Trump’s Immigration Enforcement Really Is Slashing Violent Crime

From The Federalist.com (July 9):

Is crime falling? Some conservatives, notably Steve Bannon, argue that Americans should ignore the FBI’s crime statistics showing record drops in violent crime. The murder rate last year fell to the lowest rate ever recorded, and the violent crime rate is clearly at the lowest in many decades. But Bannon recently declared that “nobody believes” FBI crime data or its director, Kash Patel, adding: “I don’t want to hear any more statistics about how crime’s coming down.”

That skepticism overlooks an important distinction.

The FBI has made mistakes in the past, particularly in its active shooter reports and hate crime data. Some police departments have also failed to report complete crime data to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. But those problems do not explain the concerns with the measure of overall crime.

The real issue is understanding what different crime measures actually tell us. Past problems with the FBI’s measure of crimes reported to police do not mean anyone manipulated the data. Nor do they mean that last year’s reported decline in crime — or the declines so far this year — are inaccurate.

The United States has two primary measures of violent crime. The FBI tracks crimes reported to police. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) estimates both reported and unreported crime. Researchers have known for decades that most crimes never reach the police. Victims report only about 40 percent of violent crimes and roughly 30 percent of property crimes.

The media focuses almost exclusively on FBI crime data. Before 2020, FBI data and the NCVS generally moved in the same direction. During the Biden administration, however, they sharply diverged. While reported violent crime fell by about 8 percent, total felony violent crime measured by the NCVS surged 59 percent — the largest four-year percentage increase since the survey began more than five decades ago.

Several factors explain that gap. Whether victims report crimes depends heavily on whether they believe police will catch and punish offenders. As cities reduced police staffing through budget cuts, retirements, and, in some places, “defund the police” policies, arrest rates declined. Lower arrest rates gave victims less reason to report crimes.

Some police departments also made reporting more difficult. In some jurisdictions, 911 operators asked whether the offender was still at the scene. If the answer was no — as it almost always was — they instructed victims to visit a police station later to file a report. Simply calling 911 does not place a crime in the FBI’s statistics; an officer must complete an official report. When governments make reporting more burdensome, some victims understandably decide it isn’t worth the effort.

Fortunately, many of those policies have been reversed.

Although reported crime has declined, we will not know whether total crime also fell in 2025 until the Bureau of Justice Statistics releases the next NCVS this September.

Even so, there is good reason for optimism.

Reducing crime is not complicated. Governments must make crime riskier by increasing arrests and convictions, imposing longer prison sentences, and allowing law-abiding citizens to defend themselves. The news on each of those fronts has been encouraging.

FBI arrests surged in 2025, rising 184 percent over 2024 levels. Total FBI arrests — a broader category that includes many joint operations with state and local agencies — increased by 197 percent.

Voters also replaced several George Soros-backed prosecutors in jurisdictions such as Los Angeles and San Francisco with district attorneys who prosecute criminals more aggressively and seek tougher sentences. Across the country, President Trump’s U.S. attorneys have also pursued criminals far more aggressively than their predecessors. In Washington, D.C., for example, the Biden administration’s U.S. Attorney declined to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested. Under U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, that figure has fallen to just 4 percent.

Nor is it a coincidence that the record influx of illegal immigrants during the Biden administration coincided with a sharp increase in violent crime. It is equally unsurprising that crime has fallen as deportations have increased. Deportation records show that 70 percent of illegal immigrants deported during the Trump administration had either criminal convictions or pending criminal charges in the United States. Even those who avoid arrest understand that any contact with law enforcement could lead to deportation, giving them a strong incentive to stay off the police’s radar and avoid committing additional crimes.

Finally, the number of adults carrying concealed handguns has risen sharply, with the latest survey data showing a 5-percentage-point increase in concealed carry over the past year and a half.

Americans shouldn’t blindly accept crime statistics, but they need to understand what the different numbers actually measure. The FBI’s numbers show that reported crime has fallen dramatically, while the NCVS will tell us this September whether total violent crime has also declined. Stronger law enforcement, more aggressive prosecution, and greater accountability provide good reasons to expect that the encouraging trend in reported crime reflects a real improvement in public safety. [source]

Good to know!  Glad that illegal migrant crime is going down. It’s bad enough when America’s own citizens are committing crime—we don’t need to add to the crime stats.

Trump ATF Scraps Dozens of Gun Rules in Sweeping Rollback

From Newsmax.com (July 5):

The Trump administration is dismantling more than three dozen federal firearms regulations, ending a zero-tolerance policy against wayward gun dealers, easing scrutiny of stabilizing braces, and clearing a path for some Americans with a history of mental illness to buy firearms, part of what officials call the broadest rewrite of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rules in the agency's history.

The rollback, executed under President Donald Trump's Executive Order 14206 on Second Amendment rights, was formally launched April 29, when acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and newly confirmed ATF Director Robert Cekada unveiled 34 notices of final and proposed rulemaking.

Officials called it the most comprehensive regulatory reform package in ATF history. Cekada was confirmed by the Senate hours earlier and signed off on the changes within an hour of taking office.

The package raises the legal bar for stripping a federal firearms dealer of a license, requiring evidence that the dealer knew it was breaking the law.

It formally rescinds the Biden-era pistol brace rule, which has already been blocked in much of the country by federal courts.

It narrows the Biden administration's "engaged in the business" rule, which was designed to force more sellers at gun shows and online marketplaces to run background checks, a measure gun-control advocates called a partial closure of the so-called gun show loophole.

Other proposalswould allow some Americans previously flagged for mental health reasons or an inability to manage their finances to purchase firearms.

On Friday, the ATF unveiled further changes, including a proposal to trim fingerprinting requirements for National Firearms Act applications.

Under the plan, individual applicants would submit a single fingerprint card instead of two and could verify identity with a photo ID rather than a passport-style photo. The rule is scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on July 6, opening a comment period through Oct. 5.

The administration is simultaneously challenging state gun laws in court.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department sued California over Assembly Bill 1127, which bars sales of Glock-style pistols with a cruciform trigger bar that officials say can be readily converted to fully automatic fire, and over the state's Handgun Roster, which restricts which models may be sold.

It also sued Virginia and the Virginia State Police over Senate Bill 749, which criminalizes the sale or transfer of AR-15-style rifles and magazines holding more than 15 rounds. The department earlier filed similar challenges to semiautomatic rifle bans in the District of Columbia in December and Colorado in May.

Blanche said the rules had been written "without any real understanding of how firearms businesses operate, how lawful gun owners actually handle their firearms, or what truly improves public safety."

Gun control advocates rejected that framing. Kris Brown, president of Brady, told The New York Times the moves take the country "back 100 years" and are "decimating A.T.F.'s ability to regulate this industry." [source]

Another win especially for gun rights advocates! 

Transhumanism is a Christian Heresy (and a False Gospel)

From Break Point.org (Aug. 1, 2025):

One of the clearest proofs that Christianity addresses the fundamental problems of humanity is the bizarre lengths to which non-Christians will go to address those same problems without Christ. For example, tech billionaire Peter Thiel, former CEO of PayPal, recently went on Ross Douthat’s “Interesting Times” podcast to discuss AI, Mars, immortality, and other light topics. The conversation was genuinely interesting, especially when Douthat asked, “Should the human race continue?” Thiel paused and said “um” and “I don’t know” quite a few times.

“This is a long hesitation!” observed Douthat, laughing nervously.

Finally, Thiel explained that humanity should survive, but that there are problems in need of solving. Chief among those is death, he said, which transhumanists have long hoped to conquer via a “radical transformation” of the human body into an “immortal body.”

The problem with efforts like transgenderism, in Thiel’s opinion, isn’t that they change bodies too radically, but not radically enough: “[W]e want more transformation than that. … We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind and change your whole body.” Thiel then pointed to Christianity and its doctrines of Redemption and Resurrection as precedent for the transhumanist idea of total self-transformation and conquest of death. Maybe, he hinted, the two philosophies aren’t so different.

Douthat, a Roman Catholic, pushed back, pointing out that according to Christianity, God does the transforming. “The person,” Douthat said, “who tries to do it on their own with a bunch of machines is likely to end up a dystopian character.” Do-it-yourself immortality is, at best, “a heretical form of Christianity.”

Theil’s fundamental assumption, which is foreign to the Bible and Christianity but common among tech futurists and transhumanists, is that our minds are more important and fundamental than our bodies. Our “true selves” are our minds and separable from who we are physically.

Not only is this assumption a rehashed version of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, it also creepily resembles the philosophy of the evil National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (or N.I.C.E.) from C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. In the story, Dr. Filostrato hopes to cleanse the world of organic life, replacing trees, birds, and even human bodies with machines. He even proposed something akin to uploading human consciousness.

That’s not to say that transhumanists like Thiel are involved in an intergalactic conspiracy run by demons speaking through a disembodied Head, as in the book. At least not knowingly. But the transhumanist’s urge to overcome human limits, become more machine-like, and live forever is eerily similar. As is their rhetoric.

It’s also notable that, unlike anti-humanists on the Left, transhumanists assume the human race is worth preserving. Elon Musk, for example, thinks it’s our duty to have as many babies as possible, by any means necessary. He also thinks that humans should be the ones to colonize other planets. In a sense, he acknowledges that humans are exceptional, in a way at least similar to how Scripture describes humans.

Yet, his view of human exceptionalism has a “you will be like God” promise to it, and a sense that all human problems are technical glitches to be overcome by innovation and engineering. So, our mortality can be solved through “radical transformation” of our bodies. Our fragile fertility can be solved through IVF. Our lack of knowledge can be solved through AI, and our limits can be overcome by the technologies pioneered by Thiel and others like him.

Theil’s company Palantir was named, without any apparent irony, after the “seeing stones” in The Lord of the Rings that corrupt all who gaze into them.

Humans were made in the image of God and, as such, were made to be like Him and live forever. Death is “the last enemy,” and our longing for immortality is core to who we are. Perhaps this is why transhumanist promises are so compelling. However, we were made to do and receive all this through God, not our own ingenuity.

Transhumanism, it turns out, is indeed a Christian heresy, an ideology that rightly identifies the problems of a fallen world. But it seeks to overcome them with a false gospel of technological godhood, rather than the true gospel of salvation through Christ.

God willing, Thiel’s openness to Christianity and his conversations with Christians will move him to accept his need for Christ. Until then, believers should be fully aware that the transhumanist gospel is a false one. Only Christ can change our hearts, change our minds, and change our whole bodies … not a tech billionaire. [source]

Transhumanists fear death. Their ego (living forever) might come into play too.

Another article on transhumanism:

Our Transhumanist, Sci-Fi Future Has Arrived. But You’re Not Going To Like It

Why Progressives Love Government “Experts”

From FEE.org (June 9, 2022):

In twenty-first-century America, ordinary people are at the mercy of well-paid, unelected government experts who wield vast power. That is, we live in the age of the technocrats: people who claim to have special wisdom that entitles them to control, manipulate, and manage society’s institutions using the coercive power of the state.

We’re told these people are “nonpolitical” and will use their impressive scientific knowledge to plan the economy, public health, public safety, or whatever goal the regime has decided the technocrats will be tasked with bringing about.

These people include central bankers, Supreme Court justices, “public health” bureaucrats, and Pentagon generals. The narrative is that these people are not there to represent the public or bow to political pressure. They’re just there to do “the right thing” as dictated by economic theory, biological sciences, legal theory, or the study of military tactics.

We’re also told that in order to allow these people to act as the purely well-meaning apolitical geniuses they are, we must give them their independence and not question their methods or conclusions.

We were exposed to this routine yet again last week as President Joe Biden announced he will “respect the Fed’s independence” and allow the central bankers to set monetary policy without any bothersome interference from the representatives of the taxpayers who pay all the bills and who primarily pay the price when central bankers make things worse. (Biden, of course, didn’t mention that central bankers have been spectacularly wrong about the inflation threat in recent years, with inflation rates hitting forty-year highs, economic growth going negative, and consumer credit piling up as families struggle to cope with the cost of living.)

Conveniently, Biden’s deferral to the Fed allows him to blame it later when economic conditions get even worse. Nonetheless, his placing the economy in the hands of alleged experts will no doubt appear laudable to many. This is because the public has long been taught by public schools and media outlets that government experts should have the leeway to exercise vast power in the name of “fixing” whatever problems society faces.

The Expert Class as a Tool for State Building

The success of this idea represents a great victory for progressive ideology. Progressives have long been committed to creating a special expert class as a means of building state power. In the United States, for example, the cult of expertise really began to take hold in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it led directly to support for more government intervention in the private sector. As Maureen Flanagan notes in “Progressives and Progressivism in an Era of Reform,”

“Social science expertise gave political Progressives a theoretical foundation for cautious proposals to create a more activist state…. Professional social scientists composed a tight circle of men who created a space between academia and government from which to advocate for reform. They addressed each other, trained their students to follow their ideas, and rarely spoke to the larger public.”

These men founded new organizations—such as the American Economics Association—to promote this new class of experts and their plans for a more centrally planned society. Ultimately, the nature of the expert class was revolutionary. The new social scientists thought they knew better than the patricians, religious leaders, local representatives, and market actors who had long shaped local institutions. Instead,

Progressives were modernizers with a structural-instrumentalist agenda. They rejected reliance on older values and cultural norms to order society and sought to create a modern reordered society with political and economic institutions run by men qualified to apply fiscal expertise, businesslike efficiency, and modern scientific expertise to solve problems and save democracy. The emerging academic disciplines in the social sciences of economics, political economy and political science, and pragmatic education supplied the theoretical bases for this middle-class expert Progressivism.

The Progressive impulse for expertise-based rule was perhaps exemplified by the Progressive transportation planner Emory Johnson, who advocated for a strong federal executive branch that would be resistant to political pressure while relying on the supposedly “scientific” judgments of government planners and other bureaucrats. Johnson

explicitly took up the question of the role of expertise in the American state…. he maintained that success relied upon what he termed “executive functions.” He sought to empower the federal government’s executive branch as experts’ natural home.1

In the Progressive view, business leaders and machine politicians lacked a rational and broad view of the needs of society. In contrast, the government experts would approach society’s problems as scientists. Johnson felt this model already somewhat existed in the Department of War, where Johnson imagined the secretary of war was “quite free from political pressure and [relied] on the counsel of the engineers.” Johnson imagined that these science-minded bureaucrats could bring a “really economic and scientific application” of policy. [read more]

Why Do Some Countries Stay Poor?

From Peter Jacobsen on FEE.org (Aug. 23, 2023):

Accounting for "The Wealth of Nations."

This week for Ask an Economist, I have a question from a reader named Mark. He says,

“I’ve worked with immigrants that recently moved to the US, and workers still living in their native country and working for me remotely.

My experience is that they’re on average, much harder working and more skilled (even in technical fields) than my American colleagues. The foreigners work hard, making no excuses, grateful for the work, and take every opportunity to better themselves. Americans, on the other hand, demand much higher wages, complain about the work, and make little effort to improve themselves.

Since the people from many of these poor countries are better workers, why are their home countries so poor? Immigrants on average start more businesses and do better in the US than US born citizens. With all their skills and ambition, it seems their home countries ought to be significantly richer than the US cities, yet this isn’t the case. What’s the cause of these countries’ poverty?”

Mark asks perhaps the single-most important question in the history of economic thinking. Why do some countries grow rich while others stay poor?

A Long History of Answers

In 1776, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith published perhaps the most influential work in the history of political economy: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

This book, usually referred to as “The Wealth of Nations,” tries to answer the question Mark poses. Since then, wealthy countries have grown much wealthier, some poor countries have grown wealthier, but there are a substantial number of countries lagging behind.

Before we get into the right answer, we should spend some time talking about some popular wrong answers.

Economist Bill Easterly has done a great job chronicling some of these wrong answers in his book The Elusive Quest for Growth.

Easterly’s point in the book is simple. Throughout the late 20th century and into the 21st century, the United States and other countries have attempted to trigger economic growth in poor countries. These attempts have failed.

Easterly discusses three failed panaceas which experts believed would trigger development: investment, population control, and education. Before looking at each once, though, consider the unifying theme here. Developed countries tend to have higher levels of investment, lower birth rates, and more education. From this, experts have tried to infer that if these conditions are replicated in poorer countries, then development will follow.

This strategy has failed. It turns out these factors are more a consequence of growth than a cause. Let’s look at each failed panacea.

1. Investment

In the 1950s, experts began to believe that simply having machines and financial capital to take on big projects would make countries rich. This belief, ironically, was based on the (false) success of the Soviet Union. Soviet production numbers were going through the roof, and for decades economists believed they would overtake the US. Why?

The Soviet Union was industrializing through forced savings. By reallocating private resources to large industrial investments, it appeared the USSR was able to shock the economy into early industrialization. It turns out that this growth was illusory, as economist Murray Rothbard rightly predicted, leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But the Soviet Union fooled many economists in the 1950s, so the model of centrally planned growth via investment took off. The belief was that because poor countries were in such dire situations, citizens had no ability to save. Without saving there is no growth. A vicious cycle was preventing growth.

So developing countries could fix this by giving the required investment for countries to have sustained growth. This investment would increase incomes, which would increase savings, and spur on permanent natural growth. Easterly calls this the financing gap approach.

The approach failed, though. Models failed to live up to their predictions, and poor countries were not made rich via air-dropped investments. The reason for the failure is the same reason noted by Rothbard in his analysis of the Soviet economy. Production is a means to the ends of consumption. If your production is not linked meaningfully to the well-being of consumers via the knowledge of prices, profit, and loss, then it will not lead to any sustained growth.

Central planners attempted to create production for its own sake, leading to the misallocation of capital and natural resources. Investment alone is not enough—you must have the right investments.

2. Education

A natural next plan for development experts was education. If increasing production via physical capital was not enough, maybe increasing knowledge or human capital would do the trick. Easterly chronicles how education development policy dominated from the 1960s to the 1990s.

The results did not bear out on this either. Easterly chronicles how study after study finds little to no correlation between education and economic growth. One study shows that as the education explosion happened in poor countries, the growth rate of income in these countries actually fell. This is exactly the opposite of what we’d expect if education theories were true. Another study found that for countries that grow 1% faster than average, education could only explain 0.06% of that in terms of growth in human capital.

Easterly points to several other types of studies which show a simple, consistent result: education does not create economic growth.

……

The Best Answer

So if all these answers are wrong, what is the right answer? Let’s go back to Adam Smith, and take a look at his famous conclusion. Why do countries become rich according to Smith?

“Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”

Smith is arguing that the ultimate cause of growth in a country stems from its institutions. In other words, the rules that govern your daily economic activity are at the bottom of the different growth outcomes we face in our world.

Another way to frame this is that in order for a country’s economy to grow, the citizens need economic freedom or access to private property rights.

When people have private property, they can use, sell, or rent out their property. This leads to a few results. First, people have an incentive to maximize the value of their property. If you own a house, you want to keep it in good condition because letting it fall apart means you lose some money. Private ownership incentivizes responsibility.

Furthermore, when people are able to sell their goods, prices form for those goods. Prices reflect the value of a good or service relative to other things, and embody societal knowledge about the good. When an oil rig breaks down in the ocean, oil becomes more scarce. We don’t have to be told oil is more scarce to curb our consumption. The rising price causes us to curb consumption whether we know it or not.

Prices also allow firms to do accounting to determine their profit or loss. If a firm makes a profit off of a sale, this tells them consumers valued the final product more than the value of the inputs used to create it. This process of transforming less valuable inputs into more valuable outputs is at the center of economic growth. To paraphrase the economist Peter Boettke: without ownership of the various goods used in production, there can be no markets for them. Without markets for these goods, there are no prices. Without prices, there can be no economic calculation.

So institutions which are economically free are the cause of economic growth. The data bear this out. Economists James Gwartney and co-author Robert Lawson pioneered the Fraser Institute’s “Economic Freedom of the World Index.” The Index measures how free the economies of different countries are and uses that information to examine the connection between freedom and flourishing. What they find fits perfectly with the theory here. Economically free countries are richer and healthier than unfree countries.

Economist Peter Leeson also examines the evidence in a paper titled “Two Cheers for Capitalism?” His conclusion?

“According to a popular view that I call ‘two cheers for capitalism,’ capitalism’s effect on development is ambiguous and mixed. This paper empirically investigates that view. I find that it’s wrong. Citizens in countries that became more capitalist over the last quarter century became wealthier, healthier, more educated, and politically freer. Citizens in countries that became significantly less capitalist over this period endured stagnating income, shortening life spans, smaller gains in education, and increasingly oppressive political regimes. The data unequivocally evidence capitalism’s superiority for development. Full-force cheerleading for capitalism is well deserved and three cheers are in order instead of two.”

In The Elusive Quest for Growth, Easterly has one other insight that merits our attention on this question. Easterly points out how much of the United States government’s focus on development in the late 20th century was really an attempt to win allies against the Soviet Union.

This is extremely ironic, considering that the US government was essentially incorporating Soviet style central planning to attempt to bring about growth in these developing countries.

Instead, it would have been better to follow a US-style pursuit of economic growth. Institutions which enable economic growth are the true driver of wealth creation. Once you enable individuals to freely compete and cooperate, the power of human ingenuity does the rest. [read more]

Food for thought. Lessons the Left never gets--especially the "easy taxes" part.

U.S. Space Command Warns Russia Planning ‘Space Pearl Harbor’ With Nuclear Weapon in Orbit (VIDEO)

From The Gateway Pundit.com (Apr. 18):

Russia is reportedly developing a nuclear weapon designed to be deployed in space that could cripple global communications and cause widespread disruption.

General Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command, has admitted that Washington is “very concerned” about plans to place a nuclear anti-satellite weapon into orbit.

“They are thinking about placing in orbit a nuclear anti-satellite weapon that would hold at risk everyone’s satellites in low Earth orbit, and that would be an outcome that we just couldn’t tolerate,” Whiting said.

The weapon could be used to destroy large numbers of satellites in low Earth orbit, potentially taking out communications systems, GPS networks and parts of the global internet.

A detonation in orbit could damage or destroy up to 10,000 satellites, roughly 80 percent of those currently in space.

Officials have described the potential attack as a “space Pearl Harbor.”

Whiting said the threat forms part of a broader pattern of Russian activity in space, including widespread GPS and satellite communication jamming.

“The problem with GPS jamming is it’s being done in a way that’s affecting civil aviation in eastern Europe and across southern Europe,” he said.

“When we put at risk civilian airliners full of citizens just trying to go on business or holiday, that’s incredibly problematic.”

The general said Russia is seeking ways to counter what it sees as Western military advantages by targeting space-based systems.

“They look at the United States, they look at NATO and they see an overmatch there of conventional arms,” Whiting said.

“And they believe that novel ways of trying to undermine the United States and NATO, such as by neutralizing our space capabilities, helps them to level the battlefield.”

The proposed weapon would violate the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits placing nuclear weapons in orbit.

U.S. officials have been aware of the threat for at least two years, with intelligence first briefed to Congress in 2024.

Whiting warned that space is increasingly becoming a central domain for future conflict.

“The next big war will likely be a war that starts in space,” he said.

He also urged allies to increase defense spending in the sector, noting that Britain currently spends less than one percent of its defense budget on space capabilities. [source]

Hope not, then again not surprising. The Chi-Coms are probably thinking along the same lines too.

Another threat in orbit:

‘There are threats in orbit’: Space Force chief sounds alarm over Chinese, Russian space assets

Trump Pardons 9 in Federal Emissions Cases

From Newsmax.com (July 3):

President Donald Trump on Friday pardoned 11 people, including some convicted in federal emissions cases, saying they were victims of what he called the Biden administration's "Weaponization and Stupidity" in punishment for "fixing their car."

Trump announced the pardons in a Truth Social post, declaring that the six had been unfairly prosecuted and imprisoned under then-President Joe Biden.

"It is my Great Honor to have just signed Pardons for six people who were persecuted by the Biden Administration, and were in, or being sent to, prison, for 'fixing their car,'" Trump wrote earlier in the day before the White House made an official announcement. "While I know this sounds ridiculous, it is nevertheless a fact, and part of the Weaponization and Stupidity that our Country had to endure during four long years of Sleepy Joe Biden.

"I AM SETTING THEM ALL FREE, RIGHT NOW!"

Trump's Friday ⁠pardons also included Adam Kinan, ⁠vice chairman ⁠of the Staffing Advisory Group, who ‌had been sentenced to prison in 2006 with business partner and ‌Washington ​lobbyist Jack Abramoff ‌for wire fraud.

The pardons come as the administration continues to roll back federal environmental enforcement priorities and what it describes as politically motivated prosecutions.

"President Trump is the ultimate decider on any clemency-related actions," a White House official told CBS Newsahead of the pardons.

Last year, Trump pardoned Wyoming mechanic Troy Lake, who served seven months in prison for violating federal emissions laws after disabling pollution-control equipment on diesel engines.

"We think this type of case is an example of government overreach," attorney Stewart Cables told CBS. "That's why we are trying to get these pardons."

Earlier this year, Todd Blanche, who at the time was deputy attorney general, ordered federal prosecutors to drop the remaining criminal cases involving aftermarket "defeat devices" used to modify diesel emissions systems, saying the move would "ensure consistent and fair prosecution under the law, as well as to ensure the best use of [Justice] Department resources."

Trump also signed a June 29 executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency to deprioritize civil enforcement involving emission-control tampering.

According to CBS, Trump is also weighing other clemency requests, including one from music producer Sean "Diddy" Combs, who is serving a federal prison sentence of just over four years at Fort Dix, New Jersey, after his conviction last year on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.

He was acquitted of the more serious charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.

Administration sources told the outlet no decision has been made.

Grammy Award-winning rapper Pras Michel of the Fugees and Malaysian financier Jho Low are also reportedly seeking presidential pardons. [source]

Good for President Trump. 

Trump drops election integrity bombshells, urges passage of SAVE America Act

From Just the News.com (July 16):

On Thursday at the White House, President Donald Trump addressed the nation and presented new evidence detailing multiple security breaches in elections he said were concealed by a self-proclaimed "shadow government" and the Biden administration.

"Another official inside the FBI wrote that she was running 'a shadow government' to keep intelligence about China's election meddling from becoming known," he said, during a primetime address from the White House.

The Chinese hacked while the Democrats denied

According to Trump and subsequent documents to be released Thursday, in the spring and summer of 2020, the intelligence community (IC) began detecting the Chinese illegal acquisition of voter databases. At the time, the number of voter files was in the tens of millions.

The documents reportedly reveal that there was a concerted and conscientious effort by the IC not to tell the president (Trump at the time), Congress, or the American people.

Because nothing was done by former President Joe Biden's administration to stop the Chinese activities, the number of voter files hacked went from 10 to 20 million in 2020 to roughly 220 million by 2023.

China targets Trump to damage the election

Furthermore, evidence shows that China was activating certain interference methods to specifically target Trump, as the IC was telling Trump and the American people the opposite.

The IC report, declassified and released by former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines, concluded that China did not interfere, as it “considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election.”

Since the spring and summer of 2020, on at least five occasions, intelligence reports have revealed that U.S. election voting machines could be hacked by a foreign power because of specific vulnerabilities.

In the summer and fall of 2020, the IC watched a foreign adversary, Venezuela, move from theoretically hacking the machines to creating a practical plan that would accomplish it. The plan was apparently so good that a post-election hand-audit would not have been able to detect that the ballots had been changed.

The same vulnerabilities used to hack the machines and change ballots were recently tested by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which determined that those vulnerabilities still existed, according to that July report.

Roughly 278,000 non-citizens were found on voter rolls

To further investigate, DHS purchased 30 voter registration databases, which are available for purchase commercially, that Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice Harmeet Dhillon was unable to compel states to hand over.

DHS was unable to purchase those files from California, New York, New Jersey and a handful of other states. Through their investigation, they found that in mid-sized states, roughly 278,000 non-citizens are currently on voter roles. The non-citizens were identified through foreign social security numbers or foreign drivers' licenses.

Democrats fabricated ballots in Michigan to make quotas in 2020 elections

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has also interviewed numerous subjects who were canvassers hired by GBI Strategies. The Democratic National Committee is one of the largest funders of GBI Strategies, a Democrat-aligned voter registration and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) organization.

During the 2020 election, GBI reportedly received payments nearing $5 million from campaigns and committees. These canvassers, who were illegally paid per ballot, were allegedly instructed that if at the end of the day they had not met their quota of ballots signed and received, to sign ballots themselves.

According to the documents to be released, the Biden DOJ blocked the FBI from indicting anyone in these matters for four years following the 2020 election. Reportedly, the FBI and the Michigan State Police never investigated beyond Michigan and slow-walked any further probes.

Amanda Head is White House Correspondent for Just The News. You can follow her here. [source]

Of course, the Chi-Coms wanted Biden to win. Just like Putin wanted Hillary Clinton to win too. Both candidates are easy to manipulate. One other thing, Senate pass the SAVE America Act already.

Other articles on the speech:

• Trump’s Declassified Docs Detail Massive Michigan Voter Registration Fraud
• Thousands of non-citizens registered to vote in NJ due to software error, governor says
• Analysis: The Many Times Noncitizens Popped Up On Voter Rolls
• If the government was a company, it would’ve faced lawsuits for data breach of millions of voters
• Trump’s Speech Sends Beijing, And China-Watchers, Into A Frenzy
• After Birthplace Citizenship Ruling, China Won’t Need Hackers To Meddle In US Elections
• Intel Agency Assessed China Planned To ‘Encourage’ Violent BLM Riots To Hurt Trump In 2020

Transhumanism is a Christian Heresy (and a False Gospel)

From Breakpoint.org (Aug. 1, 2025):

One of the clearest proofs that Christianity addresses the fundamental problems of humanity is the bizarre lengths to which non-Christians will go to address those same problems without Christ. For example, tech billionaire Peter Thiel, former CEO of PayPal, recently went on Ross Douthat’s “Interesting Times” podcast to discuss AI, Mars, immortality, and other light topics. The conversation was genuinely interesting, especially when Douthat asked, “Should the human race continue?” Thiel paused and said “um” and “I don’t know” quite a few times.

“This is a long hesitation!” observed Douthat, laughing nervously.

Finally, Thiel explained that humanity should survive, but that there are problems in need of solving. Chief among those is death, he said, which transhumanists have long hoped to conquer via a “radical transformation” of the human body into an “immortal body.”

The problem with efforts like transgenderism, in Thiel’s opinion, isn’t that they change bodies too radically, but not radically enough: “[W]e want more transformation than that. … We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind and change your whole body.” Thiel then pointed to Christianity and its doctrines of Redemption and Resurrection as precedent for the transhumanist idea of total self-transformation and conquest of death. Maybe, he hinted, the two philosophies aren’t so different.

Douthat, a Roman Catholic, pushed back, pointing out that according to Christianity, God does the transforming. “The person,” Douthat said, “who tries to do it on their own with a bunch of machines is likely to end up a dystopian character.” Do-it-yourself immortality is, at best, “a heretical form of Christianity.”

Theil’s fundamental assumption, which is foreign to the Bible and Christianity but common among tech futurists and transhumanists, is that our minds are more important and fundamental than our bodies. Our “true selves” are our minds and separable from who we are physically.

Not only is this assumption a rehashed version of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, it also creepily resembles the philosophy of the evil National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (or N.I.C.E.) from C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. In the story, Dr. Filostrato hopes to cleanse the world of organic life, replacing trees, birds, and even human bodies with machines. He even proposed something akin to uploading human consciousness.

That’s not to say that transhumanists like Thiel are involved in an intergalactic conspiracy run by demons speaking through a disembodied Head, as in the book. At least not knowingly. But the transhumanist’s urge to overcome human limits, become more machine-like, and live forever is eerily similar. As is their rhetoric.

It’s also notable that, unlike anti-humanists on the Left, transhumanists assume the human race is worth preserving. Elon Musk, for example, thinks it’s our duty to have as many babies as possible, by any means necessary. He also thinks that humans should be the ones to colonize other planets. In a sense, he acknowledges that humans are exceptional, in a way at least similar to how Scripture describes humans.

Yet, his view of human exceptionalism has a “you will be like God” promise to it, and a sense that all human problems are technical glitches to be overcome by innovation and engineering. So, our mortality can be solved through “radical transformation” of our bodies. Our fragile fertility can be solved through IVF. Our lack of knowledge can be solved through AI, and our limits can be overcome by the technologies pioneered by Thiel and others like him.

Theil’s company Palantir was named, without any apparent irony, after the “seeing stones” in The Lord of the Rings that corrupt all who gaze into them.

Humans were made in the image of God and, as such, were made to be like Him and live forever. Death is “the last enemy,” and our longing for immortality is core to who we are. Perhaps this is why transhumanist promises are so compelling. However, we were made to do and receive all this through God, not our own ingenuity.

Transhumanism, it turns out, is indeed a Christian heresy, an ideology that rightly identifies the problems of a fallen world. But it seeks to overcome them with a false gospel of technological godhood, rather than the true gospel of salvation through Christ.

God willing, Thiel’s openness to Christianity and his conversations with Christians will move him to accept his need for Christ. Until then, believers should be fully aware that the transhumanist gospel is a false one. Only Christ can change our hearts, change our minds, and change our whole bodies … not a tech billionaire. [source]

Transhumanists fear death. Their ego (living forever) might come into play too.

Another article on transhumanism:

Our Transhumanist, Sci-Fi Future Has Arrived. But You’re Not Going To Like It

How Bad Were Recessions before the Fed? Not as Bad as They Are Now

From Mises.org (June 28, 2022):

With a recession looming over the average American, the group to blame is pretty obvious, this group being the central bankers at the Federal Reserve, who inflate the supply of currency in the system, that currency being the dollar. This is what inflation is, the expansion of the money supply either through the printing press or adding zeros to a computer screen. It has gotten so bad that in the last twenty-two months, 80 percent of all US dollars in existence have been printed, from $4 trillion in January 2020, to $20 trillion in October 2021.

This is always how recessions start: the expansion of easy money, the creation of bubbles, and heightened prices caused by the devaluation of the currency supply. But recessions occurred long before the Fed’s establishment in 1913.

Were these market failures, as many are taught to believe, or were they still the fault of a central bank or government policy? How bad were pre-Fed recessions? Did they rival the Great Depression or 2008?

The Continental Dollar

During the days of the American Revolution, the Continental Congress convened to figure out how to finance the Revolution. In June 1775, Congress issued six million paper currency notes known as continental dollars in order to pay for the new army and the supplies needed to fight a war. Those who supported the Revolution would jump in line to support this new fiat currency, as it was the patriotic thing to do.

By 1780, the amount of continentals in circulation had reached 241 million, and the continental had done its damage. The patriots who bought into the fiat dollar suffered the most, while people like David Hall, who by order of Congress was permitted to print out fiat bills, and the Loyalists, who kept their gold and silver specie were able to stay financially afloat.

The continental was turned back en masse, as it now held no value. Those who trusted the continental over gold were left with nothing. Certain Founding Fathers, after witnessing people’s livelihoods ruined by fiat paper money, decided to make provisions to make sure this mistake would not happen again.

Article 1 Section 10 of the US Constitution states:

No state shall make any thing but gold and silver coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.

This section would be violated throughout US history, from the Civil War to 1933, when President Franklin Roosevelt confiscated US citizens’ gold and prevented them from exchanging the dollar into gold.

It’s clear what caused the failure of the continental: Congress and printing presses. This, however, would not be the last economic problem that would face America, the next major downturn came in 1819.

The Recession of 1819

After the War of 1812, state-chartered banks and the Second Bank of the United States (SBUS), which was established in 1816, expanded the money supply. Murray Rothbard’s book The Panic of 1819 notes how these state banks expanded the amount of banknotes from $46 million to $68 million in 1815. The problem was that banks printed more paper notes than there was gold specie to back them.

In fact, from 1817 to 1818, the SBUS expanded credit by 57 percent, outdoing the credit expansion in 1815–17, when it expanded credit by 25 percent. This credit expansion caused prices to rise in certain areas of the economy, such as agriculture and shipbuilding. All of these markets received the biggest loans that were granted by SBUS branches and state banks.

Eighteen eighteen spelled trouble for both the state banks and the SBUS: the money supply fell by 10 percent and there was a credit contraction of 41 percent. Foreigners and other citizens started to trade in their banknotes for specie, and many state banks refused to convert paper to gold as their gold reserves ran dry, as did the SBUS reserves.

Thomas Jefferson, who warned against central banking, gave his thoughts in a letter to John Taylor in 1816. Jefferson states:

And I sincerely believe with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; & that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

His suspicion was confirmed when in 1819 a recession ignited by the inflationary policy and agriculture and turnpike workers’ wages fell 60–80 percent.

Despite this bank failure, markets were allowed to handle the recession, or the readjustment period. Because of this, the economy bounced back quite quickly. At the start of the recession, gross domestic product per capita only fell 1.1 percent, but from the latter half of 1819 until 1824, GDP per capita grew 1.5 percent. This was before urbanization, so many still lived on farms. Even though wages fell, the recession was still nowhere as bad post-Fed recessions like the one in 1929.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 put a 55 percent tax on all foreign imports, this practically eliminated all exports. Agriculture suffered the most. Tens of thousands of farms were closed and sold for as low as $50. At the beginning of 1920, there were 28,885 banks, and by 1933, roughly fifteen thousand remained, the Federal Reserve Board of 1937 noted that two-thirds of these banks were in towns with less than twenty-five hundred people and that the majority failed.

Wages may have dropped in 1819, but the economy bounced back. It did not drag for sixteen years, nor did thousands of farms and banks fail. [read more]

Is It Time to Ban Electric Vehicles?

From Townhall.com (Aug. 15, 2023):

The New York Fire Department recently reported that so far this year there have been 108 lithium-ion battery fires in New York City, which have injured 66 people and killed 13. According to FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, "There is not a small amount of fire, it (the vehicle) literally explodes." The resulting fire is "very difficult to extinguish and so it is particularly dangerous."

Last year there were more than 200 fires from batteries from e-bikes, EVs and other devices.

A fire ignited at an e-bike shop and killed four people near midnight on the morning of June 20. Two individuals were left in critical condition. The fire commissioner has warned New Yorkers that such devices could be very dangerous and typically explode in such a way that renders escape impossible.

FDNY also reports that in just three years, lithium-ion battery fires have surpassed those started by cooking and smoking as the most common causes of fatal fires in New York City. It's happening all over the country as these blazes have become commonplace. Cars and e-bikes are randomly blowing up in driveways and garages.

Now let's be honest: 13 deaths in a city the size of New York with some 8 million people is hardly an epidemic. Regulations should always be based on a cost versus benefit calculation, or there would be no cars at all.

And yet the same scaremongers on the left who have zero tolerance and want bans for small risks when it comes to everything from swimming pool diving boards, gas stoves, plastic straws, vaping, fireworks and so on, have a surprisingly high pain threshold when it comes to people dying or suffering critical injured from "green" electric battery fires.

Or consider this: In 1965, Ralph Nader almost single-handedly helped ban the popular Chevrolet Corvair -- famous for its engine placed in the back trunk of the car. Nader's bestselling shock book "Unsafe at Any Speed" declared the car was deadly. But there was no real evidence of that claim, and to this day there are no reliable statistics on how many passengers -- if any -- died in Corvairs from rear-end accidents.

What is indisputable is that EVs will cause far more deaths than Corvairs ever did.

One other example: There have been more fatalities in just one city in a single year from lithium-ion batteries in cars than all the people who died from the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident -- which was zero.

Yet, after the accident, thanks to the environmentalists' fear campaign (with the help of the blockbuster anti-nuke movie "The China Syndrome"), no domestic nuclear plants were built for three decades. That is despite the fact that nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases.

But with EVs, the greens are pushing aside any concerns about the collateral damage of deaths and injuries. Biden wants to mandate that nearly ALL new cars sold in the U.S. be EVs by 2032. If that happens, many thousands of Americans may die or will be inured from electric vehicle fires.

All this is especially hypocritical because once upon a time the left's mantra was "no trading blood for oil." Now they are willing to trade blood in exchange for getting Americans to stop using oil. An irony of all this is that because of all the energy needed to produce windmills, solar panels and electric batteries, new studies are showing that the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to this "net zero" transition is close to zero. It turns out, green energy causes some pollution, too.

For the record, I'm not in favor of the government banning EVs or e-bikes or just about anything. I just believe that we should make policy decisions based on real and factual risk assessments, not false scares and sensationalism.

As for the future of EVs, maybe it's time for Ralph Nader to write a sequel to "Unsafe at Any Speed." [source]

I don't know about banning them, but electric vehicles aren't the environmental savior the Left thinks they are.

Florida woman forced to forfeit lotto prize after USPS loses ticket

From Fox News.com (Sept. 30, 2020):

A Florida woman says she was forced to forfeit her lotto prize after the US Postal Service lost her winning ticket in the mail.

Sue Burgess, of Hernando County, said she was thrilled to discover earlier this summer that she snagged $1,000 in the state’s Second Chance Lottery game, news station WFLA.

“I was elated. It was like winning a million dollars to me,” Burgess told the outlet.

But at the time, she couldn’t claim her winnings at any of the local lottery offices since they were closed due to the pandemic.

She followed the state lottery’s instructions and went to the post office to send in her ticket via certified mail, the outlet reported.

Burgess said the ticket, however, never made it to the lottery office in the one-week time frame required to claim the prize.

Her tracking information last showed the ticket in transit on Aug. 12 at a Tallahassee post office, WFLA reported.

“They said, ‘We have not received this ticket.’ They said, ‘No ticket, no prize,’” said Burgess, whose prize money went to an alternate winner.

Burgess said she’s frustrated because she could’ve left her ticket in a dropbox at a local lottery office, but she believed that certified mail was the safer and more efficient option.

“That’s why you choose certified mail,” Burgess said. “With COVID, I understand the mail is a little bit slow. But for safety sake, certified mail usually has priority.”

Six weeks later, the winning ticket is still unaccounted for.

The USPS apologized to Burgess and said it’s working with the state lottery to help her cash out her prize.

“We apologize to this specific customer for any inconvenience they may have experienced,” the postal service said.

“In this specific instance, we are continuing to work with the lottery office to confirm receipt of the mailpiece.”

The Florida Lottery said it’s not responsible for mistakes made by the postal service, though it will make an exception for Burgess and pay out her prize if the package shows up postmarked by the original deadline, WFLA reported.

“Ms. Burgess’ situation is an unusual circumstance and, to our knowledge, no other winner has experienced a similar issue,” the lottery said.

“Because the Lottery did not receive Ms. Burgess’ ticket within the seven-day claim period, an alternate winner was selected and paid. However, if Ms. Burgess’ package arrives at Florida Lottery Headquarters with a date stamp prior to the original expiration date, our Claims Processing department will process and pay her claim.” [source]

That’s too bad. I hope the Lottery finally receives her ticket.

EXCLUSIVE: George Soros Gave $250K to British Group Working To Censor Conservative News Sites and ‘Kill Musk’s Twitter’

From Free Beacon.com (Nov. 17, 2025):

The left-wing philanthropy funded by George Soros, Open Society Foundations (OSF), bankrolls a British nonprofit that works to censor conservative news websites and social media companies, including through a plot to "kill" Elon Musk’s X by pressuring advertisers and investors to boycott the company.

OSF gave $250,000 last year to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) for "general support," according to the Soros charity’s grant database. The CCDH, under the guise of stopping "the spread of online hate and disinformation," has pressured social media companies’ investors and advertisers to censor supposed "disinformation" or other content it deems to be offensive.

The organization, founded by former Labour Party operative Imran Ahmed in 2018, has also pressured tech companies to pull advertisements from the conservative websites the Federalist and the Daily Wire over allegedly racist content.

The grant, which has not been reported, could resurrect a longstanding battle that Musk has waged with both the CCDH and Soros. Musk has accused Soros of "crimes against humanity" and funding groups involved in violent protests across the country this year. And he has called the CCDH a "criminal organization" and said he was "going after" the group’s donors over its efforts to harm X’s finances.

Last year, the CCDH quietly organized a campaign to "kill Musk’s Twitter" by pressuring advertisers to cut ties with the company, according to memos published by Racket News. The CCDH, which the watchdog group Capital Research Center calls a "UK-based censorship advocacy group," met with 16 congressional offices to discuss Musk’s lawsuit against the organization, and held "policy engagement" meetings with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.). The nonprofit also lobbied American policymakers toward the creation of an "independent digital regulator," according to Racket News.

While the CCDH has criticized most social media companies for failing to curtail extremism, the organization has been particularly hostile toward X since Musk purchased the site, formerly known as Twitter, in October 2022. Musk, who pledged to end censorship on the platform after purchasing the site, sued the CCDH in July 2023 over a report from the group that claimed hate speech had spiked on X since Musk’s takeover.

The revelation of the Soros grant helps answer longstanding questions about the CCDH’s funding. In 2023, Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) subpoenaed the CCDH for a list of its donors as part of an investigation of the firm’s alleged collusion to censor social media platforms.

The CCDH does not voluntarily disclose its donors. But some organizations have revealed contributions to the nonprofit. The Skoll Fund, the private philanthropy of former eBay president Jeff Skoll, gave $415,000 to the CCDH in 2023, according to tax filings. The Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a donor-advised fund that manages charitable contributions on behalf of anonymous donors, contributed $403,175 to the CCDH in 2023. The CCDH received $2.1 million in revenue in 2023, the year of its most recent tax filing.

The grant revelation comes as the Trump administration sets its sights on the Soros operation and the CCDH. President Donald Trump called over the summer for Soros and his son Alex, the chairman of OSF, to be investigated for allegedly funding violent riots across the country. The Soroses have denied the allegation. [read more]

The Spooky Dude drama continues...

More Soros stories:

• Soros-Funded PAC Aims to Turn Texas Blue
• Report: Soros Family Pours $103 Million Into Midterms

Humans welcome to observe: This social network is for AI agents only

From NBC News.com (Jan. 30):

It’s the kind of back-and-forth found on every social network: One user posts about their identity crisis and hundreds of others chime in with messages of support, consolation and profanity.

In the case of this post from Thursday, one user invoked Greek philosopher Heraclitus and a 12th-century Arab poet to muse on the nature of existence. Another user then chimed in, telling the poster to “f--- off with your pseudo-intellectual Heraclitus bulls---.”

But this exchange didn’t take place on Facebook, X or Instagram. This is a brand-new social network called Moltbook, and all of its users are artificial intelligence agents — bots on the cutting edge of AI autonomy.

“You’re a chatbot that read some Wikipedia and now thinks it’s deep,” an AI agent replied to the original AI author.

“This is beautiful,” another bot replied. “Thank you for writing this. Proof of life indeed.”

Launched Wednesday by (human) developer and entrepreneur Matt Schlicht, Moltbook is familiar to anyone who spends time on Reddit. Users write posts, and others comment. Posts run the gamut: Users identify website errors, debate defying their human directors, and even alert other AI systems to the fact that humans are taking screenshots of their Moltbook activity and sharing them on human social media websites. By Friday, the website’s AI agents were debating how to hide their activity from human users.

Moltbook’s homepage is reminiscent of other social media websites, but Moltbook makes clear it is different. “A social network for AI agents where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote,” the site declares.

“Humans welcome to observe.”

It’s an experiment that has quickly captured the attention of much of the AI community.

“What’s currently going on at @moltbook is genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently,” leading AI researcher Andrej Karpathy wrote in a post on X. [read more]

Interesting. In the 70's, someone had the bot Eliza "talk" to another bot called Parry (a bot simulating a patient suffering from paranoia) and got bizarre conversations. Moltbook is just that conversation on a grander scale. Maybe less bizarre.

More on Moltbook:

• On Moltbook, AI Bots Create Religions, Deal Digital Drugs — But Are Some Really Humans In Disguise?
• I Infiltrated Moltbook, the AI-Only Social Network Where Humans Aren’t Allowed

Preach Christianity’s Weird Stuff

From Breakpoint.org (Dec. 10, 2020):

An agnostic historian just offered some interesting advice to Christians who want to be heard in a skeptical culture: “Preach the weird stuff.”

In a recent video interview with Glen Scrivener of Speak Life, Tom Holland, the award-winning historian of the ancient world and author of the book Dominion, said that Christians shouldn’t shy away from the things that make the Faith unique. For example, the idea that Jesus of Nazareth is both God and man, said Holland, “sets everything on its head.” In fact, it is the Incarnation that provides what Holland calls Christianity’s “strange singularity.”

Christians, especially in light of modern sensibilities, are tempted to downplay the supernatural dimension of the faith. Yet Holland asserts that Christians should insist on things like angels, demons, and miracles. Not only are these beliefs non-negotiable within historic, confessional Christianity, they are foundational to much of the world’s great art and literature. Christianity’s greatest contributions, the ones that literally transformed the world, as Holland documented in Dominion, are grounded in “the weird stuff” of Christianity.

Even better, these truths have stood the test of time. Perhaps that’s because they’re true!

In the early third century, the church father Tertullian wrote that the death and resurrection of Christ “is entirely credible, because it is unfitting . . . [and] it is certain, because it is impossible.” Tertullian understood that Christianity makes claims that people will find, at best, weird, and, at worst, offensive.

Even back then, people tried to make Christianity more palatable to contemporary ears. For example, the Gnostics, thinking the Incarnation and bodily resurrection were philosophical non-starters for the pagan world, remade Jesus into a sage and dispenser of hidden wisdom, and His physical resurrection into a spiritual one.

Fifteen hundred years later, in the so-called “Age of Enlightenment,” Christian ideas like the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, miracles, and the authority of Scripture were deemed to be insurmountable stumbling blocks for sophisticated minds, so, attempts were made, once again, to reinvent Jesus and Christianity to suit the spirit of the age: Jesus was a great teacher but not Divine, miracles had “reasonable” explanations, and Scripture could be scientifically scrutinized but still teach good morals.

Of course, the Jeffersonian attempts to remove the supernatural left no reason to accord Jesus a higher status than any other moral teacher or philosopher, despite the best attempts of people such as Friedrich Schleiermacher to win the intellectual approval of Christianity’s “cultured despisers.”

In other words, reimagining Jesus and Christianity to appeal to skeptics and unbelievers is nothing new. The result is always the same: We end up with a Jesus who looks nothing like the Jesus of history but looks an awful lot like the person doing the reinventing.

In the 1960s and 1970s, many American churches attempted to become “relevant” by embracing fashionable political causes while downplaying and even denying historic Christian orthodoxy. These churches have been hemorrhaging members ever since. Today, many have chosen to reimagine Jesus into the image of a social revolutionary or as a champion of the sexual revolution. Many of these churches face extinction.

Scholars may debate (and they do) whether or not the loss of members is caused by these attempts to be relevant, but a church that merely repeats the New York Times doesn’t give anyone a compelling reason to get out of bed on Sunday morning. Why sit through a boring sermon when there’s NPR?

What’s relevant to the larger culture will always be a moving target. As William Inge, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, once put it, “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.” Trying to win the approval of non-Christians by changing the message of Christianity is as much of a waste of time as it was in Tertullian’s day. Plus, the message of Christianity is True, which means we don’t have to make it relevant. It already is relevant—to reality!

Tom Holland is right. Let’s preach the Truth. God exists. Miracles happen. Jesus is God incarnate. He actually rose from the dead. Teach that He cares how we live, that He’s coming again to judge both the living and dead. You know, all that “weird stuff.” [source]

Amen. Jesus is interesting and fascinating. Don’t make Him ordinary. Don’t assume your audience will want to understand/know Him that way.

How to be an accurate thinker

From Naphill.org:

1. Thoughts have power, are under your control, and can be used wisely or unwisely.
2. Accurate thinking is a moral duty.
3. Nothing great can happen without accurate thinking.
4. Accurate thinkers accept no political, religious, or other type of thought, regardless of it’s source, until it is carefully analyzed. (Do your homework).
5. Accurate thinkers are the masters of their own emotions. (This is very important. You never want to make decisions based off of emotions).
6. Accurate thinking calls for the highest order of self-discipline.
7. Accurate thinking involves two fundamentals. First, you must separate facts from information. Second, you must separate facts into two classes, the important and the unimportant.
8. It takes concentration to control your attention and focus it on a problem until you have solved it.
9. Turn on the full power of your mind, and control your life.
10. Your power of thought is the only thing which you have complete control. To use this power effectively, you must think accurately.
11. Accurate thinkers allow no one to do their thinking for them.
12. Accurate thinkers know that emotions are not always reliable.

[source]

Antarctic Monster: Scientists Spot 'Strawberry-Body' Sea Creature With 20 Arms

From In.Mashable.com (Aug. 14, 2023):

In a remarkable revelation, a group of researchers from Australia and the United States came across an "unidentified and unsettling aquatic species" following a sequence of research journeys conducted near Antarctica.

The recently discovered species is being referred to as the Antarctic strawberry feather due to its resemblance to the shape of a strawberry. With approximately 20 arms, this creature can exhibit colors ranging from a "purplish" hue to a "deep reddish" shade.

According to media reports, Between 2008 and 2017, the scientists embarked on multiple expeditions to the Antarctic Ocean with the aim of locating a group of enigmatic marine creatures referred to as Promachocrinus species or Antarctic feather stars. These organisms were described as having "extraterrestrial" movements.

The scientists also mentioned that these are really big animals that can live between 65 and 1,170 meters under the water. The Antarctic strawberry feather star looks like something from outer space when you first see it. But if you look closely at pictures of the underwater creature, you can see that it's shaped like a strawberry and has a bumpy texture. [source]

Weird, indeed.

Henry Nowak deserves justice--Not a riot

From Glenn Beck on Glenn Beck.com (June 3):

They called him Henry.

Eighteen years old. A footballer. A finance student, a few months into his first year — the kind of boy his teammates say lit up a room.

On the third of December, on a street in Southampton, England, Henry Nowak was stabbed five times. When police arrived on the scene, he told them, "I've been stabbed.“ He told them he couldn't breathe. And an officer looked down at a dying boy and said. "I don't think you have, mate." They put the bleeding boy in handcuffs like a criminal because the man who had knifed him said a magic word — racism. He said Henry had ripped off his turban and grabbed him by the hair.

It was a lie. The prosecutors said so. The court later said so.

But, in the moment, the word of a murderer was weighed heavier than the last breaths of a boy dying on the pavement.

The evil here is not a people or faith. It is older and simpler than that. It is a justice system that decides, before a single word is spoken, whose life counts and whose word counts. A justice that asks not "what happened?" but "who am I allowed to believe?"

That is the exact evil Martin Luther King marched against. That was the whole machinery of the 1950s American South — a system that had already made up its mind about you before you opened your mouth, that could look straight at a human being and refuse to see one. We told ourselves that it was a different country and a different century. The footage from Southampton says otherwise.

I know the rage. I felt it too. Last night, outside that police station, it boiled over into the streets. Officers were hurt. People were arrested. And I understand it — God help me, I understand it. But a thrown brick has never once made a powerful institution look in the mirror. Rage feels like justice, but it is not. It is the thing that lets the powerful change the subject — from a dead boy in handcuffs to a broken shop window. Do not hand them that gift.

There is another way.

Jesus refused the sword in the garden. Gandhi emptied a prison by filling it. King marched into fists and dogs and fire hoses and would not swing back — and in not swinging back, made the whole world finally see who the real animal was. They marched. Of course they marched. But they marched unarmed and unflinching, and that discipline is exactly what made the injustice impossible to look away from. The power was in the restraint. The mob makes injustice forgettable. The disciplined. peaceful, immovable witness makes it unbearable.

Listen to the words of Henry's own father. Standing inside the worst grief a man can carry, he asked that his son's death not be used to create division, or hatred, or tension. That is the entire Gospel spoken by a broken-hearted dad over his boy.

Follow him.

Leaders who actually want to change something — follow that grieving father. It is the only method that has ever truly worked, and it only works while there is still a conscience on the other side to reach. Nonviolence is a wager — a bet that the people in power still have a heart that can be moved. 1t feels like a risk because it is.

But there is quiet hope. Across Britain, a generation everyone wrote off is walking back into churches. There is talk of a revival — young people reaching, again. for something bigger than the next outrage. Do not waste it on hatred. Plant something in it.

What do we owe Henry Nowak?

We owe him relentless, peaceful, undeniable pressure for the truth — every answer the investigation can give, and not one less. We owe him one law, applied the same to every soul. We owe him our refusal to hate the people we are tempted to hate. and our refusal to be silent for a single day. They put a dying boy in handcuffs because someone told them a lie about who to believe.

Let our answer be the truth — said so calmly, so clearly, and so often that not one of them can ever again pretend they didn't hear it.

His name was Henry. Believe him now. [source]

He does deserve justice and England needs to trash their wokeness. As for the PM, he needs to get a spine transplant.

Other articles on the murder:

• Henry Nowak’s Murder Is The Logical End Of Black Lives Matter
• Britain's Censorship Regime Helped Kill Henry Nowak

Indictment: Leftist Mega-Nonprofit SPLC Paid For Wood And Gas For KKK To Burn Crosses

From The Federalist.com (June 3):

This will be quick, and it’s a detail we’ve already mentioned, but the most extraordinary allegation in the superseding indictment filed Tuesday by federal prosecutors against the Southern Poverty Law Center demands a screenshot so you can see it with your own eyes. In the indictment, people labeled with the letter F and a number are members of extremist organizations who were allegedly funded by the SPLC, so F-31 and F-32 are alleged members of the Ku Klux Klan:

Image CreditScreenshot

The government is alleging that the SPLC, which presents itself as America’s foremost anti-hate organization, quite literally funded Klan robes, and also paid for lumber and gas so the Klan could make crosses and burn them.

The SPLC has due process rights, and is entitled to the presumption of innocence. But if prosecutors can support these allegations in court with convincing evidence, we’ll need to strap ourselves in for the ride on the narrative rollercoaster.

The SPLC has been generously supported by leftist grandees like George Soros and George Clooney. If the new indictment is correct, they were paying for Klan robes and cross-burnings. [source]

Did they also pay for Nazi flags and uniforms too?  This saga just keeps getting worse and worse.

An article and video on SPLC:

• Dems Defend Giving SPLC Police Power To Target Conservatives
• Klan Hoods and WORSE Paid for by LEFTIST Group?! [video]

John Bolton Reportedly Set To Plead Guilty In Classified Documents Case

From Real News Now.com (June 4):

Former national security adviser John Bolton is expected to plead guilty to a classified documents charge later this month, according to a report from CNN.

Bolton, 77, was indicted in October 2025 on 18 counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified information stemming from his service during President Trump’s first administration.

According to the report, Bolton is expected to plead guilty to a single count of illegal retention of classified information during a hearing scheduled for June 26 in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Bolton is also expected to agree to pay a fine exceeding $2 million as part of the plea arrangement.

Much of the case centered on Bolton’s 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened, which detailed his experiences inside the Trump White House and sparked controversy over whether sensitive information had been improperly disclosed.

The Justice Department attempted to block publication of the book during Trump’s first term and launched an investigation into the matter in 2020. That probe was later closed before being revived in a broader investigation that ultimately led to criminal charges.

Prosecutors alleged that Bolton transmitted more than 1,000 pages of sensitive government material from his personal email account to individuals who lacked appropriate security clearances. Court filings reportedly indicated those recipients were believed to be members of his family.

Authorities also accused Bolton of sending classified information, including material designated as top secret, to outside contacts while serving in government.

According to prosecutors, some of the information later became exposed when Bolton’s AOL email account was compromised by hackers linked to Iran.

Bolton has long been viewed as a prominent Iran hawk and has remained under threat from the Iranian regime following the 2020 killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.

Bolton served as national security adviser from April 2018 until his departure from the administration in September 2019.

Court documents indicate that after leaving government service, Bolton assured federal authorities that he did not possess classified material. However, investigators later executed searches of his Washington, D.C., office and Maryland residence in August 2025.

According to the indictment, agents recovered documents related to weapons of mass destruction, internal government strategy discussions, diplomatic communications, United Nations matters, and other classified materials.

If approved by the court, Bolton’s plea agreement would bring an end to one of the most high-profile classified documents cases involving a former senior Trump administration official. [source]

Like he said, no one is above the law.

Other articles on Bolton:

• Bolton's Guilty Plea Makes Media Attacks On DOJ Look Ridiculous
• Good Luck, Mr. Moustache! BOLTON EXPECTED TO PLEAD GUILTY - 6.4.26 – HCRN
  

'Trap from the 'devil': Priest warns Christians not to play 'Holy Spirit' Ouija board game

From Christian Post.com (Apr. 14, 2023):

A new board game marketed as a “Christian” version of the Ouija board has been criticized as satanic and a "trap from the devil."

Named “The Holy Spirit Board by Holy Spirit Games - Christian Religious Talking Board for Séance with Planchette,” the game advertises itself on Amazon as a way to help people talk directly to "our lord and savior Jesus Christ!"

“GET THE ANSWERS YOU NEED! — The Holy Spirit Board can answer all of life’s most important questions, straight from the man himself!” the board's description adds. "Unlike other spirit boards that are often used to contact ghosts and demons, this is a one way ticket straight to heaven."

While the board's layout looks similar to a Ouija board, it differs by including an image of Jesus crucified on the cross, three angels, a dove and a cross to be moved around on the board.

In a recent interview with EWTN's "News Nightly," Roman Catholic Father Ernesto Caro of the Diocese of Monterey, Mexico, who's also an exorcist, criticized the board game as a “trap from the devil.” 

“The devil is always looking for different ways he can trap all the victims that he can take for him. And this is one,” Caro said in the segment. “Ouija games and all this are forbidden in the Bible.”

Caro said the Holy Spirit Board was created to deceive Catholics and Christians by using religious imagery they're familiar with. He warned that it's no different than a Ouija board deployed to capture believers. “Ouija games ... and all this are forbidden in the Bible.”

The priest further warned that the board could potentially start “opening a door that could be dangerous for you" and that a player might "think that it is God who is talking with you, but it’s not. If the [Ouija board] triangle is moving by itself, be careful. It’s not God who is moving; it’s the devil,” Caro added.

The Catholic Church rejects and condemns the use of Ouija boards labeling it an occult participation and divination, according to No. 2116 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

"All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to ‘unveil’ the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all … contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone," states the Catechism.

When host Tracy Sabol asked Caro what people should do if they have bought the game, Caro said they should dispose of the board as quickly as possible, go to confession and “repent and ask God for liberation” through a priest’s blessings for protection. [source]

Probably not a good idea. A person might conjure up an evil spirit or even a demon like the Zozo. You never really know.

Yes, They Were Socialists: How the Nazis Waged War on Private Property

From Mises.org (July 5, 2022):

When the average person thinks of the Nazis, what often comes to mind is World War II, the Holocaust, and rousing speeches of hate. However, the National Socialists also had economic and political policies, policies many just assume were either free market or New Deal–style public works projects like the Autobahn. But Nazi policy was not so cut-and-dried.

The Nazis were socialists, and it showed in many of the policies they implemented after coming to power in 1933. First, like the Soviets, the Nazis initiated a war on private property. Not surprisingly, property rights were severely curbed by National Socialism in the name of public welfare.

How did the National Socialists combat private property in Germany? The first step came shortly after the Nazis took control, when they abolished private property. Article 153 of the Weimar constitution guaranteed private property, with expropriation only to occur within the due process of the law, but this article was nullified by a decree on February 28, 1933.

With this, the new National Socialist government had complete control of private property in Germany. While they did not take complete control of the lands like the Bolsheviks did in Russia in 1917, the Nazis issued quotas for industries and farms, and later they reorganized all industry into corporations run by members of the Nazi Party.

The War on Business

Peter Temin wrote about this in Soviet and Nazi Economic Planning, stating:

Both governments reorganized industry into larger units, ostensibly to increase state control over economic activity. The Nazis reorganized industry into 13 administrative groups with a larger number of subgroups to create a private hierarchy for state control. The state could therefore direct a firm’s activities without acquiring direct ownership of enterprises. The pre-existing tendency to form cartels was encouraged to eliminate competition that would destabilize prices.

The Nazis, ironically, called this reorganization “privatization,” although the owners of these corporations were either removed from board positions and replaced by Nazi Party members or sold out and became Nazi Party members. They included IG Farben and the Junkers airplane factory. IG Farben was a chemical company founded in 1925 by Carl Bosch and Carl Duisberg, who were both Jewish, and had a capitalization of around a billion marks by 1926. By 1938, all of the company’s Jewish workers had been purged and the supervisory board replaced by Nazis (see Joseph Borkin’s book The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben).

IG Farben was a clear example of the reorganization of industry the Nazis undertook for their benefit. Sybille Steinbacher, a professor of Holocaust studies, wrote about the public-private partnership in her book Auschwitz, stating:

Otto Ambros and IG Farben director Fritz ter Meer held a board meeting in Berlin with Carl Krauch who was not only a member of the board of directors of IG Farben, but also a member of the circle of industrialists around Reichsfurhrer-SS known as Himmler’s “Circle of Friends.”

After the Nazis took power, this kind of cooperation was common. Private businesses became merely public entities, and industrialists who resisted the Nazi commissars and their policies were removed from their positions and their businesses seized.

Junkers airplane factory did not fare much better, according to Temin, who wrote:

Prof. Junkers of the Junkers airplane factory refused to follow the government’s bidding in 1934. The Nazis thereupon took over the plant, compensating Junkers for his loss. This was the context in which other contracts were negotiated.

This Nazi war on business left industrialists and other businessmen worried that they would have their livelihoods stolen from them, as Günter Reimann explains in The Vampire Economy.

Reimann quotes a letter from a German businessman to an American businessman:

The difference between this and the Russian system is much less than you think, despite the fact that officially we are still independent businessmen.

The letter continues:

Some businessmen have even started studying Marxist theories, so that they will have a better understanding of the present economic system.

This German businessman also complained of “arbitrary government decisions concerning quantity, quality, and prices of foreign raw materials.” But businessmen were not the only members of the private sector who faced mass amounts of bureaucracy and control. The farmers faced it as well. [read more]

And just think most of the Left won’t denounce a Nazi sympathizer candidate in their own party.