Trump Must Avoid These 3 ‘Civilization Killers’ When Tackling the National Debt

From Daily Signal.com (May 26, 2025):

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I’d like to talk about debt, debt, debt.

All during the last few days, we’ve heard some startling news. Moody’s, the bond evaluator, for the first time in its history, since 1917, has lowered the credit rating of the United States government from Aaa to Aa1.

It didn’t do that during the 2008 meltdown. It didn’t do that during the Great Depression. It didn’t do that during 9/11. It didn’t do that during the Biden years when we borrowed $7 trillion. But it did it now.

At the same time, Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed, will not lower interest rates even though there’s been a good jobs report, a good inflation report, a good corporate profits report. Gross domestic product is gonna be evaluated, apparently, upward and there’s been low energy cost. That mortgage is still 4.25% Fed rate to 4.5%. And that means mortgages are still 6.5%, 7%. And that housing market is slowing as a result.

And this has got President Donald Trump very angry, that they’re doing this, given the prior administration borrowed $7 trillion and helped run up from $29 trillion in national debt to $37 trillion, and left Trump with a $3 billion-a-day interest payment. So, he’s jawboning all this and trying to get down. So, what is Trump trying to do? And is it working?

Well, he’s the first president since Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, the speaker of the House at that time, who’s talking about reducing a $2 trillion budget deficit, a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, and addressing a $37 trillion national debt. But is he actually doing it?

On the plus side of the ledger, you’ve got the Department of Government Efficiency. And DOGE in the first 100 days has identified about $160 billion in cuts. That’s encouraging if two things are following: if they can keep up that rate of identifying cuts and get up to the $500 billion or even $700 billion and maybe make 25% or 30% reduction in the $2 trillion deficit. And if the Trump administration exercises fiscal discipline.

The problem is twofold: that while he’s addressing verbally, rhetorically the debt and the deficit, you look at the big, beautiful bill under consideration and it’s going to have to pass or the Trump administration will be completely humiliated.

They need to get it through reconciliation but there are sizable increases in the defense budget from everything that’s justifiable, from salaries, from an Iron Dome-like missile defense—you name it. More drones—good. But it’s more money. And there’s more subsidies to farmers. And there’s not a lot of cuts—at least when balanced with the increases.

So, the budget deficit, for all the talk of DOGE and for all the talk of fiscal sobriety, might not actually go down. And if it doesn’t go down, the Fed may not lower rates. And if it doesn’t lower rates, then you still are stuck with a trillion dollars a year in interest payments. That’s killing us.

So, you’ve got to get that down. And the way Trump has to do it is just two ways: Either cut the budget or raise taxes—which will strangle the economy—or continue the tax cuts. And hope two things: that the tax cuts—the extension—will prime the economy, along with cheap interest rates.

And the question that we all have now: Is cutting taxes on tips, is cutting taxes on Social Security, is cutting taxes on first responder, etc.—all of which Trump has mentioned—is that really stimulus as opposed to, say, accelerated depreciation investment for businesses?

I don’t know the answer. But I do know, as a historian, that if you do not cut the deficit and the national debt and you have bond raters like Moody’s or the Fed that will not lower interest rates, you’re going to be in a crisis.

And in the antiquity—from Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance—there were three ways of dealing with unsustainable debt and are not good. They’re all civilizational killers.

No. 1: As the Weimar Republic did in Germany, you pay back what you owe in cheap dollars. They inflated the marks. And bankrupt really helped cause the depression. You can do that, pay back the $37 trillion in inflated dollars. It’s not a good option.

No. 2: You can confiscate private wealth. People do that all the time throughout history. That destroys the legitimacy of the government. And it makes private investors hide their money.

When I say confiscate wealth, you can already see articles in financial left-wing journals that say, well, maybe the trillionaire, billionaire, whatever term they use, oligarchical class will get credit, some Social Security or get some kind of credit for us taking some of their 401(k) money. Something like that. That never works. It never worked in Athens. It never worked in Rome. It never worked in Renaissance Italy.

The third is the most drastic and it’s a killer too and we’ve seen countries in South America try it. And that’s to renounce the debt. Just say: You know what? All you bondholders, you guys have U.S. savings bonds—40% of them abroad, you know, here in America—you have so much money anyway. We’re just not gonna pay you back—the government. We’re gonna renounce it and start from zero.

Who would ever buy a bond again if we were to do that?

So, bottom line is incumbent upon the Trump administration to make real cuts and show progress that you’re reducing the annual budget deficit and more importantly, you have mechanisms to grow the economy.

Final note. We have a lot of confidence—this administration—that tariffs will give revenue and maybe also help reduce the budget deficit. I’m not sure that’s happening. Only 1% or 2%, maybe 3% of the $5 trillion in federal revenue today is made up by tariff income. Even with these huge new tariffs, if they’re actually reified, you might get a trillion dollars. You might get a trillion dollars over 10 years. That’s $100 billion out of $5 trillion in revenue. So, I’m not sure we can count on tariff income at all.

What we should count on is cut, cut, cut. Seek a balanced budget and grow the economy with tax cuts that encourage investment and economic expansion. [source]

Yea, those three tactics are very bad. America doesn't want to be Weimar Republic or even Zimbabwe for that matter. Hyperinflation will economically kill a nation. Another good analysis by VDH.

Forgiveness Is Not an Act of Weakness

From Breakpoint.org (June 15, 2022):

Earlier this year, a very secular publication came to an unexpected conclusion. Vox ran a series of articles under the title “America’s Struggle for Forgiveness,.” In it, they wrote, “Grace might be the holiest, most precious concept of all in this conversation about right and wrong, penance and reform—but it’s the one that almost never gets discussed.”

Even in the most morally exhausted cultural moments, like ours, there are signs of life. Made in God’s image, with eternity in our hearts, we’re desperate for answers to our deepest questions and for purpose to help us make sense of our lives. We search elsewhere but, ultimately, only the Gospel offers what we need.

At the same time, at least when it comes to forgiveness, Christians are struggling as well. In any context, because it always involves fallen human beings, forgiveness isn’t easy. In this cultural moment, so deeply divided at such fundamental levels and with so much at stake in the issues, it can seem impossible. How can we reconcile the idea of forgiveness in a world overrun by evil? How can we be examples of forgiveness, both forgiving and seeking forgiveness, to a world that so desperately needs to see it?

First, we need to be clear on what forgiveness is and isn’t. The way Jesus’ command to “love your enemies” is often used in order to silence Christians who hold unpopular views completely misses the point. Too often, we get the impression that we need to apologize not merely for failing to live out Christian ethics, but for holding Christian ethics in the first place, as if Christian witness is compromised by Christian morality.

Second, Christians must embrace the idea of forgiveness. There’s a fear in many corners of the Church, particularly those engaged in standing for righteousness in this cultural moment, that concepts like “forgiveness,” “gentleness,” or “compassion” are signs of weakness. Certainly, many Christians have been gutted of courage at the exact moment Christian courage is so badly needed. But asking for or offering forgiveness is not necessarily a sign of weakness. In fact, in a culture devoid of it, Christians have something essential to offer people, families, institutions, and cultures.

Plus, we don’t have a choice. For Christians, a gracious posture is not an option. In Romans 12, Paul instructs Christians to “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” He also commands us to “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” Holding to truth and righteousness and being gracious to others are not mutually exclusive options. Both are required for Christ followers.

We must not pretend people are somehow “doing good” when they are not, or that evil ideologies that hurt the innocent are somehow anything less than evil. In Jesus’ words, we will be “exclude[d]” and “revile[d],” and have our names “spurn[ed]” as “evil” for His sake, not because we’ve done anything wrong but because we’ve followed Him. As Jesus’ teaching about church discipline and instructions to the disciples to “shake the dust of unbelieving towns off their feet” suggests, the goal of Christian witness can only be faithfulness. Whether or not we are liked is of little importance.

Which means, as Steve Cornell with The Gospel Coalition recently wrote, forgiveness is different than “reconciliation.” We can and must extend forgiveness, and we ought to be agents of reconciliation. However, because reconciliation always involves someone else, it isn’t merely up to us. Not only does it take two to reconcile, but when people actively pursue evil, boundaries are necessary.

The real battlefield of forgiveness is not just in external behavior. It involves the heart, which God sees with piercing clarity. It may involve asking for forgiveness, even from ideological opponents who are on the wrong side of a given issue. It will mean forgoing vengeance, even while seeking justice and extending love to those extending hate.

In God’s economy, this is not weakness. It is the strength rooted in Christ whom Himself proclaimed, “Father, forgive them.”

A wonderful example is Barronelle Stutzman, a co-recipient of this year’s Wilberforce Award. For years, she’s been the target of the state of Washington, misrepresented in the press, slandered, and sued for refusing to custom design flowers for a same-sex wedding. Only last November, after nearly a decade, was her legal case finally settled.

Through the whole, exhausting process, Barronelle extended nothing but kindness, even to the person behind her legal nightmare, longtime customer and friend Rob Ingersoll. “I did not turn down Rob,” she wrote in 2016. “I turned down an event. And if Rob walked into my store today, I would hug him and I would serve him for another 10 years.”

That same gracious attitude only became more evident in the years since. Through it all, she steadfastly refused to betray her faith while still showing gentle kindness toward those who oppose her. Anyone who knows Barronelle Stutzman would never confuse that posture with weakness.

Rather, she’s a living, breathing example that Christians can have both unrelenting conviction and a tender heart of forgiveness. We need not choose between them. [source]

Amen.

Trump’s Way of War

From AM Greatness.com (March 3):

War is the use of arms to settle differences—tribal, political, religious, cultural, and material—between organized groups. It is unchanging. The general laws of armed conflict stays immutable, given the constancy of human nature.

However, the manner in which war is conducted remains fluid. New weapons, tactics, and strategies elicit counterresponses in an endless cycle of tensions between defensive and offensive superiority.

That said, has President Trump introduced a novel way of waging Western war against America’s foreign enemies?

We saw glimpses of it during his first term, when he eliminated Iranian general and terrorist kingpin Qassem Soleimani and ISIS terrorist grandee Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In the former case, he preferred hitting the cause rather than the effects of Iranian terrorism in Syria and Iraq, while making it clear that he had no intention of striking the Iranian mainland and entering into a tit-for-tat “forever war.”

In large part, he was successful. Iran never quite replaced the venomous Soleimani. And despite tired threats, its performative art responses did not kill any Americans, and they were seen by Trump as venting and not worth a counterresponse.

In the case of the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Trump likewise went after the catalyst of ISIS terrorism. But he also bombed ISIS into near nonexistence in Iraq, since, unlike Iran, it lacked the financial and material resources of a state sponsor of terror, and it had no independent ability to make weapons or finance its terrorism.

In 2018, Trump probably killed more Russian ground troops (more than 200?) than America had during the entire Cold War, with his furious response to the Wagner Group assault on a U.S. Special Operations base near Khasham, Syria. Yet the defeat of Russian mercenaries also led to no wider conflict.

In these three cases, Trump successfully portrayed his antagonists as the unprovoked aggressors, employed overwhelming force to eliminate them, and declared them one-off occurrences with no need to punish the ultimate source or sponsor of the aggression with further force, and he was largely successful in limiting subsequent attacks on American installations.

In Trump’s second term, he widened his doctrine of “preventative deterrence” with operations to remove Venezuelan communist strongman Nicolás Maduro, along with two separate bombing campaigns against Iran.

While the second Iran operation is now in progress, it may resemble the earlier two in a number of facets.

Trump again portrayed Venezuela and Iran as unpunished past and present psychopathic aggressors. He went after Maduro, whom Biden had largely ignored, for his past of exporting gang-bangers and criminals across the Biden-era open border and for using Venezuela’s cartel connections to profit from American deaths.

As for attacking Iran, Trump cited the theocracy’s past terrorist attacks on Americans and U.S. allies, its effort to assassinate Westerners, and its unwillingness to abandon plans to create a nuclear weapon.

What, then, are Trump’s new ways of conducting war?

1. Geostrategy. Always behind these seemingly unconnected events—and other nonkinetic moves like warning Panama about Chinese intrusions—strategic concerns loom. The common denominator is usually isolating China from strategic spaces, allies, and oil—and Russia in a lesser sense.

Loud and terrorist, but ultimately impotent, proxies of strategic enemies—Cuba, Iran, Venezuela—are preferable targets. They are not just easily identified enemies given their past anti-American violence; they are also targeted because their demise offers a global display of the weakness of their distant patrons and underwriters.

2. Wars of Reckoning. Trump always frames his interventionism as reactive and long overdue. It is a sort of “reckoning war” for previously overlooked crimes that his predecessors had ignored but are often seared in the American mind. “Preemptive” or “preventative” wars, these strikes may be. But Trump himself avoids the baggage that those adjectives of aggression convey in the collective American memory.

3. War among Negotiations. Trump’s way of warmaking is usually an extension of ongoing negotiations (e.g., over Iran’s nuclear weapons or Maduro’s subsidies to terrorists and drug trafficking). So, during discussions, he offers various exit ramps to his adversaries and publicly laments the possibility of violence.

Meanwhile, American naval and expeditionary assets show up and amass to ramp up the pressure. Trump does not wait for negotiations to fail, but usually offers a deadline to his adversaries. And then he simply informs his advisors of the point at which the enemy has no intention of seeking a peaceful settlement. A strike follows. [read more]

Another great analysis by VDH. He gets the POTUS.

The rest of the ways of war:

1. The Culpable Apparat. Trump prefers top-down war. That is, he starts his attacks by targeting the enemy apparat, not its lesser henchman. The aim is both to disrupt its command and control and to separate an enemy leader from a population deemed not necessarily culpable.
2. No to Nation-Building.
3. No Boots on the Ground.
4. Exit Strategy? There is an exit strategy of sorts, partly rhetorical and partly real—but usually arbitrarily declared by Trump himself. He alone starts the shooting and stops it according to his own definition of when the war begins and ends. The enemy has a vote, of course, but Trump frames the conflict in ways that lessen his say.
5. No to Internationalism.
6. Deterrent Displays. Trump uses his strikes as global reminders of American prowess. He showcases the USS Gerald R. Ford mammoth carrier, the largest warship in the history of conflict.
7. American Self-Interest.

How America’s Recycling Program Failed—and Scarred the Environment

From FEE.org (May 31, 2022):

In March 2019, The New York Times ran a shocking story exploring why many prominent US cities were abandoning their recycling programs.

“Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents’ recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy,” Times business writer Michael Corkery reported. “In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill.”

Philadelphia and Memphis were not outliers. They, along with Deltona, Florida, which had suspended its recycling program the previous month, were just a few examples of hundreds of cities across the country that had scrapped recycling programs or scaled back operations.

Since that time, cities across the country have continued to scrap recycling programs, citing high costs.

“The cost of recycling was going to double, and the town wasn’t going to be able to absorb that cost,” said Dencia Raish, the town clerk administrator for Akron, Colorado, which ended its program in 2021 and now sends “recyclables” to a landfill.

While many Americans likely are distraught about America’s failed recycling experiment, a new video produced by Kite & Key Media reveals that abandoning recycling—at least in its current form—is likely to benefit both Americans and the environment.

A Brief History of Recycling

Like many problems in American history, recycling began as a moral panic.

The frenzy began in the spring of 1987 when a massive barge carrying more than 3,000 tons of garbage—the Mobro 4000—was turned away from a North Carolina port because rumor had it the barge was carrying toxic waste. (It wasn’t.)

“Thus began one of the biggest garbage sagas in modern history,” Vice News reported in a feature published a quarter-century later, “a picaresque journey of a small boat overflowing with stuff no one wanted, a flotilla of waste, a trashier version of the Flying Dutchman, that ghost ship doomed to never make port.”

The Mobro was simply seeking a landfill to dumb the garbage, but everywhere the barge went it was turned away. After North Carolina, the captain tried Louisiana. Nope. Then the Mobro tried Belize, then Mexico, then the Bahamas. No dice.

“The Mobro ended up spending six months at sea trying to find a place that would take its trash,” Kite & Key Media notes.

America became obsessed with the story. In 1987 there was no Netflix, smartphones, or Twitter, so apparently everyone just decided to watch this barge carrying tons of trash for entertainment. The Mobro became, in the words of Vice, “the most watched load of garbage in the memory of man.”

The Mobro also became perhaps the most consequential load of garbage in history.

“The Mobro had two big and related effects,” Kite & Key Media explains. “First, the media reporting around it convinced Americans that we were running out of landfill space to dispose of our trash. Second, it convinced them the solution was recycling.”

Neither claim, however, was true.

The idea that the US was running out of landfill space is a myth. The urban legend likely stems from the consolidation of landfills in the 1980s, which saw many waste depots retired because they were small and inefficient, not because of a national shortage. In fact, researchers estimate that if you take just the land the US uses for grazing in the Great Plains region, and use one-tenth of one percent of it, you’d have enough space for America’s garbage for the next thousand years. (This is not to say that regional problems do not exist, Slate points out..

Mandated recycling efforts, meanwhile, have proven fraught. [read more]

Chinese Spy Balloon Used US Internet to Communicate as it Soared Over Nuclear Silos

From The Gateway Pundit.com (Dec. 29, 2023):

Last January the Biden administration knew about the Chinese spy balloon traversing across the continental United States, from Alaska to the Carolinas, but sought to conceal this from the American public.

A newspaper photographer first spotted the balloon over Montana.

The Chinese spy balloon first entered US airspace over Alaska in late January.

The balloon soared over nuclear silos and military installations across the US with Joe Biden’s full approval.

The balloon was shot down over the Atlantic just off the coast of the Carolinas.

According to the Pentagon, the spy balloon carried explosives to self-detonate, was 200 feet tall, and weighed thousands of pounds.

Earlier this week it was reported General Milley also knew the spy balloon was collecting data as it flew over the continental US but kept this from the American public.

Now this…

According to CNN, the Chinese spy balloon used US internet to communicate as is soared over the United States and gathered information.

CNN reported:

US intelligence agencies found that the Chinese surveillance balloon that transited the United States in early 2023 used an American internet service provider to send short, periodic transmissions of data related to navigation and location back to China, according to a US official.

This connection was one of the ways that the US was able to track its location and gather information on the balloon as it transited the United States, the source said.

CNN was not able to identify the internet service provider. CNN has previously reported that officials said the balloon was capable of communicating with Beijing as it traveled across the US.

NBC News first reported that the balloon used a US network to communicate with Beijing.

The network connection was not used to transmit intelligence back to China, according to the official. The balloon stored that information for later, including imagery and other data, which the US has since been able to study after shooting it down in February.

[source]

Of course it did. The Chi-Coms made a mockery of Briben.

Trump Says Russia Stole Hypersonic Rockets

From Newsmax.com (May 24, 2025):

President Donald Trump on Saturday complained about hypersonic rockets "stolen" by Russia, reports Newsweek.

"Eight cadets here today took on the challenge of designing their own hypersonic rocket," Trump said during a West Point commencement address in New York.

"Oh, we can use you building them right now. You know, we had ours stolen. We are the designer of it. We had it stolen during the Obama administration. They saw — you know who stole it? The Russians stole it. Something bad happened.

"But we're now, we're the designer of it," he added.

"We're now building them, and lots of them, and earlier this year, they launched it into space, setting a world record for amateur rocketry. Can't get you in there fast enough."

Wearing a red "Make America Great Again" hat, Trump also told the 1,002 members of the class of 2025 at the U.S. Military Academy that the United States is the "hottest country in the world" and underscored an "America First" ethos for the military.

He said the cadets were graduating at a "defining moment" in Army history as he accused political leaders in the past of sending soldiers into "nation-building crusades to nations that wanted nothing to do with us." He said he was clearing the military of transgender ideas, "critical race theory," and types of training he called divisive and political. [source]

Probably. China is known to steal America's technological patents, so, why not Russia and other rogue nations?

Kim Jong-un Confiscates Pet Dogs During North Korea’s Food Shortage

From Breitbart.com (Aug. 18, 2020):

“Authorities have identified households with pet dogs and are forcing them to give them up or forcefully confiscating them and putting them down,” a North Korean source told the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo on August 12.

“The dogs are also being sent to zoos or sold to restaurants where dog meat is eaten,” the source added. In addition to North Korea, dog meat is eaten by humans in some parts of China and South Korea.

Kim Jong-un issued a ban on pet ownership in July, denouncing the practice as “a ‘tainted’ trend by bourgeois ideology,” the source said. The Communist North Korean regime touted the pet ban as Kim’s way of protecting the country against capitalist “decadence,” according to Chosun Ilbo.

“Ordinary people raise pigs and livestock on their porches, but high-ranking officials and the wealthy own pet dogs, which stoked some resentment,” the source said.

According to the report, the Communist regime enforced the pet ban and confiscation amid a worsening nationwide food shortage and economic crisis. World powers have imposed various economic sanctions on North Korea for years in an effort to denuclearize the hostile nation. The struggling country further isolated itself by shutting its borders earlier this year in an effort to control its Chinese coronavirus outbreak.

The North Korean regime officially denies the existence of any coronavirus cases in the country, but has taken several drastic countermeasures to prevent the spread of the virus, suggesting that it has been battling a massive outbreak for several months. In January, North Korea closed its borders and schools and began placing thousands of people in quarantine. In late June, North Korean officials locked down the nation’s third-largest city, Chongjin, after a serious coronavirus outbreak was detected there, according to reports. The government also recently said it would extend its border closures through 2021.

In June, the U.N. warned that food insecurity in North Korea had worsened during the coronavirus pandemic due to the country’s closed borders, reporting that some people were “starving” as a result. Over 40 percent of people in North Korea were considered “food insecure” prior to the pandemic, with many people in the country suffering from malnutrition. [source]

Welcome to Communism! No wonder the citizens are trying to illegally enter China. It’s that bad.

Promise to America’s Parents

From Breakpoint.org (July 7, 2022):

Last year, a coalition of organizations, including the Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Policy Alliance, Colson Center, and the Heritage Foundation, teamed up to issue a Promise to America’s Children, a commitment to protect their minds, their bodies, and their most important relationships amid this hypersexualized culture.

Today, we join again, this time to issue a Promise to America’s Parents. Why? As the website puts it,

“Local, state, and federal government policies are imposing ideologies that divide children by race and promote the falsehood that a boy can become a girl or vice-versa. Some schools are treating children as if they are the opposite sex without the permission of parents. Medical professionals are performing harmful experiments on children who are emotionally distressed about their bodies. To protect children, parents need laws that protect their rights.”

Simply put, no government entity should usurp the place of parents. In too many classrooms, progressive ideas are forced on children, targeting their hearts, minds, and identities. A reigning ideology in education is critical theory which, in its various forms, denies that every single person is made in the image of God. Thus, kids are taught to see other people in simplistic categories of oppressed or oppressor, to see Christianity as an oppressive and destructive historical force, and to see themselves primarily in terms of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Promise to America’s Parents galvanizes parents to “A.C.T.”—an acronym referring to accountability, choice, and transparency—on behalf of their children. According to the Promise,

“Children belong first and foremost to their families. In the words of the U.S. Supreme Court, they are not “mere creatures of the state.” The unique and intimate relationship between a parent and a child creates a duty and a corresponding natural right. Parental rights are fundamental rights protected by the U.S. Constitution. However, courts have not consistently protected parental rights against government interference and invasion as they should. “

In the “A.C.T.” acronym, accountability means that “Every mother or father may hold the government accountable for infringing on their rights to care for their child.” Choice means that “Every mother or father has the responsibility and right to choose the education and medical treatment that they deem best for their child.” Thus, neither schools, nor healthcare providers, nor schools acting like healthcare providers should push a child toward an alternative gender without the parents’ permission. Schools also must not restrict a child’s speech by creating vague anti-racist policies that would prohibit differing viewpoints being stated.

Transparency means that “Every mother or father has the right to know about what their child is learning, their child’s health, and any harms to them.” Parents have the right to know the content within the curriculum, from textbooks to other materials. Parents have the right to know the content of their children’s files. Specifically, no separate files should be kept to maintain secretive use of counseling, gender pronouns, or treatments.

Please read the whole Promise to America’s Parents at promisetoAmericasparents.org. There’s also a free downloadable toolkit, explaining parental rights at schools and in doctors’ offices. It also provides practical advice on how to proceed if a child describes their school day, and warning lights start flashing in your head. For example, the toolkit explains what you can and cannot ask for in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, how to access the school’s curriculum, securing opt-out policies for classroom instruction that conflicts with religious or moral beliefs, and how to help children report statements or actions that treat students differently because of their race, religion, or moral views.

There are also plenty of stories on the Promise website about parents who took a stand. Two parents whose stories are told are plaintiffs in cases represented by ADF. Melissa Riley says of her son, who is biracial, “He is changing . . . . If things don’t go his way or things seem unfair, he will now claim it’s racism. He never did that before.” Another parent, Carlos Ibenez is a plaintiff because his daughter was told in middle school that as a Latina, she wouldn’t succeed because the system was set up to privilege people with white skin.

Parents can protect their children from indoctrination that targets the mind and the heart. Parents can protect their children from being co-opted by the state. Please, visit promisetoAmericasparents.org. [source]

Amen. The Left believes children belong to the State on not the family. So, they can make them into new people that worships the State.

Abuse of Power Part 2: Investigation Interference & Illegal Spying

Roosevelt helped a loyal Texas congressman by the name of Lyndon Johnson. "Johnson himself became an IRS target for failing to properly report income from his campaigns," explains Folsom. "On January 13, 1944, just as six IRS agents were winding up their 18-month investigation of Johnson, President Roosevelt had an emergency meeting with Johnson. That day, the president contacted . . . Irey and began the process of halting the investigation of Johnson. . . . Johnson was not harmed at all. He had proven himself too valuable to the president to lose.

……….

President Kennedy even had installed a secret recording system in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room as well. He personally ordered Secret Service agent Robert Bouck to undertake the task. In his book The Tunnels, author Greg Mitchell wrote: "Three previous presidents had installed listening devices, but they had used them sparingly. Franklin Roosevelt made a few recordings in 1940; Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower left behind less than a dozen hours of tapes each. Kennedy's plan would give him far more opportunity than that. JFK aimed to document face-to-face conversations with aides and visitors, for his own use and/or the historical record. Without telling anyone why . . . At Kennedy's direction, he installed the Oval Office microphones under the President's desk and in a coffee table. Kennedy could activate them with the discreet push of a button on his desk. The microphones in the Cabinet Room were hidden behind drapes and could be turned on and off by a button at the head of the table where Kennedy sat."

………

Like several of his predecessors, but even more so, Johnson used the IRS and the FBI, as well as the CIA, for unconstitutional and unlawful purposes. For example, the Heritage Foundation's Lee Edwards, who had served as director of information for the 1964 Barry Goldwater presidential campaign, tells how Johnson used the CIA and FBI to spy on the Goldwater campaign.

"Former intelligence officer E. Howard Hunt, best known for his role as an orchestrator of the Watergate bugging," wrote Edwards, "told a Senate committee in 1973 that his CIA superior ordered him to infiltrate the Goldwater campaign. Hunt claimed to have questioned the order, only to be told that it had been a personal request of President Johnson and that the information he received would be delivered to a White House aide. CIA Director William Colby confirmed the White House's role in the illegal surveillance while addressing a congressional hearing in 1975. That the CIA is prohibited by law from operating within the U.S. didn't matter to the Johnson campaign. The Goldwater people never suspected that one of them was a spy for the Democrats."

Source: Unfreedom of the Press (2019) by Mark R. Levin.

The Senate Is Considering An AI Bill That Could Radically Alter The Future Of The Internet

From Daily Caller.com (Dec. 10, 2023):

The Senate could soon take up a bipartisan bill defining the liability protections enjoyed by artificial intelligence-generated content, which could lead to considerable impacts on online speech and the development of AI technology.

Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal in June introduced the No Section 230 Immunity for AI Act, which would clarify that liability protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act do not apply to text and visual content created by artificial intelligence.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 states that internet companies cannot be held liable for third-party speech posted on their platforms. The question of whether these same protections apply to content created by artificial intelligence could have a dramatic impact on online speech, especially as artificial intelligence technology such as ChatGPT come to play a large role online, as major tech companies could face a deluge of lawsuits for AI-generated content.

The bill would enable Americans to file lawsuits against AI firms whose advanced technology enables the production of damaging content. The bill would target AI-generated content such as deepfakes, which are false but realistic-looking visual imitations, often of a real person. Deepfakes are becoming much more widespread, leading lawmakers to raise concerns that they could enable financial fraud and intellectual property theft.

The legislation defines generative AI as “an artificial intelligence system that is capable of generating novel text, video, images, audio, and other media based on prompts or other forms of data provided by a person.’’

Democratic Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, one of the authors of Section 230, said it should not apply to AI in comments to The Washington Post in March.

“AI tools like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and others being rapidly integrated into popular digital services should not be protected by Section 230,” he told the Post. “And it isn’t a particularly close call … Section 230 is about protecting users and sites for hosting and organizing users’ speech” and it “has nothing to do with protecting companies from the consequences of their own actions and products.”

“The reality is Section 230 was not written with artificial intelligence in mind, or the idea that artificial intelligence creating content is the same thing as user-generated content,” Jon Schweppe, director of policy for American Principles Project told the DCNF. “And so, obviously, we need to consider what we want to do with AI before we just grant immunity from civil liabilities to all these firms.” [read more]

CIA Yanks 19 Docs ‘Compromised’ By Leftist Activism, Including Threat Assessment Targeting ‘Traditional Motherhood’

From The Federalist.com (Feb. 20):

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe ordered the retraction of 19 intelligence products following an independent review that found the documents failed to meet regulatory standards of tradecraft and quality, the agency announced Friday.

Redacted versions of three documents obtained by The Federalist showed that the analyses promoted left-wing ideology, took sides on domestic political disagreements in foreign countries, fell outside of the CIA’s official role, and were sourced to left-wing media, nongovernmental organizations, and nonprofit groups. This commitment to advancing leftist activism appears to span at least three presidential administrations beginning in 2015.

“There is absolutely no room for bias in our work and when we identify instances where analytic rigor has been compromised, we have a responsibility to correct the record,” Ratcliffe said in a statement. “These actions underscore our commitment to transparency, accountability, and objective intelligence analysis.”

In one 15-page intelligence assessment published in October 2021, the CIA dubs organizations that have historically “lauded motherhood and homemaking as women’s most important responsibility” as suspect, especially because those groups reportedly “recorded an increased number of female recruits.”

Another document — a World Intelligence Review (WIRes), bulletins that are often distributed to “several hundred senior Executive and legislative branch policymakers” on a daily basis — raised concerns that too many children would be born in countries such as Egypt, Nigeria, and Pakistan if Covid disrupted the distribution of condoms and other contraceptives. That particular review relied on data provided by abortion giants and activist groups such as International Planned Parenthood Federation, Guttmacher Institute, and Marie Stopes International to draw such conclusions.

A third document, published in January 2015, advocated the launch of LGBT academic programs in North African and Middle Eastern universities. The WIRe also asserted that Middle Eastern and North African governments’ “tough stance” on LGBT people and issues is “driven by conservative public opinion and domestic political competition from Islamists, and is hindering US initiatives in support of LGBT rights.”

The decision to remove 17 intelligence documents and substantially revise two more comes after the nonpartisan President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) audited 300 analyses spanning the last decade to ensure they met the agency’s standards. It is unclear how the 300 documents were selected for the audit. Intelligence Directive 203 requires the CIA to produce intelligence products that are accurate, objective, impartial, and “independent of political consideration.” The CIA declined to answer whether the individuals who created and distributed the flawed documents faced any disciplinary action.

The intelligence assessment about female involvement in “white racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist” (REMVE) groups defined its targets as women who “may not openly advocate violence” but “amplify” narratives regarding perceptions of racial hierarchy. Admitting its assessment was limited by “minimal reporting” and reliant on “open-source reporting,” it listed “traditional motherhood” as a “white REMVE goal” and said females were emerging as “key players” to advance that goal.

The assessment also suggests that “white REMVE-sympathetic women” use “blogs, videos, or other online content under the guise of cooking tutorials” to facilitate conversations or promote content the CIA deems alarming. These videos, the document claims, “feature discussions about the importance of organic food alongside subtle narratives about racial purity and the defense of white European heritage.”

The file titled “Women Advancing White Racially and Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist (REMVE) Radicalization and Recruitment” does not list evidence of any violence attributed to the women considered by the CIA to be “perceived threats.”

The CIA relied on reporting from The Atlantic, owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, a major Democrat donor, and encouraged others to use similar “strategic messaging campaigns” that focused on “limits to [female] authority” in targeted groups. A senior CIA official said the assessment was a prime example of how analysts should not spend their time.

“The intelligence products we released to the American people today — produced before my tenure as DCIA — fall short of the high standards of impartiality that CIA must uphold and do not reflect the expertise for which our analysts are renowned,” stated Director Ratcliffe. [source]

Good.  Glad the CIA is doing this. Other agencies should follow suit and remove the Marxist virus.

Trump: Iran Supreme Leader Khamenei Killed in Strikes

From Newsmax.com (Feb. 28):

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in joint Israeli-U.S. airstrikes early Saturday, President Donald Trump said.

"Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

Iranian state media confirmed the Supreme Leader's death.

"This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS," Trump continued.

"He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do," Trump added.

"This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country."

The president cited reports that many Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, security, and police forces "no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us."

"As I said last night, 'Now they can have Immunity, later they only get Death!'" Trump wrote.

"Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves," he continued.

"That process should soon be starting in that, not only the death of Khamenei but the Country has been, in only one day, very much destroyed and, even, obliterated," Trump wrote.

"The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!"

Previously, Newsmax correspondent Zach Anders reported that Khamenei was killed, and Newsmax later confirmed the Iranian leader's death.

In a televised address Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel eliminated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders, senior regime officials, and senior nuclear officials.

He added that in the coming days, "we will hit thousands of targets of the terror regime."

"There are growing indications that [Khamenei] is no longer alive," Netanyahu said, according to The Jerusalem Post. He did not provide additional details.

Netanyahu's comments came after Israel and the U.S. launched attacks on Iranian military targets in what Israel has dubbed Operation Roaring Lion and the U.S. has called Operation Epic Fury.

Israel's Channel 12 News reported that Netanyahu was shown an image of Khamenei's body after Iranian authorities recovered it from his compound in Tehran, The Times of Israel reported.

Israel carried out a massive strike on the compound in the opening salvo of attacks on Iran early Saturday.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter updated American officials that Israel had succeeded in killing Khamenei, a source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel, confirming earlier reporting by Axios.

Khamenei, 86, became Iran's highest authority in 1989 following the death of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Israel long viewed Khamenei as a destabilizing force in the Middle East, citing his backing for terrorist groups including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

He had been the target of several assassination attempts since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Most notably, on June 27, 1981, a bomb exploded during a speech at a mosque in Tehran, severely injuring him and permanently paralyzing his right arm, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Khamenei had six children, including Mojtaba Khamenei, who had been touted in recent years as a possible successor. [source]

Another evil thug dead. Good. I read on Newsmax.com that he and his top henchmen were meeting all together in one location. Thanks for making the military's job easy. Evidently, the Supreme Corpse didn't believe in decentralization and oh, I don't know, teleconferencing? 

The IRGC should do itself a favor and surrender. They lost. Just accept defeat. The POTUS gave you an out. Take it.

The country should rename itself Persia again or another name (like Trumpland or Trumpia 😀) and drop the Hitlerian name Iran. Just saying that would be great gesture of peace.

More articles on the Iran operation:

• Satellite images show Iranian sites before and after airstrikes
  
• How Israel killed Ayatollah Khamenei with a missile from space
  
• US Sinks 17 Ships, Hits 2K Targets; Trump Says Tehran Forces Largely Knocked Out
  
• Israel eliminates man behind Trump assassination attempt
  
• US Military: 3 Service Members Killed; 5 Seriously Wounded in Iran Operation
• Trump Awards Medal of Honor to 3 US Army Service Members
• ‘Bottom Of The Sea’: Trump Declares Iran’s Navy Is Finished
• ‘Wake Up’: Iranian Democrat Blasts Her Own Party’s Iran Strike Backlash
• Trump Demands Role in Choosing Iran's Next Leader
  
• Russia Providing Intel to Iran, US Official Confirms to Newsmax
  
• Witkoff: Iran Boasted It Has Fuel for 11 Nuclear Bombs
  
• The Situation in Iran
• Trump's REAL Goal with the Iran Strikes Was NOT the Ayatollah [video]
  

Big ideas from Trump's State of the Union speech, from federal 401k payments to Dalilah's law

From Just the News.com (Feb. 24):

After a whirlwind year of action abroad and home, President Donald Trump on Tuesday night used the first State of the Union address of his second administration to propose sweeping new ideas – ranging from trucker safety to an historic change to the energy grid in a signal he has no plans to relent on his agenda in the face of the midterm congressional elections.

Here are some of the big ideas the 47th president put on the table during a joint session of Congress:

A federal matching payment for Americans' 401k retirement accounts

Trump announced he will be creating a new program giving Americans up to $1,000 to match their retirement savings in 401k accounts, promising more details in the near future.

"Your 401ks are way up, yet half of all of working Americans still do not have access to a retirement plan with matching contributions from an employer," Trump declared. "To remedy this gross disparity, I'm announcing that next year my administration will give these often forgotten American workers, great people, the people that built our country, access to the same type of retirement plan offered to every federal worker.

"We will match your contribution with up to $1,000 each year, as we ensure that all Americans can profit from a rising stock market."

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A plan to protect electricity rate payers from the costs of Artificial Intelligence grid expansion

Trump announced a “rate-payer protection pledge” being executed with major tech companies requiring them to provide for their own power needs by building their own power plants and grids. It's a major revolution in power policy, allowing private companies to do what major governments have handled for decades.

U.S. electricity rates have soared an average of 6.3% in the past year as the AI revolution rages forward with massive data center construction.

<

Delilah's Law: A Major Reform for Commercial Truck Driver Licenses

Trump called on Congress to pass a "Delilah's Law," barring states from issuing commercial driving licenses to illegal immigrants. In announcing the proposed law, he turned to the audience and Dalilah Coleman, a first-grader who was severely injured in a car accident caused by an illegal alien driving a semi-truck.

"Many, if not most, illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs," Trump said. "That's why tonight I'm calling on Congress to pass what we will call the Delilah law, barring any state from granting commercial driver's licenses to illegal aliens."

<

Tariffs to income tax freedom?

Trump said he will make new legal justifications for his tariffs to preserve them after a recent loss at the Supreme Court and predicted they would one day put the country on a path to reducing federal income taxes.

"I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love," Trump said.

<

A new commander for the war on fraud and a goal for a balanced budget

Trump turned to tech entrepreneur Elon Musk at the beginning of his second term to run the DOGE review to identify waste, fraud and abuse in taxpayer programs. Musk finished his temporary assignment identifying tens of billions of dollars in potential savings before returning to his suite of companies.

On Tuesday night, Trump said the next phase of the “war on fraud” would be led by Vice President JD Vance. He also suggested there were enough savings to be achieved that could put America on a path toward a balanced budget after years of annual budget deficits of $2 trillion or more.

<

Redirecting federal health subsidies from big insurers under Obamacare to American families instead

Trump proposed anew redirecting the billions of dollars in subsidies given to health insurers under Obamacare to individual health savings accounts, allowing people to choose health care services directly.

"I want to stop all payments to big insurance companies and instead give that money directly to the people so they can buy their own health care, which will be better health care at a much lower cost," Trump said. [source]

A pretty good speech. I don’t think taxpayers should pay for others’ babies though. Private donations (like from the Dell family) are okay. Otherwise, it is just a form of welfare.

Other mentions of the speech:

• Read the complete transcript of Trump’s 2026 State of the Union
• Trump declares 'war on fraud' during State of the Union
• Cheap Gas, Less Crime, Lives Saved, And 4 Other Victories Dems Refused To Cheer At SOTU
• The Right’s Brand Is 'America First.' The Left's Brand Is Getting Mad About That
• Miracle in the Capitol: Trump Compels Dems To Stand During SOTU
• The Silence of the Dems
• 7 Ways Republicans Can Capitalize On SOTU Momentum If They Want A Shot At Midterm Victory
• Trump’s Pro-America Vision Will Only Succeed If He Pushes Republicans To Implement It
• Trump Hails 'Turnaround for the Ages' in SOTU Address
• In SOTU, Trump Slams Court Ruling, Says Tariffs Will Stand
• Trump's speech is longest State of the Union address in recent history
• President Trump Gets the Job Done
• The most INCREDIBLE moment of Trump's 2026 State of the Union [video]

What “Separation of Church and State” Is Really About

From Breakpoint.org (July 14, 2022):

In response to the recent Dobbs decision and the Supreme Court’s clear, consistent support for religious liberty throughout this term, many progressives are warning of an imminent “Christian theocracy.” Among the loudest voices predicting our collective doom are mainstream media outlets. For example, a recent story in Reuters claimed, “U.S. Supreme Court Takes Aim at Separation of Church and State.”

What’s missing in virtually all of these pieces is a proper understanding of the “establishment clause.” The establishment clause is derived from the opening lines of the First Amendment which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …” There are two ways this statement is commonly misunderstood.

First, it is often described as establishing a “wall of separation between church and state.” In fact, those words are found nowhere in the Constitution. The phrase actually was coined later in a letter by Thomas Jefferson. Second, and more importantly, it is assumed that if organized religion cannot be supported by the state, then secularism is somehow “neutral.” Thus, by default, anything goes as long as it’s “secular.”

Understanding the historical context is essential. In the 18th century, an “established” religion referred to an official state church. In the U.S., individual states had already established churches, such as the Anglican Church in Virginia. The First Amendment specifically applied to Congress and prohibited a national church. To prefer the Anglican Church over the Congregationalists or Presbyterians would, at the time, mean alienating certain citizens and entire states. States continued to have established churches well into the 19th century.

In addition, the First Amendment was not intended to prohibit religious activities in governmental institutions. From the very beginning, Congress started each session with prayer. That continues today and is led by an official chaplain.

Our founding fathers, particularly James Madison, believed that religious liberty was an innate right, and inseparable from the freedom of conscience. He also believed that religion would better flourish in a free marketplace of ideas. That thinking was the basis for the free exercise clause.

This understanding of the freedom of conscience is the foundation for the other freedoms protected in the First Amendment. Without conscience rights, we cannot truly speak, write, assemble, or advocate freely from our deepest beliefs. That’s why the freedom of religion is often called “the first freedom.” Its position in the Bill of Rights highlights its importance.

Although the rights of conscience should not be controversial, somehow, that’s what they have become. How this happened is worth considering. By claiming secularism to be neutral, proponents of secularism ,as far back as the 19th century, attempted to broadly apply laws originally intended by Protestants to prevent Catholic schools from accessing state funds. In the 20th-century, secularists embraced the concept of “a living Constitution” in order to transform the meaning of the First Amendment, attempting to keep religious institutions from accessing state funds and allowing only “secular” views in the public arena.

Though many court cases illustrate this, among the more important was Torcaso v. Watkins (1961), which declared unconstitutional Maryland’s requirement that officeholders state belief in God. Rather than ruling on the basis of Article VI, which prohibits religious tests for public office, the Supreme Court ruled on the basis of the establishment clause of the First Amendment and of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from violating the rights guaranteed to U.S. citizens. The same line of reasoning has since been used to challenge prayers at public meetings, Bible studies in schools, and nativity scenes on public property. In the process, the First Amendment was turned on its head, taking a clause intended to keep the state from backing any one denomination and construing it to position the state in opposition to all organized religions.

In footnote 11 of the Torcaso v. Watkins decision, Justice Hugo Black listed secular humanism as one of a number of religions “which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God.” Calling humanism a religion was not outlandish.  For a century, humanists such as John Dewey and Julian Huxley had defined their beliefs as a religion. After all, secularism involves certain claims about the cosmos, existence, and human nature.

And yet in 1994, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled in Peloza v. Capistrano Unified School District that while “religion” should be broadly interpreted for free exercise clause purposes, “anything ‘arguably non-religious’ should not be considered religious in applying the establishment clause.” In other words, secular organizations were able to play both sides, qualifying as a religion for the free exercise clause but free from constraints from the establishment clause.

To further determine whether religious activities could utilize public spaces, the Supreme Court derived the so-called “Lemon Test” in the case Lemon v. Kurzman (1991). According to this rule, a religious activity is only licit on public grounds if it performs a secular purpose, neither advances nor inhibits religion, and does not foster excessive government entanglement in religion. This test maintained an obviously secular bias: Secular organizations were not required to pass any tests to obtain access.

In the recent decision in the Coach Kennedy case, the Supreme Court continued its long-overdue corrections to the anti-religious way the First Amendment had been interpreted. Particularly by unequivocally tossing the “Lemon Test,” the Court has stopped the active suppression of religious beliefs and practice. We ought not fear an impending theocracy, but instead welcome a redress to the unjust and ahistorical understandings of religion. [source]

Amen. Religion in gov’t doesn’t necessary mean a theocracy, but containing moral lawgivers if the religion is based on Judea-Christian beliefs. Otherwise, you might have corrupt and tyrannical lawgivers.

Information Warfare: An Interview With Dr. Robert Malone

From Zachary Emmanuel on Countere.com (June 16, 2022):

There are many moments one could call the definitive end of the 60s—the resignation of Nixon, the Manson murders, Altamont—but one last leprous gasp was heard from the decade’s corpse in February of 2022, when 76-year-old Canadian citizen Neil Young removed his music from Spotify in protest over The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Rogan’s transgression? Interviewing Dr. Robert Malone, a renowned pioneer in mRNA vaccine technology and horse farmer, about his concerns over mRNA vaccine technology. The hippie movement is diseased and dead.

……

What sources or institutions can we trust?

As a scientist, I'm trained not to trust anything.

In the medical world, my intellectual home is pathology. Pathology is essentially the quality control discipline for the entire medical care system. That's the nature of an autopsy—not just to ascertain the truth of an individual and their death, but to provide quality assurance for hospitals in the entire medical system. We're trained in pattern recognition, we detect and discern signal from noise, we’re trained to do this in the medical world.

As a scientist, I was rigorously trained to question everything, including myself. [I use] the intellectual structure called The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses [pdf]. The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses was originally published in Science Magazine in the late 1800s. So these are fundamental philosophies of medicine and clinical research that I'm speaking of.

The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses addresses the problem that exists for scientists, which is that we have a tendency to use a system of scientific questioning that we call hypothesis-driven research. The problem with hypothesis-driven research as a tool to discern truth is that it suffers from what's called “strong inference”—the tendency of a scientist to say, “I know the answer, I have a hypothesis, it’s my hypothesis, and I take ownership of it.”

What happens when you do that is that you will bend truth and reality and information to conform with your hypothesis. I don't normally discuss The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses. I'm speaking about this because I know that your magazine [Countere] thinks about these kinds of underlying philosophical issues.

I've been trained to approach the world as a cluster of information. That information is divided into three compartments. One is, there's the Known, the things that we can all agree on: the Earth is generally round, it orbits the sun, gravity exists. These have been divisive at various times in human history, but now we're pretty convinced those are solid truths.

Then, there’s the world of Knowable but Unknown. If we apply the Scientific Method—which is increasingly a new priesthood, but that's another problem—if we rigorously apply the Scientific Method to this world of Knowable but Unknown things, we can gradually pull truth out of that information cloud and place it into the world of the Known.

Then, there's a third compartment of information. This is the Unknown Unknowable. And that's basically the world of faith. That's the intellectual space of things which we are not able to directly perceive or measure, which may or may not exist. And we can't really apply the Scientific Method to this thought space. We can't get data to test hypotheses. This is the world of philosophers and theologians.

I've been trained on the first compartment, the Known. Then there’s this middle compartment of stuff that’s Knowable but Unknown, and that’s the world I’ve always lived in, first as a young academic and then as a scientist and pathologist.

I had thought that I didn't have to apply that kind of intellectual rigor to the world of politics or public policy or economics. I thought that that was all being adequately handled by other experts that were similarly objective. Now we learned that absolutely not the case, and all of us are forced into becoming citizen-scientists-philosophers, whether or not we're trained.

I didn't choose to be one of the “Leaders of the Resistance,” to use a Star Wars metaphor. But having been placed in that position through circumstance—because I was early in speaking out about certain things, and I had a background that enabled me to legitimately question what was going on—I now find myself with the burden of responsibility of that leadership, and it's one that I don't take lightly. Feeling that responsibility results in some self-editing, some self-censorship. There are things that I observed, for instance, about the World Economic Forum that are so far beyond what average people can accept that I have to self-censor. Otherwise, I'll be labeled as a crazy person. [read more]

Even If The Polls Are Accurate, I Don’t Care. I Want My Country Back

From Brianna Lyman on The Federalist.com (Apr. 29, 2025):

The country has been suffering for decades economically, culturally and politically — and the propaganda press wants you to care about approval ratings. As President Donald Trump marks his first 100 days in office, headlines scream about “record-low” poll numbers. But here’s the thing: polls don’t fix nations — leaders do.

The same media that tried to convince us seven months ago that then-Vice President Kamala Harris had a legitimate chance to take Iowa could very well be running yet another psyop — bad polling — to malign Trump and stain his legacy. But let’s just pretend, for argument’s sake, that the propaganda press’ polling is accurate.

To borrow a line from Vice President JD Vance: “I don’t care, Margaret” — because I want my country back.

Even if what Trump is doing is “unpopular,” it’s necessary. Only a real leader can decipher the difference between what’s easy and what’s essential –and choose the hard path, even when it costs him politically.

A joint ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted by the left-leaning pollster Ipsos says Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 39 percent.

“The previous low in approval for a president at or near 100 days in office, in polls dating to 1945, was Trump’s 42 [percent] in 2017,” ABC’s Gary Langer reported. As my colleague Beth Brelje pointed out, “it is hard to trust ABC’s Trump coverage after its biased moderation against Trump in the 2024 presidential debates, or after the $15 million defamation settlement ABC agreed to pay Trump.”

Still, Langer reports that Americans “disapprove of Trump’s performance on six of seven issues tested…” including “stock market volatility, tariffs, foreign relations and the economy overall.”

Langer adds that 53% of Americans polled “said they disapprove of [Trump’s] handling of immigration.” [read more]

Amen! . Things are looking up poll-wise for President Trump. Since this article was written he has risen in the polls. 50% agree that the country is on the right track.

YouTuber headed to federal prison after he intentionally crashed airplane for clicks, cleaned up the wreckage: Prosecutors

From The Blaze.com (Dec. 5, 2023):

YouTuber will serve time in federal prison after he intentionally crashed an airplane, cleaned up the wreckage, and then lied about it to investigators.

On Monday, United States District Judge John F. Walter sentenced Trevor Jacob, 30, to six months in prison after Jacob pled guilty last June to one count of destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation, said a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Central District of California.

Jacob, a YouTube pilot and former Olympic snowboarder, began a YouTube channel 15 years ago and has since amassed more than 140,000 subscribers. His channel also attracted sponsors, including a company that sells various products such as wallets.

According to federal prosecutors, Jacob agreed to promote a wallet from this company in a video for his channel. But the video he made was not about wallets at all.

Instead, Jacob took off from Lompoc City Airport on November 24, 2021, on a solo flight with the expressed destination of Mammoth Lakes. Several cameras had been affixed to the plane, and Jacob had a video camera and a selfie stick as well.

Approximately 35 minutes after takeoff, Jacob, an experienced skydiver who was already wearing a parachute, indicated that he had "an engine out." He began swearing profusely and opened the plane door, looking nervously at the ground below. Within moments, he evacuated the plane, leaving it to crash in a remote part of Los Padres National Forest.

After landing in a dry brush of poisonous oak, Jacob wandered about for hours, first to locate the plane, then in a desperate search for water and safety. After sunset, he eventually found some ranchers who rescued him.

Jacob documented his journey throughout that harrowing episode.

Jacob also reported the crash to the National Transportation Safety Board two days after it happened. At that time, he agreed to provide the NTSB with "the coordinates of the downed plane and videos of the crash" and to preserve the wreckage so that the NTSB could examine it, the press release said. The FAA soon began an investigation as well.

Despite the promise not to meddle with the wreckage, a few weeks after the crash, Jacob and a friend located the crashed plane by helicopter. They then used straps to secure the plane to the helicopter and eventually transported it to Jacob's hangar at Lompoc City Airport. There, Jacob systematically dismembered the wreckage and deposited it, pieces at a time, in various garbage receptacles at the airport and elsewhere "with the intent to obstruct federal authorities from investigating the November 24 plane crash," the press release claimed.

Jacob then lied, saying that he did not know the location of the crash site. He also made a false report about the accident and misled investigators when he told them that he had to parachute from the plane because he could not find a safe place to land it.

In other words, Jacob got himself into a mess of his own making and then lied to cover it up. He even admitted as much in a video entitled "I Got My Pilots License Back! But Going to Prison...," posted to his YouTube channel on Monday. In that video, Jacob said that at one point, he was facing five felony charges that each carried a 20-year sentence.

He also called himself "an idiot" for pulling the stunt and said he felt "horrible" about it almost as soon as he hit the ground. "I screwed up," he said. He then added that he has paid dearly for his mistake. But he also indicated that he was motivated to fake the plane crash to fulfill a "bucket list" dream, not "to make money" or "gain online views," as alleged in the press release.

Whatever his reasons, Jacob will serve six months in the interest of justice and to deter other would-be daredevil YouTubers from trying something similar. "It appears that [Jacob] exercised exceptionally poor judgment in committing this offense," prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. "[Jacob] most likely committed this offense to generate social media and news coverage for himself and to obtain financial gain. Nevertheless, this type of ‘daredevil’ conduct cannot be tolerated."

Jacob's attorney did not respond to CNN's request for comment. [source]

Good! What a bonehead. He could have gotten himself killed. Airplane crashes are serious and not to be taken lightly or exploited for clicks.

Trump Admin Cracks Down On Texas Over In-State Tuition For Illegals

From Daily Caller.com (June 4, 2025):

The Department of Justice (DOJ) moved Wednesday to block the enforcement of Texas law granting in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants.

The DOJ filed suit against the state of Texas to stop the enforcement of state law requiring colleges and universities to provide in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants, as the Trump administration intensifies its scrutiny of jurisdictions violating federal immigration laws. The “Dream Act” passed in 2001, allows those who are not lawfully present in the country to qualify for reduced tuition at public state colleges, which the DOJ argues is discriminatory to U.S. citizens from other states who are required to pay higher tuition rates to attend certain schools in Texas.

“That is squarely prohibited and preempted by federal law, which expressly provides that ‘an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State … for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit … without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident,” the complaint reads.

Texas is home to the second-largest population of illegal immigrants, and approximately 57,000 of them were enrolled in its state universities as of 2022, according to the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration.

“Under federal law, schools cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi. “The Justice Department will relentlessly fight to vindicate federal law and ensure that U.S. citizens are not treated like second-class citizens anywhere in the country.”

The lawsuit follows two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump designed to crack down on illegal immigration.

One order, titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders,” directs all agencies to “ensure, to the maximum extent permitted by law, that no taxpayer-funded benefits go to unqualified aliens.” The other, “Protecting American Communities From Criminal Aliens,” instructs officials to take steps against state and local laws or policies that favor illegal immigrants over American citizens.

The Trump administration is cracking down on so-called “sanctuary cities” or jurisdictions that allegedly obstruct federal immigration law. In February, the DOJ sued Chicago, Cook County and the state of Illinois for its policies restricting cooperation between local police and federal immigration enforcement.

Neither the DOJ nor the Texas attorney general’s office responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. [source]

Good.  Glad he's doing that. Illegals should not be getting in-state tuition.

Trump Withdraws US From Global Climate Agreement

From Newsmax.com (Jan. 7):

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the United States will withdraw from the international agreement that has served as the foundation for global efforts to rein in climate change for 34 years.

The pact includes every other nation in the world, making it one of the most widely adopted international frameworks still in force.

In a social media post, the White House said Trump signed a memorandum directing the U.S. to exit 66 international organizations and treaties that "no longer serve American interests."

The White House did not immediately release a full list of the organizations and agreements covered by the order, but highlighted the climate agreement as a major component.

Trump and his advisers framed the withdrawal as part of a broader push to reclaim control of U.S. energy and economic policy and reduce what they view as outside constraints on domestic industry.

The decision is expected to draw swift backlash from U.S. allies and climate advocates who argue the agreement is central to coordinating emissions cuts and financing climate adaptation.

Environmental groups warned the withdrawal could weaken global momentum as countries face increasing climate-related disasters, including extreme heat, flooding, and wildfires.

Supporters of the move praised it as a rejection of international bureaucracy and what they call an unfair system that imposes disproportionate costs on the United States.

The withdrawal is likely to trigger diplomatic and legal questions over how quickly the U.S. can exit and what happens to prior commitments made under the agreement's framework.

White House officials said further actions related to U.S. participation in international organizations would follow. [source]

Good. The agreement is just another way to punish America.

No Civilization Without Restraint: Wise Words From 1939

From Breakpoint.org (Aug. 1, 2022):

It is not normal or healthy for a culture to talk about sex this much. From Pride month to education to companies telegraphing their commitments to inclusion and diversity, to just about every commercial, movie, or TV show produced today, sexual identity is treated as if it is central to human identity, human purpose, and human happiness. And this vision of life and the world is especially force-fed to children, who are essentially subjects of our social experimentations.

“If the energy spent talking about sex is disproportionate, it’s important to know there were some who saw this coming. The best example is Oxford sociologist J.D. Unwin. In 1939, Unwin published a landmark book summarizing his research. Sex and Culture was a look at 80 tribes and six historical civilizations over the course of five millennia, through the lens of a single question: Does a culture’s ideas of sexual liberation predict its success or collapse? ”

Unwin’s findings were overwhelming:

“Just as societies have advanced [and] then faded away into a state of general decrepitude, so in each of them has marriage first previously changed from a temporary affair based on mutual consent to a lifelong association of one man with one woman, and then turned back to a loose union or to polygamy. ”

What’s more, Unwin concluded,

The whole of human history does not contain a single instance of a group becoming civilized unless it has been absolutely monogamous, nor is there any example of a group retaining its culture after it has adopted less rigorous customs.

Unwin saw a pattern behind societies that unraveled. If three consecutive generations abandoned sexual restraint built around the protections of marriage and fidelity, they collapsed.

Simply put, sexuality is essential for survival. However, sexuality is such a powerful force, it must be controlled or else it can destroy a future rather than secure it. Wrongly ordered sexuality is devastating for both individuals and entire societies.

Unwin’s conclusions can be boiled down to a single issue. Are people living for the future, with the ability to delay gratification, or are they focusing only on the here and now? When a culture fails to restrain its sexual instincts, people think less about securing the future and instead compromise the stability, productivity, and the well-being of the next generation in the pursuit of sexual pleasure.

Unwin claims that he had no moral or ideological axe to grind in this research. “I make no opinion about rightness or wrongness,” he wrote. But his work is nevertheless profound, as are his conclusions, which we seem to be living out in real time.

According to Pew Research, almost 90% of children lived with two married parents in 1960. By 2008 that number had dropped to just 64%. Over the same period, the percentage of kids born to unmarried women rose from 5% to 41%. There is really no question of how this impacts children. Studies show that teens from single-parent or blended families are 300% more likely to need psychological assistance, twice as likely to drop out of high school, and more likely to commit suicide. They end up with less college education and lower–paying jobs than their parents and are more likely to get divorced themselves.

This is not because children from non-traditional homes have less potential or less value. Nor do stable two-parent families guarantee outcomes for children. Statistics do not determine the future of an individual, but they can identify the future of a society. On a civilizational level, the future is a matter of math.

The early days of the sexual revolution reframed the morality of sexual behavior, but today it’s gone further, undermining the already fragile identity in the rising generation, fraying it in the various directions of the ever-growing acronym of sexual identities. Anywhere from 1 in 5 to nearly 40% of young people identify as LGBTQ today. Or, in the case of one junior high class in the Northeast I heard of recently, “all of them do.”

Christian faithfulness in this cultural moment must involve the protection of children and a commitment to the future of society. At the very least, that means speaking up, especially when it is unpopular to do so. Along the way, we will have to reject the “inevitability thesis,” the notion that all is lost and that things will only get worse so nothing we do matters. With courage and unconditional love for our neighbor, we continue to speak the truth.

And we will need to remind ourselves and each other of something that should be obvious but is not: The ideas and behavior of the late sexual revolution are not normal. Nor is our fascination and focus on sexuality as the central defining factor in human existence and value.

Human sexuality is not some arbitrary construct like a speed limit. It is as much a part of the fabric of life as gravity. We may deny that, but we will not avoid the pain of hitting the ground if we do. [source]

Amen.

Along the same lines..: The Epstein Files, Pagan History, and Christian Morality