A cultural divide between the National Football League and heartland America continues to grow, with a new commercial underscoring how far apart the two have drifted.
The commercial, which will play in front of millions of families across the country during the Super Bowl, features two drag queens who were previously on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” a reality show that is centered around drag culture.
Kim Chi and Miz Cracker are the two drag queens who will appear in the commercial, among other personalities.
“Ready, Cracker?” Chi asks, while eating the Sabra brand hummus the entire commercial seems to be intended to sell.
“Chickpeas, I was born ready,” Cracker responds before attempting to put a football helmet on.
While the commercial is likely to catch many unaware families off guard, the LGBT crowd is overjoyed about their lifestyle choices being normalized and broadcast to millions.
LGBTQ Nation celebrated the fact that more than “100 million people will see drag queens on TV – many of them for the first time.”
PinkNews, another LGBT-centric publication, claimed that the cross-dressing duo “will make herstory.”
While the quips between the two may entertain the LGBT crowd, the connection to hummus will be largely lost on many Americans who may struggle to understand why drag queens are needed to sell a snack food.
Will this go over well with the NFL’s audience?
0% (0 Votes)
100% (1 Votes)
Thankfully, there are some answers.
“We’re bringing a diverse group of personalities to the table and demonstrating just how incredibly versatile, relevant and relatable hummus is today,” Jason Levine, chief marketing officer for Sabra, told AdWeek.
“We think we’ve got something for everyone.”
Along with the drag queens, the commercial will feature rapper T-Pain and two women from “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.”
The ad is set to debut during Super Bowl LIV Sunday. Watch a 15-second preview of the full commercial below.
While there have been plenty of controversial Super Bowl commercials before this one, the addition of two drag queens to this major sports event will not go unnoticed.
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
It might just be. Supreme Court Justic Neil Gorsuch, in a ruling about denying green cards to migrants who come here to be “public charges,” something that’s plainly laid out in U.S. law as illegal, threw in a special warning to activist judges, all leftists, who have been beavering away to rule from the bench, warning them that he’s tired of their shenanigans. It’s a specter to behold – a big lion on the Supreme Court who not only cares about rule of law, but is now warning the leftists out there that he’s coming for them.
In addition to the 5-4 decision allowing the rule to go into effect, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a concurring opinion rebuking activist judges and their rush to apply “nationwide injunctions” against Trump administration policies.
“Today the Court (rightly) grants a stay, allowing the government to pursue (for now) its policy everywhere save Illinois. But, in light of all that’s come before, it would be delusional to think that one stay today suffices to remedy the problem. The real problem here is the increasingly common practice of trial courts ordering relief that transcends the cases before them. Whether framed as injunctions of ‘nationwide,’ ‘universal,’ or ‘cosmic’ scope, these orders share the same basic flaw—they direct how the defendant must act toward persons who are not parties to the case,” Gorsuch wrote.
His concurrence, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, is a much-needed rebuke to what he calls “the increasingly common practice of trial courts ordering relief that transcends the cases before them. Whether framed as injunctions of ‘nationwide,’ ‘universal,’ or ‘cosmic’ scope, these orders share the same basic flaw—they direct how the defendant must act toward persons who are not parties to the case.”
Love the use of the word ‘cosmic’ to describe this judicial overreach. Kudos also to Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been laboring on this for decades.
Translation: Back off. You are a problem. You will be overruled.
The story here is that a new big lion has roared and all the little judicial activist rats out there who have been scurrying hard to block President Trump’s bid to do what the voters asked of him, are now being read the Riot Act.
The problem Gorsuch stated is actually a huge issue, cutting to the right of whether the citizens have the right to elect the leaders they want. Seems any judge out in some wasted blue city has appropriated for himself the power to overrule the president on any spurious grounds whatsoever and knows that by the time the appeals get done, the presidency will be over. Time enough to elect a Democrat for that. Some of these creeps even know their spuriously reasoned rulings will be overturned but for them, knowing full well the idea is to
Those who lose out are the voters. And the irony of the whole matter is that they elected President Trump to get rid of insane things like government by executive order, as in the case of DACA and assorted drilling bans. Obama, or any Democrat, is free to issue these essentially sweeping dictatorial edicts, but the judicial rattery says Trump is not free to get rid of them, correcting course on previous presidential overreach.
Here’s are fifteen such judicial activist bids to block Trump and rest assured the list is not comprehensive
San Francisco judge William Orrick in 2017 blocked President Trump’s bid to withhold federal funds from cities that shield illegal aliens through sanctuary city laws.
Hawaii judge Derrick Watson in 2017 blocked President Trump’s temporary travel ban on citizens from terrorist-exporting countries, derived from an Obama administration list, a perfectly reasonable presidential decision based on who was getting in.
Texas border judge Andrew Hanan in 2018 blocked President Trump’s bid to shut down DACA, despite admitting that President Obama had no authority to impose DACA after Congress rejected it, arbitrarily saying Trump waited “too long” to get rid of the Obama executive order. He didn’t notice that Trump spent a lot of time trying in good faith to make a deal with the Democrats, who don’t do deals.
Washington D.C. judge John D. Bates in 2018 blocked Trump from shutting DACA down, too, ruling that not only were the Dreamers free of any deportation concerns, the Trump administration would be forced to continue to take applications from the lawbreakers, keeping the incentive to immigrate illegally with small children going.
San Francisco judge William Allsup in 2018 blocked Trump from shutting DACA down so that all the little lawsuits from illegals and their advocates could go through first, a great plan for driving a decision on the issue well past the Trump administration for disposition.
San Francisco judge Kim Wardlaw in 2018 continued to block the Trump administration from shutting down DACA on the logic that the illegals in question were “likely to succeed” in whatever new lawsuits they could cook up to stop Trump. Nothing like a convenient forecast.
El Paso judge David Brione in 2019 blocked President Trump’s diversion of $3.6 billion in defense funding for a border wall, effectively saying that guarding the border from bona fide invaders was not a defense purposa, apparently thinking the Department of Defense is solely there for Iraq wars instead.
Oakland judge Haywood Gilliam in 2019 blockedPresident Trump’s diversion of $3.6 billion in border wall funding to protect the border on the get-a-load “logic” that it might interfere with the Sierra Club’s enjoyment of all the border scenery. Kid you not. When you see how much the other judges are getting away with in Gettin Trump, any old logic will do.
San Francisco Judge Jon Tigar in 2019 blocked President Trump’s bid to enforce international asylum law requiring would-be asylees to take the first country of refuge, meaning, would-be asylum seekers would have to show their seriousness by taking any place they can get instead of country-shopping across multiple borders for the best package deal. His ruling pretty well rang the dinner triangle for the increasingly sophisticated and lucrative people smuggling networks from India, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Central America to come on in, passing through as many countries as they needed to. He actually did it two other times, too, creating a “gift to human smugglers and traffickers,” as White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said.
Alaska judge Sharon Gleason in 2019 blocked President Trump’s 2017 lifting of Obama-era restrictions on drilling, saying he hadn’t done enough environmental assessmenting.
New York judge George Daniels in 2019 blocked President Trump’s bid to enforce existing federal law about denying green cards to migrants who have come her to use pricey welfare services such as Medicaid, free housing cash, and food stamps, and he wasn’t the first – three other judges in California, New York and Washington state were there first.
Washington, D.C. judge John Bates (him again) in 2019 blocked President Trump’s bid to enable small businesses to band together with other small businesses to buy health care at the same cheap rates corporates get for their employees, saying it was “an end-run” around the punitive Obamacare. That’s some logic he’s got there: Pay higher rates or else. Stay punished, my friends.
Maryland judge Peter Messitte in 2020 blocked President Trump’s decision to allow local officials to decide whether they wanted to accept “refugees,” many of whom have created problems, with the vague flip of the hand that it was “not in the public interest.” Apparently the members of the public who live in such places don’t have interests.
That’s just fifteen such activist jackasses and rest assured there are more.
Gorsuch’s move was sorely needed if the voters are ever going to be able to make choices based on democratic representation. It’s a good thing for democracy, it restores the link between voter choices and voter results, allowing voters to be right and wrong, and ending a petty satrapy of petty leftwing judges who follow solely the activist agenda, allowing themselves to be the handmaidens of creatures such as George Soros and his vast NGO activist networks. It forces judges to rule by what the law says, not what they want and can’t persuade votes to get at the ballot box. It forces them to stay in their lane or else endure the disgrace of seeing their stupid rulings overruled. It snaps the judges back to their role and curbs the vast unelected administrative state that Brought Trump.
Gorsuch’s stellar move is in the same constellation as the great legal mind of Antonin Scalia. It’s fealty to the Constitution. It’s fealty to democratic rule. And it’s a torch that has long been lying there, critical for someone to pick up. Gorsuch did it. This Justice rocks.
Is the era of Big Judicial Activism over?
It might just be. Supreme Court Justic Neil Gorsuch, in a ruling about denying green cards to migrants who come here to be “public charges,” something that’s plainly laid out in U.S. law as illegal, threw in a special warning to activist judges, all leftists, who have been beavering away to rule from the bench, warning them that he’s tired of their shenanigans. It’s a specter to behold – a big lion on the Supreme Court who not only cares about rule of law, but is now warning the leftists out there that he’s coming for them.
In addition to the 5-4 decision allowing the rule to go into effect, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a concurring opinion rebuking activist judges and their rush to apply “nationwide injunctions” against Trump administration policies.
“Today the Court (rightly) grants a stay, allowing the government to pursue (for now) its policy everywhere save Illinois. But, in light of all that’s come before, it would be delusional to think that one stay today suffices to remedy the problem. The real problem here is the increasingly common practice of trial courts ordering relief that transcends the cases before them. Whether framed as injunctions of ‘nationwide,’ ‘universal,’ or ‘cosmic’ scope, these orders share the same basic flaw—they direct how the defendant must act toward persons who are not parties to the case,” Gorsuch wrote.
His concurrence, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, is a much-needed rebuke to what he calls “the increasingly common practice of trial courts ordering relief that transcends the cases before them. Whether framed as injunctions of ‘nationwide,’ ‘universal,’ or ‘cosmic’ scope, these orders share the same basic flaw—they direct how the defendant must act toward persons who are not parties to the case.”
Love the use of the word ‘cosmic’ to describe this judicial overreach. Kudos also to Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been laboring on this for decades.
Translation: Back off. You are a problem. You will be overruled.
The story here is that a new big lion has roared and all the little judicial activist rats out there who have been scurrying hard to block President Trump’s bid to do what the voters asked of him, are now being read the Riot Act.
The problem Gorsuch stated is actually a huge issue, cutting to the right of whether the citizens have the right to elect the leaders they want. Seems any judge out in some wasted blue city has appropriated for himself the power to overrule the president on any spurious grounds whatsoever and knows that by the time the appeals get done, the presidency will be over. Time enough to elect a Democrat for that. Some of these creeps even know their spuriously reasoned rulings will be overturned but for them, knowing full well the idea is to game the system.
Those who lose out are the voters. And the irony of the whole matter is that they elected President Trump to get rid of insane things like government by executive order, as in the case of DACA and assorted drilling bans. Obama, or any Democrat, is free to issue these essentially sweeping dictatorial edicts, but the judicial rattery says Trump is not free to get rid of them, correcting course on previous presidential overreach.
Here’s are fifteen such judicial activist bids to block Trump and rest assured the list is not comprehensive
San Francisco judge William Orrick in 2017 blocked President Trump’s bid to withhold federal funds from cities that shield illegal aliens through sanctuary city laws.
Hawaii judge Derrick Watson in 2017 blocked President Trump’s temporary travel ban on citizens from terrorist-exporting countries, derived from an Obama administration list, a perfectly reasonable presidential decision based on who was getting in.
Texas border judge Andrew Hanan in 2018 blocked President Trump’s bid to shut down DACA, despite admitting that President Obama had no authority to impose DACA after Congress rejected it, arbitrarily saying Trump waited “too long” to get rid of the Obama executive order. He didn’t notice that Trump spent a lot of time trying in good faith to make a deal with the Democrats, who don’t do deals.
Washington D.C. judge John D. Bates in 2018 blocked Trump from shutting DACA down, too, ruling that not only were the Dreamers free of any deportation concerns, the Trump administration would be forced to continue to take applications from the lawbreakers, keeping the incentive to immigrate illegally with small children going.
San Francisco judge William Allsup in 2018 blocked Trump from shutting DACA down so that all the little lawsuits from illegals and their advocates could go through first, a great plan for driving a decision on the issue well past the Trump administration for disposition.
San Francisco judge Kim Wardlaw in 2018 continued to block the Trump administration from shutting down DACA on the logic that the illegals in question were “likely to succeed” in whatever new lawsuits they could cook up to stop Trump. Nothing like a convenient forecast.
El Paso judge David Brione in 2019 blocked President Trump’s diversion of $3.6 billion in defense funding for a border wall, effectively saying that guarding the border from bona fide invaders was not a defense purposa, apparently thinking the Department of Defense is solely there for Iraq wars instead.
Oakland judge Haywood Gilliam in 2019 blockedPresident Trump’s diversion of $3.6 billion in border wall funding to protect the border on the get-a-load “logic” that it might interfere with the Sierra Club’s enjoyment of all the border scenery. Kid you not. When you see how much the other judges are getting away with in Gettin Trump, any old logic will do.
San Francisco Judge Jon Tigar in 2019 blocked President Trump’s bid to enforce international asylum law requiring would-be asylees to take the first country of refuge, meaning, would-be asylum seekers would have to show their seriousness by taking any place they can get instead of country-shopping across multiple borders for the best package deal. His ruling pretty well rang the dinner triangle for the increasingly sophisticated and lucrative people smuggling networks from India, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Central America to come on in, passing through as many countries as they needed to. He actually did it two other times, too, creating a “gift to human smugglers and traffickers,” as White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said.
Alaska judge Sharon Gleason in 2019 blocked President Trump’s 2017 lifting of Obama-era restrictions on drilling, saying he hadn’t done enough environmental assessmenting.
New York judge George Daniels in 2019 blocked President Trump’s bid to enforce existing federal law about denying green cards to migrants who have come her to use pricey welfare services such as Medicaid, free housing cash, and food stamps, and he wasn’t the first – three other judges in California, New York and Washington state were there first.
Washington, D.C. judge John Bates (him again) in 2019 blocked President Trump’s bid to enable small businesses to band together with other small businesses to buy health care at the same cheap rates corporates get for their employees, saying it was “an end-run” around the punitive Obamacare. That’s some logic he’s got there: Pay higher rates or else. Stay punished, my friends.
Maryland judge Peter Messitte in 2020 blocked President Trump’s decision to allow local officials to decide whether they wanted to accept “refugees,” many of whom have created problems, with the vague flip of the hand that it was “not in the public interest.” Apparently the members of the public who live in such places don’t have interests.
That’s just fifteen such activist jackasses and rest assured there are more.
Gorsuch’s move was sorely needed if the voters are ever going to be able to make choices based on democratic representation. It’s a good thing for democracy, it restores the link between voter choices and voter results, allowing voters to be right and wrong, and ending a petty satrapy of petty leftwing judges who follow solely the activist agenda, allowing themselves to be the handmaidens of creatures such as George Soros and his vast NGO activist networks. It forces judges to rule by what the law says, not what they want and can’t persuade votes to get at the ballot box. It forces them to stay in their lane or else endure the disgrace of seeing their stupid rulings overruled. It snaps the judges back to their role and curbs the vast unelected administrative state that Brought Trump.
Gorsuch’s stellar move is in the same constellation as the great legal mind of Antonin Scalia. It’s fealty to the Constitution. It’s fealty to democratic rule. And it’s a torch that has long been lying there, critical for someone to pick up. Gorsuch did it. This Justice rocks.
KYIV, Ukraine—Monday marks
the 75th anniversary of the day Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz, Nazi
Germany’s largest concentration and extermination camp. At Auschwitz, the Nazis
murdered more than 1 million men, women, and children, mostly Jews, during the
Holocaust.
I have been to Auschwitz
only once. It was a long time ago, in February of 2006.
I lived in Paris at the
time, attending graduate school at the Sorbonne as part of a military
fellowship before Air Force pilot training.
We had a few weeks off in February, so a friend and I embarked on a road trip across Eastern Europe. In Prague, we split up for a few days. I’d wanted to visit Krakow, Poland, and Auschwitz. My friend didn’t. So, I hopped on a train and we agreed to reconvene in Vienna a few days later.
The Auschwitz I camp. (Photos: Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal)
The thing is, I was drawn
to Auschwitz. For me it was a monument, symbolizing that wars are sometimes
necessary. And at that time, war cast a long shadow over my life, even while I
was having the time of it while living in Paris as a young man.
The wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan were then in full swing, and I was a newly-minted Air Force second
lieutenant, having graduated from the Air Force Academy in June of 2004.
And so, while most of my friends had gone straight off to training programs for their future career fields, getting ready for war, my superfluous days were spent reading and writing in Parisian cafes, enjoying the famous French wine and food—with the odd university class thrown in the mix, from time to time.
A memorial to the dead near the ruins of the gas chambers at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
By February of 2006, some
of my friends were flying fighter jets. Others had already experienced combat.
And yet, there I was, nearly two years on active duty, about to automatically
make rank as a first lieutenant. And I’d done nothing more than easy living in
Paris.
I got a hard dose of
reality one weekend night in Paris.
I was in line for a
nightclub, and the two men in front of me were speaking in English, using
acronyms and lingo that quickly gave them away as U.S. military members. We got
to talking, and I let them know I was an Air Force lieutenant slated to begin
pilot training in the fall of 2006. I thought they’d be impressed. They
weren’t.
They said they were
enlisted U.S. Army soldiers on leave after a tour in Iraq. Then they asked if
I’d ever deployed. I said no and felt smaller than I ever had before.
Yes, living in Paris was a gift, and I was grateful for the experience. But I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I should be out there fighting in my country’s wars.
On a cold February day in 2006, the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp seemed deserted.
Thus, it was in this frame
of mind that I decided to part ways with my friend in Prague and take a night
train to Poland. I’d also just recently watched the movie “Schindler’s List”
for the first time. Fresh, haunting images from that film were forefront in my
mind when I stepped off the train in Krakow.
It was night, and I walked
the streets alone and in the dark. A thick layer of snow covered the ground.
The air was painfully cold.
I went first to Oskar
Schindler’s Enamel Factory, where the legendary German industrialist had
sheltered Jews during the Holocaust. From there, I strolled Krakow’s streets
late into the night, trying to imagine what had happened there during the war.
The city was quiet and still as most cities are at night, and I felt like I had
the place to myself.
And yet, that nagging sense
of guilt was always there, chasing me like Pigpen’s dust cloud. The
unforgettable truth that at that moment my friends were at war, and I wasn’t.
The next day I took a train from Krakow to Auschwitz. It wasn’t a long ride, and I arrived early in the morning and took a taxi from the station to the Auschwitz I camp.
It was cold inside the prisoner barracks at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp.
Like a scene from Dante, I
walked into the camp through the metal gate infamously crested by the German
words: “Arbeit macht frei.”
Work sets
you free.
Originally Polish army
barracks, the Nazi SS had used Auschwitz I at first to house Polish political
prisoners. At the site, the Nazis later built gas chambers and a crematorium
for the mass murder of Jews and other minorities.
The day was clear without a
cloud in the sky. But it was cold. A kind of unforgiving cold that cuts easily
through piled-on layers of down and fleece. My fingers moved in slow motion as
I tried to work my camera.
My thoughts, too, seemed to be stuck at some slower pace. But that lethargy had nothing to do with the cold. Rather, as I went deeper into the camp, and as I encountered mounting evidence of what had happened there during the Holocaust, my mind simply could not keep up with the horror of it all. The real-world implications of what I was seeing were beyond the limits of my 23-year-old imagination, which had not yet been shaped by war, to appreciate.
A memorial to the dead at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
Yes, I’d seen movies and
read books about the Holocaust. But at that moment I was walking through the
place where it had all actually happened. The epicenter of humanity’s
greatest crime.
I went into the old brick
buildings and saw rooms filled with eyeglasses, shoes, clothes, random
knick-knacks. All stolen from prisoners before their executions in the gas
chambers. The piles of these things were depressingly huge.
There was a gas chamber and crematorium left standing at the Auschwitz I complex. When I went inside my eyes gravitated toward the walls and the ceiling—the edges of that horrible space. Subconsciously, my mind wanted out.
The crematorium at Auschwitz I.
I caught another taxi for
the two-mile trip to the larger, Auschwitz II-Birkenau compound.
From pictures, I instantly recognized the front tower at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and how the narrow-gauge railway line ran underneath the tower into the center of the camp where prisoners were unloaded from cattle cars and the Nazi SS guards decided who lived and who died.
The end of the railway into Auschwitz II-Birkenau, where prisoners were unloaded from cattle cars and the Nazi SS guards decided who lived and who died.
I walked alone through the
ruined camp. I’m sure other people were around, but I saw no one.
The day, as I’ve said, was cold beyond cold. My feet crunched in the snow. My fingers burned and then went numb. I felt guilty, though, when I considered cutting my visit short to seek warm shelter. The prisoners had once endured equally cold conditions, and under infinitely more trying circumstances.
I walked to the rear of the
camp and stood at the edge of a ramp that led down to what had once been a
building housing gas chambers. In an attempt to hide their crimes, the Nazis
had demolished the gas chambers before the Soviets arrived. On that day in
2006, the structures were nothing more than piles of rubble covered in
snow.
Nearby where I stood, a
black stone monument stood amid an unblemished blanket of snow. The stone was
engraved with the words:
To the memory of the men, women, and children who fell victim to the Nazi genocide. Here lie their ashes. May their souls rest in peace.
Gravity seemed heavier on this spot. The weight of the knowledge of the tragedy that had happened here added mass to the earth and air.
A gas chamber at Auschwitz I.
It wasn’t an exceptional
place. Just a heap of bricks under the snow. But the suffering that the ground concealed
was radioactive. It hummed and crackled, passing invisibly through the air,
then right through me, turning me inside out, damaging me from within.
You can’t see it, touch
it, or smell it. But you feel it. And there’s a particular way the hushed
voices of the dead echo to the living in a place like Auschwitz.
Later, I moved on and looked into the prisoners’ barracks. It was unimaginably cold inside where the prisoners had once slept—where at night they’d clung to their slim hopes for survival. I ran my hand over a graffiti mural a prisoner had drawn on a wall. I tried to imagine life as a prisoner at Auschwitz. I couldn’t.
Piles of eyeglasses stolen from prisoners on display at the Auschwitz I camp.
Before I left Auschwitz
II-Birkenau, I came upon two roses tied to a barbed-wire fence. The red petals
stood out sharply against the snow. The flowers had not wilted; someone had
left them there recently. I looked around but saw no one.
Standing before the roses, I thought, “Thank God there are good people, too.”
Then I proudly remembered my friends who were at war. And more than ever I wanted to join them in the noble effort of preventing something like Auschwitz from ever happening again.
Two roses tied to a barbed-wire fence at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
More than 10 years later, I
stood at the edge of a field in Sinjar, Iraq. A pile of human bones was in the
field. Evidence of another genocide—the Islamic State’s mass murder of Yazidis, Christians, and
Shiite Muslims.
By then, in June
of 2016, I’d
already served in both Iraq and Afghanistan as an Air Force special operations
pilot. And I’d been back to both those wars as a civilian war correspondent.
I’d spent a lot of time on the front lines in Ukraine, too.
Now I knew what war looked like from both the ground and from the air. I knew a lot more about war than I’d ever thought I’d know. And yet, despite my education in the horrors of war, there I was once again, totally incapable of understanding what quantity of evil could ever permit a human being to prosecute the mass murder of innocents.
An image drawn by a prisoner in the barracks at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
I stood
there in silence alongside dozens of Kurdish peshmerga soldiers. Those brave
warriors were, at that time, engaged in ongoing combat against the Islamic
State’s terrorist army. In fact, the Islamist militants were entrenched only a
couple miles from where we then stood.
The
fighting was close enough to hear. And in the sky, U.S. warplanes—piloted by
men and women of my generation, some of whom I knew—were also killing our
mutual enemies. Amid the background din of distant gunfire and American jet
noise, I thought back to that cold day at Auschwitz a decade earlier.
I remembered that the ruins of Auschwitz’s gas chambers are not, after all, evidence of evil’s defeat. Rather, those ruins remind us that the fight is never over. Every generation has its own responsibility to keep evil at bay. And mine is no exception.
Originally Polish army barracks, the Nazi SS had used Auschwitz I at first to house Polish political prisoners.
As we reflect on the 75th
anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, it’s easy to be lulled into the mistaken belief
that history automatically arcs in the right direction. That the era of world
wars and genocides is over. That it could never happen again.
But the truth is we are just
treading water, fighting against the gravitational tug of history. The minute
we stop kicking, we descend, quickly and easily, into those dark depths from
which we thought we had escaped.
To defeat evil, we must
remember that it exists. And to prevent another Auschwitz from ever happening
again, we must believe that it could.
The last time Republicans held a majority on this state’s Supreme Court was in the 1920s. Its Court of Appeals has never had a Republican majority.
The last time Republicans held a majority in both houses of the state Legislature at the same time was 1930. In the 89 years from 1931 to the present, Democrats have held a majority of both houses of the state Legislature for 79 of the 89 years.
Since 1931, Democrats have held the governor’s office for 69 of the 89 years. Even when a Republican has been governor, his powers have been greatly limited because he has never held a majority in both houses of the state legislature while in office.
What state am I?
If you guessed CA, IL, NY, NJ, or MA, you’re wrong. If you guessed NM, go to the head of the class (here) (here). Since 1931, no other state has had single-party Dem rule at the state level as long as New Mexico. And how has New Mexico fared under the stewardship of single party Democrat rule? As we shall see, not so well.
EDUCATION: By all accounts, New Mexico has one of the worst, if not the worst, K–12 public education system in the country. It is a system that spends vast sums of money but has little or no accountability for the students, teachers, administrators, parents, or elected officials. Here are the sobering stats. It has recently been rated as the worst state public school system in the country. Among the country’s 11,850 school districts, only one from New Mexico, Los Alamos, is rated in the top 1,000. A charity named the New Mexico Coalition for Literacy estimates that an astonishing 46% of the adults in the state are functional illiterates.
Sadly, the state university system is little better. It is an example of quantity over quality. Despite its small population of 2.1 million, New Mexico has a staggering seven state-funded colleges and universities that grant four-year degrees. In contrast, neighboring Arizona with a population of 7.3 million has three. Not a single college or university in New Mexico is ranked in the nation’s top 500.
CRIME: New Mexico is a dangerous place to live, and a lot of judges are reluctant to lock up criminals. It is #1 in the country for per capita property crime and #2 for violent crime. Albuquerque, by far the state’s largest city, has the dubious distinction of a #1 ranking for auto thefts in the entire nation. Don’t expect the Chamber of Commerce or the Department of Tourism to brag about the fact that Albuquerque is ranked as the 12th most dangerous city in the U.S. Expect Albuquerque to move up on the list, as it just had a record number of homicides in 2019.
JOBS/ECONOMY: New Mexico survives financially because it receives enormous sums of money from two sources: the federal government and the oil and natural gas industry. The federal government has spent a gigantic amount of money in the state since the 1940s, with the development of the bomb and all the defense spending that came afterwards. The state also receives millions of dollars each year from oil and gas revenues, especially from leases of state land. With the fracking revolution going on in the Permian Basin in southeast New Mexico, the state is swimming in tax revenues and has a large budget surplus.
Despite all the mentioned revenue and the production bonanza in the Permian Basin, New Mexico has one of the worst job markets in the country. It has the fourth highest unemployment rate of any state. It’s the second hardest state in the country in which to find full-time employment. As one would expect of a state that has had single-party Dem rule for nearly 90 years, the state is teeming with public-sector employees and has the third highest percentage of public-sector workers in the country. The national average for public sector workers is 15.1%, while New Mexico has 22.2%. In other words, New Mexico has 47% more public sector workers than the national average. Not surprisingly, New Mexico is more dependent on federal spending than any other state and receives more in per capita federal spending than all but two states.
POVERTY: Poverty among adults is usually associated with low education levels, and poverty among children is usually associated with being raised in a single-parent home. New Mexico has lots of both. As of November 2019, New Mexico had 827,269 persons receiving Medicaid, or 39% of the population and 223,116 persons receiving SNAP benefits, or 11% of the state’s population. Despite the enormous amount of federal spending, oil and natural gas riches, and some of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, New Mexico is considered to be the third poorest state in the nation.
DEATH SPIRAL: Several years ago, Forbes Magazine identified New Mexico as the #1 death spiral state in the country. New Mexico, with its vast public-sector work force, is on the hook for billions of dollars in defined benefit pension plan payments to retiring public employees. These defined benefit plans are so generous that private-sector businesses can no longer afford them and now offer 401(k) (defined contribution) plans instead. The public plans are woefully underfunded primarily because they assumed an unreasonably high expected annual rate of return of 7% to 8%. Assuming such high expected rates of return permitted pols to reduce annual contributions to the plans. Now, in addition to insufficient past contributions, there are not enough taxpayers to make up the funding shortfalls. New Mexico has a whopping 148 public-sector pension-takers for every 100 private-sector job-holders in the state. This is the largest imbalance of any state in the country and clearly unsustainable for the taxpayer.
STAGNATION: New Mexico and Arizona share much history. The New Mexico Territory became part of the United States after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. During the Civil War, the territory was divided into the New Mexico and Arizona Territories. As recently as 1930, Arizona’s population was just 12,000 larger than New Mexico’s (435,000 vs 423,000). But today, Arizona’s population is more than five million larger than New Mexico (7.3 million vs 2.1 million). Why did New Mexico, with its vast oil and natural gas wealth, experience such anemic population growth compared to Arizona?
In most parts of the country, population growth follows job growth. The most plausible explanation of what has happened is that 90 years of single-party Dem rule in New Mexico has created a state that is deemed business-unfriendly. When the private businesses did not come, neither did the people.
The state nickname for New Mexico is the Land of Enchantment. Sadly, after 90 years of single-party Democrat rule, it should probably be changed to the Land of Disenchantment.
The last time Republicans held a majority on this state’s Supreme Court was in the 1920s. Its Court of Appeals has never had a Republican majority.
The last time Republicans held a majority in both houses of the state Legislature at the same time was 1930. In the 89 years from 1931 to the present, Democrats have held a majority of both houses of the state Legislature for 79 of the 89 years.
Since 1931, Democrats have held the governor’s office for 69 of the 89 years. Even when a Republican has been governor, his powers have been greatly limited because he has never held a majority in both houses of the state legislature while in office.
What state am I?
If you guessed CA, IL, NY, NJ, or MA, you’re wrong. If you guessed NM, go to the head of the class (here) (here). Since 1931, no other state has had single-party Dem rule at the state level as long as New Mexico. And how has New Mexico fared under the stewardship of single party Democrat rule? As we shall see, not so well.
EDUCATION: By all accounts, New Mexico has one of the worst, if not the worst, K–12 public education system in the country. It is a system that spends vast sums of money but has little or no accountability for the students, teachers, administrators, parents, or elected officials. Here are the sobering stats. It has recently been rated as the worst state public school system in the country. Among the country’s 11,850 school districts, only one from New Mexico, Los Alamos, is rated in the top 1,000. A charity named the New Mexico Coalition for Literacy estimates that an astonishing 46% of the adults in the state are functional illiterates.
Sadly, the state university system is little better. It is an example of quantity over quality. Despite its small population of 2.1 million, New Mexico has a staggering seven state-funded colleges and universities that grant four-year degrees. In contrast, neighboring Arizona with a population of 7.3 million has three. Not a single college or university in New Mexico is ranked in the nation’s top 500.
CRIME: New Mexico is a dangerous place to live, and a lot of judges are reluctant to lock up criminals. It is #1 in the country for per capita property crime and #2 for violent crime. Albuquerque, by far the state’s largest city, has the dubious distinction of a #1 ranking for auto thefts in the entire nation. Don’t expect the Chamber of Commerce or the Department of Tourism to brag about the fact that Albuquerque is ranked as the 12th most dangerous city in the U.S. Expect Albuquerque to move up on the list, as it just had a record number of homicides in 2019.
JOBS/ECONOMY: New Mexico survives financially because it receives enormous sums of money from two sources: the federal government and the oil and natural gas industry. The federal government has spent a gigantic amount of money in the state since the 1940s, with the development of the bomb and all the defense spending that came afterwards. The state also receives millions of dollars each year from oil and gas revenues, especially from leases of state land. With the fracking revolution going on in the Permian Basin in southeast New Mexico, the state is swimming in tax revenues and has a large budget surplus.
Despite all the mentioned revenue and the production bonanza in the Permian Basin, New Mexico has one of the worst job markets in the country. It has the fourth highest unemployment rate of any state. It’s the second hardest state in the country in which to find full-time employment. As one would expect of a state that has had single-party Dem rule for nearly 90 years, the state is teeming with public-sector employees and has the third highest percentage of public-sector workers in the country. The national average for public sector workers is 15.1%, while New Mexico has 22.2%. In other words, New Mexico has 47% more public sector workers than the national average. Not surprisingly, New Mexico is more dependent on federal spending than any other state and receives more in per capita federal spending than all but two states.
POVERTY: Poverty among adults is usually associated with low education levels, and poverty among children is usually associated with being raised in a single-parent home. New Mexico has lots of both. As of November 2019, New Mexico had 827,269 persons receiving Medicaid, or 39% of the population and 223,116 persons receiving SNAP benefits, or 11% of the state’s population. Despite the enormous amount of federal spending, oil and natural gas riches, and some of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, New Mexico is considered to be the third poorest state in the nation.
DEATH SPIRAL: Several years ago, Forbes Magazine identified New Mexico as the #1 death spiral state in the country. New Mexico, with its vast public-sector work force, is on the hook for billions of dollars in defined benefit pension plan payments to retiring public employees. These defined benefit plans are so generous that private-sector businesses can no longer afford them and now offer 401(k) (defined contribution) plans instead. The public plans are woefully underfunded primarily because they assumed an unreasonably high expected annual rate of return of 7% to 8%. Assuming such high expected rates of return permitted pols to reduce annual contributions to the plans. Now, in addition to insufficient past contributions, there are not enough taxpayers to make up the funding shortfalls. New Mexico has a whopping 148 public-sector pension-takers for every 100 private-sector job-holders in the state. This is the largest imbalance of any state in the country and clearly unsustainable for the taxpayer.
STAGNATION: New Mexico and Arizona share much history. The New Mexico Territory became part of the United States after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. During the Civil War, the territory was divided into the New Mexico and Arizona Territories. As recently as 1930, Arizona’s population was just 12,000 larger than New Mexico’s (435,000 vs 423,000). But today, Arizona’s population is more than five million larger than New Mexico (7.3 million vs 2.1 million). Why did New Mexico, with its vast oil and natural gas wealth, experience such anemic population growth compared to Arizona?
In most parts of the country, population growth follows job growth. The most plausible explanation of what has happened is that 90 years of single-party Dem rule in New Mexico has created a state that is deemed business-unfriendly. When the private businesses did not come, neither did the people.
The state nickname for New Mexico is the Land of Enchantment. Sadly, after 90 years of single-party Democrat rule, it should probably be changed to the Land of Disenchantment.
Based on its own ideology, the American Left must now conclude that their own educational policies are racist. A groundbreaking study by a group called Brightbeam (“a network of education activists demanding better education and a brighter future for every child”) has discovered that cities politically dominated by progressives have far greater gaps between the average educational achievement levels of whites and minorities of blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans than cities politically dominated by conservatives.
John Hinderaker of Powerline introduced me to the findings:
This report by Chris Stewart of Brightbeam is a blockbuster. It is titled: “The Secret Shame: How America’s Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity For All.” Stewart is a liberal activist from Minnesota who undertook to find out why the Twin Cities’ left-wing public schools have some of the country’s worst achievement gaps between white and minority (black and Indian) students.
Stewart compared achievement by race in a number of cities that he classified as progressive or conservative. The results didn’t surprise me, but they shocked Stewart. Conservative cities (as ranked by political scientists used as a reference for the study) consistently did a better job of closing student achievement gaps–sometimes, to zero–than progressive cities. This chart sums up the findings:
No topic is dearer to the hearts of America-hating leftists than the “achievement gap” in education. The statistical tendency of minorities deemed racially oppressed by the Left to on average score lower on academic tests and other measures of learning than whites and those minorities that out-perform the white average, in particular East Asians and Jews always is blamed on “racism!” And the cure for racism! Is supposed to be spending more, sensitivity training, and other factors extrinsic to the underperformers. The history of discrimination against over-performing minorities like East Asians and Jews is relegated to taboo status, as is any examination of parental and cultural values as well as individual behavior of the children.
John Hinderaker links to an essay by James Bacon in Bacon’s Rebellion that sums up the data and probable causal factors:
At one extreme is San Francisco, where Democrats and progressives have long prided themselves on efforts to uplift the underprivileged. Educators are dedicated to openness, tolerance, diversity and equal opportunity. Yet the black-white cap is horrifying. Seventy percent of white students score proficient in math compared to only 12% of blacks — a chasm of 58%. For math, the gap in Washington, D.C., is even worse — 62 percentage points.
By contrast, the conservative cities of Virginia Beach, Anaheim, and Fort Worth “have effectively closed the gap in at least one of the academic categories we looked at, literally achieving a gap of zero or one,” the study reports. “The politically conservative Oklahoma City has even turned the tables on our typical thinking about race-based gaps. There, students of color outperform white students on high school graduation rates.”
The study systematically ruled out other explanations for the differences between progressive and conservative cities — per-pupil spending, income inequality, poverty rates, percentages of white and black students, and other factors. “Of all the factors we looked at progressivism is the greatest predictor.” Remarkably, despite the obsessive attention that progressives give to closing the gap for lower-income students, the racial gap in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C. is worse for low-income students than for middle- to upper-income students.
James Bacon hypothesizes what might lie behind the counterproductivity of the progressive approach:
§Agency. By blaming racism and discrimination for the woes afflicting minority communities, progressives deprive minority students of agency — the sense that they control their own destinies and that their efforts will make a difference. If minority students see themselves as victims of systemic racism, why bother working hard and “acting white”?
§Discipline. Progressives have implemented “social justice” approaches to school and classroom discipline on the grounds that suspensions and other punishments disproportionately affect minorities. The resulting breakdown in classroom discipline has the perverse effect of disproportionately harming the minority students whose classes are being disrupted.
§Lower standards. As an offshoot of the “self esteem” movement, progressive educators don’t want to damage the self-esteem of minority students. Accordingly, they have lower expectations and set lower standards for minorities to offset the advantages that white students have from “white privilege.”
All of these factors make intuitive sense, yet all touch on theological beliefs of the Left, doctrines they will not give upon willingly.
No doubt, the major media will do their best to suppress the findings of the study, and however valiant the efforts of conservative media outlets to publicize the findings, they won’t influence policy makers unless and until parents of children in progressive cities go on the attack, and help themselves to the tactics that Saul Alinsky systematically laid out in Rules for Radicals. In particular, number four: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
Based on its own ideology, the American Left must now conclude that their own educational policies are racist. A groundbreaking study by a group called Brightbeam (“a network of education activists demanding better education and a brighter future for every child”) has discovered that cities politically dominated by progressives have far greater gaps between the average educational achievement levels of whites and minorities of blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans than cities politically dominated by conservatives.
John Hinderaker of Powerline introduced me to the findings:
This report by Chris Stewart of Brightbeam is a blockbuster. It is titled: “The Secret Shame: How America’s Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity For All.” Stewart is a liberal activist from Minnesota who undertook to find out why the Twin Cities’ left-wing public schools have some of the country’s worst achievement gaps between white and minority (black and Indian) students.
Stewart compared achievement by race in a number of cities that he classified as progressive or conservative. The results didn’t surprise me, but they shocked Stewart. Conservative cities (as ranked by political scientists used as a reference for the study) consistently did a better job of closing student achievement gaps–sometimes, to zero–than progressive cities. This chart sums up the findings:
No topic is dearer to the hearts of America-hating leftists than the “achievement gap” in education. The statistical tendency of minorities deemed racially oppressed by the Left to on average score lower on academic tests and other measures of learning than whites and those minorities that out-perform the white average, in particular East Asians and Jews always is blamed on “racism!” And the cure for racism! Is supposed to be spending more, sensitivity training, and other factors extrinsic to the underperformers. The history of discrimination against over-performing minorities like East Asians and Jews is relegated to taboo status, as is any examination of parental and cultural values as well as individual behavior of the children.
John Hinderaker links to an essay by James Bacon in Bacon’s Rebellion that sums up the data and probable causal factors:
At one extreme is San Francisco, where Democrats and progressives have long prided themselves on efforts to uplift the underprivileged. Educators are dedicated to openness, tolerance, diversity and equal opportunity. Yet the black-white cap is horrifying. Seventy percent of white students score proficient in math compared to only 12% of blacks — a chasm of 58%. For math, the gap in Washington, D.C., is even worse — 62 percentage points.
By contrast, the conservative cities of Virginia Beach, Anaheim, and Fort Worth “have effectively closed the gap in at least one of the academic categories we looked at, literally achieving a gap of zero or one,” the study reports. “The politically conservative Oklahoma City has even turned the tables on our typical thinking about race-based gaps. There, students of color outperform white students on high school graduation rates.”
The study systematically ruled out other explanations for the differences between progressive and conservative cities — per-pupil spending, income inequality, poverty rates, percentages of white and black students, and other factors. “Of all the factors we looked at progressivism is the greatest predictor.” Remarkably, despite the obsessive attention that progressives give to closing the gap for lower-income students, the racial gap in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C. is worse for low-income students than for middle- to upper-income students.
James Bacon hypothesizes what might lie behind the counterproductivity of the progressive approach:
§Agency. By blaming racism and discrimination for the woes afflicting minority communities, progressives deprive minority students of agency — the sense that they control their own destinies and that their efforts will make a difference. If minority students see themselves as victims of systemic racism, why bother working hard and “acting white”?
§Discipline. Progressives have implemented “social justice” approaches to school and classroom discipline on the grounds that suspensions and other punishments disproportionately affect minorities. The resulting breakdown in classroom discipline has the perverse effect of disproportionately harming the minority students whose classes are being disrupted.
§Lower standards. As an offshoot of the “self esteem” movement, progressive educators don’t want to damage the self-esteem of minority students. Accordingly, they have lower expectations and set lower standards for minorities to offset the advantages that white students have from “white privilege.”
All of these factors make intuitive sense, yet all touch on theological beliefs of the Left, doctrines they will not give upon willingly.
No doubt, the major media will do their best to suppress the findings of the study, and however valiant the efforts of conservative media outlets to publicize the findings, they won’t influence policy makers unless and until parents of children in progressive cities go on the attack, and help themselves to the tactics that Saul Alinsky systematically laid out in Rules for Radicals. In particular, number four: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
Much has been spoken and written lately regarding the evangelical community’s feelings toward President Trump, especially since the Christianity Today editorial calling for his removal from office was published last month. Many evangelicals continue to support him wholeheartedly because he has proven repeatedly that he can be trusted to keep his campaign promises and to govern faithfully and conservatively. Others vow never to support him because they feel that he “embodies the anti-Christian ethic.”
President Trump certainly has a “colorful” past, and that is the key reason why I did not support him in the Republican presidential primary of 2016. I just couldn’t imagine a man of his moral failings representing this nation and becoming the leader of the free world. However, when it ultimately came down to a choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on November 8, it was a no-brainer. I would have crawled on my hands and knees to the polls, if necessary, to vote against her. That’s exactly what my vote was at that time — a vote against Hillary Clinton.
It turns out, however, that millions of us who held our noses and voted for Trump have been quite pleasantly surprised by his ardent support of the values and policies that we hold dear. He has been the most pro-life president in the history of our nation, and he was the first president ever to attend the annual March for Life on Capitol Hill. He has been a true friend to small business–owners; he has appointed hundreds of wonderful federal judges; he is defending religious liberty; he is improving our international trade relationships; and among many other accomplishments, he is making our military stronger and our nation safer. Despite all of these successes, many persist in demanding the removal of President Trump because they dislike how he conducts himself.
For many evangelicals, the decision to vote for and to continue to support Donald Trump essentially boils down to this: he operates from the Republican Party platform, which represents life; liberty; and conservative, Judeo-Christian values. Whoever his Democrat opponent turns out to be in November, that person will stand on the Democrat Party platform, which is immoral, anti-Christian, anti-God, anti-life, and anti-freedom. Seems pretty clear and simple.
My church went through a study in 2019 called OT19, in which we read much of the Old Testament together. The very same week that the Christianity Today editorial calling for Trump’s removal was published, our assigned reading included Isaiah, chapters 44 and 45. In these chapters, the Israelites were captives in Babylon, and God used a non-Israelite, a Persian king named Cyrus, to free His people from captivity and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.
Speaking to Cyrus, God said (emphasis mine):
For the sake of Jacob my servant, of Israel my chosen, I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting men may know that there is none besides me. (Isaiah 45:4–5)
I see some parallels between God’s anointing of the Persian King Cyrus and the election of President Donald Trump. Cyrus clearly was not a follower of God, but God anointed him and gave him a “title of honor.” Donald Trump has not historically been a follower of God, either, yet God has also bestowed on him a title of honor and given him the role of shepherding the most influential and powerful nation in the history of the world.
There has been much debate about whether President Trump is truly a Christian and whether he is “morally fit” to lead our nation. He certainly has moral shortcomings, as we all have. It is true that only God can judge the hearts of men, but hundreds of trusted evangelical leaders all over the nation, who have spent time with President Trump and advised him and prayed over him, continue to defend and support him. Regardless of Trump’s true spiritual condition, which none of us can know with certainty, God has shown clearly in His Word that He can and will use both people who honor and serve Him and people who do not in order to accomplish His purposes on this Earth. When God anointed the foreign, heathen Persian King Cyrus, He said about him, “He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please” (Isaiah 44:28).
Cyrus was the tool that God used to bring deliverance and restoration to the Jews thousands of years ago. God has continued to use all sorts of flawed and morally deficient people — Moses, Samson, Rahab, and Paul are just a few examples — down through the centuries, because He is God and He knows best.
God doesn’t need our permission or approval to put His choice of shepherd over us to accomplish His purposes. His ways are higher than our ways, and we can’t always understand with our finite minds what He is doing in this world. However, we can see when good and moral fruit is coming from the White House, as it certainly seems to be now. I, for one, am abundantly thankful for the shepherd who has been anointed to watch over our nation. Our responsibility is to continue to pray for our president to make wise decisions. He has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and we, like Aaron and Hur, should help to hold up his hands when he grows weary (Exodus 17:10–13).
Much has been spoken and written lately regarding the evangelical community’s feelings toward President Trump, especially since the Christianity Today editorial calling for his removal from office was published last month. Many evangelicals continue to support him wholeheartedly because he has proven repeatedly that he can be trusted to keep his campaign promises and to govern faithfully and conservatively. Others vow never to support him because they feel that he “embodies the anti-Christian ethic.”
President Trump certainly has a “colorful” past, and that is the key reason why I did not support him in the Republican presidential primary of 2016. I just couldn’t imagine a man of his moral failings representing this nation and becoming the leader of the free world. However, when it ultimately came down to a choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on November 8, it was a no-brainer. I would have crawled on my hands and knees to the polls, if necessary, to vote against her. That’s exactly what my vote was at that time — a vote against Hillary Clinton.
It turns out, however, that millions of us who held our noses and voted for Trump have been quite pleasantly surprised by his ardent support of the values and policies that we hold dear. He has been the most pro-life president in the history of our nation, and he was the first president ever to attend the annual March for Life on Capitol Hill. He has been a true friend to small business–owners; he has appointed hundreds of wonderful federal judges; he is defending religious liberty; he is improving our international trade relationships; and among many other accomplishments, he is making our military stronger and our nation safer. Despite all of these successes, many persist in demanding the removal of President Trump because they dislike how he conducts himself.
For many evangelicals, the decision to vote for and to continue to support Donald Trump essentially boils down to this: he operates from the Republican Party platform, which represents life; liberty; and conservative, Judeo-Christian values. Whoever his Democrat opponent turns out to be in November, that person will stand on the Democrat Party platform, which is immoral, anti-Christian, anti-God, anti-life, and anti-freedom. Seems pretty clear and simple.
My church went through a study in 2019 called OT19, in which we read much of the Old Testament together. The very same week that the Christianity Today editorial calling for Trump’s removal was published, our assigned reading included Isaiah, chapters 44 and 45. In these chapters, the Israelites were captives in Babylon, and God used a non-Israelite, a Persian king named Cyrus, to free His people from captivity and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.
Speaking to Cyrus, God said (emphasis mine):
For the sake of Jacob my servant, of Israel my chosen, I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting men may know that there is none besides me. (Isaiah 45:4–5)
I see some parallels between God’s anointing of the Persian King Cyrus and the election of President Donald Trump. Cyrus clearly was not a follower of God, but God anointed him and gave him a “title of honor.” Donald Trump has not historically been a follower of God, either, yet God has also bestowed on him a title of honor and given him the role of shepherding the most influential and powerful nation in the history of the world.
There has been much debate about whether President Trump is truly a Christian and whether he is “morally fit” to lead our nation. He certainly has moral shortcomings, as we all have. It is true that only God can judge the hearts of men, but hundreds of trusted evangelical leaders all over the nation, who have spent time with President Trump and advised him and prayed over him, continue to defend and support him. Regardless of Trump’s true spiritual condition, which none of us can know with certainty, God has shown clearly in His Word that He can and will use both people who honor and serve Him and people who do not in order to accomplish His purposes on this Earth. When God anointed the foreign, heathen Persian King Cyrus, He said about him, “He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please” (Isaiah 44:28).
Cyrus was the tool that God used to bring deliverance and restoration to the Jews thousands of years ago. God has continued to use all sorts of flawed and morally deficient people — Moses, Samson, Rahab, and Paul are just a few examples — down through the centuries, because He is God and He knows best.
God doesn’t need our permission or approval to put His choice of shepherd over us to accomplish His purposes. His ways are higher than our ways, and we can’t always understand with our finite minds what He is doing in this world. However, we can see when good and moral fruit is coming from the White House, as it certainly seems to be now. I, for one, am abundantly thankful for the shepherd who has been anointed to watch over our nation. Our responsibility is to continue to pray for our president to make wise decisions. He has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and we, like Aaron and Hur, should help to hold up his hands when he grows weary (Exodus 17:10–13).
CNN hit a new low this weekend mocking and laughing out loud at uneducated, redneck Trump supporters who can’t even read.
This is what they think of Middle America — the 63 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump for president.
Far-left op-ed writer Wajahat Ali, and Never-Trumper Rick Wilson joined Don Lemon in the vicious assault on Trump supporters.
It could not have been more insulting.
Don Lemon thought it was so funny he almost fell from his chair.
The segment that aired on Saturday night came in response to reports that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yelled at a left-wing NPR reporter last week.
They really hate the Trump voters. The President is onto them
It is rather a surprise to learn that we are all going to die from a viral pandemic, considering that we have all already died from swine flu, bird flu, SARS, and that one time when four people had Ebola. Nonetheless, if media reports are to be believed, we are on the verge of yet another planet-wide outbreak. This time, the imaginary global destruction will happen courtesy of the coronavirus.
Back in realityville, the coronavirus has infected 2,700 people, or about .00003% of the global population. Almost all of the cases are in China, where the death toll has reached 82. The majority of these deaths were people who had the misfortune of already being old and sick before they contracted the virus, compounded by the disadvantage of living with China’s “ailing” health care system. Outside of China, there have been around 50 cases, none of them fatal. So far, five people in the United States have been diagnosed and none have died. Of the approximately 327,000,000 people in the U.S., approximately 326,999,995 do not have the coronavirus. There is no good reason to think that the latter number will significantly shrink, as the infected people pose a “low risk” to the public, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Still, none of this has stopped the media from printing scary graphics showing how the disease you almost certainly will not contract will affect you if it does, giving tips on how to “stay safe,” putting terrifying things in their headlines like “containing new coronavirus may not be feasible, using the word “pandemic” to describe something that is not actually a pandemic, running fantasy simulations to show what might happen in a “hypothetical” worst-case scenario, and urging the public to “protect” itself.
I don’t mean to spoil the twist ending, but here’s how to protect yourself from the coronavirus if you live in America: Do nothing special at all. Carry on with your life. Wash your hands. Avoid ingesting the bodily fluids of strangers, as much as possible. Do all of the normal things you would do to maintain a healthy life. Media reports indicate that face masks are an “ineffective” way of preventing the spread of the virus. What the reports forget to mention is that it would be a sign of delusional paranoia if a person in the United States went around wearing a mask for fear of a disease that almost nobody in this hemisphere actually has.
I am not downplaying the significance of this illness. For people who live in China, especially in or near Wuhan, this is a very real public health emergency. But many parts of the world are plagued by many illnesses that either rarely make it onto our shores, or are easily contained and treated when they do. Tuberculosis still kills millions across the globe while comparatively few die from it in this country. Meningitis is a major killer in Africa but claims only a few hundred lives annually in the United States. For all the lumps our health care system takes, deserved and undeserved, the fact is that we generally don’t die from a great many diseases that kill a great many people elsewhere on Earth. And that is why the relatively high mortality rate of the coronavirus is not proof that the disease itself is significantly deadlier than garden-variety pneumonia. All we know is that it is potentially deadlier in Wuhan, where every disease is potentially deadlier.
If you’re a U.S. citizen looking for a disease to worry about, I could suggest more relevant options. The common flu, for example, killed 57,000 people in the U.S. alone last year, which is actually significantly lower than the death toll the year before. That’s a body count nearly 1,000 times higher than the current figure for the coronavirus. And we’re talking about U.S. deaths, in this case. True, most people who die of the flu are either very old or very young. But the same is the case for the coronavirus. Even the aforementioned tuberculosis and meningitis are more reasonable candidates for public panic. Pretty much any disease would be, considering the current death toll for the coronavirus in America is zero. If that number jumps from zero to one, or three, or even fifteen, there still would be no reason for panic. The media wants you to panic because panic means clicks, and clicks generate revenue. Don’t fall for it. Again.
Mexico is taking its own illegal immigration problem — caravans of thousands of migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, and elsewhere — seriously, cracking down on border-crossers at its own southern border, and now critics are convinced that President Donald Trump, unable to get a physical border wall built, has convinced Mexico’s president to be come his de facto “border wall.”
The Guardian reported Sunday that “Mexico has become Trump’s wall,” faulting Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador for increasing hostility among Mexican law enforcement agents toward migrant caravans.
Although Mexico was, initially, allowing these thousand-plus person caravans to cross its southern border on the promise that they would head directly to the United States’ southern border to seek amnesty, the Mexican government has since taken an active role in interdiction, blocking passage through Mexico’s southern border and even firing tear gas into unruly crowds of migrants trying to push through into Mexico.
“López Obrador’s government greeted migrants in a more hostile fashion,” the LA Times reported about incidents that occurred last week. “Mexican National Guard troops in full riot gear blocked their way and fired tear gas canisters to disperse those seeking to breach the nation’s border with Guatemala. Hundreds of people were put on planes and buses back to Honduras, where most of the migrants in the latest caravan began their journey.”
There were no major injuries, though there were around 800 arrests, according to reports. Before things got hostile, the Mexican government says they offered migrants work visas and the chance to remain in Mexico’s southern states, but the migrants refused.
“The president, generally referred to as Amlo, once railed against the abuse visited on migrants. In opposition, he pleaded for Mexico to provide safe passage to people heading for the US border,” the Guardian reported in horror. “But 13 months into his presidency – and under the looming threat of US tariffs – Amlo has assumed a new role: immigration enforcer.”
This is a stark difference from just one year ago, when Mexican authorities were, largely, turning a blind eye to so-called migrant caravans, offering them temporary visas to travel through Mexico on their way to seek amnesty in the United States. Occasionally, the government would attempt a “crackdown,” but only when Mexicans were overly burdened by the caravans, and even then, the Mexican government typically offered migrants temporary work visas or free rides back to Central America.
Now, things have changed both at the southern border and in the board room. The Trump administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy, which has those individuals seeking amnesty stay south of the border while their claims are processed rather than remain in the United States pending a hearing, has made life for Mexicans in border towns difficult (and it has cut down significantly on the number of migrants seeking amnesty). President Donald Trump also threatened Mexico, last year, with tariffs and a trade freeze if Mexico did not enforce its own immigration laws.
But it’s not all Trump’s fault, regardless of what the Guardian may believe. The LA Times notes that Obrador is copying Trump’s “America First” strategy with a “Mexico First” attitude, taking a particular interest in domestic policy and mostly ignoring Mexico’s foreign entanglements.
But the Trump administration is, at least, pleased with what’s happening.
“The efforts by the Mexican National Guard and other officials have thus far been effective at maintaining the integrity of their border, despite outbreaks of violence and lawlessness by people who are attempting to illegally enter Mexico on their way to the United States,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement this week.
