROCK: UALR law professor files claim with state Claims Commission over Named Professorship. “Steinbuch, who joined the law school faculty in 2005, also claims Beiner unilaterally extended the Named Professorship she holds, the Nadine Baum Distinguished Professor of Law, for a fifth year. . . . Beiner extending her own named professorship beyond four years violates not only the law school’s stated rules — no new named professorships have been created recently, which is a condition for extending a Named Professorship beyond four years for the same holder — but a conflict of interest, according to Steinbuch. Also in his filing, Steinbuch said he’s being discriminated against because of his past conflicts with his superiors regarding naming a named professorship after former President Bill Clinton, as well as Steinbuch’s longstanding practice of having guest lecturers for his classes when he observes Jewish holidays.”
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: LA Times: Major Democratic donor may have stolen donation money from his injured clients.
IF WE WANT TO STOP THE IRAN BOMB: Then we need to make it clear in word and deed to the Mullahs that America supports, vocally and practically, the growing protest movement in Iran that, the Washington Free Beacon’s Matthew Continetti argues, is the key to stopping both the Islamic Revolution and Iranian terrorism.
“The malignancy of the Iranian government spreads beyond the nation’s borders, for sure. But its primary victims are the Iranian people. They are the first to suffer the economic, social, cultural, and physical costs billed to the regime. Their discontent is the clearest register of the regime’s criminality and the most visible sign of its decay,” Continetti writes.
