More Wilful Deception

Trump Hit Piece Could Be Wrong

Atlantic Editor Concedes Central Claim 

Jordan Davidson
The Federalist

On Sunday, Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg admitted the White House’s account that President Trump’s trip to a cemetery of fallen World War I soldiers in France in 2018 was modified due to bad weather is probably accurate.  “I’m sure all of those things are true,” Goldberg told CNN in an interview on Friday when asked to respond to evidence a story he published saying otherwise is false.

In the story published in The Atlantic on Thursday, Goldberg asserted that multiple senior White House staffers heard President Trump express a desire to cancel his visit to the cemetery because “It’s filled with losers.”

“When President Donald Trump cancelled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed the rain for the last-minute decision, saying ‘the helicopter couldn’t fly’ and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true. Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become dishevelled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead,” Goldberg wrote, citing only anonymous sources.

Getting Down to Business

If Kenosha Is Any Indication, Trump Will Win Wisconsin

Who knows what the 2020 election will bring? But after surveying Kenosha, I'm convinced Trump won't lose Wisconsin. If I were a betting woman, I'd say he won't lose the White House.


Kylee Zempel
National Review Online

He doesn’t seem well. In fact, he sounds exactly like every person I’ve encountered on their deathbed. These thoughts ran through my mind Thursday while I watched Joe Biden breathlessly address Kenosha community leaders through his surgical mask.

Aside from the former vice president’s extortionate call-to-action that if you don’t vote for him, racism and riots will reign forever, my primary takeaway from his remarks was that Biden is the weakest and least-inspiring candidate I’ve ever seen. This was quite a contrast from the energy I felt pulsing through Kenosha as I walked the glass-littered streets the day President Donald Trump came to town.

Trump Can’t Win… Or Can He?

Sometime around the second month of the pandemic, I made my peace with a Biden presidency. There was no way Trump could win, it seemed. With the death toll rising, businesses closing, and the economy tanking, things weren’t looking too good for the incumbent. Pair that with the fact that Democrats wield unrivalled power in our major institutions, controlling all of them save for some churches — including media, education, and entertainment — a second-term victory for Trump seemed impossible.

But administrations come and go. Unlike many prominent Democrats, who’ve thrown a four-year tantrum since 2016, most people realize presidential elections aren’t the end of the world. Would it be a bummer if Biden sealed the deal? Sure, but it would be fine. We would survive (without an embittered #NotMyPresident campaign).

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that’s a reality we’ll never have to face. As The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway pointed out, Biden held a 25-point lead in the betting odds at the beginning of August. Fast-forward just one month, and Trump has made up the entire deficit, now neck-and-neck with Biden.

“So here is the cold reality the media are for some reason refusing to tell people as the country rounds Labor Day and this campaign really gets into high gear,” Hemingway wrote. “This race is effectively tied today, Trump has momentum, and Biden is going to have to campaign hard, energize his voters, and earn it if he hopes to unseat the incumbent.”

An Evil Regime

The Uyghur Genocide

By Jimmy Quinn
National Review Online

Call it what it is

Chinese Communist Party officials say that the Uyghurs, a Turkic minority in the Xinjiang region, are the “happiest Muslims in the world.” The evidence trickling out of western China tells a different story. In July, U.S. customs officials intercepted a 13-ton shipment of beauty products made out of human hair from the region and a video of blindfolded prisoners being led onto train cars went viral. Over the past couple of years, some have compared the human tragedy unfolding there to North Korean totalitarianism and South African apartheid. More recent evidence has inspired comparisons to the Holocaust. “Genocide” is a word that packs a punch, spurring action by connecting “the solemn commitments of the past and a new atrocity unfolding before the world’s eyes,” as a report by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center put it last year. This word, sadly, is now an apt descriptor for the situation in Xinjiang.

Thanks to the fearless work of researchers, journalists, and victims, it’s now widely known that the CCP in 2017 stepped up its repression of the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities by means of a mass-internment drive and a new, Orwellian surveillance state. When the Uyghurs “graduated” from these “reeducation” and “vocational training” facilities, to borrow the euphemistic terminology of CCP officials, many were forced into slave labor. All told, over a million Uyghurs and other members of Turkic minorities are estimated to have been detained, and a total of 3 million people to have been swept up in various reeducation efforts. Others were charged with bogus crimes and remain imprisoned. Beijing, citing a few terrorist incidents that took place in 2014, claims that it’s stamping out extremism, but its true aim is to solidify Han Chinese dominance over Xinjiang.

The Idiocy of Critical Race Theory Exposed

Donald Trump Is Right To Remove Critical Race Theory 

US Federal Government Will Not Use Spurious Racism To Advance A False Cause


David Marcus
The Federalist

Last week the Trump administration announced that it would make efforts to ensure Critical Race Theory is not used in diversity programs in the federal government. This came after reports emerged of “training sessions” in which white government employees were basically told they were inherently racist and made to confess and apologize for their privilege. Such sessions have also become popular in the corporate world and in our schools; they are operated by very successful companies trading on white guilt.

One thing that is amazing about Critical Race Theory is that it has absolutely no basis in science. There is no data anywhere to suggest that it has ever made anyone less racist, or that it has ever reduced incidents of racism. Rather it is all based on feelings, lived truth, and not so subtle calls for racial reparations, if not flat out revenge. So how has Critical Race Theory come to dominate corporate and governmental anti-racism efforts?

A Growing Extension of Unjust Powers

Victoria is Now a Police State

A guest post by a reader.  This was first published in Kiwiblog. 


The city of Melbourne has already endured one of the longest and harshest lockdowns anywhere in the world. And the lockdown has just been extended, with little hope that this will be over anytime soon.

The Victorian Police is behaving like a hostile occupying force, with the gentle bedside manner of Imperial Stormtroopers and the sense of humour of the Stasi. Peaceful protest is illegal. The Police recently arrested a pregnant woman in her home and charged her with incitement. She now faces up to 15 years in jail for the heinous crime of promoting a peaceful protest on Facebook. Others have been forcibly masked before being wrestled to the ground and handcuffed for the crime of being out of their homes for a non-permitted reason.

The Police has unlimited power. They can enter your home without a warrant, and they will do so without any hesitation. If you’re not quick enough opening the door, they will break it down for you.

How could this happen in a civilised country? Why is there nobody stopping the madness? Here are some hints.

The UN Did Not Get the Memo

Everything Bad In History Was the Patriarchy’s Fault, Claims United Nations

“If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts”, Camille Paglia once famously said. But the United Nations didn’t get the memo

James Delingpole

Breitbart London

No, really. According to the United Nations, the “millennia of patriarchy” which gave us, among many other things, the Greek and Roman philosophers, Christianity, the Taj Mahal, Habeas Corpus, the art of the Renaissance, the collected works of Shakespeare and Goethe, Johann Sebastian Bach, penicillin, central heating, air conditioning, the internal combustion engine, and space travel, have actually been damaging to “everyone”.

Also, according to the UN, “we all” know this.  Who exactly is this “we”, Kemo Sabe?

Indeed, is there any sane and sentient being in the world who has the remotest sympathy with this revolutionary cultural Marxist bullshit?  That revolutionary cultural Marxist bullshit is also in direct contravention of the UN’s founding principles. The UN was established in the aftermath of the Second World War to “promote international peace and security”.

One of its subsidiary purposes, according to its two founding Articles, is: 

“…promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.”

How does picking on men and blaming them for everything that is wrong square with that particular clause?

And just how deludedly, monstrously arrogant would you have to be to declare that you know better how to order society and run the world — in a non-patriarchal way, apparently — than pretty much every civilisation in the entirety of human history?

Long May It Continue

The Media Are Lying About The Election Again

Trump has cut Biden's lead by half or more in key battlegrounds, and is on track to win again

Mollie Hemingway
The Federalist

Election 2020 is shaping up to be déjà vu all over again for the news media. In an effort to help push Joe Biden over the finish line, the Washington establishment is going all-in on the easily refuted idea that there has been no change in the presidential race over the last three weeks.

“With Two Months To Go, a Steady Presidential Race,” writes Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report.  “The Latest Polls, the Great Non-Tightening: This Week in the 2020 Race,” write Astead W. Herndon and Annie Karni of The New York Times.  “In a time of disruption and unrest, the presidential race has changed little,” writes Dan Balz of the Washington Post.

After having botched the entire news coverage of the 2016 election, where all the “experts” repeatedly told the American public that Donald Trump had little to no chance of being the Republican nominee and even less a chance of being elected president, corporate media are back at it again, insisting all is well with the Biden campaign and the Democrats are safely on cruise control to take the White House and the Senate.

Here’s the truth they are not telling you.

We Desperately Need "Three Strikes"

Murderer Back in Prison After Parole Breach

By Rob Kidd
Otago Daily Times


One of the country’s longest-serving prisoners is back behind bars after taking drugs while on parole.
Andrew Peter McGlynn (53) was sentenced in the High Court at Christchurch in February 1986 to life imprisonment for murder.  The defendant, who appeared in the Dunedin District Court yesterday for breaching parole, has made headlines in the past for his indiscretions while on release.

Soon after being paroled, in 1994 McGlynn was incarcerated once again after committing an armed robbery.  Another release in 2003 had an almost identical result.  McGlynn was back to prison to continue serving his life sentence after being convicted of aggravated robbery.

However, it was not enough to convince the Parole Board he should remain there.  In 2005, yet another stint in the community was abruptly ended when McGlynn assaulted a woman. 

His repeated failures to reintegrate resulted in him becoming a poster boy for Act New Zealand’s law and order spokesman David Garrett in his push for the "three strikes" legislation in 2009.  He called him the country’s “most recalled lifer”.

McGlynn, the court heard yesterday, had been released on parole on March 25 on a range of strict conditions, including a prohibition from using illicit drugs.  Just like on previous occasions, the killer did not last long.

Timely Advice and Encouragement

Psalm 11: A Psalm for Our Time

Peter Orr
©  TGC Australia

More than any part of the Scriptures, it is the Psalms that have provided the greatest comfort for God’s struggling people through the centuries. Certainly I, as I have read through the Psalms over the last few months during this season of pandemic, have had my vision lifted beyond the wreck of the world and set on the glory of God and his king: David in the first instance, but ultimately the Lord Jesus.

Psalm 11 in particular struck me, and especially verse 3 where David asks “if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” I imagine that many of us over these last few months have felt like “the foundations are being destroyed.” Of course, that is not an experience limited to the pandemic—many of us endure dark times in our lives where we feel that the very things that have given our lives stability have been pulled out from under us.

False Perspective

And yet, when we look closer, it turns out that this understanding of what is happening in the world is not actually David’s but is that of his enemies.  At the beginning of Psalm 11, he is actually paraphrasing a conversation with an imaginary advisor (or perhaps it is a record of a real conversation) who tells him that there is nothing left for him to do but to flee. The righteous are defeated, there is nothing you can do, David:

“flee like a bird to your mountain, for behold, the wicked bend the bow; they have fitted their arrow to the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart” (vv1-2).

It is all over, this advisor tells him: “if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (v3). Yes, I know you are righteous David, but what you are facing is too tumultuous—just run and flee, there is nothing else you can do.  In response to this “helpful” advice, David does three things that I think are instructive for us.

1. Refuge in The Lord

First, even though “the foundations are being destroyed,” David continues to “take refuge” in the Lord (1).

"Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and plot"

Democrats Should Curb Their Enthusiasm for Mail-in Voting

Mail-in voting could contribute to a 2020 nightmare


By Rich Lowry
National Review Online

There’s a giant scheme afoot to disenfranchise voters in November — it’s called mail-in balloting.

Mail-in voting has, like many things in our politics, taken on the aspect of tribal warfare — if President Donald Trump is vociferously against it, Democrats must be vociferously for it, and vice versa.

Absentee voting is unquestionably less secure than in-person voting, but there’s no evidence of widespread fraud. Nor is there evidence that, at least prior to this campaign, mail-in voting has favored Democrats, as the president believes.

Trump shouldn’t be trying to delegitimize the process, a point that journalists have often made. Yet there hasn’t been enough focus on the other side of the equation: Does it make sense for Democrats to be fervent boosters of a process that may lead to a historic number of votes cast in a presidential election not counting? Stacey Abrams, call your office.

No matter what anyone says, there is inevitably going to be more mail-in voting in the fall, but in-person voting is superior. Only about one-hundredth of 1 percent of in-person votes are rejected, whereas rejection rates of 1 percent are common with mail-in votes, and some states exceeded that during their primaries this year.

This should be a five-alarm worry for Democrats. According to polling, almost twice as many Biden supporters as Trump supporters say they’ll vote by mail this year.

Dear Joe Biden

Please Accept Your Loss When It’s Time

Don't be a palooka, else this country may not survive another contested election.


Peter Van Buren
The American Conservative


Joe, I’m writing to ask a favor. Don’t be a bum, a palooka. If you lose the election, lose it graciously. Don’t drag a damaged America through a long fight designed to cripple the next Trump term, the way Democrats did in 2016. Those same voices are gonna want you to never concede, to “sue ’til it’s Blue” but you gotta do the right thing. Don’t be the guy to wreck America.

While two months can change a lot, it doesn’t look like November 3 is gonna be your night, kid. So far you got nothing to offer but you’re Not Trump, and because I know you play some poker, that’s stretching a pair of twos too far. Pennsylvania new voter registrations added 150,000 more Republicans than Democrats. Trump is beating you on Latino outreach, Joe, and owns the Cuban vote (as well the formidable Jewish vote) in crucial Florida. A pollster on our podcast believes the “shy Trump voter” effect is even stronger today than in 2016.

I’ve seen it myself. I know the way many Trader Joe Americans noodle around when they want to see if it’s OK to talk about Trump. They’ve done well in the economy. They’ve noticed the wars have tapered down. Once they open up, they say they’re afraid you’ll lose control to the progressives nipping at the party’s heels. When Elizabeth Warren childishly sneaks in a pro-BLM message during your convention, they don’t see the justice they titularly support, they see chaos. And the looting they roll their eyes over happening in New York is now in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Swing states, Joe, on literal fire under Democratic gubernatorial leadership.

I know you are counting on the left behind, out of work Americans without 401ks as your people, but Joe, they aren’t.

Reclaiming the BBC?

‘Woke Crowd’ Pushing ‘Illiberal Code’ Are ‘Vociferous Minority’

Farage on BBC Proms

Victoria Friedman
Breitbart London

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has hailed the BBC’s U-turn on banning the lyrics to “Rule, Britannia!” and “Land of Hope and Glory”, saying that the “woke crowd” that pushed for the words to be censored in the first place were a “vociferous minority”.

After suspected pressure from Black Lives Matter supporters with the broadcaster, it was rumoured that the BBC would cut the songs, and in August it was reported that it would be performing the favourite patriotic pieces at the Last Night of the Proms on September 12th, but only as instrumentals. 

Following a public outcry and campaigns from prominent figures such as actor Laurence Fox, BBC Proms announced that a choir would accompany the pieces after all. The statement came the day after Tim Davie took over as the BBC’s director-general, and vowed that the broadcaster would have to reform, suggesting that Davie had forced the decision.

In response, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the United Kingdom was “going through an orgy of national embarrassment” and that it was “crazy” to “censor” the country’s traditions and history. 
“It’s absolutely absurd, and I think we should speak out loud and proud for the UK and our history,” Johnson said, according to The Sun.

A New Book Hits the Hustings

"Searching for Charlie . . . "


We have been enjoying reading the recently published biography of Charles Upham VC & Bar.  We will endeavour to contribute some reflections and commentary on Searching for Charlie: In Pursuit of the Real Charles Upham VC & Bar, by Tom Scott [Takapuna: Upstart Press, 2020].

One question that immediately intrudes is "why bother".  Upham and the Second World War are "old hat" by now.  Maybe, but maybe not.  There has to be some reason or explanation for Scott's biography racing to the top of the charts almost within hours of its release. 

One of the characteristics of Charles was his self-identification as an "ordinary bloke".  Consequently when he was interacting with the "high and mighty" he tended to speak to the person as if they were as ordinary as he conceived himself to be.  In other words, he addressed people, regardless of who they were,  as if they were ordinary sheep farmers working in the back blocks of New Zealand. 

This egalitarian view of life displayed by Upham extended even to his view of the Queen. 

If her Majesty felt strongly about awarding Charlie a knighthood, she had numerous opportunities over the years to ask Charlie in person to accept one.  Every royal tour to New Zealand included Charlie in civic receptions or state banquets, and he and Queen Elizabeth were often seen together locked in animated conversation.  Pressed later about these exchanges, Charlie would only say admiringly, "Boy, she knows her horses, that girl." [Searching for Charlie, p.337]

We are pretty sure that Charlie Upham would not have intended any hint of disrespect for the Queen.  More to the point, his remarks about "that girl" would far more likely indicate a deep and abiding respect for the Queen.  It is, we expect, one reason why the overwhelming number of Kiwis would regard Upham to this day as both "an ordinary bloke" and, at the same time, someone to be held in deep respect.

Welcome Voices

Kanye West On ‘Black Genocide’

The  ‘Abortion Culture Teaches People That A Child Isn’t A Real Soul’

'The Birthday Party' is dealing with life and pro-life, because these are kids that are now gonna get a chance to have birthdays,' West said.

Madeline Osburn
The Federalist

On the latest episode of Nick Cannon’s podcast, “Cannon’s Class,” entertainer and now 2020 presidential candidate Kanye West discussed his recent breakdown over abortion at a South Carolina campaign event. Kanye said he believes, “[God] wants me to say this now,” adding that people decided to keep their unborn children after connecting to him.  If God didn’t want me to run on stage and say Beyonce had the best video, he wouldn’t have sat me in the front row,” West said jokingly, comparing the most recent backlash to his 2009 controversy with Taylor Swift at the VMAs.

In what is being billed as “Part 1” of their conversation, West and Cannon discussed a range of topics including abortion, his faith, his 2016 hospitalization, fashion design, and his political affiliation called “The Birthday Party.”

When Cannon brought up how media and fans blasted West for his tearful campaign speech in July, West responded that it shows the world is “sick.”

“A world that thinks you shouldn’t cry and be in repentance when you just … you know that is the world that is sick,” he said, before sharing “hard facts that deal with the black genocide.”

West reiterated his previous statements on the racist goals of Planned Parenthood and its founder Margaret Sanger.

Precious Petals Justly Rebuked

The Clap-track Brigade

Critics of Judith Collins and David Wong-Tung's social media should get a sense of humour

Barry Soper
NZ Herald

We are all running the risk of losing our sense of humour (well maybe not all, but some of us).

To describe posts on Facebook by Judith Collins' husband David Wong-Tung as 'aggressive misogyny', as some have done, is simply ridiculous.  The Nats are making good use of humour on the platform with what they are calling the National Party's Meme Working Group.

The fiercely private Wong-Tung has been re-posting some of them on his personal Facebook site, like the one where they have tinted the Prime Minister's face green, making her look like the Marvel comic character The Incredible Hulk, followed by one calling her The Incredible Sulk with a caption saying: "Don't make me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry."

That of course was a play on her telling us she was indeed uncharacteristically angry over a call-out by the Government's Covid team telling everyone in South and West Auckland to have a Covid test, regardless of whether they had symptoms.  If you had been waiting in your car for several hours waiting for a test you could be forgiven to being angry - particularly when you discovered the message should never have been sent.

Collins handled her husband of more than 40 years' Facebook posts the way they should have been handled saying she's never been able to get him to do anything she tells him to do.

Russian Duplicity

Sickening Conduct

Germany has confirmed that Alexei Navalny has been poisoned by a Soviet-era "nerve agent."  Navalny, of course, is (or was) one of Vlad's strongest critics. 

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the same type of Soviet-era nerve agent that British authorities identified in a 2018 attack on a former Russian spy, the German government said Wednesday.

The findings – which experts say point strongly to Russian state involvement – are likely to increase tensions between Russia and the West. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the poisoning on Navalny attempted murder and said it was meant to silence one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics.  [Stuff, September 3, 2020]

It's well past time that the law-abiding international community ruled that Vlad's post-Soviet Russia is in actual fact a rogue state.  It will be interesting to see just how far Angela Merkel will take the issue.  Since Germany has signed up to import Russian natural gas on a grand scale our expectations of something meaningful in the way of sanctions against Vlad remain low. 

We expect that Angela will take a couple of disprins and it will be "business as usual" before lunchtime. 

Called Home

Dr Joe Williams Dies

Covid 19 Coronavirus: NZ's 24th death

Emma Russell
NZ Herald

[Some years back our extended family was confronted with a near-new born unable to feed well.  We received advice and diagnoses from several doctors and health experts.  Nothing worked.  A friend who worked in the medical area took us aside and quietly suggested that we might seek a consultation with a doctor, whom she knew, who specialised in such cases.  After securing an appointment, the doctor  recommended a strict, particular diet for the new-born's mother.  The change and effect upon our new born was virtually palpable before our eyes.  That doctor was Dr Joe Williams. Ever since that day, we have held him in the highest regard.  Our family owes him a great deal.  Editor.]

Dr Joe Williams, former Prime Minister of the Cook Islands and a much-respected GP, has died after contracting Covid-19 in Auckland.  The widely-respected medical professional died in Auckland City Hospital last night.  He becomes the 24th person in New Zealand to die from Covid-19 and the second in less than 24 hours related to the current Auckland cluster.

The Ministry of Health said Williams was a "widely regarded member of health services in both New Zealand and the Cook Islands".

Director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said Williams was a well-known politician, physician and author.  "Dr Williams was seen as a leading figure in the Cook Islands medical community and he will be sadly missed," he said.  Williams was admitted to Auckland City Hospital on August 13.  "Our thoughts are with his family and community at this time of loss and grief.

Williams, 82, was admitted to hospital after he became sick when it is thought he might have come in close contact to someone connected to the initial Auckland cluster. His Mt Wellington practice is not far from the Americold coolstore.  Williams served as the Cook Islands Prime Minister for four months in 1999. He earlier served as the country's Health Minister.

Grace Community Church Continues The Struggle

MacArthur Dodges Legal Action From Government for a Fourth Time

Jesse T. Jackson


On Monday August 24, 2020, Los Angeles County returned to the courts for a fourth time in an attempt to shut down Grace Community Church’s indoor worship services. The county’s temporary restraining order was denied again.

”This was their fourth unsuccessful attempt to obtain a court order prohibiting indoor worship services at Grace Community Church. We look forward to fully vindicating our clients’ constitutionally protected rights in subsequent proceedings for this important case,”  Special Counsel Paul Jonna said.

On Tuesday August 25, 2020 Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff, of the California Superior Court, denied the County of Los Angeles their application for a temporary restraining order against Grace Community Church and John MacArthur.

“We are very grateful to Judge Beckloff for his reasoned opinion and for taking great care to review this very important matter,” a thankful MacArthur said. “As I said in my declaration to the court, we see this action against us as an illegitimate misuse of power. It should shock the conscience of every Christian that churches are coming under assault from our own government simply for holding church. Church is essential.”

Attorney Jenna Ellis also commented after the judge’s decision on Tuesday saying, “This should signal to LA County that California courts will not quickly or easily trample the constitutionally protected rights of churches.

The Envy of the Mob

What Is the Violence in American Cities All About?

The point of the mob is to destroy what it cannot create.

Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online


It is hard to tell what the current revolutionary violence in our major cities is all about.

So far, hundreds of police have been injured, dozens of people have been killed, and we have seen billions of dollars in property and collateral damage.  Ostensibly, many of the summer demonstrations were in protest over the gruesome detention and death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody on May 25.

Yet three months later, few of those trying to burn down a Portland police precinct — with police barricaded inside — or looting the high-end boutiques of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, or indiscriminately beating up innocent pedestrians, appear to be driven by Floyd’s death.

Apologists argue that the perfect-storm furor of June, July, and August was the dividend of a collective six-month fear over the COVID-19 pandemic that has, as of this writing, killed nearly 180,000 Americans.   The unprecedented national quarantine and the sudden, self-generated recession of a once-booming economy certainly added to the tensions.

Millions of youths were sequestered in their apartments and basements, unemployed, without school, and worried over their career prospects. Many simply wanted to vent their rage at the world and almost everything in it.

It's Much Worse Than You First Think

Abortion As A ‘Horror Show’

The Washington Post Just Proved Abby Johnson’s Point 


Madeline Osburn
The Federalist

After former Planned Parenthood employee Abby Johnson spoke the truth about the abortion industry at the Republican National Convention Tuesday night, corporate media immediately went into attack mode, setting out to poke holes in her speech, all while affirming the message Johnson intended to send: The only way to defend abortion is to deny it.

The story Johnson shared on the RNC stage was one of denial, and how she ignored the reality of abortion until she witnessed it for herself. Only after seeing what violence in the womb really looks like, even smells like, Johnson said, did she realize what she had been a part of.

“For most people who consider themselves pro-life, abortion is abstract. They can’t conceive of the barbarity,” Johnson said. “For me, abortion is real. I know what it sounds like, what it smells like. I’ve been the perpetrator … to these babies … to these women.”

The next day, Washington Post Style Columnist Monica Hesse set out to disprove Johnson’s claims, only to illustrate them perfectly. “As a reporter covering women’s health care, I’ve witnessed at least 20. My friends have had them,” Hesse writes, laying out her abortion bona fides. She says Johnson had to use “dramatic terms” to tell her story, and could only “describe abortion as a horror show because the alternative would have been too banal to achieve the effect she desired.”

If Johnson’s description of an abortion procedure seemed “dramatic” or akin to a “horror show,” that’s because that’s what an abortion is. The reality is, abortion is a violent act. It ends in the loss of life. To describe it as “banal,” as Hesse does, is more of an exaggeration or a misrepresentation than any of the rhetoric Johnson used.

Hesse continues:

As for one of her other seemingly horrifying claims, that doctors piece together fetal remains to make sure the abortion is complete — that’s true. But it’s not some ghoulish jigsaw puzzle done on a lark. It’s because an incomplete abortion could be dangerous to a patient’s health, and abortion doctors care about women’s lives.

Johnson didn’t have to describe a routine part of the abortion procedure as a “ghoulish jigsaw puzzle,” to conjure up that image in mind of her audience. Hesse came up with that image herself after hearing Johnson laying out the facts. Johnson was simply describing what Planned Parenthood locations call “Products of Conception” rooms, “where infant corpses are pieced back together to ensure no extra body parts remain in the mothers.” That may be a horrifying statement to many, but it’s not a dramatization of what happens during an abortion. It’s reality, as Hesse even admits herself.

Spiralling Into the Abyss

Living The Lie

The Worst Part About Fake ‘Anti-Racism’ Is That It Forces Us To Live Lies

America under the sway of the Black Lives Matter movement is reminding me of life in the Soviet Union: One's entire existence is premised on something believed to be untrue.

Katya Sedgwick
The Federalist

The worst thing about socialism is not empty grocery stores or even the Gulags. The worst thing is harder to represent visually or to pinpoint, but it’s inescapable, and its damage extends for generations. The worst thing about socialism is what being forced to live a lie does to one’s psyche. Save for the few true believers whose numbers dwindle as time passes, virtually everyone experiences this mental toll.

By “living a lie,” I don’t mean minor shows of pleasantry or even bowing to social pressures. I mean having one’s entire existence premised on something widely, by an unspoken agreement, believed to be untrue.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but the pillar of the State.” Solzhenitsyn recognized that the violence of the state depends upon the cowardly culture of lies, on ordinary people trying to stake out space to live while complying with the dictates of the regime.

I Was Made to Live a Lie in the Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union, that meant in everyday life that preschool-age kids were forced to recite verses praising the Bolshevik Revolution and that their parents were diverted from work to march in parades. Political meetings convened at schools and workspaces on a regular basis. Sometimes commissars vanished from pictures. Day after day, television delivered news of record harvests or some exciting technological innovation, but these events always took place somewhere far away and didn’t involve anyone we knew.

One didn’t have to dig very deep to discover that under the smooth veneer of uniformity was a vast, stormy sea of despair and resentment.

Life and Death Locked Up in a Cell

For Whoever Observes the Whole Law, But . . . 

We have never met Brenton Tarrant, nor are we likely to do so.  He is the first to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in New Zealand--that is, Tarrant must literally spend the rest of his natural life in this world locked up in a cell.  His egregious acts of mass murder necessarily have attracted the most severe penalty "on offer" in the present judicial system of New Zealand, as it were. 

Christians will be thinking long and hard about all of this.  But Christians will be thinking differently from atheists, agnostics, and Unbelievers of all sorts and stripes.  They will also have a distinct view from Islamic folk. 

Christians will be conscious of the fact that Brenton Tarrant has been spared the most extreme form of judicial punishment available in this life: that is, the death penalty.  Secondly, Mr Tarrant may well live another sixty or seventy years in his cell.  That existence might lead to his atonement and forgiveness--but only if Tarrant repents of his horrendous sins and turns to Christ, believing in His mercy and cleansing. 

Thirdly, Christians will be acutely aware that Tarrant's evil is replicated to some degree or other in the lives and attitudes of every Christian that has ever lived, or ever will live.  We look at him and see ourselves.  There have been times when we have lost control of our tempers and sentiments to the extent of wishing evil upon others.  The wishing of evil upon others makes us guilty of that every act itself.  So, as we consider Mr Tarrant, we end up being condemned with him because to some extent we share his evil. 

Doubtless there are many who would find such thoughts to be offensive.  "How dare you say that I am like that evil man" would be the natural response.  Well, Christians are commanded to measure themselves by standing alongside Christ Himself, not alongside Mr Tarrant.  Unless we are like Christ in all regards, we are as doomed as Tarrant is.  "For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it" [James 2:10].

May God have mercy upon us all.

Welcome News In our In-Box

Family First WINS Appeal Against Deregistration  


A Win For Freedom Of Speech & Belief In NZ

Positive news from Family First

Family First NZ has won their appeal in the Wellington Court of Appeal against deregistration from the Charities Register.

This decision is a win for the freedom of speech and belief in New Zealand. The attempt by the Charities Board to deregister Family First would have been a watershed, not just for Family First, but for the whole country.

In the High Court in Wellington in 2018, the court judgment held that Family First’s “…core purpose of promoting the traditional family unit cannot be shown to be in the public benefit in the charitable sense under the Act.” Family First did not accept the High Court’s analysis or its conclusions and appealed to the Court of Appeal.

Family First appealed this decision because of the threat it placed on us and other charities and our collective freedom to speak on behalf of our supporters in a civil society.

An overly restrictive or narrow view of what is in the public benefit is likely to be of concern to all charities, many of which have a certain emphasis or point of view. The importance of freedom of expression and open debate in a civil society are ideals every New Zealander should be defending.

JUDGMENT OF THE COURT 

A The appeal is allowed. 

B The decision of the Charities Registration Board dated 21 August 2017 to remove Family First New Zealand from the Charities Register is set aside.

C There is a declaration that Family First New Zealand qualifies for registration under the Charities Act 2005.

THANK YOU!!

We take this opportunity to say thank you to the thousands of you who have contributed to our Legal Fighting Fund. It has been a very expensive fight - and it may not be over, depending on whether the charities Board decide to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

But we are so grateful for the financial support and the messages of encouragement in this fight which began way back in 2013 during the same-sex marriage debate! Thank you.

Thank you for standing with us as we stand for families in New Zealand.

Kind regards.

Bob McCoskrie
National Director

"At Last The PM Has Said Something . . . "

Boris Johnson Bashes the BBC

Stop This ‘Cringing Embarrassment About Our History’

Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart London

Prime Minister Boris Johnson lashed out at the BBC over its decision to remove the lyrics of Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory from its broadcast of the Last Night of the Proms, calling for an end to the constant “self-recrimination and wetness”.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, the Prime Minister said that “they (presumably his political advisors) are trying to restrain me from saying this, but if it is correct — which I can’t really believe that it is -- that the BBC is saying that they will not sing the words of Land Of Hope And Glory or Rule, Britannia! as they traditionally do at the end of The Last Night of The Proms.”

“I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, and about our culture, and we stopped this general bought of self-recrimination and wetness,” Johnson proclaimed.  “I wanted to get that off my chest,” the PM added.

On Monday night, the BBC announced that it would indeed be scrapping the lyrics of the patriotic songs in its Last Night broadcast, after pressure from Black Lives Matter supporters, including from the 35-year-old Ukrainian-Finnish conductor of this year’s ceremonies, Dalia Stasevska, who reportedly is a “big supporter of Black Lives Matter”.

The statement from Mr Johnson was met with glib praise from the leader of the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage, who wrote on social media: “Hooray, at last, the PM has said something.”

The Same Three-fold Solution

In Which Idaho Starts to Revert to Factory Settings

Douglas Wilson
Blog & Mablog

Introduction

There are some early developing signs that Idaho has had quite enough, thanks.

When news of the pandemic first set in, nobody quite knew what was going on. There was a stir and a bother, and different governors started to order lock downs. Idaho came late to that move, thus missing her real opportunity to shine like South Dakota. So unfortunately, we locked down as well.

In the meantime, blue state governors responded to the crisis with real enthusiasm. If bossing people around is in your DNA, then what could be better than a crisis which provides you with the cover to boss people around like it was a good thing?

But Idaho, like a number of other reluctant red states, went into lock down only to prevent the cool kids from calling them names, and (of course) to not miss the pots of FEDERAL MONEY that would soon be handed around in the spirit of reckless bonhomie.

Political Re-calibrations

I Was Wrong About Trump 

He Didn’t Destroy the GOP, He Saved It

At the RNC four years ago, I thought Trump couldn’t win the White House and that his nomination would destroy the Republican Party. I was wrong.

John Daniel Davidson
The Federalist

When the Republican Party formally nominated Donald Trump four years ago at the national convention in Cleveland, I thought the GOP was making huge mistake. It seemed Trump would certainly lose in November, and that every Republican officeholder who climbed aboard the Trump train that summer would be purged from whatever came after his inevitable defeat. It would be the end of the GOP as we knew it.

I was wrong about all of that—and in hindsight, I’m glad I was wrong.

Like a lot of observers at the time, I thought Trump had no real policy agenda to define his campaign beyond a vague pro-America sentiment and a withering disdain for the political establishments of both major parties. I thought his political inexperience was a liability, that his penchant for insulting his opponents would turn voters off, and that the GOP had missed an opportunity to defeat Hillary Clinton by nominating someone else—anyone, really, besides Trump.

But it turned out Trump was the best candidate to beat Clinton because Clinton embodied nearly everything voters had come to hate about America’s political class: the falsity, the naked hypocrisy, the barely disguised disdain for ordinary people.

When Money Talks Loudly

Green Party Contortions

The headline said it all: "Greens caught bending party policy to grant $11.7m to private school in Taranaki".  At least that's what newspaper Stuff wanted us to understand.  

The NZ Greens are normally casting their political "support net" well left of centre. When it comes to education that translates into being strongly anti-private schools and strong proponents of  a government run education and schooling system. 

But not in this case.  One of the Green's leaders has been "caught bending party policy".  He has supported government funding of a private school. 

The Green Party has been caught bending its own party policy after a private school in Taranaki was given $11.7 million to fund an expansion programme.

The money comes from the Government’s $3 billion shovel-ready projects fund, and was announced in a press release from Greens co-leader James Shaw who said the grant to Green School New Zealand would help the school expand its roll from 120 students to 250, creating 200 jobs.  “Securing over 200 jobs will help direct more money into the parts of the economy where most people earn their livelihood. These are the parts of the economy that are sustained when public investment is directed at getting people into work and earning money that they then spend in their local communities,” Shaw said.

“The support we are providing will help Green School to meet growing demand from parents all over New Zealand, and the rest of the world, wanting to enrol their children. This will mean more families can take the opportunity to put down roots in Taranaki and contribute to the future growth of the region,” he said. 

OK.  So maybe this strange Green support can be justified by the Greens because it will facilitate work.  All those jobs!  Also, the name of the school will be "Green School".  Presumably this moniker is not because some bloke called Green has donated $11.7 million to fund the school.  Of course not.  The Greens want a school where Greenist ideology will be imparted to aspiring young Greenists. 

Hold on.  It turns out that the pupils of Green School--a private school--will be off shore students.  It will also take NZ students.  But only the richest. 

But Green School New Zealand is a private school which charges up to $24,000 a year for New Zealand students and $43,000 a year for international students.

Green Party policy is opposed to state funding being given to private schools, and wants it to be gradually phased out.  ‘Public funding for private schools should be phased out and transferred to public schools,” says the party’s current education policy.

It seems that Green Party ideology and policy just got run over by one of its leaders.  There's a word for that . . . hypocrisy.

"As Deep and Clammy As The Grave"

Were Holiday-Wrecking Quarantines Worth It? 

The Government Haven't a Clue!

Peter Hitchens
The Mail On Sunday

As the [UK] Government wrecks another few thousand holidays with sudden quarantine, you might assume that it takes this sort of thing seriously, and keeps close track of it.

After all, you don’t force people to abandon holidays they have saved up for all year, and stampede them into dashing for the nearest port or airport, or expect them to spend money they haven’t got on cruelly inflated ticket prices so they can meet a 4am deadline, just on a whim, do you?

You don’t lightly demand that, if they miss that deadline, they remain under house arrest for 14 days, unable to go to work, do you?  Surely you do those things because you genuinely believe that there is a grave danger if people remain in the affected countries, which must be severely contained? I thought so too. But is it so?

When Doing Grievous Harm Becomes the Norm

The Factory of "Gender Change"

The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in the UK is increasingly becoming a place of controversy.  A long article has appeared in Spiked  detailing the arguments and counter arguments that are racking the GIDS.  It is worth a read.

Here are some striking paragraphs:

Unsurprisingly, GIDS’ activity at the Tavistock has been subject to increasing public attention, and, more recently, scrutiny. In 2018, an internal report, by then staff governor Dr David Bell, effectively accused GIDS of fast-tracking children and adolescents for gender transition. Featuring damning quotes from whistle-blowing clinicians and unhappy staff members, it reinforced the growing sense that GIDS has been a little too eager to encourage young people to transition and potentially undergo life-changing medical treatment. Indeed, since 2017, over 35 clinicians have quit GIDS because they are worried about ‘overdiagnoses’ of gender dysphoria. Sonia Appleby, who works at GIDS as its Named Professional for Safeguarding Children, is even bringing a case against the Tavistock on the grounds that it is failing in its duty to safeguard children, by encouraging staff not to report any child safety concerns to her. . . . 

Nevertheless, Marcus and Susan insist that hormone therapy and other treatments should be a last resort, and even then only in extraordinary cases. They should be something that takes place after all other avenues of therapy and mental-health treatment have been explored. But too many at the Tavistock, Marcus says, are simply ‘not interested in the downside of treatment’. ‘There’s all this sort of pressure to say, “Well, it’s not really a medical decision – is it any different from, you know, having plastic surgery?”‘

Yet it is very different from having your nose done or your ears pinned back. Hormone therapy, for instance, is a serious, life-altering treatment. ‘It should try to not be at all for children’, says Susan, citing the potential for future ‘sterility or infertility’. She points out how absurd it is that we are encouraging some young people to take a decision that could change their lives forever. ‘There’s a reason we don’t let children marry or have tattoos. And somehow we’ve unrolled this treatment!’ . . . . 

This problem has come to head in the case of Keira Bell. Bell underwent surgery and medication to transition to male during her teen years, and is now acting as a claimant, alongside Mother A, in a legal case being brought against the Tavistock, for which Susan is a witness. Bell claims she was given poor care. She alleges that instead of challenging her demands to transition, and taking into consideration her poor mental health at the time, doctors and nurses at the Tavistock allowed her to undergo life-altering treatment which she now regrets. ‘I was allowed to run with this idea that I had, almost like a fantasy, as a teenager’, Bell told the BBC, ‘and it has affected me in the long run as an adult’. When asked about the importance of listening to, and not questioning, children who are claiming to want to change genders, Bell told a BBC reporter ‘it’s up to institutions like the Tavistock to step in and make children reconsider what they’re saying’. . . . 

 Yet at the same time, it is not enough to ask questions of GIDS, or trans-activist charities like Mermaids. We need to ask ourselves searching questions, too. After all, what has happened to our society that means thousands of children are encouraged to feel estranged from their own bodies? Why is it that some feel so averse that they want to change those bodies? And what does it say about us as adults that instead of questioning these children’s demands we are all too willing to give in to them?

Extraordinary To Be Sure

A Most Remarkable Soldier

We were delighted to receive a special birthday gift recently.  It was a large book.  The opportunity to sit down and read a worthy volume during mid-winter was welcome.  The author is Tom Scott.  The volume's title is Searching for Charlie: In Pursuit of the Real Charles Upham VC & Bar (Takapuna: Upstart Press, 2020).

As most of our readers will be aware, Upham was a remarkable man.  To win a VC (Victoria Cross) is rare enough.  To win two is pretty much unheard of.  Some historians have even reckoned that Upham's exploits were worth three, if not four VC's. 

But there is something even more remarkable.  Many years later, at his death there were four death notices published for Charlie Upham in New Zealand papers.  There were the usual kind--death notices and appreciations from family and from his colleagues.  There was also a third from the Greek community, extending their deepest sympathy. 

But there was one more obituary.  It read:

UPHAM, Charles Hazlitt (VC and Bar)
One of the bravest and one of the best soldiers--in
deep respect.  Sympathy for family and friends  on behalf
of the Association of former Afrika Korps, Karl Heniz
Boettger (Col. Ret'd), Hamburg. Germany.

Tom Scott writes:

Whoa! The Germans put a death notice in a New Zealand newspaper saluting a former foe?  How extraordinary is that? [Tom Scott, Searching for Charlie, p. 26.]

Indeed. 

US Democrats Wedded to Abortion

Three Reasons the Democratic Convention Downplayed Abortion

. . . And Covered It Up

JOHN McCormack
National Review Online


Transport yourself back in time to May 2019 and imagine you had been told that the 2020 Democratic National Convention would take a muted approach to the issue of abortion. This prediction would have been shocking.

The 2012 Democratic convention, amid the “war on women” and the travails of Sandra Fluke, was a rip-roaring abortion jamboree.

The 2016 Democratic convention somehow managed to be an even more pro-abortion extravaganza: The party platform called explicitly, for the first time, to provide unlimited taxpayer-funding of abortion for Medicaid recipients, a plank one Democratic senator called “crazy.” The president of Planned Parenthood was given an 8:00 p.m. speaking slot. The leader of NARAL spoke onstage about the time she aborted her first child, not because of any medical issue but because it was an inconvenient time to have a child, and the crowd cheered.

In May 2019, several states across the South had just passed laws that would ban abortion when a baby’s heartbeat is detectable early in pregnancy (if the federal courts allowed states to govern themselves on this issue). Democratic activists were panicked and outraged. One would have reasonably thought the 2020 Democratic convention would have put the “war on women” front and center.

But that didn’t happen. There were some brief mentions of “codifying Roe v. Wade” and “reproductive justice” scattered throughout the four nights of speeches — but nothing rhetorically close to the 2012 or 2016 DNC in terms of its emphasis on abortion.

There are at least three reasons for that.

Hysterical Foxes Running the Hen House

From Climate Change to Coronavirus 

We Are All Victims of Deep State Hysteria

James Delingpole
Breitbart London

If you want to know why the world is in such a mess, don’t blame the feckless politicians, blame the paranoid, credulous, insidiously leftist Deep State.

This certainly seems to be true where the United Kingdom is concerned, as I’ve learned from two damning pieces — one by an anonymous Civil Service insider at Lockdown Sceptics; the other one in The Critic, titled ‘The BLM Takeover of Whitehall.’  Both are simultaneously depressing and illuminating. No matter how useless Boris Johnson and his ministers are, you realise, their doctrinaire leftist Civil Servants are both far more inept and far more dangerous.

Here’s a flavour of the Black Lives Matter article: 

 But just like U.S. federal administrators in Washington (according to City Journal), the mandarins in Whitehall have become partisans of “Critical Race Theory” and its radical tenets about “systemic racism”, “white privilege”, and “white fragility”. They have adopted this left-wing ideology, promoted it, and are now institutionalising it throughout the Civil Service, root and branch, using new internal organisations such as “Project Race” and the “Race Ambassadors Network”. Your taxes have paid for these views: it’s about time you saw in the press what you were getting for your money.

And here is what for me is the killer paragraph by the Covid Civil Servant writing at Lockdown Sceptics.

The Giant Chasm

Unprofessional

It has long been hinted that New Zealand's Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern was a sandwich short of a picnic.  She talks a big game.  She has talked up all the wonderful things her administration was doing when it came to controlling the border.  Sadly, neither she nor her colleagues could hide forever the failures.  

Here is an excerpt from Stuff.

The Revelations About the Border Botch-ups

Given the importance of the borders, and making sure that those coming into the country don’t cause community transmission, the Government has been making promises for the last two months that every worker employed in relation to the border would be routinely tested. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Health, and the Director-General of Health have continued to reassure the public that such testing was being carried out.

The media have pressured the Government over these promises, with many journalists attempting to verify that routine testing was in fact taking place. Newshub’s Michael Morrah then broke the news ten days ago, that the system wasn’t working at all.  (Emphasis, ours.)

This news has been met with exasperation. The Herald’s Derek Cheng, who had been asking the government for details of the testing for three weeks without reply, said the revelation went against what the Government had been saying was necessary and being done. He pointed out that “A quick glance at Melbourne is all you need to see what’s at stake here.”

Elaborating further, Cheng explained that the lack of testing is an ongoing problem that the Government should have learnt from already. He points to controversies in June when “people staying in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities were meant to be tested on day three and on day 12 of their stay. It wasn’t happening, we later learned, because the ministry was still putting it in place. Daily health checks were also not done properly on two Covid-infected sisters, one of whom had symptoms”. He asks: “why is there – still – a giant chasm between what the Government says is happening and what the ministry is doing?”

Sex Education in NZ Government Schools

Sexuality in NZ Government Schools

Family First has an excellent summary of the issues involved in the Government's promotion of sexual intercourse and sexual practises in general throughout the NZ State School system. 

Readers can access Family First's research at Sexuality Education in NZ.

Silly Man

John Kerry's Clueless Claims

Iran Deal Would Have ‘Eliminated The Threat Of An Iran With A Nuclear Weapon’

Paulina Enck
CBN News

Last night in his address at the Democratic National Convention, John Kerry claimed that he “eliminated the threat of an Iran with a nuclear weapon” during the Obama administration. What was this deal Kerry made that would have prevented Iran from developing a nuclear weapon? Because it certainly couldn’t be the Iran deal.

The Obama administration’s nuclear deal, which Kerry presented as the crowning achievement of both his tenure as secretary of state and recent foreign policy as a whole, was an impotent deal that only attained the appearance of preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. It also sent piles of U.S. taxpayer cash to bribe and pay off a terrorist-sponsoring state.

There was another small problem with the deal: It included no way of ensuring whether Iran was keeping their end of the bargain. Iran refused to allow its military locations to be inspected for nuclear activity, leaving the United States no recourse for ensuring their compliance. It may as well have relied on the honor system — again, among terrorists with a history of lies, murder, and double-dealing.

President Obama didn’t leave the White House with the fear of a nuclear Iran behind us. Far from it. Kerry weakened our position abroad immensely with a futile deal from which Americans should be glad President Trump freed us.

Paulina Enck is an intern at the Federalist and current student at Georgetown University in the School of Foreign Service. Follow her on Twitter at @itspaulinaenck

Reversing the Divine Sentence Upon Us All

Meditation From Hosea

In the second chapter of Hosea we read:

And I will sow her for myself in the land.  And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, "You are my people" and he shall say, "You are my God."  [Hosea 2:23]

E. B. Pusey writes:

So God's mercies again overflow His threatenings.  He had threatened to Israel, that he (Israel) would be unpitied, and no more His people.  In reversing His sentence, He embraces in the arms of His mercy all who were not His people, and says of them all, that they should be my people and beloved.  At one and the same time, was Israel to be thus multiplied, and pity was to be shown to those not pitied, and those who were not God's people were to become His people.

At one and the same time were those promises fulfilled in Christ; the one through the other; Israel was not multiplied by itself, but through the bringing-in of the Gentiles.  Nor was Israel alone, or chiefly, brought into a new relation with God.  The same words promised the same mercy to both Jew and Gentile, that all should be one in Christ, all one Jezreel, one Spouse to Himself, one Israel of God, one Beloved; and that all, with one voice of jubilee should cry to Him, "my Lord and my God."

. . . . when God thus anew called them His people, they by His grace would obey His call, and surrender themselves wholly to Him.  For to say "my God" is to own an exclusive relation to God alone.  It is to say, my Beginning and my End, my Hope and My Salvation, my Whole and only God in Whom Alone I will hope, Whom Alone I will fear, love, worship, trust in, obey and serve, with all my heart, mind, soul and strength; by God and my All."  [The Minor Prophets: A Commentary.  Volume 1: p.41.]

Joe Biden and the Brownshirts

Joe Biden’s ‘Four Crises’ Deliberately Ignore Rising Crime and Left-Wing Riots

John Nolte
Breitbart News

A startling rise in violent crime and months of left-wing riots are not included on Joe Biden’s list of presidential priorities.

On Thursday night, Biden gave his speech accepting the Democrat nomination for president. The address clearly laid out his priorities, what he called the “four historic crises.” 

And now history has delivered us to one of the most difficult moments America has ever faced. Four historic crises. All at the same time. A perfect storm. The worst pandemic in over 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The most compelling call for racial justice since the 60’s. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change. So, the question for us is simple: Are we ready? I believe we are.

There’s no way around the fact that like the rest of the Democrat party and the corporate media propaganda machine, Biden has decided to pretend months of rioting and an explosion of violent crime just isn’t happening.

We all know why this makes the left uncomfortable. The riots and violent crime explosion are all happening in Democrat-run cities. What’s more, the riots are almost exclusively led by the Democrats’ Brownshirts, the left-wing terrorists in Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

The fact Biden deliberately ignored two legitimate crises proves the most crucial part of his speech, his biggest promise, a lie…  “But while I will be a Democratic candidate,” Biden said, “I will be an American president. I will work as hard for those who didn’t support me as I will for those who did.”

“That’s the job of a president,” he added. “To represent all of us, not just our base or our party. This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment.”

How can Biden be America’s president?

Kamala Harris, The Persecutor

Planned Parenthood Whistleblower Still Trapped In Kamala Harris’s Persecution


Madeline Osburn
The Federalist

Sen. Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president Wednesday night, exactly three weeks after journalist and pro-life activist David Daleiden appeared in a San Francisco Superior Court, once again fighting the criminal charges Harris brought against him at the behest of her political donors four years prior. As Harris joins a campaign fighting for the “soul of our nation,” Daleiden continues a years-long battle for countless unborn souls and the First Amendment, both of which Harris has a record of fighting against.

In March 2016, as the California attorney general, Harris met with six Planned Parenthood officials in her Los Angeles office. Email records between Harris’s office and Planned Parenthood officials show the two were corresponding on orchestrating public responses, filing police reports, and even drafting legislation targeting Daleiden for his undercover videos exposing the abortion giant’s illegal practices.

Two of the six executives in that meeting went on to be used as witnesses in Harris’s criminal investigation. Harris has been a staunch abortion advocate and received tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions from Planned Parenthood-affiliated entities over the course of her political career.

The Ascendance of Wall-Street Democrats

Democrat Party Captured by Self-Serving Elites

Kamala Harris's Nod Tells Blue-Collar Workers Democrats Are Done With Them

Harris is now the voice of a new, aloof, wealthier liberalism that seeks only to manage the decline of America’s economic might.

Kyle Sammin
The Federalist

In the presidential election of 2016, voters in each of the major parties were dissatisfied with their faction’s presidential nominee in such large numbers that we witnessed a massive shift in the two-party system. The nomination of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris means the 2020 election will further entrench those changes. Indeed, Biden’s nomination is less consequential: in his dotage, he is merely a screen onto which every faction of the Democratic Party may project its vision.

In choosing Harris as his running mate, however, Biden signals that the ascendance of Wall Street Democrats over working-class factions is nearly complete. A candidate beloved of Hollywood and Big Business, Harris puts a rainbow flag over a government boot and calls it progress. Her nomination as president-in-waiting means the future of the Democratic Party will be hashed out in corporate boardrooms, not church basements and union halls.

Shifting Coalitions

The Republican Party began with a good claim on the workingman’s loyalties. Fighting for free labor and high tariffs meant that the GOP of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries stood for American jobs. The Great Depression changed that perception. America’s version of that tragic era began with a Republican in the White House and meant that a Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt, could rhetorically unite his party as the new savior of working Americans.

We can disagree on which of his party’s policies actually helped working people — some clearly did, others absolutely did not — but his message was on point. In the popular mind, Democrats became the friend of the farmer, the laborer, and the little man, while Republicans were portrayed as the party of Manhattan boardrooms and Connecticut country clubs. Fair or not, this perception stuck for many years.

Since that time, pieces of FDR’s big coalition have fallen away.

Something's Not Right

Goodbye — Sort of — to Germany?

Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online


Why should America anchor Germany's defense? It cuts deals with Russia, has never met its NATO commitment, and is the most anti-American nation in Europe.

President Trump recently ordered a 12,000-troop reduction in American military personnel stationed in Germany. That leaves about 24,000 American soldiers still in the country.  A little more than half of the troops being withdrawn will return home. The rest will be redeployed to other NATO member nations, such as Belgium, Italy, and perhaps Baltic and Eastern European countries.

German chancellor Angela Merkel is said to be furious. She claims that the redeployments will “weaken the [NATO] alliance.” German commercial interests chimed in that the troop withdrawals will hurt their decades-old businesses serving U.S. bases.  Perhaps, but Merkel surely cannot be surprised. Six years ago, all NATO members pledged to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Yet only eight of 29 so far have kept their word.

Germany spends only about 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense. As NATO’s largest, wealthiest, and most powerful European member, it sets the example for the rest of alliance.  Merkel’s reneging on her 2014 pledge helps explain why less wealthy and influential NATO members also see no reason to meet their obligations.

Germany surely knows that 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the World War II, and the 29th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall — the symbolic end of the Cold War.  Will there be any point in the future when Europe is confident enough to be a full defense partner with the U.S. rather than an eight-decade client?

NATO, of course, still provides a common European defense, but only by habitually relying inordinately on U.S. military contributions.

Rampaging Tyranny

Democratic LGBTQ Platform Leaves No Room for Religious Liberty

Heather Sells
CBN News

This week Democrats are hashing out their party's platform and that includes where it stands on LGBTQ issues. For many people of faith, there's significant concern that the platform will crush religious freedom.

Although Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has a deep Catholic faith and history that he regularly touts to potential voters, he has also pledged to make the Equality Act his top legislative priority.   He told the powerful LGBTQ lobbying organization, the Human Rights Campaign, last year "I promise you that's the first thing I'll ask that will be done."

Dr. Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptists' Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, says it fails to uphold human dignity.  Before the House passed the bill in 2019 Moore explained, "While the proposed intention of H.R. 5 is to protect individuals who identify as LGBT, the bill would instead steamroll the consciences of millions of people."

Dr. Ed Stetzer, the executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, says the bill threatens social service and civic institutions including faith-based higher education.  "The Equality Act would in essence say that our beliefs are unacceptable and that we must change," he said.

Vlad's Tyrannical Corruption Likely Up On Stage Again

Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny Allegedly Poisoned

John Hayward
Breitbart News

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been frequently arrested and legally harassed for his unrelenting criticism of President Vladimir Putin, became seriously ill while flying from Siberia to moscow on Thursday and was placed on a ventilator. Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh claimed he has been poisoned.

“We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed into the tea. It was the only thing that he drank in the morning. Doctors say the toxin was absorbed faster through the hot liquid,” Yarmysh said via Twitter.  The Associated Press quoted Yarmysh, who was on the plane with Navalny, saying he began to sweat profusely and asked her to keep talking to him so he could “focus on the sound of a voice.” She said he passed out while using the restroom and has not regained consciousness since.

“Looks like Putin is doing really badly – was handed some data on protest sentiment growing explosively – if he made the decision to poison Navalny,” Navalny ally Vladimir Milov said when news of his condition broke.

CNN described video footage taken aboard the plane that appeared to show 44-year-old Navalny groaning in distress, and later showed him being transported to an ambulance in a wheelchair. The plane made an emergency landing in Siberia, and Navalny is currently a patient in the acute poisoning unit of a hospital in Omsk.

The head physician of the hospital told reporters Navalny is on a ventilator and in serious condition, but stable. He said poisoning “is considered as one of the possible reasons for the deterioration of his state,” but added there could be “a number of conditions that started acutely and led to the same clinical reactions.”

According to Yarmysh, the hospital prevented Navalny’s wife Yulia from visiting him because she didn’t bring her marriage certificate and he did not consent to see her. Yarmysh sounded deeply skeptical of this explanation.

“They’re not letting her in because ‘the patient has not agreed to a visitor.’ They’re literally saying that,” she snorted. If nothing else, it seems odd to expect a comatose patient to give his consent for a visitor.  Yarmysh was also deeply skeptical of state media reports that the police think it is “not unlikely” that Navalny had an allergic reaction to something he consumed, rather than being poisoned.  “Of course. It’s just the tea was bad. This is what the state propaganda is going to do now — yell that there was no deliberate poisoning, he [did something] accidentally, he [did something] himself,” she said sarcastically on Twitter, with edits from the Associated Press. . . .

The New York Times recalled Moscow’s lamentable history of poisoning dissidents, most famously including former intelligence agents Sergei Skripal, who was attacked in the United Kingdom along with his daughter in 2018, and Alexander Litvinenko, who suffered a very messy assassination in London in 2006 that apparently involved slipping radioactive polonium into his tea.

Litivenko’s widow Marina, who now lives in Sicily, told the Associated Press it was “obvious” Navalny would “not be stopped” from exposing corruption and criticizing Putin, so “maybe they decided to do a new tactic not to stop him just with an arrest but to stop him with poison.”

In addition to mounting periodic political challenges to Putin, Navalny established an anti-corruption foundation that published highly critical reports on the Russian elite, famously including Dmitry Medvedev, who has been both prime minister and president.

Navalny’s foundation was shuttered last month after a lawsuit from Kremlin-linked businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, commonly nicknamed “Putin’s Chef” for his role in organizing state dinners. Prigozhin filed a $1.2 million suit against Navanly’s foundation for allegedly defaming one of his catering companies. Russian courts have a pronounced tendency to side with the plaintiffs in such lawsuits against Navalny. Navalny said he could never pay the penalties Prigozhin and others were seeking, so he dissolved the foundation, then vowed to recreate it under a new name and continue investigating corruption.

When the "D-Team" Is In Charge . . .

Unintended, Unacceptable Lawlessness

Hard to justify unlawful lockdown

Barry Soper
Newstalk ZB

Hats off to Andrew Borrowdale. Who is he, you may well ask? He's a Wellington lawyer - in fact he used to write laws for Parliament.  He was so agitated about the lack of legal grunt behind the country being locked down on March 26 that he took a case to the High Court to challenge it - and today he won.

Borrowdale didn't argue about the wisdom of people staying at home, but he did argue about the Government's right to order them to do so.

His view was reinforced by a Crown Law Office opinion, that he didn't see before mounting his challenge, circulated to interested parties.

We Hoped For Better Things

Boris the Clown Has Turned into Boris the Dictator

James Delingpole
Breitbart News


Boris, Spoiler of Summer Holidays; Boris, Calorie-Counting Nanny Statist; Boris the Dictator.

Did anyone vote for any of these grisly characters in the General Election last year? I know I didn’t. When I held my nose and put my cross in the Conservative box, I did so for two reasons. First, I thought it was our best shot at breaking the Brexit impasse and finally leaving the European Union. Second, I fondly hoped that after the disappointments of David Cameron and Theresa May, we might finally have a Conservative prime minister worth the name. Sure, Boris might not have the courage, principles and tenacity of Margaret Thatcher. But at least he’d inject our dreary, earnest political scene with a much-needed sense of fun…

Boris, we are repeatedly told, has libertarian instincts. When in April he first put Britain under lockdown he did so, he told us, with great reluctance.  Funny what a taste of untrammelled power can do to a man, though, isn’t it? In the space of six months Boris Johnson has mutated from loveable clown to blustering dictator.

Britain has the strictest lockdown rules in Europe. You can now get a fine of up to £3,200 simply for refusing to wear a muzzle, despite the fact that a cloth face covering is next to useless against Covid-19. If you go on holiday somewhere deadly like Spain or France, you are now expected to quarantine yourself at home for 14 days, unable even to go to the shops, on pain of more fines running into the thousands.

Not content with grotesquely overreacting to Chinese Coronavirus, Boris has also taken it upon himself to police our diets too.  His latest wheeze, according to the Sun, is to ban adverts for some or all of the following foods from daytime television because they are unhealthy: 

Sausages; fish fingers; pasties; English mustard; ketchup; Marmite; bacon; cheese; humous; potato salad.

This is exactly the kind of political correctness gone mad that Boris would once have satirised heartily in his lavishly overpaid Daily Telegraph column. The Spectator’s diarist Steerpike has collected six examples of this: Boris saying it’s your own fault if you’re fat; Boris attacking TV chef Jamie Oliver for trying to make school meals ‘healthier’; Boris warring against the EU’s attempts to make child booster seats in cars compulsory; Boris decrying plans to restrict river swimming; Boris using his mayoral powers to stop a proposed ban on smoking in parks; Boris criticising George Osborne’s sugar tax as ‘continuing creep of the nanny state’.

In one of these articles, he lamented ‘the namby-pamby, risk-averse, mollycoddled airbagged approach that is doing so much economic damage to Britain’.  How could the person wise enough to have written those words have mutated in such short space to the very embodiment of the overweening nanny statism he once deplored?

The Boris Johnson we voted for was the Boris Johnson who got stuck on the zipwire; the Boris Johnson who executed that comically brutal tackle in the celebrity football match against Germany; the Boris Johnson who successfully threw a basketball hoop backwards over his head on the Embankment near London’s Tower Bridge.

The Boris Johnson we now have in charge — the bullying, nannying, enviro-loon dictator — is a very unpleasant and very disappointing imposter.

Please can we have the amiable buffoon back, sharpish?

UK Pundit Stumps For Trump

Nigel Farage Predicts Donald Trump Will Win in November

Joe Biden is ‘Wholly Unfit for High Office’

Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart News



The architect of the Brexit movement in the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage, said that Americans should not believe the national polls, saying that he will “stick his neck out” and predict that President Donald Trump will indeed win his re-election bid in November.

The leading Brexiteer and long-time Trump ally said that “national polls should not be trusted” and that a better predictor of the presidential election is to analyse voter enthusiasm for the respective candidates. He argued that compared to President Trump’s loyal base, Joe Biden’s support is based largely on anti-Trump sentiment, rather than true support for the 77-year-old former Vice President.

“I have seen this data in private polling,” Mr Farage wrote in Newsweek, adding: “It shows a distinct lack of enthusiasm for and confidence in Biden’s ability to discharge his duties as would-be president of the United States of America. I am not surprised. The truth is that he is past it. He is not up to the job. He is wholly unfit for high office, and the voters can see it.”

"Do Not Forsake Assembling Together: Hebrews 10:25

The Lord Commands Church Attendance and Worship

By Anugrah Kumar
Christian Post Contributor


Holding indoor services once again in defiance of California’s COVID-19 lockdown orders, Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church on Sunday told his congregation, “We are holding church … because our Lord commands it.” The megachurch met hours after an appeals court blocked a ruling that had allowed it to meet for worship.

“They don’t want us to meet, that’s obvious,” MacArthur said after Los Angeles County secured a stay of the trial court ruling that would have allowed the congregation to meet indoors with masks and social distancing.  “They’re not willing to work with us. They just want to shut us down. But we’re here to bring honor to the Lord,” the pastor continued.

The California Court of Appeal said in its ruling late Saturday, “As between the harm that flows from the heightened risk of transmitting COVID-19 (namely “serious illness and death”) and the harm that flows from having to conduct religious services outdoors instead of indoors, the balance at this early stage favors issuance of a stay.”

MacArthur said he doesn’t know “exactly what the city is trying to do with us and to us,” and clarified that the indoor service was not aimed at being “rebellious.” “We’re meeting because our Lord has commanded us to come together and worship Him.”

The Sun Valley church has been holding in-person worship services despite Gov. Gavin Newsom's recent lockdown orders prohibiting indoor church gatherings. Grace Community filed a lawsuit last week against state restrictions, accusing government officials of selectively restricting gatherings amid the pandemic.

“When many went to the streets to engage in ‘political’ or ‘peaceful’ protests purportedly against racism and police brutality, these protesters refused to comply with the pandemic restrictions. Instead of enforcing the public health orders, public officials were all too eager to grant a de facto exception for these favored protestors,” the lawsuit says.

On Friday, Judge James Chalfant of Los Angeles Superior Court agreed with MacArthur and his church that it is the county’s burden to show why they should be permitted to infringe on the constitutionally protected rights of churches to freely exercise religion. The appeals court, however, issued an emergency order on Saturday in favor of LA County.

Over The Top

Melbourne's Pains

Repression by men in black uniforms is not a good look

Peter Hitchens
Mail on Sunday

The great city of Melbourne in Australia is now under a severe six-week curfew from 8pm until 5am.  Its businesses are crippled. Even the authorities admit it could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Muzzles are, of course, compulsory. Inhabitants can leave their homes only once a day for essential supplies and food, and once for one hour of exercise, within a three-mile radius.




The local police chief, Shane Patton, fetchingly dressed in black shirt and black tie (does he know no history?) is pleased that non-muzzle-wearers are being ‘shunned’ and says his officers ‘had’ to smash into cars whose drivers did not co-operate with stop and search

Police and soldiers are hammering on the doors of those who have tested positive for Covid (who are now forbidden to exercise), to check they are at home. Huge fines face those who don’t comply.

Victoria State Premier Daniel Andrews says: ‘We can no longer have people simply out and about for no good reason… you will be stopped and you will be asked and need to demonstrate that you are lawfully out and you are not breaching that curfew.’

The local police chief, Shane Patton, fetchingly dressed in black shirt and black tie (does he know no history?) is pleased that non-muzzle-wearers are being ‘shunned’ and says his officers ‘had’ to smash into cars whose drivers did not co-operate with stop and search.  Why this wild repression? Because of 15 deaths in a day, mostly among the very old, in a state of more than six million people. Once again, the words ‘out of proportion’ spring to mind.

I predict that a major British city will be subjected to something similar in the coming winter.  Strikingly, it is in the formerly free English-speaking world, inheritors of Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, that the most severe attack on freedom is happening. They seem confident we will not defend it.

Pro-Abort Iniquity

Biden-Harris Pro-Abortion Ticket ‘Great Concern to All Christians’

Analysis by Rev Franklin Graham

Dr. Susan Berry
Breitbart News

Rev. Franklin Graham tweeted Wednesday it “should be a great concern to all Christians” that pro-life leaders are labeling Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris as “the most pro-abortion … in the history of our nation.”

Graham tweeted a Breitbart News article containing the statements of many national pro-life leaders expressing that concern.  “As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am pro-life and believe every life is precious to God,” he said. 

Within the last day, more pro-life leaders have added their concerns about the Biden-Harris pro-abortion rights ticket.  “I didn’t think Joe Biden could move much further Left on abortion — but he did just that in picking Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate,” expressed Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council Action.

He continued: 

Vice President Biden has already endorsed taxpayer funded abortions and embraced late term abortions. And now he has chosen a vice presidential candidate who voted to leave perfectly healthy newborns on hospital tables to die and as the attorney general of California went after pro-life activists for exposing Planned Parenthood for illegally selling aborted baby body parts. During the presidential primary, Senator Harris complained that she didn’t have enough time in the debates to show off her abortion radicalism. As if this were not enough, Harris co-sponsored the religious liberty-violating and pro-abortion ‘Equality Act’ in the U.S. Senate. Joe Biden has now clearly shown himself for what he is: a puppet on the strings of radical abortion.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, recalled that, while a presidential primary candidate, Harris pledged that, if elected, “no abortion law or practice will take effect until the Department of Justice certifies it comports with Roe v. Wade.” 

In May 2019, Harris’s presidential campaign pledged not only to restrict states’ rights to pass and enact their own laws, but also to block a pro-life president’s power and that of the administration.  “Guardrails will ensure DOJ enforces the law even under an administration that’s hostile to women’s rights — and patients and providers will have standing to sue if they don’t,” Harris’s plan stated.

Harris’s presidential campaign website now immediately takes visitors to joebiden.com.

Hawkins continued that Harris has not only “promised to ‘protect Planned Parenthood from Republican attempts to defund’” it, but also hopes to “force all private insurances and employers to cover abortion and contraception, even over people’s moral objections, such as the nuns in the Little Sisters of the Poor who twice had to fight for their conscience rights before the Supreme Court.”

“Sen. Kamala Harris has already proved that she will use any legal authority available to her to target pro-life Americans,” Hawkins said. “Abortion was always going to be an issue in this election, but the stakes just got higher. The choice for anyone who rejects abortion at any point in pregnancy and with taxpayer funds is crystal clear.”