AFRICAN NATIONS CANCELING DEALS WITH CHINA: Troubles begin for the lender when the lendees realize their kneecaps are in danger.

MSM LAUNCHES JIHAD AGAINST RIGHT MEDIA? Tuesday, it was The Epoch Times in the cross-hairs of the fact-free-zone newsrooms at NBC/MSNBC today it’s the New York Times going after Floyd Brown and the Western Journal. Anything contrary to the elitist MSM narrative is branded “disinformation,” or worse.

The people in those newsrooms call themselves “journalists,” yet, with few exceptions, that is no longer a credible label for what they do. Who will be tomorrow’s target, The Federalist? The Daily Caller? Washington Examiner? Washington Free Beacon? Instapundit?

WHAT WOULD COTTON MATHER DO? Six of America’s 10 most “post-Christian cities” are in New England, once the “City on a Hill” of the Puritans, and all 10 are in deep blue states, according to The Barna Group’s latest annual survey results for the top 100.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, seven of the 10 least post-Christian are in the states of the old Confederacy or border states that were culturally attached to the South. All of those, of course, are today either mostly or deeply red.

THIS THEORETICAL PHYSICIST SAYS ‘MULTIVERSE’ IS RELIGION: Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder doesn’t beat around the bush: “Believing in the multiverse is logically equivalent to believing in god, therefore it’s religion, not science.” She isn’t denying the possibility of multiverses, only that much of the advocacy for the concept isn’t based on actual science.

WHAT IF THE “GLOBAL TEMPERATURE” DOESN’T EVEN EXIST? Issues & Insights (I&I) has the answer. The I&I guys are on Al Gore’s amazing Internet (HT: Chris Plante), but he’s not going to like what they say on this one.

PHILANTHROPIC TYRANNY IS WHAT SPLC IS ABOUT: Capital Research Center’s Hayden Ludwig zeroes in on what this advance guard of the People’s Republic of America seeks in its campaign against Donor Advised Funds (DAF) on the Right, but not on the Left.

I TRY TO BE OPTIMISTIC BUT THEN I READ THIS: Lawrence M. Ludlow returned to teaching high school after a 35 year absence and found … well, the title of his piece in The American Thinker says it all – “Worse Than Ever: Government Schools After 35 Years.”

WARREN SURGES IN POLL BUT ITS REAL NEWS IS ABOUT PRAYING AMERICANS: Yes, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) suddenly bolts to a virtual dead heat with former Vice-President Joe Biden in the latest YouGov. survey for The Economist.

That’s interesting to be sure, but the last five of the 145 questions asked of 1,500 respondents concerned things like church attendance and frequency of prayer, topics not typically raised in such surveys. The margin of error is three percent.

Turns out that more than half of us pray regularly and a third of all Americans go to church at least once or twice a month. Checking the demographics of the respondents reveals an over-sampling of Democrats to Republicans, so the prayer and attendance percentages might be slightly understated.

HOW LONG BEFORE THIS FAMOUS PROFESSOR IS RUN OUT OF YALE? David Gelernter is a legend at Yale University and deservedly so, as he is, among much else, the author or co-author of many computing tools in wide use around the world. But he recently committed the unpardonable sin of doubting the efficacy of parts of contemporary Darwinism.

The Hoover Institution’s Peter Robinson sat down with Gelernter and two  colleagues whose works had huge impacts on his own thinking on the issue. It’s a longish video at 53 minutes, but Robinson is a superb interviewer and the discussion is by turns, fascinating, puzzling and enlightening. In other words, just the kind of thing to get you blacklisted in academia these days.

Related (From Ed): Famed Yale computer science professor quits believing Darwin’s theories, The College Fix adds.

HITLER INVADED POLAND IN SEPTEMBER 1939. DO YOU KNOW THE OTHER NATION THAT ALSO INVADED POLAND IN SEPTEMBER 1939? Sadly, the fact that Stalin joined Hitler’s invasion  of Poland is hardly ever mentioned. Law & Liberty’s Ryszard Legutko reminds us of the immense and enduring significance of the Hitler-Stalin Pact signed 80 years ago this month.

LIFE AS A DC LOBBYIST CAN BE VERY REWARDING! The town is full of lobbyists like Jaime Harrison used to be. The Washington Free Beacon’s Brent Scher examined the South Carolina Democratic senatorial aspirant’s financial disclosures and found evidence of just how truly rewarding the lobbying life was for the associate chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

ONLY 10 OF AOC’S CONSTITUENTS ARE DONORS TO HER RE-ELECTION: Andrew Kerr of the Daily Caller News Foundation takes a look at Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s latest FEC donor list and finds only a handful of residents of her district.

Now, I’m from out of town and all, but doesn’t that make AOC a tool of special interests outside of her district? BTW, Kerr is one of the most talented young investigative journalists in the Right media, so keep an eye on his byline. He’s going places.

NO, THE ‘TEXODUS’ DOES NOT MEAN DEEP-RED TEXAS IS GOING PURPLE: Democrats are ecstatic about their chances of shifting more Lone Star State representatives to their side of the aisle. But maybe what they are convinced is happening isn’t.

EVER HEAR OF THE “CHAPO TRAP HOUSE,” THE BIGGEST PODCAST OF ALL? Well, it preaches socialism of the Stalinist/Sanders variety and, according to Capital Research Center’s Dangerous Documentaries, it is “a million-dollar behemoth with over 100,000 listeners.” You need to watch this short videoumentary because these are bad dudes and they are coming for the Democratic Party and for your future.

LATEST BUDGET DEAL SHOWS MEMBERS OF CONGRESS ARE THE PROBLEM: Ever since the Gramm-Rudman Act of 1985 was promised to impound all spending above authorized limits, Congress and chief executives have relied on budget agreements that make token cuts in the year of passage, promise much bigger cuts in the “out years” and provides a “sequestration process” for enforcement.

But the out year reductions never come because succeeding congresses can’t resist boosting the spending caps. The R Street Institute’s James Wallner goes through the dreary succession since Reagan’s second term and concludes:

“All of which suggests procedural solutions alone are insufficient when lawmakers do not want to abide by them. If Congress wants to spend more than the law permits, it will.” That applies to members of both major political parties.

SIX WAYS BUBBA LIES ABOUT HIS ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN: No doubt this will come as a shock to many but the man from Hope has recently been telling half a dozen whoppers about that assault weapon “ban” from his days in the Oval Office. For one thing, it wasn’t really a ban, according to Mark Overstreet in The Federalist.

NO COINCIDENCE THAT WESTERN CIVILIZATION PRODUCED THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION: Scan a who’s who of Europe’s explosion of scientific inquiry and it becomes clear that two factors united them: Their location and their faith.

So, if Western Civ and Christianity are lost, can science be far behind? Or, to put it another way, can science survive multiculturalism and identity politics, which are antithetical to Christianity’s enduring emphasis on the individual?

MARYLAND SHERIFF LAYS INTO WAL-MART FOR LOUSY STORE SECURITY: Carroll County Sheriff Jim Dewees wasn’t worried about being PC when asked about Wal-Mart store security after a gun man robbed one in the suburban area of his mostly rural jurisdiction:

“Find me a Walmart that isn’t a burden on law enforcement resources and I will kiss your a–,” he said, according to The Carroll County Times. “Their corporate policies are pitiful when it comes to securing their stores and protecting their employees and the customers that are there.”

TRUMP ORDER LETS BARR DECLASSIFY CLINTON EMAIL DOCS. WILL HE? That’s the question posed by Paul Sperry, writing today on Issues & Insights.

MEET THE ‘FEDERALIST SOCIETY FOR FOREIGN POLICY:’ Check out the Quincy Institute, which is helping form a braintrust for the post-Trump world” in the foreign policy arena.

NOT SURE IT CAN BE PUT MORE PRECISELY THAN THIS: “Pursuing Comey on the memo-leaking offense would be like charging Comey for jaywalking after he crossed the street to fire a close-range kill shot at our Constitution.” That’s according to “Adam Mill,” writing this morning in The Federalist. I’m waiting and seeing.

Mill makes the point enroute to his conclusion that there has been a succession of intelligence community scandals since 2013, one of which was the revelation in 2014 of NSA’s “Bumblehive.” If that doesn’t jar your memory, remember Admiral John Poindexter and “Total Information Awareness?” Go here.

IF SUNDANCE SAYS THIS IS A MUST-WATCH, YOU CAN BE SURE IT IS: “It” being Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday conversation on Fox News with former Rep. Trey Gowdy, who drops a bombshell regarding why the public has not seen the FBI transcript of George Papadopoulos and informant Stefan Halper.

I must admit that, having met Halper, briefly, during the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign, I never would have guessed at the time where he was then headed. Just another one of the Bushies. Maybe that should have told me something???

WHOSE MORALITY ARE YOU IMPOSING TODAY? It’s the response everybody who has ever debated social issues with lefties hears, sooner or later: “Don’t impose your morality on me!”

Listen to cross-examined.org’s Dr. Frank Turek for two minutes on HillFaith this morning and it becomes abundantly clear just how shallow, evasive and projectionist is that familiar warning.

HERE’S HOW TO ACTUALLY DRAIN THE SWAMP: President Donald Trump has made a small start on relocating federal agencies out of the nation’s capital and Sen. Joni Ernst has a bill that would remove some significant obstacles to expanding the initiative in a big way.

MORE ON JOSH HARRIS: Here’s my two cents worth. Ed Driscoll linked to some important observations by others about the announcement of the “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” author that he is no longer a Christian. Harris also apologized to the LGBQT community.

It’s a significant turn of events for Instapundit readers, many of whom are on the evangelical side of the spectrum, and because many Instapundit readers are products of or proponents for the home-schooling movement of which Harris’ parents were early leaders.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, I have long been a homeschooling supporter and view it as one of the major reasons for hope that this country is going to make it.

Also, PJM’s Paula Bolyard made some of the same points as I did, plus several others I didn’t but wish I had. Interesting that two of the best analyses of Harris come from two women (Bolyard and Pullmann) who are Christians, conservatives and extremely talented writers and editors. If you aren’t following both of them, you should be.