I’ve been watching The Chosen with friends, a show about Jesus and his disciples. I’m not going to comment on it, but you can read Brad Miner’s review here. This column isn’t really about The Chosen as a show. There is a scene in Season 2, however, where James and John are plowing and planting a field because Jesus has asked them to. They don’t know whose field it is or why they have been told to plow it, and since they are fishermen, not farmers, they find the work extremely toilsome and unpleasant. But they do it.
Because it’s Jesus.
This scene got me thinking about our relationship with the Incarnate Lord. I mean, if we really understood in our minds and hearts that the man talking to us was the Lord of all Creation, the One who was the ultimate Source of every planet, galaxy, cosmic black hole, and time and space itself, how would we react to His requests?
You sometimes see science fiction shows in which mankind encounters an alien race of incredible intelligence, and the lesson of such shows is usually that we should approach such beings with deep respect. Only the idiots try to kill these super-intelligent beings. But we have something greater than a “superior intelligence” with the Incarnate Lord. We have the Source of All Being and Truth. Not just an intelligent being, but the Intelligence that created whatever exists. Standing before Him would be like standing before Zeus, if you multiplied the power and wisdom of Zeus to an infinite degree.
More daunting yet, you would be standing before the One who knows all those evil thoughts and designs you so diligently hide from everyone else. How utterly humbling would that be? The point is, I can’t imagine doing anything other than kneeling in abject unworthiness. I sometimes think about this when I’m going up for Communion. It’s not that I think everyone should kneel, although personally, I prefer taking Communion at a Communion rail. But even then, I think, “Who am I that my Lord should come to me?” Kneeling just doesn’t cut it. There’s a big part of me that just wants to slink away into the floor. But I take it that Jesus wouldn’t like that. So I stay there.
Now, I take it that if Jesus found me kneeling there, pitifully, He would likely say something like: “Get up. Look at me. Your sins are forgiven. Now go out and plow this field.” And it’s hard to imagine that, if the God of the Entire Universe said, “I know your sins, but I forgive you, so now go plow this field,” you wouldn’t jump up and say to yourself: “Wow, I thought that was going to be a lot worse.” And then say to the Lord: “This field, Jesus? No problem. I am on it.”
I mean, it’s God. You have a chance to do something He thinks is important. What are you going to say? “Yeah, well, thanks God, but I’ve got some . . . you know . . . important paperwork to fill out.” If the CEO of your company came to you and said, “I have something I’d really like for you to do,” would you say, “Um, yeah, well, pretty busy here. Why don’t you check with Bill next door?” No. I think you’d probably say to your spouse or all your friends:
“The boss came and asked me – me personally – to do something for him today.”
“You mean he actually noticed that you exist?”
“Yeah, and he addressed me by name and asked me to do something special.”
*
Would it be less compelling somehow if you believed that the God of the Entire Universe said, “Hey, would you do something for me?” It seems to me it could only be less compelling if you didn’t really believe it was God. And quite frankly, even on the off chance that it was, it seems to me you’d hop to it.
Of course, what’s odd, is that we don’t jump up and go plow the field. In my case, there I am, kneeling at that altar rail, feeling totally unworthy (and I am), saying to myself, “Why would He have anything to do with me?” but then He actually embraces me (yay!) and asks one small thing — “Go plow this field for me” — and I start looking around as though I’ve got something better to do. I should be skipping like a young child just released from the hospital over to that field, but instead I’m hanging my head wondering “Why me?”
So God – not just any god, but the God, the God of All Creation – has asked us to plant thisfield, the field we have before us in the first half of the twenty-first century in the United States of America. And we do. . .what? We grumble. About everything under the sun. (And God just loves grumbling. On this, see the Book of Exodus.)
We say: “I want to plow a perfect field, the field over there with better soil, where the weather is nicer, not thisfield.” But God says, “No, this field.” And you say: “But there’s a pandemic. And corrupt politicians. And horrible people. And stupid bishops. And the pope says things I don’t like.” And God says: “Yup, that field.”
So you say to God: “Nope, not doing it. Not this field. Too rocky. No obvious pay-off. It’s owned by a jerk I don’t like.” We grumble. And moan. And complain.
But it’s God. Not your mother; not your boss; not a politician of the other political party. It’s the God of All Creation – the One who loved you so much He suffered horribly and died so that you could live. That God. The God. If that God asked you to plow a field, how stupid would you have to be to say no and then grumble about the working conditions?
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Biden Prioritizes LGBT Over Christians August 24, 2021 Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on President Biden’s Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein: Personnel is policy. The people a president appoints to any job reveal his priorities. Even ambassadors, who are usually just major campaign donors, can tell a lot about what a president wants to accomplish. From President Biden’s appointment of Scott Miller to serve as the United States Ambassador to the Swiss Confederation and the Principality of Liechtenstein, we can see once again that Biden has clearly prioritized LGBT issues over Christians. Scott Miller comes into his ambassadorship after serving as the co-chairman of the Gill Foundation, one of the largest militant and anti-Christian LGBT organizations in the country. The Foundation has long worked to trample the rights of anyone who morally objects to same-sex marriage. Miller, along with his “husband” Tim Gill, the founder and co-chair of the foundation, have not sought to find a compromise in which homosexuals and people of faith can coexist; rather, they have treated the relationship as a zero-sum game. According to John Lomperis, the United Methodist Director at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, the Gill Foundation “has shown an extremist hostility to basic freedom-of-conscience protections for those who do not morally approve of same-sex unions.” When open hostility will not suffice, the Gill Foundation works to subvert religious organizations from within. Frequently, the foundation partners with Jon Stryker and his Arcus Foundation. Together, they have backed efforts within Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim groups that reject their religions’ teachings on homosexual acts and relationships. In 2012, the Gill Foundation made a $100,000 general support grant to the Catholics United Education Fund. Catholics United used this money to promote same-sex marriage while attacking groups that promoted traditional values. In 2012, the group sent letters to pastors in Florida putting them on notice that they were watching for illegal political activity from the pulpit in an attempt to silence priests from speaking out against issues that directly concerned the Church in that election cycle. In 2013, Catholics United sparred with the Knights of Columbus claiming that the Knights were promoting a “far-right political agenda” hostile to “marriage equality.” In short, Miller is a radical. The organization he co-chairs actively works to undermine religious liberty and subvert the Catholic Church and other faiths. Now, he will play an important part in shaping America’s foreign policy, and based on his history, we can say with the highest degree of confidence that he will not champion the cause of religious liberty. Indeed, he will likely undermine it.
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Moral Absolutes and Bidenby Judie BrownShareTweetForwardRead online and share: https://all.org/moral-absolutes-and-biden/Sham-Catholic president of the United States Joe Biden is a total failure. In terms of the natural law he is a moral pygmy, but he was helped along the road by Catholic bishops. And whether by accident or on purpose, what they have permitted is more outrageous than what Biden himself has done.Dating back to the early 1980s there have been bishops from the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, who have turned a blind eye to Biden’s support of abortion, homosexual marriages, and other moral evils. In fact, I recall pro-life giant and my dearly departed friend Dee Becker of Wilmington telling me time and time again that she could not convince her bishop to lift a finger to even scold Biden for his pro-death record.Furthermore, in 2019 when Fr. Robert Morey of South Carolina did deny Biden Communion, Francis Malooly, Biden’s bishop at the time, responded to Fr. Morey’s action by saying he would not “politicize” the Eucharist; he would not deny the sacrament to pro-abortion Biden.Add to this the large number of Catholic prelates who have made it publicly known that when it comes to Biden there is nothing they will do to instruct him on the error of his ways, including denying him the holiest of Catholic sacraments—the body and blood of Christ.Among them we find Cardinal Blase Cupich, the same prelate who recently instructed his priests in the Archdiocese of Chicago that they may not honor requests for religious exemptions to the COVID vaccine! He says there is no basis in Catholic moral teaching for such questions, but he has also publicly criticized USCCB president Archbishop Jose Gomez for condemning Biden on his pro-abortion position.And of course Biden has been defended by Cardinal Wilton Gregory and others who prefer not to deny the Eucharist to Biden. So when you wonder why Biden is so confused about what the moral absolutes are and why they are important, you need look no further than many of the Catholic bishops of the United States.Biden, then senator and ever the lawyer, said during the 1991 Senate confirmation hearings on now Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, that in his arrogant opinionapplying natural law to the Constitution was unacceptable.Secular newspapers such as the Washington Post concurred with Biden, reporting that “Judge Thomas has said that ‘the thesis of natural law is that human nature provides the key to how men ought to live their lives’—suggesting that natural law dictates morality to us, instead of leaving matters to individual choice.”Prideful statements like this have been offered time and time again to defend the misguided actions of people like Biden who would not know a moral absolute if it hit him in the face. As we know, when individual choice is preferred, moral absolutes must be rejected.But many intelligent individuals—like Professor Dianne Irving—are not steeped in political gobbledygook. Irving writes: “Natural law ethical theory aids us in understanding which human actions are morally right or wrong through the aid of human reason alone—without the use of Divine Revelation or the teachings of the Magisterium. It has been studied and refined over the centuries as a means of addressing what is the morally right thing for us to do when faced with genuine moral dilemmas. It is not some new, brash, untried or unscrutinized moral theory.”In other words, natural law theory is knowable by human reason and yet can be and is rejected by the likes of Joe Biden. Why is that?Well, as we know, moral absolutes do not change. Dr. Samuel Gregg, an expert in natural law theory, wrote an entire article on moral absolutes in which he pointed out the obvious: A moral absolute means “that there are intrinsically evil acts which admit of no exception whatsoever.”And there’s the rub. For folks like Biden, Cupich, and others, the idea of adhering to moral principles that admit to no exception is just unthinkable.And so the body of Christ will continue to be insulted. The babies will continue to die. The innocent will continue to be tossed aside, and all in the name of the “greater good.”Hogwash!That is why we must remember this:Without the negative moral absolutes, however, we can have no sure knowledge of evil, when we have chosen it, and how it imperils our salvation. Considered in these terms, the moral absolutes are far from being a burden. Instead they are a tangible sign of God’s love for us. To forget that in the name of being merciful would be folly itself.So let us pray for President Biden and all those who flirt with eternal suffering by ignoring the moral absolutes. God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” That truth, of course, is Christ Jesus.
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For anyone trying to understand how Chief Justice Roberts’s jurisprudential principles apply to the question whether he should vote in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Chief’s concurring opinion in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) is essential—and, from the perspective of those of us urging overruling, very encouraging—reading.
In Citizens United, the Court, by a 5-to-4 vote, overruled its decision twenty years earlier in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce that the First Amendment allows political speech to be banned based on the speaker’s corporate identity. In addition to joining Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion, the Chief (joined by Justice Alito) wrote separately “to address the important principles of judicial restraint and stare decisis implicated in this case.” In this post, I will outline the Chief’s exposition and the various ways in which it applies to Dobbs.
1. The Chief rejects the proposition that the Court had “reaffirmed” Austin by applying it in later cases:
This is the first case in which we have been asked to overrule Austin, and thus it is also the first in which we have had reason to consider how much weight to give stare decisis in assessing its continued validity. The dissent erroneously declares that the Court “reaffirmed” Austin’s holding in subsequent cases…. Not so. Not a single party in any of those cases asked us to overrule Austin, and as the dissent points out, the Court generally does not consider constitutional arguments that have not properly been raised. Austin’s validity was therefore not directly at issue in the cases the dissent cites. The Court’s unwillingness to overturn Austin in those cases cannot be understood as a reaffirmation of that decision.
Dobbs is likewise the first case in which a party has asked the Court to overrule Casey. Casey’s validity was not “directly at issue” in the Court’s various abortion rulings since then, so the Court’s unwillingness to overturn Casey in those cases “cannot be understood as a reaffirmation of that decision.” Therefore, Casey does not benefit from the additional stare decisis weight it would have if it had been repeatedly (or even once) reaffirmed.
2. The Chief explains that stare decisis does not support retaining a precedent by reconceiving the grounds for that precedent:
To the extent that the Government’s case for reaffirming Austin depends on radically reconceptualizing its reasoning, that argument is at odds with itself. Stare decisis is a doctrine of preservation, not transformation. It counsels deference to past mistakes, but provides no justification for making new ones. There is therefore no basis for the Court to give precedential sway to reasoning that it has never accepted, simply because that reasoning happens to support a conclusion reached on different grounds that have since been abandoned or discredited.
Doing so would undermine the rule-of-law values that justify stare decisis in the first place. It would effectively license the Court to invent and adopt new principles of constitutional law solely for the purpose of rationalizing its past errors, without a proper analysis of whether those principles have merit on their own. This approach would allow the Court’s past missteps to spawn future mistakes, undercutting the very rule-of-law values that stare decisis is designed to protect.
The Chief’s explanation means that the Court in Casey wrongly invoked stare decisis as it reconceived and modified the holding of Roe. And it also means that the Court in Dobbs can’t invoke stare decisis to reconceive or modify Casey.
3. The Chief sets forth basic stare decisis doctrine: On the one hand, departures from precedent are inappropriate in the absence of a “special justification.” On the other hand, stare decisis is not an “inexorable command, … especially in constitutional cases.” It is instead a “principle of policy” in which “we must balance the importance of having constitutional questions decided against the importance of having them decided right.”
4. As the Chief explains, stare decisis “is not an end in itself” but is instead “to serve a constitutional ideal—the rule of law”:
It follows that in the unusual circumstance when fidelity to any particular precedent does more to damage this constitutional ideal than to advance it, we must be more willing to depart from that precedent.
Thus:
[I]f adherence to a precedent actually impedes the stable and orderly adjudication of future cases, its stare decisis effect is also diminished. This can happen in a number of circumstances, such as when the precedent’s validity is so hotly contested that it cannot reliably function as a basis for decision in future cases, when its rationale threatens to upend our settled jurisprudence in related areas of law, and when the precedent’s underlying reasoning has become so discredited that the Court cannot keep the precedent alive without jury-rigging new and different justifications to shore up the original mistake.
a. The Chief points out that “the validity of Austin’s rationale—itself adopted over two ‘spirited dissents’—has proved to be the consistent subject of dispute among Members of this Court ever since.” And while the “simple fact that one of our decisions remains controversial is … insufficient to justify overruling it,” that fact “does undermine the precedent’s ability to contribute to the stable and orderly development of the law.” “In such circumstances,” the Chief observes, “it is entirely appropriate for the Court—which in this case is squarely asked to reconsider Austin’s validity for the first time—to address the matter with a greater willingness to consider new approaches capable of restoring our doctrine to sounder footing.”
Likewise: Roe and Casey were both adopted over spirited dissents and have been the subject of intense dispute among the Justices ever since. (The Chief’s debate with Justice Breyer in June Medical over what Casey’s undue-burden standard even means is only the latest example.) They have not produced clarity or predictability. The Court should therefore have an even “greater willingness” to reconsider them.
b. The Chief also points out in Citizens United that Austin “threatens to subvert our decisions outside the particular context of corporate express advocacy” and that “the costs of giving [Austin] stare decisis effect are [therefore] unusually high.”
Similarly, Roe and Casey have caused distortions in important doctrinal areas, such as First Amendment speech (Hill v Colorado), basic rules of res judicata (Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt), third-party standing (June Medical v. Russo), and the standard for facial challenges (Casey). The costs of giving Roe and Caseystare decisis effect are thus unusually high. (Roe and Casey of course inflict other massive costs that have no analogue in Austin.)
5. The Chief rejects the “false premise” that “our practice of avoiding unnecessary (and unnecessarily broad) constitutional holdings somehow trumps our obligation faithfully to interpret the law.” The Court “cannot embrace a narrow ground of decision simply because it is narrow; it must also be right.”
The bottom-line legal question in Dobbs is whether the Constitution permits Mississippi’s law allowing abortions after 15 weeks of gestational age only in medical emergencies or in instances of severe fetal abnormality. There is no way to decide that question without first deciding whether to overrule the extraordinary protections that Roe and Casey confer on abortion, and there is no coherent narrow (or middle) ground to adopt on that threshold question. (Law professor Sherif Girgis elaborates these points here.)
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Déjà Vu: Biden-Obama Arming Enemy Terrorists All Over Again; Biden And Obama Also Turning Over Lithium-Rich Afghanistan To China
August 23, 2021
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By Mary Fanning and Alan Jones | The American Report | August 23, 2021
Joe Biden, whose crack-addicted son Hunter has hauled in billions of dollars in deals with Chinese Communist Party-linked companies, has installed Taliban medieval Islamic terrorists to once again control rare earth mineral-rich Afghanistan.
Afghanistan Is Rich In Lithium, A Rare Earth Mineral Used To Produce Electric Vehicle Batteries
As tens of thousands of desperate Americans remain stranded behind enemy lines at this hour, China is decisively and rapidly moving to establish diplomatic and business ties with the Taliban, opening a path for China to exploit trillions of dollars of Afghanistan’s rare-earth mineral reserves, including electric vehicle battery component lithium.
Lithium is in high demand for the production of electric vehicle batteries as the world transitions from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles.
China has a “stranglehold on [the] electric car battery supply chain,” according to Mining.com.
China is maneuvering to control Afghanistan’s strategically-valuable minerals, such as lithium. Joe Biden’s actions are enabling China’s rapid acquisition of Afghanistan’s resources. Afghanistan’s mineral resources have an estimated value of $3 trillion. Joe Biden just handed over Afghanistan’s natural resources to China.
“Chinese dealmakers have their bags packed, and will arrive on the first flights after the airports open,” said Byron King, geologist and mining and energy writer for Agora Financial…
…Afghanistan may become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” the New York Times in 2010 quoted an internal Pentagon memo as saying…
…“Afghanistan is a long-term play on the best of days and now that the Taliban have ‘won’, it’s more of a long-term play for Chinese interests,” he [King] said…
…He expects that “historians will look back at Aug. 15 as a Western/American/NATO geopolitical tsunami.”
Via regulations and executive orders, the Biden Administration is pushing hard to kill the U.S. petroleum industry, destroy the petrodollar status as the world’s reserve currency, and force manufacturers of automobiles, light trucks, and diesel heavy trucks to transition from fossil fuel-powered vehicles to electric battery-powered vehicles, a win for China.
Déjà Vu: Obama 2.0: Biden Just Armed Taliban Terrorists With Billions Of Dollars Worth Of US Military Hardware
President Obama at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan in 2012
In addition to turning over lithium-rich Afghanistan to the Taliban, and by extension, China, Biden has also armed those Taliban terrorists with billions of dollars worth of American military hardware paid for by the American taxpayer.
Joe Biden’s hasty retreat from Afghanistan has left the Taliban with huge caches of weapons, from M-4 rifles, to Humvees, to Black Hawk helicopters and drones.
According to Fox News, the U.S. spent $85 billion on the Afghan army, and the Taliban have seized 600,000 weapons, 75,000 vehicles, and 200 aircraft.
Biden also handed over Bagram Air Base to the terrorists, a critical central-Asian air base initially built by the Soviets, and greatly upgraded and expanded by the U.S. military.
This breathtaking weapons transfer to America’s terrorist enemies is a repeat performance of what happened when the Obama – Biden administration armed ISIS with Humvees and heavy weapons by withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Obama and Biden also armed ISIS through illegal arms trafficking via Syria.
According to an in-depth December 2017 report from Conflict Armament Research (CAR), the Barack Obama – Joe Biden administration and Saudi Arabia transferred massive additional amounts of weapons from Eastern Europe (former Soviet states) to Syrian fighters, weapons that quickly ended up in the hands of IS, sometimes within the span of only one month. Many of those weapons were anti-armor weapons such as anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) that were used to target U.S. and coalition troops. The weapons transfers were illegal, violated treaties, and great lengths were taken to conceal the origin of the weapons (including repackaging, reboxing, removal of manufacturer names, etc.)The vast majority of weapons and ammunition used by IS were from China, Russia, and former Soviet states in Eastern Europe.
In other words, Obama and Saudi Arabia participated in a cold-war proxy war on the side of the Islamic Bloc, Russia, and China against the United States and U.S. and coalition troops and Iraqi partner troops.
Perhaps that explains the origins of the stunning Saudi Royal purge that began during the Trump administration on November 4, 2017, in which the Ritz Carlton was turned into a prison for Saudi royals that had been rounded up.
General Michael Flynn, who was Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), knew all about Obama’s illegal arming of terrorists via Syrian “rebels” and spoke out about it. Flynn knew too much about Obama’s crimes, so Obama had Clapper fire Flynn.
This is an ongoing, long-term operation by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, raising the very real possibility that Biden’s Afghanistan “fiasco” was no accident.
In 2014, Obama and Biden released five top Taliban commanders known as the “Taliban Five” from Guantanamo Bay prison as part of a “prisoner exchange” for disgraced U.S. Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl. In his last email to his parents before he walked away from his unit, Bergdahl wrote “I am ashamed to even be american [sic].” Obama falsely referred to Bergdahl as a “POW.”
Now, one of the Taliban Five, Khairullah Khairkhwa, has reportedly orchestrated the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
Nauseatingly Incompetent, Anti-American, or Both?
China bought their man Joe Biden through a stolen election, and in payment, Biden is certainly delivering to China, and then some. In fact, Biden is helping China achieve its stated goal of global domination.
Hunter Biden was sent in as the Biden family bag man through Hunter’s deals between BHR (Bohai Harvest RST) and the Bank of China.
“China has sought to build ties with the Taliban despite its own worries about the possible effect on what Beijing sees as Islamist extremists operating in China’s Xinjiang,” Reuters reported. The Chinese Communist Party imprisons Uyghur Muslims in horrific CCP concentration camps located in China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Biden’s weakness in Afghanistan and elsewhere is sending a clear message to U.S. allies, including Taiwan and Japan, that the United States can no longer be trusted to stand by friends in the event of Chinese aggression.
China recognizes that now is the perfect opportunity to attack Taiwan while the Biden administration exhibits weakness and obedient capitulation to China across the global stage.
Biden Refuses To Hold China Accountable For COVID-19 Or Protect US Power Grid From Chinese Cyber Attack
At home, the Biden regime refuses to hold China accountable for COVID-19 and has yet to issue its 90-day report on the origins of the virus, due within the next few days.
The Biden administration has also refused to take bold action to protect the U.S. power grid, as the Trump administration did, leaving Americans vulnerable to a Chinese or North Korean EMP attack. Biden reversed President Trump’s orders to ban Chinese power grid components, including transformers, from America’s electric grid critical infrastructure.
China Aggressively Attacking US Electric Car Manufacturer Tesla
California-based Tesla, led by eccentric entrepreneur and CEO Elon Musk, manufactures electric cars in China.
“In a surprise move, China’s top battery manufacturer CATL will supply Tesla with lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for Model 3 production at its newly built $2 billion factory outside Shanghai,” Mining.com reported in February 2020.
By early 2021, as the Taliban conquered cities and provinces across Afghanistan with increasing speed,Tesla hit an extremely rough patch in the company’s evolving relationship with Chinese authorities. China accuses Tesla of safety problems and spying against China with its vehicle camera. China’s military banned Tesla vehicles from PLA bases and facilities at around the same time that Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met with hostile Chinese diplomats in Alaska. In June 2021, several months after the Alaska meeting, rumors flew that Chinese intelligence official Dong Jingwei had defected to the U.S. and that China, during the Alaska meeting, had asked the U.S. to turn over Dong, a spy story that both the CCP and the Biden administration both deny.
Beijing may be moving to take over Tesla’s Chinese market share with CCP-backed electric car makers which can use Chinese lithium-powered batteries.
“Electric vehicle sales in China surged in July as drivers flocked to local auto brands in the world’s largest car market, while those of Tesla plunged after the US group was swept up in a string of scandals in the country,” the Financial Times reported on August 11, 2021.
Thanks To Biden, Afghanistan Is Now Part Of China’s Belt And Road
It is clear that China has an open road to integrate Afghanistan into its ambitious global Belt and Road initiative that gives China hegemony across much of the globe.
One must ask, did Biden turn over Afghanistan to the Taliban and China because the Bidens are compromised by China, through Hunter’s shady business deals and compromising lifestyle, or is it simply Joe Biden’s anti-American stance.
And was the creation of the hostage crisis in Afghanistan that exponentially eclipses President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 Iranian hostage crisis as Americans trapped behind enemy lines desperately plead with Biden to allow U.S. military forces to rescue them, simply “collateral damage” for a secret business arrangement between the Bidens and the CCP?
If China, which already unleashed COVID-19 on the U.S. economy, can also control the global electric vehicle and electric battery market and, via Biden, force the U.S. economy to ditch gas and diesel vehicles in favor of electric vehicles running on lithium batteries, China can complete its mission to conquer the U.S. economy and the petrodollar.
At the same time, China can support the Taliban’s terror-state of Afghanistan, which is increasingly serving as a haven for al-Qaeda and ISIS, organizations which can then launch new terror attacks against the United States, as the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 approaches.
This is World War 3 — full-spectrum unrestricted warfare, and it’s looking like Biden and Obama are once again siding with the enemy while the American taxpayer is picking up the tab.
We’ve seen this play before. This is a repeat performance.
Most are accusing Biden of “bungling” the operation and of being incompetent due to mental decline.
But behind the scenes, is Barack Obama. Did Biden really “botch” the operation, or did Obama somehow control Biden’s daily actions in a way that created the condition for the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and the Taliban’s theft of U.S. military hardware.
Is Biden anti-American? His own words speak for themselves.
Anyone with even a small amount of knowledge on world politics knows that America’s hasty retreat from Afghanistan will have geopolitical consequences for years to come. And it looks like some of those consequences are starting to materialize.
Thanks to the increased instability in the region, Iran now plans to hold joint military drills with Russia and China, according to Russian and Iranian leaders.
That’s a worst-case scenario for the US, as three of our nation’s fiercest enemies are banding together as the power vacuum grows stronger in the Middle East.
It won’t be long before the countries stake claims in Afghanistan. And that doesn’t bode well for American interests around the world. And our allies will quickly blame us for this mess as it gets worse.
But Joe Biden refuses to admit that he messed up the Afghanistan withdrawal as he continues to claim it was the best he could do.
Moynihan and Derksen regarding Bergoglio resigning or issuing a document on succession
Raymond Antonini
7:56 PM (2 hours ago)
to
In 2003/4 ‘Cdl.’ Gottfried Daneels of Belgium pushed to get rid of the papacy (in the Apostate Sect of Vatican II that masquerades as the Roman Catholic Church but is not) and substitute a governing council with a rotating head as president of the council. Bergoglio is such a power mad narcissist he would normally want to stay in power forever, unless by resigning and formulating new governance he could out of his extreme hatred for God, the Faith and the Church cause even more damage. So let’s see what Bergoglio the Lesser Beast of the Apocalypse, the Prophet of the future Antichrist, chooses to do to and in his apostate sect. Please note the True Holy Roman Catholic Church still and will always remain in all the baptized who hold the Faith, Whole and Entire. https://abyssum.org/2021/08/23/is-it-really-possible-that-we-may-be-rid-of-jorge-bergolio-this-year/
FW: Yes, Trump did tell RFK Jr. to investigate vaccine dangers—and why it mattersInboxRaymond Antonini9:57 PM (2 minutes ago)to
—– Forwarded Message –Sent: Monday, August 23, 2021, 09:15:24 PM EDTSubject: FW: Yes, Trump did tell RFK Jr. to investigate vaccine dangers—and why it matters In this explosive interview, we get details of the 2016 Trump-Kennedy meeting…Yes, Trump did tell RFK Jr. to investigate vaccine dangers—and why it matters by Jon Rappoport (To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.) In this explosive 12 minute Theo Von video interview with Robert Kennedy Jr., we get details of the 2016 Trump-Kennedy meeting, at which Trump gave Kennedy the go-ahead to investigate vaccine dangers. This isn’t simply “setting the record straight” on what went down. The latest official figures on autism? 1 in 54 American children are autistic. So we are talking about the MASSIVE destruction of life, and the ongoing internal destruction of the country. Investigating and detailing the role vaccines play in this horrific reality should be the highest priority. Robert Kennedy, in the video interview, explains that shortly after Trump was elected in November of 2016, the new president contacted him (Kennedy) and invited him for a meeting at Trump Tower in New York. During the two-hour sit-down with Trump, Kennedy explained that a comprehensive investigation of vaccines could be done without any heavy lifting by government. There was a well-known Vaccine Safety Datalink which, when opened, would give independent researchers access to a vast trove of US medical records. From those records, a convincing case could be made about vaccine safety/dangers. Trump gave Kennedy the green light to move ahead. However, roadblocks then appeared. Access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink and the medical records was severely limited. Two independent investigators were confined to one room—with only pencil and paper—to study medical records. The room was intentionally overheated to a temperature of 105. No copying-machine use was permitted. Then Pfizer made a million-dollar contribution to Trump’s inauguration. Then Trump made two grotesque appointments to his new administration—Scott Gottlieb as FDA commissioner, and Alex Azar as head of Health and Human Services. Both men had heavy pharmaceutical industry connections. Azar had served as chief of US Eli Lilly, and had sat on the board of the pharma trade group, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. Scott Gottlieb was a director at Tolero Pharmaceuticals and the giant drug company, Daiichi Sankyo. He also worked for Glaxo; and now, in 2021, after his stint as FDA commissioner, Gottlieb sits on the board of Pfizer. Robert Kennedy’s vaccine investigation was shut down. Did Kennedy then reach out directly to President Trump, to try to reignite the vaccine probe? The video interview doesn’t address this. Did Trump ever explain why he allowed Kennedy’s investigation to crash and burn? Or why, at the 2016 New York meeting, he told Kennedy to announce the formation of the vaccine investigation, instead of announcing it himself, as the new President? Not to my knowledge. One other thing. In this video interview, Kennedy says the man who keeps the vital Vaccine Safety Datalink, and all the medical information it leads to, shut down and away from independent investigators, is… Anthony Fauci. Once upon a time in the Empire, all roads led to Rome. Now they lead to the Good Doctor, and onward to Bill Gates. ~~~ (The link to this article posted on my blog is here — with sources.)
In June, 2020, the FDA said final approval of the mRNA COVID vaccines should take up to two years. (As of 8/22/21, these were all currently experimental vaccines.) But on July 30, 2021 STAT News noted the final approval time would be condensed into six months at the urging of unnamed lawmakers and health experts and that, “It would be a powerful tool in convincing the unvaccinated to get their shots.” A week later, on August 8, 2021 the Associated Press reported Dr. Fauci as saying: “I hope—I don’t predict—I hope that it will be within the next few weeks. I hope it’s within the month of August.”
Unsurprisingly, then, the Wall Street Journal reported today (8/23/2021) that the Pfizer vaccine has now been fully approved:
The FDA, under pressure to give COVID-19 vaccines full approval swiftly, made its decision less than four months after Pfizer began its approval submission. The process of reviewing applications normally takes up to approximately 10 months.
Pressure to vaccinate
Note that on Meet the Press (8/8/21), Dr. Fauci said “…you’re going to see the empowerment of local enterprises giving mandates…colleges, universities, places of business, a whole variety.… You want to persuade them…. But for those who do not want, I believe mandates at the local level need to be done.” Fauci says the Delta variant is the reason for supporting vaccine mandates. But news out of Minnesota finds that COVID vaccine effectiveness against the Delta variant as of July, 2021 for the Pfizer vaccine was only 42%, and 76% for Moderna.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, a public health professor and past NIH Fellow, suggests Fauci’s shifting statements on COVID 19 “herd immunity” do not give the public much confidence. Fauci said, “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent… .Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit’, so I went to 80, 85.” Fauci stunned Dr. Prasad: “Fauci is…basing his statements on what he thinks the public will accept, and to what degree his rhetoric might help vaccination efforts, and…the absolutely stunning part, he is admitting this openly to a reporter for the New York Times.…”
Fauci also downplays the science-based effectiveness of natural immunity after contracting COVID. Robert Kaplan, who supports COVID vaccines, states that,
New cases of COVID-19 peaked…from more than 300,000 per day on Jan. 8 to around 55,000 on Feb. 21.… By Feb. 21, only 5.9% of Americans had received two shots, yet there had been an 82% decline in new cases.… The best explanation for declining rates of COVID-19 appears to be previous infections….”
An analysis of the entire Israeli population concluded that both mRNA shots and prior COVID infection, “are effective against both subsequent SARS-CoV-2 infection and other COVID-19–related outcomes.… This puts into question the need to vaccinate recent (up to six month) previously-infected individuals.”
Further, Fauci’s proposed rapid-fire “review” for final approval of COVID 19 shots leads to violations of the June, 2020 FDA guidance for final approval: “Follow-up of study participants for COVID-19 outcomes (in particular, for severe COVID-19 disease manifestations) should continue…ideally at least one to two years, to assess duration of protection….” STAT noted that for final vaccine approval, “The process requires FDA staff to review millions of pages of complex data, conduct plant inspections, and negotiate with Pfizer over … the FDA’s approved label and the company’s postmarketing responsibilities.” We now know all this is being bypassed.
Given the abrupt CDC mask policy reversal requiring even vaccinated persons to wear masks indoors in areas of high transmission, no one should be surprised that skepticism of mRNA shots remains. But while “booster shots” are being prepared for the fully vaccinated because immunity from the FDA authorized shots has waned, Fauci wants FDA final approval to make mandates easier to impose. This will not increase confidence in the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines or the integrity of the FDA. Indeed, three New England Journal of Medicine authors, who conditionally support vaccine mandates, acknowledge:
[E]xcept for influenza vaccination of health care workers, mandates have not been widely used for adults.… The fact that a vaccine has received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval…is an insufficient basis on which to conclude that it should be required. FDA approval…may be based on very limited evidence and consciously or unconsciously influenced by the intense pressure to speed countermeasures to market.
Critical questions
Are the private institutions pushing mandates (businesses, schools, churches) prepared to be sued for violating personal conscience rights under the First Amendment or federal or state Religious Freedom laws? Are they willing to accept liability for possible adverse reactions?
All current FDA authorized COVID vaccines (as of 8/22/21) are linked to abortion. Will Dr. Fauci’s “guidance” and FDA approval of the COVID vaccines be used by lawmakers to compel Americans who believe in the sanctity of each human life to take vaccines tested on or derived in part from preborn children killed by abortion?
Distinguished Catholic University Law Professor, Robert Destro, who served on the U. S. Civil Rights Commission and as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, has warned that “Guidance” from the CDC does not have the force of law and cannot repeal existing civil and human rights protections in federal and state laws:
Employers who mandate vaccines without allowing for medical exemptions run the risk of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, and both State and federal laws require accommodation of religious objections. But the real ticking time-bomb is civil liability for adverse effects. If businesses mandating vaccines think that CDC “Guidance” will protect them from liability for known adverse effects, they are delusional. [personal communication]
Fauci and other vaccine promoters have had to claim that, contrary to published and reviewed studies, drugs like Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) or Ivermectin could not safely and effectively treat COVID because federal law states the FDA Commissioner may only issue an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), “…when there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.” However, Dr. Peter McCullough and at least 250 doctors treated between 10,000 and 15,000 patients a day using HCQ or Ivermectin and other drugs approved by the FDA for other purposes. Dr. McCullough believes their approach “could reduce hospitalization and death by 85%” if used widely across the US.
At the same time, adverse vaccine reactions are largely ignored. Between December 4, 2020 and August 13, 2021, the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) counted 595,622 adverse events following COVID vaccination, 13,086 deaths, 81,850 serious injuries including deaths, 17,228 permanently disabled, 53,979 hospitalized and 13,811 life threatening events. The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services states that, “Underreporting is one of the main limitations of…VAERS.”
Catholic bishops and conscientious objection
The U. S. Catholic Bishops are split on whether or not to authorize diocesan priests to write letters supporting individual Catholics who object on conscience grounds to taking an abortion derived vaccine. The Washington Post reports (6/19/21) that bishops of six dioceses (Philadelphia, San Diego, New York, Los Angeles, Honolulu and Camden, N.J.) have instructed priests to not give formal support to parishioners who object to taking an abortion-linked COVID vaccine.
But Catholic Bishops in Colorado have prepared an excellent summary of Catholic and Natural Law teaching on vaccination. You can download a letter to give to your parish priest (if your bishop has not forbidden priests from signing such letters) or use it yourself to explain your opposition to being compelled to take a COVID vaccine linked to the taking of the life of a child via induced abortion.
As the FDA grants final approval to the COVID vaccines, that will give impetus to COVID vaccine mandates by businesses and public institutions. But as Professor Destro explained, such FDA action does not eliminate constitutional rights and protections of persons. Even if the FDA gives final approval to COVID 19 vaccines, Congress can decline federal funds to implement COVID vaccine mandates that do not make exemptions for self-determined reasons of conscience, religion and medical concern. If such measures are defeated, there will be a record vote to show the public where our representatives stand.
Dr. Fauci noted that the COVID 19, “vaccine requirements will come at the state and local levels—and…they’ll proliferate when the Food and Drug Administration gives full approval to coronavirus vaccines….” But like Congress, state legislatures and county officials can prohibit state and local funds for implementing mandates that do not allow exemptions for reasons of conscience, religion and medical concerns. Again, if these efforts fail, there should be a public record of where these officials stand. Consider urging your Congressional Representative, your two U. S. Senators, your state legislators, and your local county or city officials to ban public funds or resources to implement or assist in implementing COVID vaccine mandates, especially those that do not provide for self-declared conscience, religious or medical exemptions.
CatholicCulture.org is not a political action organization but, in furtherance of its Catholic mission, authorizes free distribution of this analysis of political initiatives which violate a Catholic understanding of the human person. For those unfamiliar with how to contact their Federal State and local representatives, we also provide the following public links to their email addresses and local phone numbers:
Bob Marshall served 26 years in the Virginia House of Delegates and was the chief House sponsor of the 2006 voter-approved Virginia Marriage Amendment and a ban on late term abortion. He recently wrote Reclaiming the Republic: How Christians and Other Conservatives Can Win Back America (TAN Books). Previously, he co-authored Blessed are the Barren, a social history of Planned Parenthood (Ignatius Press). Finally, don’t miss Bob’s Civics Lesson for Catholics in the Catholic Culture Podcast Episode 17. See the full bio.
U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman granted a temporary restraining order against Beshear’s mask mandate after a group of Catholic school parents sued the governor over the order. The order, which is in effect for the next 30 days and subject to renewal, requires all students over the age of two, as well as teachers, visitors and staff, to wear a mask.
Beshear’s order did differentiate between vaccinated and unvaccinated. The age of vaccination recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is 12 years of age.
Bertelsman ruled, however, the order violated state law because the state’s general assembly voted in the spring to curb Beshear’s power to issue executive orders.
The mask mandate is the key to Joe Biden’s state of permanent pandemic.
There will always be new variants and the so-called “experts” never give any benchmarks as to when the emergency will end.
Also, the European version of the CDC does not recommend mask mandates and children in Europe went to school for the last year with no mask mandate.
Mask mandates in schools are not about “following the science.”https://lockerdome.com/lad/12687898013280870?pubid=ld-6824-545&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fpatriotpulse.net&rid=&width=720
They are about control and the teachers unions wanting to keep schools shut down so their members can continue to work from home.
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