It’s a crime wave that’s overwhelming the internet and is at a “breaking point” according to a new report released by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The New York Times’s coverage of the report details how the porn industry has metastasized into all kinds of social media and now will be better able to hide its deadly presence because of changes that mega-vendors like Facebook are proposing. And it’s getting worse every day.
Porn is so prevalent in our virtual world that “12 million of 18.4 million, or two out of every three reports of child pornography online, come from the Facebook Messenger app.” In fact, the report found “(l)ast year, tech companies reported over 45 million online photos and videos of children being sexually abused — more than double what they found the previous year.”Even knowing this, law enforcement officials are forced to focus on the worst of the worst, because of the numbing volume, said Patrick Trueman, President and CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, on Wednesday’s Washington Watch.”We have an overwhelming problem so that the Justice Department of the United States and other law enforcement agencies don’t even try to prosecute those who have child pornography images of older children. They’re just now trying to work on the prepubescent children.
It’s unlicensed. It’s out of control … Many of these law enforcement agencies won’t even prosecute unless you actually have an image of someone sexually abusing a child,” Trueman said.The tragedy is that a focus on child porn, though understandable, doesn’t address how those addicted to porn end up fantasizing about children.
Trueman noted:
“What we know about the brain science is that people get addicted to pornography and then they look for harder and more deviant material because you get bored with the kind of material you’re looking at … and eventually people move from one genre to another and then they aren’t excited about it, and they go to child pornography.”
And sexual offenders may find that they have a friend in Facebook to cover up their crimes.
“Google and its allies, Mozilla and Clouds, they’re going to encrypt all search activity on the browsers so that all of the material that people search for will be hidden. Just imagine what that is going to do to law enforcement,” said Trueman.
As Breitbart reported: “Facebook has long known about abusive images on its platforms, including a video of a man sexually assaulting a 6-year-old that went viral last year on Messenger. When Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, announced in March that Messenger would move to encryption, he acknowledged the risk it presented for ‘truly terrible things like child exploitation.'”
“We are getting further and further away from child protection on the Internet because of this encryption issue,” said Trueman.
The former justice department leader said that he and others will be working with Congress to address this crisis. “We do need much more funding. But we do need to have law enforcement agencies, particularly the Justice Department, to recognize that any illegal images of pornography … have to be prosecuted.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2019-10-04 06:02:032019-10-04 06:03:53PODCAST: How the Cancer of Child Porn Hides in Plain Sight by JP Duffy
During a townhall meeting hosted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a woman stood up and said that in order to save the planet, “We got to start eating babies! We don’t have enough time! … We have to get rid of the babies! … We need to eat the babies!”
Note that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez does not denounce the “eating babies” comments.
Watch:
In a September email the 98 member Democratic Congressional Progressive Caucus (which includes the four members of The Squad) sent out an email titled, “Read what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal just said.” Here is the content of the email:
Scientists estimate that we only have 12 YEARS until the effects of climate change become IRREVERSIBLE. We have to act, now!
That’s why Progressive Caucus members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal are speaking out:
We must pass bold initiatives, like a Green New Deal, if we want to stop climate change in its tracks.
Cannibalism
If you think killing unborn children and selling their body parts is bad, the latest woke on the liberal left is cannibalism.
Swedish behavioural scientist Magnus Söderlund has suggested that eating other people after they die could be a means of combatting climate change.
The scientist mentioned the possibility of cannibalism during a broadcast on Swedish television channel TV4 this week about a fair in Stockholm regarding “food of the future”.
Söderlund is set to hold seminars at the event, entitled “Gastro Summit — about the future of food” where he intends to discuss the possibility of eating people in the name of cutting down greenhouse emissions.
A European scientist speaking at a summit in Sweden last week suggested a controversial new trend to combat climate change: consuming human flesh as an alternative to animal products.
“Stockholm School of Economics professor and researcher Magnus Soderlund reportedly said he believes eating human meat, derived from dead bodies, might be able to help save the human race if only a world society were to ‘awaken the idea,’” reports the New York Post.
“At a summit for food of the future (the climate-ravaged future) called Gastro Summit, in Stockholm on Sept. 3 to 4, a professor held a PowerPoint presentation asserting that we must ‘awaken the idea’ of eating human flesh in the future, as a way of combating the effects of climate change,” adds the Epoch Times.
Conclusion
The opposite of peace is not war. The opposite of peace is fear. If you believe the progressive bunk on climate change then you are in fear, as is the woman at Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s townhall meeting. Fear that the planet earth will die and take you along with it.
Of course this has been a big lie propagated by the progressives to take control of all means of production, especially fossil fuels.
There are three absolute truths about the climate:
The climate changes.
These changes follow natural cycles (i.e. summer, fall, winter, spring)
There is nothing mankind can do to alter these natural cycles.
Eating our dead or babies will not save the planet. What will save the planet is exposing this big lie for what it is – a United Nations effort to impose a one world government. This, as it always has, will lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions of human being, born and unborn.
Would it surprise you to learn the greatest global two-year cooling event of the last century just occurred? From February 2016 to February 2018 (the latest month available) global average temperatures dropped 0.56°C. You have to go back to 1982-84 for the next biggest two-year drop, 0.47°C—also during the global warming era. All the data in this essay come from GISTEMP Team, 2018: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP). NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (dataset accessed 2018-04-11 at https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/). This is the standard source used in most journalistic reporting of global average temperatures.
The 2016-18 Big Chill was composed of two Little Chills, the biggest five month drop ever (February to June 2016) and the fourth biggest (February to June 2017). A similar event from February to June 2018 would bring global average temperatures below the 1980s average. February 2018 was colder than February 1998. If someone is tempted to argue that the reason for recent record cooling periods is that global temperatures are getting more volatile, it’s not true. The volatility of monthly global average temperatures since 2000 is only two-thirds what it was from 1880 to 1999.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Vlad Tepes Bloghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngVlad Tepes Blog2019-10-03 09:29:242019-10-03 09:41:49VIDEO: A few Science Items on Climate and the Origins of the Global Warming Myth
Given the poor track record of drastic government solutions adopted in an atmosphere of fear, a healthy skepticism toward demands related to climate change should not only be tolerated but encouraged.
When you’re several decades older than Greta Thunberg, her impassioned warning of impending doom hits you differently than it may college students or early twenty somethings. In a word, it sounded “familiar.”
I’m not just talking about the climate change movement, nor exclusively about the left side of the political spectrum. I’ve been hearing about impending doom that can only be averted by massive increases in the size and scope of government my whole life, from both the right and the left.
Fearmongering by the Right
The earliest example I remember came from the right. During the 1980s, the airwaves were flooded with reports on the military superiority of the Soviet Union. I don’t mean their nuclear weapons capabilities, which were and remain a valid cause for concern, as are those of every nuclear-armed government. No, the American public was saturated with reports of the Soviet Union’s superiority in waging conventional war, with planes, tanks, ground troops, etc.
The only solution, said the Reagan administration, was massive increases in military spending, which not only doubled the size of the federal government overall during Reagan’s two terms but started a trend of massive military spending that continues to this day. The conventional wisdom of the right says it was this spending that caused the Soviet Union to collapse because they tried to keep up and couldn’t. It wasn’t. The Soviet Union collapsed because of its communist economic system, which former KGB agent Vladimir Putin admitted in 2009 when hesaid,
In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.
The truth is, the Soviets were never a military threat, outside their nukes, which Reagan’s spending did nothing to deter. Poor countries generally don’t win conventional wars against much richer ones. Knowing that now, would you like to have those trillions in unnecessary military spending back?
The 1980s also saw a massive increase in the so-called “War on Drugs.” Capitalizing on the tragic death of basketball player Len Bias, drug warriors succeeded in convincing the American public that only draconian drug laws and sentencing guidelines could save their children from certain death due to an imminent, nationwide epidemic of drug addiction. The legislation pushed through on the heels of this fear-mongering resulted in the mass incarceration of generations of disproportionately black and brown people, many for as little as possessing too much marijuana, which is now legal in more than half of US states.
Knowing what you know today, would you like to have those millions of destroyed lives and families back?
In 2003, with the American public still shell shocked from the 9/11 attacks, the George W. Bush administration embarked upon a fear campaign similar to the Reagan administration’s Soviet scare featuring an even less plausible boogeyman: Saddam Hussein. Hussein was a ruthless dictator and a generally bad guy, but he was never a threat to US national security. The Bush administration evoked images of massive chemical weapons attacks and even “a mushroom cloud” in a major US city. It was all baloney.
Knowing what you know today, would you like to have the Iraq War back?
Fearmongering by the Left
So, what does all this have to do with climate change? Environmentalists are using the same tactics, only for different ends. Right-wingers often revere the military and law enforcement. For all their talk about “small government,” no increase in either would be too much for many of them.
They’ve generally got what they’ve wanted in those areas by employing a thus far foolproof tactic that goes something like this: Oh my God! I’ve discovered a dire threat to all our lives and civilization as we know it. And believe it or not, the only solution is for you to give me everything I’ve ever wanted politically.
Shouldn’t any thinking person be suspicious of this? Would it not have benefitted Americans, left, right or otherwise, to have been more skeptical of claims like this before the War on Drugs or the Iraq War?
I’m not trying to convince liberals there is nothing to the anthropogenic climate change theory. But I am calling attention to the fact that the very same tactic that gave us the Iraq War, the largest prison population in the history of the world, and an out-of-control national debt due largely to unnecessary military spending is now being used to achieve a political result to address climate change.
Let’s not forget that before the fall of the Soviet Union and China’s dramatic turn away from communism and towards a market economy, the hard left’s chief argument against free markets had nothing to do with the environment. For most of the 20th century, they claimed that full-on communism or socialism was a better economic system. It was only when its failure in so many places became impossible to deny that the focus shifted to the environment. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) didn’t form until 1992, the year after the Soviet Union disappeared and just after China’s market reforms got underway.
Coincidence? Maybe, but shouldn’t it at least raise an eyebrow? How can anyone be blamed for skepticism when the very same people who wanted a centrally planned economy based on its economic merits suddenly discover it’s the only way to “save the planet”? Shouldn’t that give pause to even a true believer in climate change?
This is before even asking the question of whether giving the government these sweeping new powers (not to mention trillions more of our dollars) would actually solve the stated problem. Past experience should make us skeptical of this, too. Did the War on Drugs result in fewer drugs on the street? Did the Iraq War result in less terrorism? Believing the government is suddenly going to be wildly successful based purely on its doing the bidding of the other political tribe seems more like religious faith than reason.
The Poor Will Suffer Most
One thing Greta Thunberg’s speech is honest about, at least indirectly, is that adopting the drastic environmental measures called for by the hard left will make us poorer. She derisively asks how any of us can even talk about “economic growth.” That’s easy for Thunberg and other First-Worlders to say, given what this will cost them vs. what it will cost truly poor people, of which there are very few in the United States or Sweden.
The truth is eliminating fossil fuels at the rate the hard left suggests could cost billions of poor people their lives, not merely their hamburgers. Given that grim reality and the poor track record of drastic government solutions adopted in an atmosphere of fear, a healthy skepticism toward the hard left’s claims and demands related to climate change should not only be tolerated but encouraged.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2019-10-02 08:20:322019-10-02 16:00:56Why Even Liberals Should Be “Climate Change Skeptics”
“I dare you… Hold up the textbook in front of the camera and show them a picture of what 10-year-olds are going to be asked to see.” That was Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers’s (R) challenge to reporters, when they asked him about his fierce response to the radical Left’s sex ed. He pointed to a book, called It’s Perfectly Normal, that isn’t normal at all — unless you’re one of those rare individuals who think teaching anal sex to five-year-olds is a good idea.
Arizona State Superintendent Kathy Hoffman’s (D), Twitter profile shows a picture of the new officeholder carrying a sign that says, “#IAmPublicEducation.” And after hearing her vision for sexualizing kids, that’s exactly what parents are afraid of. “I couldn’t even read the manual to you over the radio,” State Senator Sylvia Allen (R-Ariz.) told me on “Washington Watch” Monday. “When [they] talk about comprehensive sex education,” she warned, “that’s exactly what they mean. It’s very comprehensive, very detailed—they leave nothing out. And when you read the material, you can only come to the conclusion that if they’re going to give [kindergarteners] on up different types of information, the only reason for that is because you are… giving them information to help sexualize them.”Bowers, who is fighting alongside Allen, agreed. The dad of seven has been on a one-man mission to keep the curriculum changes the state derailed in June off track. “I don’t need to sexualize children and tell them how to masturbate,” he said. “It’s way beyond where we need to be.” Hoffman’s office fired back that his fears had no basis in reality.
Bowers is not alone in his concern.
When activists tried to overturn 40 years of conservative sex ed messaging and replace it with graphic, pro-LGBT propaganda, the crowd was so large at the state board of education that officials had to open three overflow rooms! Outside groups like Planned Parenthood and GLSEN were trying to strip the state’s ban on “abnormal, deviate, or unusual sexual acts and practices” — and parents on both sides were furious. “Instead of creating more Planned Parenthood customers, let’s put our energy into improving the reading ability of our children,” one mom railed. Another held up the same book Bowers did and pointed to the nude pictures. It’s completely unnecessary, Bowers argues. The board agreed, deciding to table the changes — for now.
But the battle isn’t over. Not by a long shot. Extremists are still finding ways to slip the indoctrination into districts where parents aren’t watching. At an event in September, Bowers took his warning on the road, asking people to think about these consequences. When we sexualize kids, he argued, what are the results? “Sexually transmitted diseases, which we treat for money. Abortion, which we do for money. Even the heinous selling of body parts, which we do for money. And the treatment of AIDS across the world, which we do for money.”
These activists, including the ones at the highest levels of state government, are counting on parents’ ignorance to push this agenda through. “That’s my reason for being very involved in this,” Sylvia told me, “because I believe that these programs are going against the vast majority of parents—and what parents want taught to their children about this subject… In Arizona, we have local control over curriculum. So that means parents have got to be active in their school district to see what their school district might want to propose on this subject.”
Of course, when we talk about sex ed, there’s probably a tendency for a lot of moms and dads to think back to when they were in school and the lessons were a lot more subdued. This is not your grandmother’s sex education. This isn’t even your mom’s. This is explicit. But the Left is overreaching — and in school after school, we’re seeing a monumental pushback from parents of both parties. As Sylvia said, this isn’t a partisan issue. No one wants to leave this crucial part of a child’s development to the activists in their district. They don’t want to be in a race to beat their schools to this conversation. In Arizona, leaders like Allen are trying to overhaul the system to create an opt-in type permission system where the schools will have to obtain the parents’ consent before teaching these subjects.
Right now, they’re hoping other states are paying attention to what’s happening in their districts and learning from it. Do you know if your local sex ed is an opt-in or opt-out program? Have you looked at the curriculum? If they update the materials, do they tell you? These are the questions our friends at the Center for Arizona Policy are asking their parents. Take a look at their post, “What is the state teaching your kids about sex?” and apply it to your community. The best parent is an informed parent. Join the movement to Take Back Our Schools!
Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2019-10-02 05:16:172019-10-11 06:19:44PODCAST: Parents Fight Back: Sex and Kindergarten in America
Fox Business Network reported some news last week that may surprise business strategists as well as kids and parents alike: Toymaker Mattel has announced a new line of gender-neutral dolls.
The company cites new “research” finding that kids “don’t want their toys dictated by gender norms.”
So, for $30, children will now be able to outfit dolls with long or short hair, clothing that includes pants, skirts, or both—whatever the kids decide. The dolls are also available in six skin tones.
“Toys are a reflection of culture and as the world continues to celebrate the positive impact of inclusivity, we felt it was time to create a doll line free of labels,” explained the company’s senior vice president, Kim Culmone.
“This line allows all kids to express themselves freely, which is why it resonates so strongly with them. We’re hopeful Creatable World will encourage people to think more broadly about how all kids can benefit from doll play.”
It’s hard to know what to find more shocking: that Mattel has created a “gender-neutral doll,” or that the market—primarily made up of kids—is supposedly demanding one.
Somehow, it’s difficult to believe that young kids who don’t yet know the meaning of “gender neutral” would be demanding a gender-neutral doll.
A much more likely possibility is that Mattel is caving to progressive political forces that want “gender-neutral dolls.” In that respect, the new line of dolls tells us more about the politics of the present moment than the desires of kids.
Some might push back and say, “Calm down, they’re just dolls. Dolls aren’t meant to imitate real life.” And that’s true, to an extent.
Many toys are unrealistic—consider Batman, Spider-Man, Paw Patrol figures, and others. But the companies that manufacture those toys don’t pretend they are mimicking reality. They aren’t. They’re based on fiction and intended to ignite imaginative play, an important part of a healthy childhood.
But dress-up dolls are much more realistic than action figures, and they have often been used to promote gender stereotypes—for better or for worse.
With these gender-neutral dolls, Mattel is deconstructing the notion of sex in the minds of young children and teaching them an ideology that says there is no relationship between biological sex and reality.
This same radical gender ideology has proved disastrous when taken to its ultimate conclusion: pushing young people down the path of sex-reassignment with life-altering drugs and harmful surgeries
This ideology claims that since gender is simply a social construct with no basis in biological reality, it can therefore be fluid—hence the term “gender fluid.” However, a study published in 2017 in the Infant and Child Development journal suggests there is a biological basis for human behavior.
The study observed 1,600 boys and girls at play and found that when offered a variety of toys to choose from, under various conditions, boys and girls consistently preferred toys typed to their own sex, indicating biology’s persistent role in behavior.
Of course, kids shouldn’t be forced to conform to rigid sex stereotypes that dictate, for instance, that girls can’t play with trucks and boys shouldn’t play with dolls.
But it is a huge mistake to treat our sexed bodies as secondary to a subjective self-perception of gender. That is misleading at best, and damaging at worst.
The truth is that there are only two sexes, and toy companies should not mislead children to believe otherwise.
Gender dysphoria is a real condition, but the transgender community’s recommendations for medical treatment have been shown to be not only ineffective at resolving a person’s underlying distress, but actually harmful—especially to children.
Studies show this isn’t a safe process. Brand new data from the Food and Drug Administration shows that over 6,000 adults have died from the effects of a drug that is being used to block puberty in children who struggle to feel comfortable with their sexed bodies.
Progressive gender ideology isn’t helping Americans; it’s hurting them. It is not only nonsensical, but irresponsible for Mattel to create a line of gender-neutral dolls aimed at indoctrinating kids with this harmful ideology.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Times, The American Spectator, and Parents Magazine. Twitter: @russell_nm.
In the wake of every tragic mass shooting or high-profile incident involving gun violence, we hear the same narrative: To stop these horrible atrocities from happening, we must crack down on gun laws.
But is the answer really to create more laws around gun control, or is this just an opportunity to limit your Constitutional right to bear arms?
The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you better understand the 8 Stubborn Facts on Gun Violence in America.
They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today! GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW! >>
When the alarm went off at Jennifer Hrobuchak’s work, the 22-year-old district manager didn’t think twice. She got in her car in the early morning hours and headed off to the store to investigate. The new college graduate, who had hoped to have a career saving people from drugs, never saw the man run through the red light straight at her. At 82 miles per hour, he slammed Jennifer’s car across the road into a building that crushed and killed her. After seven years of telling the story, her mom, Corinne, still gets emotional. And it’s no wonder. The man who hit her was high on marijuana and walked away from the scene completely unharmed. Her daughter never walked anywhere again.
There are thousands of stories like Jennifer’s. Agonized parents like Jeffrey Veatch’s whose son died snorting heroin, only after marijuana experimentation led him there. After the unimaginable pain of losing a child, the idea that anyone would make it easier for kids to get addicted to pot is hard for any of them to fathom. And yet, last Wednesday, in the U.S. House, more than 300 members of Congress put their names behind a bill that would help legitimize a business that’s destroying and endangering lives.
It was the first ever vote on a stand-alone cannabis bill, not that the name would have told you so. The SAFE Banking Act, one of the more ridiculously named pieces of legislation in the Democratic House, would make it easier for marijuana companies to “open checking accounts and get business loans.” Pot companies argue that it would make the entire market safer, since they tend to operate on a “cash-only basis” or pay sky-high fees to the banks who are willing to work with them. Amazingly, 321 members of Congress (including 91 Republicans) fell for this logic, which encourages banks to get involved in the sale of what the federal government still considers an illegal substance.
Luke Dean Niforatos, chief of staff for Smart Approaches to Marijuana, can’t believe that the U.S. House would green-light a bill that would allow billions of dollars to flow into the pot market. Calling it the “Safe Vaping Act,” Niforatos told listeners on “Washington Watch” that this would mean “tons more money for these companies to create more marijuana, vaping oils, more marijuana vapes, which would feed into the crisis that we’re talking about right now today.
“It defies comprehension that the House would pass this,” he argued. “And now it’s in the Senate. And you have a number of senators — [even solid Christians who are]… being swayed by this argument that marijuana industry needs access to these banks. You know, they need to hear from everyone loud and clear that there’s a vaping crisis going on. The last thing we should do is allow money in to this industry that’s putting out these marijuana vapes.”
And while the Democratic House may be embracing pot, the reality, Luke explains, is that the rest of the country is having second thoughts.
“We actually had a dozen states or more reject marijuana legalization this year alone, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — all very progressive states with progressive governors who were totally committed to legalizing marijuana. But minority groups and family groups and other groups came out and said, ‘No thanks.’. So there’s a movement now in this country to push against this — and a lot of that is being stemmed by a number of major public health concerns we’re discovering. Maybe not many people know this, but just three weeks ago, the United States surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, just released the first surgeon general’s advisory on marijuana in 40 years.”
There are probably some conservatives out there who’ve fallen for the libertarian lie that the government can do a better job regulating marijuana and protecting people if it’s legal. But the research is clear: all that’s happening in the states where pot is allowed are more arrests, more hospital visits, more suicides, more crime, more DUIs, more work-related problems — more Jennifers.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) isn’t going to be in a hurry to pass anything on the House Democrats’ radical agenda. But the pressure is building on him, even from members in his own party, to chase these dead-end solutions. Contact your senators and ask them to hold the line on the SAFE Banking Act.
Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2019-10-01 07:50:412019-10-01 07:50:41PODCAST: Pot Bill Tokes the Line on Public Safety
Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg lives in the healthiest, wealthiest, safest, and most peaceful era humans have ever known. She is one of the luckiest people ever to have lived.
In a just world, Thunberg would be at the United Nations thanking capitalist countries for bequeathing her this remarkable inheritance. Instead, she, like millions of other indoctrinated kids her age, act as if they live in a uniquely broken world on the precipice of disaster. This is a tragedy.
“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” Thunberg lectured the world. And maybe she’s right. We’ve failed her by raising a generation of pagans who’ve filled the vacuum left by the absence of faith, not with rationality, but with a cultish worship of Mother Earth and the state. Although, to be fair, the Bible-thumping evangelical’s moral certitude is nothing but a rickety edifice compared to the moral conviction of a Greta Thunberg.
It’s not, of course, her fault. Adults have spent a year creating a 16-year-old because her soundbites comport with their belief system. It was “something about her raw honesty around a message of blunt-force fear [that] turned this girl from invisible to global,” says CNN in a news report about a child with a narrow, age-appropriate grasp of the world.
It should be noted that “blunt-force fear” is indeed the correct way to describe the concerted misinformation that Thunberg has likely been subjected to since nursery school.
There probably isn’t a public school in America that hasn’t plied the panic-stricken talk of environmental disaster in their auditoriums over and over again. New York City and other school systems offered millions of kids an excused absence so they could participate in political climate marches this week, as if it were a religious or patriotic holiday.
We’ve finally convinced a generation of Americans to be Malthusians. According to Scott Rasmussen’s polling, nearly 30% of voters now claim to believe that it’s “at least somewhat likely” that the earth will become uninhabitable and humanity will be wiped out over the next 10-15 years. Half of voters under 35 believe it is likely we are on the edge of extinction. Is there any wonder why our youngest generation has a foreboding sense of doom?
It’s the fault of ideologues who obsess over every weather event as if it were Armageddon, ignoring the massive moral upside of carbon-fueled modernity. It’s the fault of the politicians, too cowardly to tell voters that their utopian vision of a world run on solar panels and windmills is fairy tale.
It’s the fault of media that constantly ignores overwhelming evidence that, on balance, climate change isn’t undermining human flourishing. By nearly every quantifiable measure, in fact, we are better off because of fossil fuels. Though there is no way to measure the human spirit, I’m afraid.
Thunberg might do well to sail her stern gaze and billowing anger to India or China and wag her finger at the billions of people who no longer want to live in poverty and destitution. Because if climate change is irreversible in the next 10-12 years, as cultists claim, it can be blamed in large part on the historic growth we’ve seen in developing nations.
China’s emissions from aviation and maritime trade alone are twice that of the United States, and more than the entire emissions of most nations in the world. But, sure, let’s ban straws as an act of contrition.
Boomers, of course, have failed on plenty of fronts, but the idea that an entire generation of Americans should have chosen poverty over prosperity to placate the vacuous complaints of privileged future teenagers is absurd. No generation would do it. Until recently, no advanced nation has embraced Luddism. Although these days, Democrats who advocate for bans on fossil fuels and carbon-mitigating technologies such as fracking and nuclear energy are working on it.
Climate activists could learn something from Thunberg’s honesty, though. She argues that “money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth” have to come to an end. The emission cuts that environmentalists insist are needed to save the earth would mean economic devastation and the end of hundreds of years of economic growth. This is a tradeoff progressives pretend doesn’t exist.
And Thunberg’s dream for the future means technocratic regimes will have to displace capitalistic societies. We can see this future in the radical environmentalist plans of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, one supported by leading Democratic Party candidates. It’s authoritarianism. There is no other way to describe a regulatory regime that dictates exactly what Americans can consume, sell, drive, eat, and work on.
One imagines that most Americans, through their actions, will continue to reject these regressive ideas. One reason they should is so that Greta Thunberg’s generation won’t have to suffer needlessly.
In the wake of every tragic mass shooting or high-profile incident involving gun violence, we hear the same narrative: To stop these horrible atrocities from happening, we must crack down on gun laws.
But is the answer really to create more laws around gun control, or is this just an opportunity to limit your Constitutional right to bear arms?
The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you better understand the 8 Stubborn Facts on Gun Violence in America.
They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!
Pope Francis will serve as synod president, while Cdl. Lorenzo Baldisseri will serve as secretary general.
Baldisseri has willfully cooperated with the Vatican’s homosexual network. He used his position as lead organizer of the 2014 and 2015 Synods on the Family to push Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried, as well as liberalization of Church teaching on homosexuality.
During the 2015 gathering, Baldisseri personally intervened to block Cdl. Raymond Burke and other faithful cardinals from distributing Remaining in the Truth of Christ, a book reiterating Church teaching on marriage on the grounds that they would “interfere with the synod.”
Baldisseri was also responsible for inserting the term “LGBT” into the working document for the 2018 Youth Synod — an unprecedented concession to the pro-gay movement.
He also approved publication of the document, which suggested that Church teaching on contraception, abortion and homosexuality are up for debate and sought to legitimize young Catholics who choose to live homosexual lifestyles while still wanting “to be close to the Church.”
Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, archbishop emeritus of Sao Paulo and president of the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (REPAM), will serve as relator general. As early as 2014, Hummes was pushing the idea of married priests as a solution to the shortage of clerics in the Amazon region.
Cardinal Pedro Ricardo Barreto Jimeno, archbishop of Huancayo in Peru and REPAM vice president, will serve as one of three president delegates. Jimeno is an avowed environmentalist.
During a 2005 synod, he asserted that the bread and wine offered during Mass are compromised if the land that produces them is poorly cared for.
“I said that if we offer bread from land that’s contaminated, we are offering God a contaminated fruit. And the same for the wine,” he recalled in a Crux interview earlier this year.
Attendee Cdl. Pietro Parolin, secretary of state for the Holy See, is a principal architect of the September 2018 Vatican accord with China in which the Holy See recognized seven “bishops” of the Communist-backed “patriotic” Catholic Church. The agreement has been slammed by Cdl. Joseph Zen as a betrayal of faithful Chinese Catholics and warned it could be “the death of the true Faith in China.”
Earlier this year, Vatican whistleblower Abp. Carlo Maria Viganò alleged Parolin “knows the names of a number of priests in the Curia who are sexually unchaste, violating the laws of God that they solemnly committed themselves to teach and practice, and he continues to look the other way.”
Parolin has tried — unsuccessfully — to silence faithful Catholic opposition. Under his direction, in 2017, the Vatican hired a pro-gay law firm to try to shut down conservative Spanish website InfoVaticana after it voiced alarm over the growing homosexual current in the Church.
Synod member Cdl. Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, also has connections to McCarrick.
Though sharing a house with McCarrick for years, Farrell denied any knowledge of the disgraced ex-cardinal’s crimes: “I was shocked, overwhelmed; I never heard any of this before, the six years I was there with him. And never, no indication, none whatsoever, nobody ever talked to me about that,” he insisted after the abuse revelations came to light. “So, I really don’t have any knowledge or anything to add to about more than that.”
Farrell is also accused of minimizing clerical sex abuse during his time as bishop of Dallas from 2007–2016. In one case, after failing to report abuse, Farrell allegedly told a victim that his abuse at the hands of an older priest was “consensual.”
Synod member Cdl. Reinhard Marx, head of the German Bishops’ Conference, is well-known for promoting heterodoxy — instituting Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried in Germany, pushing for admission of Protestants to the Eucharist and advocating for married priests.
In recent weeks, Marx has led the Church in Germany to the edge of schism, insisting on pressing forward with a controversial “Synodal Assembly” to re-examine Church teaching on clerical celibacy, women’s ordination and sexual morality.
“[T]hey share their joys and sufferings, they help one another,” Schönborn said in his defense of “stable unions” for gay couples. “It must be recognized that this person took an important step for his own good and the good of others.”
The cardinal also reinstated an active homosexual to an Austrian parish council after he was removed by a faithful priest for causing scandal.
Synod member Abp. Vincenzo Paglia, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, made headlines in 2017 for admitting a pro-abortion Protestant philosopher to the pro-life institute. In what has been described as a “coup” in July, Paglia dismissed a raft of leading pro-life theologians from leadership at the academy.
Representing the United States at the Oct. 6–27 synod is Cdl. Sean O’Malley of Boston and Bp. Robert McElroy of San Diego.
Cardinal O’Malley has been accused of turning a blind eye to the Church’s gay subculture.
In July 2018, The New York Times revealed that O’Malley had been contacted as early as 2015 about Theodore McCarrick’s abuse of seminarians but did nothing to expose the serial homosexual predator.
In the wake of that allegation, an ex-seminarian accused O’Malley of whitewashing an investigation into rampant homosexual activity at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts.
Bishop McElroy, a leading climate change apologist, has distinguished himself as one of the most pro-LGBT prelates in the United States.
The bishop has described faithful Catholics as a “cancer” in the Church, and in October 2018, McElroy made headlines by ejecting young orthodox Catholics out of a series of “listening sessions” after they questioned him about homosexuality in his clerical ranks.
Like O’Malley, McElroy was also made aware of McCarrick’s sexual predation of young men but did nothing to stop it. In 2016, clerical sex abuse expert Richard Sipe notified McElroy that he had personally interviewed 12 seminarians and young priests who reported being abused by McCarrick. McElroy did not respond to Sipe’s outreach.
Other prominent leftists featured on the synod’s roster include Cardinal-elect Michael Czerny, undersecretary of the Migrant and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, and Cardinal-elect Jean-Claude Hollerich, archbishop of Luxembourg and president of the Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, both of whom favor open-door migration policies, as well as Cdl. Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Cdl. Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Bombay, both of whom openly back the LGBT agenda.
As you may know, the Kentucky gubernatorial race is expected to be one of the most competitive and closely watched statewide races this year.
This morning, the Campaign for American Principles released a new ad in Kentucky attacking Democrat gubernatorial candidate Andy Beshear for his stance on allowing biological males to compete on women’s sports teams.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2019-09-24 07:32:552019-09-24 07:47:41WATCH: New Ad ‘Is It Fair?’ on Women’s Sports
Major pieces of legislation get the spotlight and shape the national debate. But each year, Congress considers hundreds of smaller measures that have a big impact on our country and our lives.
That’s where the American Energy Alliance comes in.
AEA analyzes and tracks these bills, including what they do and who co-sponsored them — and shares those summaries and key points with supporters like you. When it comes time for a vote, AEA tracks that, too, and includes it all in a scorecard for each Member of Congress.
With the AEA Energy Scorecard, you can see — at a single glance — where your representatives stood on the most important energy votes of the year … and who the true energy champions are in Congress.
The higher the score on the AEA Energy Scorecard, the more you can count on that elected official to advance a Pro-American energy agenda.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2019-09-21 15:52:012019-09-21 15:52:01New Video: My Gift To Climate Alarmists
Study: ‘Generalized beliefs that uncommitted sex is okay … can contribute to the failure of a marriage’
by Paul Murano • ChurchMilitant.com
If you already knew divorce rates today are in part the byproduct of the sexual revolution, this will confirm your wisdom. Anew study conducted by a group of Florida State University researchers, published in the journal Psychological Science, concludes that premarital sex can have deleterious effects on one’s future marriage.
The researchers investigated common factors influential in determining the success and failure of marriages. Among the major factors contributing to marriage failure is an individual’s premarital beliefs and behaviors toward uncommitted sex.
“What we’ve found,” Juliana French, the first author of the study, said in a statement to the Association for Psychological Science, “is that when, prior to their marriage, one or both spouses hold generalized beliefs that uncommitted sex is okay, that can contribute to the failure of a marriage.”
Generalized beliefs that uncommitted sex is okay can contribute to the failure of a marriage.Tweet
French, along with assistant professor Andrea Meltzer and fellow graduate student Emma Altgelt, collected and analyzed data from 204 newly married couples, focusing primarily on information gathered about their behaviors and attitudes prior to marriage.
While following up periodically with the couples over several yearsin order to discover what may lead to maritalsatisfaction,they collected information andcataloged data on which couples had eventually separated or filed for divorce.
The researchers found that people who expressed behaviors, desires and attitudes prior to marriage that would make them more likely to engage in uncommitted sexual relationships, who generally believed that sex without love or commitment is OK, were more likely to separate and divorce.
The bad news goes even further. While those who wereloose in attitude and behavior on sex without commitment were less satisfied at the start of their marriages, and experienced more rapid declines in satisfaction over the first several years of marriage, people whose marital partners had been “unrestricted” or promiscuous in action and attitude prior to marriage also experienced a rapid decline in marital satisfaction over the first few years of marriage, leading to greater likelihood of separation or divorce — even if they themselves were premaritally celibate.
“What we found most surprising about these resultswas the fact that both [spouses’ premarital attitudes and experience] play an important role in long-term marital outcomes,” said French.
This study is another example of science supporting the truth and goodness of natural law, codified in Christian moral teaching. Scripture infers that sexual union is not simply something one does, but something two become.
Two becoming “one flesh” could happen within (Gen. 2:24), or outside of (1 Cor. 6:16) marriage. Aquinas speaks ofthe one-flesh union as creating a new relation that cannot be repudiated. We are learning more through science about the profundity of the biblical term of two becomingone flesh.
Scripture infers that sexual union is not simply something one does, but something two become. Tweet
Genetic material, chemical compounds, hormones and prostaglandins, nucleotides and seminal proteins areexchanged and commingled in this greatest of natural human intimacies. Tracey Chapman, a researcher at the University of East Anglia in Norwich in the United Kingdom,has conducted studies on fruit flies and has concluded thatseminal proteinis a “master regulator“ of genes and that females exposed to it through sexual union show a wide range of changes in gene expression.
Cells have proteins called receptors that bind to signaling molecules and initiate a physiological response.Chapman believes this kind of sexual signaling is widespread in the animal world, raising questionsaboutwhat kind of behavioral responses may occur in female mammals.
A 2002 CUNY study conducted by psychologist Gordon Gallup and subsequent confirmations indicate that seminal fluid does indeed alter the mood of women, as it is absorbed into their bloodstream and acts as a mood stabilizer and safeguard against depression.
It is now well-documented that “bonding hormones” such as oxytocin and vasopressin are released during sexual intimacy, causing emotional and psychological bondingbetween the two partners. Other scientific studies relating to male microchimerismin womenand the possibility oftelegonyin humanshave pointed to other interesting possibilities that may someday uncover more depth of truth about the one-flesh union.
The more science revealsinsight into the physical, psychological and social dimensions of the family, the more the “Sexual Revolution” is nakedly exposed as the destructive foundation upholding our Culture of Death. As this study points to in its correlation between premarital sex and divorce, it is a revolution not only against God, but against human nature as well.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Church Militanthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngChurch Militant2019-09-20 18:35:422019-09-20 18:35:42New Study Links Premarital Sex with Separation and Divorce
The last place anyone would expect liberals to rethink their extremism is New York City. But, thanks to a new lawsuit, even the Big Apple seems to understand when it’s vulnerable. “Pinch yourself,” FRC’s Cathy Ruse says. One of the most radical cities on earth is about to walk back its LGBT counseling ban. All because one courageous psychotherapist fought back.
Like most Americans, Dr. Dovid Schwartz doesn’t want the government telling him what he can and can’t say — especially not to patients in desperate need of a listening ear. As someone who’s practiced in New York City for 50 years, he’s seen countless people who want his help overcoming same-sex attractions. After the council passed its ban on talk therapy for patients like his, simply offering that help would have come at a price: $1,000, $5,000, or $10,000 for first, second, and third violations. In Schwartz’s opinion, people should have the right to seek whatever counseling they need. By passing the law, they weren’t just punishing therapists, they were punishing patients. It’s “inhumane,” he argued.
So, with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, he filed a lawsuit. And, without even stepping foot in a courtroom, Schwartz won. The council, seeing the writing on the wall, buckled, announcing that it would be the first legislative body in America to reverse itself on the issue. “Obviously, I didn’t want to repeal this,” the council’s speaker, Corey Johnson, told reporters last week. “I don’t want to be someone who is giving in to these right-wing groups. But the Supreme Court has become conservative; the Second Circuit, which oversees New York, has become more conservative. [And] we think this is the most responsible, prudent course.”
Friday, on “Washington Watch,” lead ADF attorney Roger Brooks told listeners that this case was about a lot more than sexual orientation or gender identity. It goes to the heart of free speech as we know it. “What this lawsuit is about is defending the right of New Yorkers — and obviously, down the road, protect every American to pursue their [own] lives [and seek their own] counsel… [T]here were fundamental constitutional issues at stake… And the bottom line, I think, is that after they looked a little harder at the case, the city attorneys had to agree and agreed that this was simply found unconstitutional.”
ADF’s hope — and ours — is that more elected officials see what’s happening in New York and stop to think about the dangerous side effects to policies like this one. This law, he points out, “extended to conversations between a therapist and an adult,” but there are a great many other laws that take aim at minors and their free speech and personal rights. “Some of those laws are currently being challenged… [and] I think that this case is likely to slow down the emotion elsewhere in the country.” Maybe, he hints, it’s the start of something.
FRC’s Ruse agrees. In a column for the Stream, she talks about the significance of the LGBT movement — “a wrecking ball against any cultural or legal edifice in its way — repealing its own law out of fear. It fears that the new slate of federal judges — who see themselves as umpires and not social problem-solvers — might well strike its law. And in the process, create a precedent that threatens other new laws policing LGBT speech. This is, in a word, huge. It might even rise to the level of a paradigm shift.”
But, she warns, it’s not over until it’s over. “Even if the New York City gag rule is repealed, nearly 20 state gag rules still stand, including one passed by the New York General Assembly this January.” That’s where you come in. There are plenty of local councils and state leaders trying to keep Americans trapped in a lifestyle of pain and bondage. Ohio has a hearing on a similar ban this Wednesday. Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin aren’t far behind. Make sure you’re informed. Find out how Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE) are helping people — and what you can do to protect them in Peter Sprigg’s new issue analysis, here.
Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2019-09-17 07:37:212019-09-17 07:43:16PODCAST: In NYC, a Change of Orientation
Michigan’s opioid pushers: Is your doctor on this list?
Michigan locks up more doctors and pharmacists for peddling pain pills than any other state except New York, the Department of Justice says.
A Free Press investigation focused on this trend and found that metro Detroit doctors in particular are among the leading culprits fueling the opioid crisis, with more than 100 area physicians facing criminal charges over the last decade for running painkiller schemes.
Dr. Obioma Agomuoh. Prison sentence: 5 years
Dr. Asm Akter Ahmed, 58, of Hamtramck. Prison sentence: Time served
Dr. Muhammad Ahmed, 65, of Ypsilanti. Prison sentence: 4 years
Dr. Abbey Akinwumi, 55, of Superior Township. Prison sentence: 7 years and 3 months.
Dr. Yasser Awaad, a Bloomfield Hills neurologist, is accused in civil suit of diagnosing hundreds of children with epilepsy who didn’t have. He fled the country in 2017.
Dr. Hussein “Sam” Awada, 46, of Royal Oak. Prison sentence: 7 years
Dr. Gavin Awerbuch of West Bloomfield. Prison sentence: 32 months
Dr. Mohamed Batayneh, 68, of Livonia. Prison sentence: 8 years and 1 month
The case of Lebanese born Doctor Farid Fata was front page news in Michigan for years. He got 45 years, but his victims wanted even more!
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Ann Corcoranhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAnn Corcoran2019-09-17 06:56:212019-09-17 07:14:36Michigan: See List of Doctors Illegally Pushing Opiods
