News Briefing - May 18, 2022

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LABASH: Politicized Churches Dropping Christ from Christianity

Sometimes, I hate talking to my friends, and not just because so many of them are imaginary. (No offense, Mr. Whiskers.) You get together for lunch, or drinks, or for a drinking lunch as required by media guild bylaws, and next thing you know, it becomes a “didja-read” fest, as illustrated in this Portlandia scene:

There is much to read, perhaps too much. And despite the average American reading on a 7th/8th grade level, or perhaps because of that sad fact, much of it is crap. But the sheer tonnage of it is daunting. Hell, there’s so much to read, I’m not even sure I have time to read Slack Tide anymore, and I write it. Once your friends have loaded up your dance card with enough of their recommendations, you just want to go home, slink off to your sofa, and turn on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

And yet, one of those recommendations broke through this week, and it was well worth the time, as it turns out to be one of the most essential pieces of religious journalism of the last many years. It concerns the toxins that have poisoned the evangelical church. As a lifelong evangelical myself, this pains me to say.

Swiss Billionaire’s Mega-Influence On U.S. Politics

While Hansjörg Wyss draws comparisons in the press to liberal megadonors like George Soros and Tom Steyer, relatively little is known about the Swiss billionaire, other than that he regularly ranks as one of the richest men in the world and also as one of its most philanthropic.

Wyss made headlines recently by leading a consortium of investors attempting to buy the Chelsea Football Club from sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. He also tried unsuccessfully before that to purchase a national newspaper chain owned by Tribune Publishing. One area where the wealthy Swiss businessman has met with unquestionable success after retiring from the pharmaceutical industry: U.S. politics. He has deep pockets and deep ties in Washington as a result – connections that he tells reporters overseas extend all the way to the White House.

And yet, despite the hundreds of millions Wyss has spent bankrolling progressive advocacy groups and despite the undeniable heft Wyss throws around in the Democratic Party and its causes, one question has remained unanswered in the American press.  

 Five things to know about the UFO hearing   

A House Intelligence subcommittee on Tuesday held the first congressional hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years.

Testimony was heard from Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray, who are overseeing the Pentagon’s new task force investigating what are now being called unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs).

Here are highlights from the hearing......

As Musk Calls Out Twitter Over Fake Accounts, Audit Reveals Half of Biden's Followers Are Fake 

Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter has unearthed some interesting aspects of the company. Among other things, it has begun to shine a light on the bogus accounts that litter the platform.

Musk has bemoaned the plethora of “spam bots” on Twitter, and the billionaire’s purchase of the company has been halted as he seeks more information on just how many Twitter accounts are fake.

A report Tuesday shows he has a reason to be concerned.

MUSK TWITTER DEAL UNRAVELS...

TWO-THIRDS of users are bots? 

Elon Musk Announces Twitter Deal 'Cannot Move Forward' Unless CEO Proves Key Claim 

In a tweet that could shake the foundations and future of Twitter, Elon Musk said Tuesday morning he believes fake accounts make up as much as 20 percent of the platform.

The billionaire tweeted that his offer to buy Twitter was contingent on the accuracy of the company’s estimate that fewer than 5 percent of its accounts are spam or bot accounts instead of real people.

As such, Musk said, he will not move forward with his proposal to buy Twitter until company CEO Parag Agrawal proves Twitter’s numbers are accurate. 

COVID FILE

Naomi Wolf: FDA KNEW Vax Was a Failure and Dangerous

Five things to know about long COVID 

Thousands Shown Being Herded Into Quarantine in China...

Pandemic cut wedding numbers to lowest in 40 years

NYC Mayor Eric Adams masks up as city's

health department quietly reveals plans to set Covid alert level to 'high' and

tells residents over the age of two to wear face coverings in ALL indoor settings

Americans offered eight more free Covid tests per household - as debate over pandemic-funding between White House and Congress rages on

China Doubles Down on Impossible ‘Zero COVID’ Benchmark    

Does Paxlovid help people who have been vaccinated against COVID?    

HUNTER BIDEN FILE

Exclusive: Former Trump aide posts online a searchable database containing a huge trove of more than 120,000 emails from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop, calling

them 'a modern day Rosetta Stone of white and blue collar crime'

Hunter Biden-Linked Firm Admits To Foreign Lobbying

CROSSFIRE HURRICANE

FBI witness in Sussmann trial says Trump-Alfa Bank allegation was 'far-reaching,' not objective

Durham Pretends FBI Was Duped by Hillary's Lawyer Into Participating in Her 'October Surprise'

Durham Trial: You Can't Unsee All the Potential Conflicts of Interest in the 'Russia Collusion' Case in D.C. 

FBI agent at Sussmann trial says he rejected Alfa-Bank claims within days

UKRAINE FILE

Ukraine relinquishes Mariupol as Russia attacks both east and west

Zelensky opens Cannes, links war and cinema

Vladimir Putin Decides He Is a Better General Than His Generals and Takes the Reins in Ukraine

Ukraine position on peace talks with Russia: There's the border, Vlad, so cross it

Disinformation Czar Nina Jankowicz Resigns as Biden's Ministry of Truth Collapses 

On Monday, it was announced that the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board would be “paused.”

The partisan leftist appointed to lead President Joe Biden’s de facto “Ministry of Truth” resigned from the project, according to the Washington Post.

Nina Jankowicz resigned as the executive director of the Disinformation Governance Board on Wednesday.

The entity was put on ice following a flurry of criticism, with lawmakers and political figures across the aisle rejecting the notion of a federal government agency that would instruct the public on “disinformation.”

Professor: For Complete Reparations, EVERY White Child Must Support 16 Minorities

What is the statute of limitations, so to speak, on slavery-based claims such as “reparations”? No one has provided any such time frame despite slavery having ended in the United States back in 1865-’66. But one academic has offered a different kind of specificity: estimating how many minorities each white child will have to support under reparations models.

While approximately 70 percent of Americans oppose giving the handouts euphemistically known as “reparations” to descendants of black American slaves, there are stark racial/ethnic divides on the issue. “Most black Americans, 74%, favor reparations, compared with 15% of white Americans,” related the New York Post in 2019. “Among Hispanics, 44% favor reparations.” What’s more, the effort has gained great traction in the Democrat Party.

Gen. Flynn Makes His Move: 'I Don't Give a Crap, I'm Going After These People' 

Lt. Gen Michael Flynn is warning the FBI and the U.S. Deptartment of Justice that he is coming for them by filing a lawsuit seeking $50 million in damages for “malicious prosecution” related to the discredited Russia collusion crusade.

Flynn, who was briefly President Donald Trump’s national security advisor until the corrupt FBI began persecuting him, has filed a civil lawsuit seeing $5 million in property damages and an additional $45 million in personal injury for the years-long persecution for allegedly lying to the FBI — a charge he has steadfastly denied.

The general says he is coming for the FBI, including former chief Jim Comey, and all the way up to former President Obama, who directed the DOJ to persecute Flynn just before Donald Trump took office.

What is 'great replacement theory' at center of Buffalo shooting fallout?

Great replacement theory is a conspiracy theory that contends elites in society are banding together to replace white people with nonwhite people. Proponents of the white supremacist-linked thesis in the United States often point to the decline in birth rates among white people and the mass migration of nonwhite people into the U.S.

In addition to replacing white people physically, the theory maintains that elites are also seeking to supplant the culture and political power of whites with nonwhite people.

The theory comes in different forms and has multiple iterations, including one in which Jews are the "replacist" elites striving to supplant white people, per the Immigration Forum.

Oftentimes, the theory is linked to the "white genocide" conspiracy, which holds that white people are at risk of extinction and typically blames a Jewish plot for causing the extinction. 

Klavan Reviews 2000 Mules

Project Veritas Releases Video of Senior Twitter Engineer Describing Culture and Ideology of The Platform 

The View' warned Biden's sister about Hunter Biden question 

Biblical Worldview & Christian Education: Real & Fake

Biden pushes gun control in visit to Buffalo after shooting

Klavan Reviews Everything Everywhere All At Once

PolitiFact Is to Fact What Pravda Was to Truth

During a recent broadcast, I said that once Elon Musk takes control of Twitter, "Twitter will be flooded with hate, and a lot of it will come from people on the Left who want to show how hate-filled it is. It's like their race-hoax industry. If you see a noose on a college dorm of a black student, the odds are overwhelming that the noose was put there by a black student. If you see the N-word on a dormitory building, the odds are overwhelming that a black student actually did that. We're filled with race hoaxes."

One of the better-known self-proclaimed fact-checkers, PolitiFact, declared my claim "false."

They offered no refutation of what I said and provided no examples of nooses or the N-word on campuses perpetrated by white supremacists. Instead, they made a self-defeating argument: "Experts who track hate crimes told PolitiFact that there isn't even a nationwide data source that Prager could have used to pin down the number of incidents — real or fake — that specifically involved hanging a noose or scrawling the racist insult on college buildings or grounds."

Black Conservatives Convene for a 'New Birth of Freedom'

Recent remarks by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, noting the institutional damage caused by the leak of Justice Samuel Alito's opinion on Roe v. Wade, have gotten exhaustive coverage in the press.

But, not surprisingly, the venue where Thomas made these remarks has gotten little attention by these same journalists.

The event was a convening of the nation's leading Black conservative intellectuals — from academia, policy institutes, media — to focus on, as explained in a press release from one of the institutional sponsors, the American Enterprise institute, why "despite decades of affirmative-action programs, wealth-redistribution schemes and other well-intentioned government efforts, racial gaps in educational achievement, employment, income, family formation and crime persist."

The venue, Old Parkland in Dallas, was provided through the generosity of Texas businessman Harlan Crow.

The Old Parkland Conference was inspired as a reconvening of a similar effort organized by economist Thomas Sowell in December 1980 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco — a pioneering effort, the first of its kind.

The Howling Idiocy of the 'Great Replacement' Theory

\For those who believe in the "great replacement" theory, I can affirm: Yes, today's Americans are going to be replaced with people very different from us. They are called descendants, and they will turn out in such ways that we would barely recognize them.

My Confederate forebears would be displeased to find that I would sooner burn a Confederate flag than fly one — and that I live in the Land of, yes, Lincoln. My agrarian ancestors would lament that I couldn't farm my way out of an NPR tote bag.

Present-day white supremacists and others who believe there is a master plan to change America, of course, are not focused on how little their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will resemble them. They are obsessed with racial identity and the prospect that whites will see their dominance erode. One adherent is the man accused of targeting and killing 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. 

Honoring the Service and Sacrifice of Those Who Have Earned It

Gratitude: The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.

The word “gratitude” appears frequently in columns I have written over the last 25 years. In a recent column, I noted that, despite all the divisive noise from the Beltway babblers, there is much good and right about our great nation. All one need do is look around.

I start every day understanding that gratitude shapes my attitude, and there is no better way to recenter on what is good and right, especially in moments of trouble, than to focus on the many blessings, large and small, for which I am grateful.

One of the great privileges of my job, and at the same time the most humbling, is the opportunity to write about others who are serving, or have served, in our nation’s Armed Services — those who have abided by their solemn oaths “to support and defend” the American Liberty enumerated in our Declaration of Independence and enshrined in our Constitution.

How Congress Undermines Constitution, Federalism

The American republic was created by a remarkable generation of men who turned a rebellion against the British crown into a transforming moment in human history, one based on the revolutionary proposition that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with fundamental rights that no government has the moral authority to set aside.

On achieving independence, however, the Founders faced the formidable task of creating a government that could operate effectively while respecting and protecting the liberties for which the Revolution had been fought.

In doing so, they had no illusions about human nature, the one constant in human affairs. They understood that the drive to accumulate power, whether by an individual despot or a parliamentary majority, is the historic enemy of individual freedom.

So, they incorporated two safeguards into the Constitution: the separation of governmental powers, with its checks on potential abuses, and the principle of federalism underscored by the 10th Amendment’s command that all powers not assigned to the federal government be “reserved to the States respectively or to the people.”

Double Jeopardy: Princeton Prepares To Axe Star Professor Who Raised Hell Over Woke Lunacy

Middle schooler worried sexual harassment

accusations for using wrong pronouns could

‘shatter’ college chances

Incredibly Sad Video Shows Mother Pushing Left-Wing Gender Ideology on Her Son