Heresy, Hypocrisy, Persecution, and Lunacy Incorporated

 By Rich Kozlovich Tags: The World's Nine Orders  

Let's start with heresy and hypocrisy.  

Recently Andrea Widburg published this piece over at American Thinker, The continued decline of the morally bankrupt Church of England saying "over the years, the Church of England has":

1. Ordained women as priests (which is unbiblical).
2. Ended all limitations on women serving in the church hierarchy. The current Archbishop of Canterbury (the head of the Church of England) is Sarah Mullally, who sort of supports same-sex relationships (unbiblical), is sort of pro-choice (un-traditional-Christian), and is very pro-refugee (anti-British). (Amazingly, she is opposed to assisted suicide.)
3. Approved of homosexuality as an acceptable behavior among the faithful.
4. Authorized the church to bless homosexual unions.
5. Allowed openly gay priests into the clergy.
6. Became very supportive of so-called transgenderism.
7. Went (and still goes) the extra mile for ecumenical relationships with Islam.

Given that the Church has allowed itself to be led by popular culture, rather than standing as a bulwark of firmly held Christian beliefs, it’s probably no surprise that only 10% of British people identify as members of the Church of England, with only 1% attending church every week. Once it became the Church of the BBC, it ceased to have spiritual value.

Well, it's not just the Anglican Church, Heretics Leave a Moral Foundation of Quicksand. The mainstream religions claiming to be Christian are twisting themselves into knots in an effort to appease people who don’t believe, and who rarely attend or don’t attend at all. There is no vile heresy they’re not embracing. Clearly they’re heretics, and if people are what they do, then secretly they must be atheists. Can there be any other conclusion? 

At this point we may be seeing a modern schism developing in the Catholic Church, There are a great many who claim Pope Leo's views on immigration are those of a leftist politician and have nothing to do with the gospel.  The Vatican  rejects that claim saying his views "are official ‘proclamations of the gospel."  There was at time when the Pope understood there was no harmony between Christianity and communism, and "excommunicated all communist Catholics in 1949."  There was a time when it was understood there could be no harmony between Christianity and Islam.  

Right now there appears to be a schism in the making as Cardinal Victor Fernandez excommunicated those who belong to the Society of Saint Pius X for appointing bishops without the approval of the Vatican, calling them schismatic.  Now, prelates and Catholic clergy who are not members of  the SSPX are saying that action is null because:

"Fernandez and those working with him are schismatics themselves. It is no secret that 80 percent of Vatican clergy are homosexuals and that both Fernandez and Leo are responsible for the rampant spread of LGBTQ in Rome and beyond..............  “In the Vatican, however, key positions are increasingly being occupied by people who have been completely corrupted by the world and who have been placed there [by Francis and Leo] in order to destroy the Catholic Church down to its very roots. They are the ones who should be excommunicated, because they no longer have anything at all in common with the Church of Christ.”

So, we've covered heresy, hypocrisy, now let's cover persecution.  

In China, which is one of the world's worst human rights violators as Communist China is a pariah, it’s time to treat it like one.  Xi is seeing a growing Christian movement in China so he arrested a prominent pastor hoping to halt this movement.  It's not working and Xi is going full blast to be a modern Mao arresting Christians who refuse to bend the knee the cult of Xi.  The pastor has since been released but that's not changing Xi's persecution of Christians.

Nigeria is now, and has been for some time, a nightmare of genocide for Christians.  Muslims are killing 35 Christians a day and it's estimated between 5,000 and 10,000 Christians are murdered by Muslims each year, and their corrupt government is doing little about it.  And not one word from the wokesters about genocide.  In this case it's provable genocide versus of the propaganda touted by Democrats, Islamophiles and their media cats paws about Gaza.    

We've covered heresy, hypocrisy, persecution, so now let's cover lunacy.  

Did you know that God doesn't like America?  That blacks are God's chosen people?  That race baiters are the new apostles?   Yessir, and we know this is so because Senator Warnock told us so claiming: 

.............. in a sermon on Sunday that God sent a thunderstorm to the National Mall in Washington, DC on July 4 to force people who were “telling themselves a bunch of lies” about the greatness of the United States into the African-American History Museum.

But when it comes to lunacy, even Warnock can't begin to outdo James Talarico who now claims Christians are ‘Christofascists’ and Islam is a “path to truth”.  Yessir, he's really got a handle on faith, and how to win Texans over.  

Update:

•  The Most Dangerous Pride Event Wasn't the Parade - It Was the Catholic Mass

Another Left-Wing Tax Hypocrite

September 3, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Who are the world’s worst fiscal hypocrites?

• Some people say the answer is the international bureaucrats at the OECD, IMF, and UN who push for higher taxes while receiving lavish tax-free salaries.
• Other people say the answer is politicians in the United States who push for higher taxes while following clever strategies to protect their own money.

Both of those choices are good, but we don’t want to overlook reprehensibly hypocritical politicians from other nations.

Consider Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minster of the United Kingdom. She and her government love tax increases to finance ever-bigger government.  Yet, as reported by Ben Ellery for the UK-based Times, she has been very aggressive about protecting her own money.

 

Angela Rayner’s constituency home was valued at the exact threshold for inheritance tax when part of it was placed in a trust using a wealth protection firm. Tax experts told The Times it was a “remarkable coincidence” that the property owned by the deputy prime minister and her former husband was valued at £650,000, the maximum amount allowed before the tax becomes payable. Rayner has been facing questions over whether she avoided £40,000 in stamp duty when buying her new flat in Hove, East Sussex… 

Heather Powell, a partner at Blick Rothenberg specialising in property, said: “Valuing the property at £650,000 is a remarkable coincidence. …The questions over inheritance tax in relation to Rayner follow speculation that she had saved money on stamp duty and capital gains tax. Rayner bought a three-bed flat in a Victorian mansion block in Hove overlooking the sea for £800,000 in May. She said that she had disposed of her interest in her former family home in Ashton, before buying the flat on the south coast — a move thought to have saved her £40,000 in stamp duty. … 

Questions were also raised last year about Rayner’s tax payments on a 2010 house sale. Rayner bought her Stockport council house in 2007 under right-to-buy. After marrying in 2010, she sold it for £48,500 profit but didn’t pay capital gains tax, stating she was unaware married couples typically only claim one main home for CGT.

Since the capital gains tax should not exist, part of me wants to cheer for Ms. Rayner.  But I can’t cheer for people who want higher taxes on others while aggressively protecting their own money. Moreover, the BBC is reporting that she is admitting wrong-doing and will now surrender some of her money.

 

The housing secretary has admitted paying the wrong amount of tax on a house. That is pretty much the worst headline conceivable about any housing secretary, let alone Angela Rayner, who is also the deputy prime minister and spent years as Labour’s sleazehunter-in-chief. That’s the straightforward fact which makes this such a damaging, indeed career-threatening, episode for Rayner. …Rayner is adamant that she sought advice from a lawyer about the stamp duty liable, and has only now learnt from a different lawyer that that advice was wrong. It is on that basis that she is not resigning.

Since I’m not familiar with the details of capital gains taxation and stamp duty taxes in the UK, I have no opinion on the legal question of whether she crossed from legal tax avoidance to illegal tax evasion.

But I do know that the United Kingdom has become a tax hell for non-politicians, so there should be endless scorn when pro-tax politicians try to minimize their own taxes (legally or illegally).

P.S. Ms. Rayner is not the only Labour Party politician to get in trouble for hypocrisy.

My Gazette: Going Green

If it's Green, it isn't Gold.  Going Green is Another Term For Corruption, Hypocrisy, Lies and Insanity.

By Rich Kozlovich 

Growing up in South West Pennsylvania I saw pollution from the coal mines and coke ovens that was massive, and as a result, for many years I considered myself an environmentalist. That was a failure in definition on my part.  I considered justifiable concern about the environment meant being an environmentalist. How foolish I was. Environmentalists merely used that to disguise the real definition of organized environmentalism.

Green on the outside, and red on the inside.

After I became an exterminator, I wanted to make sure what I was doing wasn’t harmful to society and the environment, which meant doing a lot or research on pesticides, especially DDT.  What I found very quickly was if the greenies and/or leftists were for something, that was more than enough justification to be against it. From that point on I started writing about what I discovered in defense of my industry.

Everything you’ve been told about DDT and pesticides in general is a lie. The green/left nitwit brigade have tools they use consistently. Lies of commission, lies of omission, logical fallacies, speculation, and projection.  Nothing has changed, except I think far more people see them for who and what they really are now.

 On January 2, 2024, Jack Hellner published this article, The media and other green pushers clearly don't care about killing wildlife or the truth, saying:

Instead of the media blaming wind turbines for killing whales and dolphins, they blame conservatives for pointing it out. According to the Daily Signal:  Associated Press Gets It Wrong: Wind Farm Contractors Acknowledge Turbines Harm Dolphins, Whales........There is a sad story in USA Today that a bald eagle that had a gunshot wound had to be put down. They correctly said it was an inhumane act that killed the eagle:. .............Yet we never see stories about how inhumane it is that wind turbines are allowed to kill thousands of eagles without many if any repercussions. The green pushers are allowed to kill eagles and other wildlife because they are supposedly saving the planet from climate change............  

Remember DDT? It was banned because it was allegedly killing the avian life of North America, especially the Bald Eagle.  And that was a lie, a lie that's still being perpetrated.  

 

This picture to the right was featured in an article entitled, "What Were We Thinking? "The Top 10 Most Dangerous Ads", with the subtitle, "A look back at 10 colossally painful advertisements." 

 

Some of the stuff they point out is right on, but let's face it, they're wrong about DDT, because DDT was the greatest chemical compound ever created for the benefit of mankind.  It was good for everyone, and everything, except for bugs, especially mosquitoes, and everything you "know" about DDT is a lie.   

 

In spite of the claims in this article, DDT wasn't dangerous to the "nervous, immune, endocrine, and neurological systems." Nor did it have a "devastating influence on the natural environment." 

 

The fact is DDT was a weapon of mass survival, and saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people, the avian population actually increased during the DDT years, including the Bald Eagle, and the robin, which Rachel Carson claimed was going to go extinct, was the most populace bird in North America. Avian life was 19 times higher during the peak DDT years, and Rachel Carson had to know that because she was a writer for the Wild Life Service and every year she viewed and reported on the December Audubon Society's winter report showing that. 

 

Rachel Carson's science fiction book Silent Spring was blatantly false, and she knew it.  She was the mother of junk science, and that pattern of lies of commission, lies of omission, misdirection, speculation, and out right fraud has been the pattern of the green movement ever since.  

 

When one takes a good look at the claims of the green movement we find the rank and file, mostly useful idiots, really aren't so much concerned about the environment, as they're concerned about eliminating humanity.  The leadership is only concerned about using the fear mongering that movement can generate to attain unwholesome amounts of power, privilege, and money.   And make no mistake, none of their schemes will apply to them, and have no illusions, they will claim everything causes catastrophic climate change, including houseplants. Everything except what they're doing. 

 

Javier Milei, President of Argentina, made it clear at the latest Davos meeting - January 18, 2024 By Olivia Murray - Idle hands are the devil’s playground, and who has a more frivolous existence than a leftist working at the behest of any one of the West’s federal governments? Case in point: Justin Trudeau and his thumb-twiddling comrades. They are running out of private affairs in which to meddle; they’ve already socialized all the industries; baby murder is everywhere (and snowballing); and the unalienable “rights” of the people are all but dead. What else could they possibly find to do? Well, idle hands are drawn to mischief like a moth to the flame, and Canada’s federal government is now pursuing the ideas of creating a “net zero” military. As reported by Rebel News yesterday:..............

 

Here's what they're up to. 

 

Agriculture

 

The farmer protests that changed the Dutch government have come to Germany-  January 13, 2024 By Andrea Widburg - The mainstream media is assiduously ignoring a fascinating story: German farmers are doing what Dutch farmers did last year; namely, rising up in a massive protest against their country’s globalist, climate change policies. With luck, these protests will have the same outcome, which was a massive shift to conservativism in the Dutch government during the last election. Modern Germany is, in some ways, a very weird country thanks to the legacy of WWII. Its citizens have grown up in the shadow of their collective guilt for the Holocaust, along with the 80 million or so other deaths the Nazi war sparked. They are, in many ways, a very self-apologetic, self-loathing people.............

• WEF Speaker Claims Farming and Fishing Are “Ecocide” and It Be Recognized as a “Serious Crime” [VIDEO]

Anthropogenic Climate Change

 

The complete fantasy of climate science - January 10, 2024 By Andrea Widburg - One of the things to remember about climate change madness is that it has all the scientific validity of the flat earth theory or the ancient medical belief in humors. That is to say, it’s a sealed universe driven by self-reinforcing faith and fantasy without any serious reality attached. The last two days have brought two new examples of the delusions and outright lies that drive the climate change narrative.  On the delusion side, we have Axios’s horror that the earth is within 1.5 degrees of the global warming limit set at the Paris Climate Accords, paired with its assurance that (and I’m quoting more accurately than Claudine Gay ever would), “The climate of 2023 was the hottest seen in at least 125,000 years…” (Emphasis mine.)..........

 

Does the Earth have a fever? Is it boiling? Have we hit the tipping point? The answer is clearly no - January 13, 2024 By Jack Hellner -The public is constantly being told that the Earth is the warmest it has ever been. And that warming is being caused by humans, our use of natural resources, and CO2. 

And the solution for the media and other Democrats is the same as the solution for all problems: We need a bigger government, with higher taxes and more regulations and of course, the government has to be run by Democrats. We need to give up our gas-powered cars, furnaces, gas stoves, and appliances before it is too late. Something that never gets in their way as they push this green agenda are facts..........

 

Media members panic with the record cold, worry it will derail ‘warming’ tale - January 18, 2024 By Jack Hellner - The media agents can’t stand the thought of people seeing and experiencing the record cold in the United States, because they’re worried it will have an effect on the everyday person’s willingness to believe the scam that the earth is warming—so they put out this piece of propaganda:

US in deep freeze while much of the world is extra toasty? Yet again, it’s climate change

Wind chills in parts of North Dakota reached minus 70 degrees (minus 56 degrees Celsius), while the heat index in Miami was more than 160 degrees warmer at 92 (33 degrees Celsius). The fourth-coldest NFL football game took place in Kansas City, while across the globe the thermometer hit a blistering 92 degrees, 12 degrees (6.8 degrees Celsius) warmer than average on Friday during tennis’ Australian Open in Melbourne. Warm temperature records fell overnight in Aruba, Curacao, parts of Argentina, Oman and Iran.

If it seems as if the world has gone topsy-turvy, in a way it has. Because this all comes from what’s happening in the Arctic, where it used to be warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Now, it’s warming three to four times faster.

Hint: If all the things we are told cause warming, actually did, it would be warming everywhere. You wouldn’t have record cold temperatures across different climates and regions...........

Electric Vehicles

So filled with fraud: The green agenda and the rich who benefit from it -  January 19, 2024 By Jack Hellner - The federal government essentially has ordered electric car companies to commit fraud.  Here's the headline: The Electric-Vehicle Cheating Scandal, A government rule makes them look nearly seven times as efficient as they are. Here's what's from the article:..............These are the worthless carbon credits that companies such as Tesla got rich selling to companies like GM and Ford so they could pretend to reduce the carbon from their highly profitable gas guzzling trucks and SUVs. Democrats claim they care about the poor and middle class but the poor have been screwed for years to pay more for their gas-powered vehicles to cover the massive losses from selling inefficient, expensive, impractical vehicles powered by the highly flammable pollutant lithium that the green pushers want to force all of us to buy. ..............

The Electric Car Con Explained - William Levin There is no factual basis to claim that the government man - January 11, 2024 By William Levin - Is electricity a source of energy? Most people will answer yes, which is incorrect. Electricity carries energy but it is not itself a source of energy, which in the U.S. is supplied 60% by natural gas and coal, 18% nuclear and 22% renewables (hydro, solar and wind). The related question is whether cars are a major consumer of energy and hence a significant contributor of Co2 emissions? Again, most people believe both statements are self-evidently true, hence the importance of moving to electric cars. In fact, cars (light-duty transportation) account for less than 5% of global energy demand, with U.S. cars accounting for 19% of the global car fleet, declining to under 15% by 2050 as car demand grows faster outside the U.S.   Putting these facts together, and they are indisputable facts, provides a stunning insight................ In other words, there is no factual basis to claim that the government mandate to switch to electric cars will have any material impact on global Co2 emissions..........

Hertz backpedals… again… and announces plan to sell off EV fleet and purchase gas vehicles -

January 12, 2024 By Olivia Murray - Is this schadenfreude or a palate cleanse? Perhaps a little of both? In 2021, Hertz had publicized plans to have electric vehicles comprise 25% of its fleet by 2024, and announced it would be ordering 100,000 Teslas by the end of 2022. By the end of 2023, it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen; per Hertz Global CEO Stephen Scherr, “our in-fleeting of EVs will be slower than our prior expectations.” (Scherr cited price cuts as Tesla, in conjunction with repair costs which were “twice” as much as a normal gas-powered vehicle.)  In November, I wrote a blog on the car rental company’s decision to renege on previous commitments to the “green” agenda, but it seems I was a bit premature, because the story wasn’t finished; from an article at Detroit Free Press published yesterday:............

 

Why Electric Vehicles Have a Reduced Range in the Cold - Alex Caprariello, Urja Sinha Jan 16, 2024 - As subzero temperatures slam the U.S., electric vehicle drivers are learning their cars’ batteries don’t perform well in the cold. Some charging stations in cities like Chicago have become EV graveyards with long lines of Teslas that won’t start. “It’ll drain pretty fast. This cold is brutal. It’s draining the battery, I can’t even get inside the car,” said EV driver Wes France. “My battery drained down to five percent, which is faster than normal. Long story short, here I am, I have to tow it out this way.”...........

 

Chicago becomes a ‘graveyard’ littered with corpses of ‘dead robots’ - January 16, 2024 By Olivia Murray - As the late great John Wayne purportedly said, “Life’s hard; it’s even harder when you’re stupid.” The Midwest, accustomed to brutal winters, has been hit by an especially “bitter” storm; Chicago in particular is dealing with temperatures as low as the negative 20s and 30s, and a high of… one whole whopping degree. Now, as anyone with even the slightest bit of awareness could have told you, E.V.s were not going to perform… like at all, in this kind of weather. But then again, are the people buying these cars really doing so with any awareness? Arguably no, which is presumably why they actually relied on their vehicles for transportation, and were genuinely shocked to discover how truly unreliable the E.V. design is; read below, reported by a Fox News outlet based in Chicago:..........

 

My Take - Chuckling. I'm really enjoying all this. Is that being mean? Yep, and I'm really enjoying all this, and I don't care. Those who wrote about this from the beginning, and were called Luddites, deniers, and worse, have the right to enjoy this. Maybe all that smug, arrogant self righteousness will keep them warm? Oh, wait, that's all frozen now.  Schadenfreude!

 

Electric buses: another bankrupt green boondoggle  -January 9, 2024 By Mike McDaniel - Electric buses are just like electric passenger vehicles: they’re not ready for prime time, only more so. Proterra buses are a case in point. Cities that wasted money on them found they had far less range then advertised. They commonly couldn’t complete even short, flat routes specifically designed for them. The enormous weight of their batteries cracked frames, and getting parts from the factory was virtually impossible. But to make up for their failures, they were far more expensive than reliable diesel buses. Proterra went bankrupt in August of 2023. President Biden gave Proterra at least $10 million, and lauded it as the future: “when you start making a thousand buses a year, you’re going to need more room for customers.”  That makes as little sense as anything Biden is saying these days. And as with everything else, the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration is incapable of learning from its mistakes: ......... 

 

Ford Cuts Michigan Workforce for Electric Truck That Joe Biden Touted - John Binder 19 Jan 2024 - Ford Motor Company is following through on plans to scale back production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup that President Joe Biden once touted. On Friday, Ford executives announced that about 1,400 auto workers at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, would be moved to other manufacturing jobs at the company or offered retirement packages. The workforce cuts come as Ford scales back production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning due to a lack of demand among American consumers................

Fossil Fuels

Left Wing Climate Activist Endorses Blowing up Pipelines and Admits People Could be Killed - Mike LaChance Jan. 16, 2024 -  A left wing climate activist named Andreas Malm was recently interviewed by the New York Times and openly endorsed the idea of blowing up pipelines and admitted that there could be casualties. Trump supporters are sitting in jail for merely walking through the Capitol, but left wingers can openly call for crime and violence in the furtherance of their political goals and no one says a thing. When pressed on that response, Malm argued, “Well, I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now. I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents. But what do I know? I haven’t personally blown up a pipeline, and I can’t foretell the future.”...........The left is so used to getting away with this behavior that they’re perfectly comfortable talking about it openly.

San Diego Catholic diocese touts its 'historic first' in divesting from fossil fuels -  January 13, 2024 By Monica Showalter - The Catholic Diocese of San Diego, led by progressive San Francisco Cardinal Robert McElroy, apparently doesn't care if it ends up looking stupid ... or for that matter, broke. According to the National Catholic Reporter, it's taking its cues on economics from Argentine-educated Pope Francis, who understands about as much about economics as the socialist regime in that country that was just thrown out by its voters......

Trudeau’s regime shifts its focus to a ‘net-zero’ military -  January 18, 2024 By Olivia Murray - Idle hands are the devil’s playground, and who has a more frivolous existence than a leftist working at the behest of any one of the West’s federal governments? Case in point: Justin Trudeau and his thumb-twiddling comrades. They are running out of private affairs in which to meddle; they’ve already socialized all the industries; baby murder is everywhere (and snowballing); and the unalienable “rights” of the people are all but dead. What else could they possibly find to do? Well, idle hands are drawn to mischief like a moth to the flame, and Canada’s federal government is now pursuing the ideas of creating a “net zero” military. As reported by Rebel News yesterday:............

My Take - As a side bar, you may find this interesting.  Trudeau's Hypocrisy Regarding Israel - American Thinker.   The man has been vile his entire career, and yet he's still in power. I'll never understand Canadian politics or parliamentarian government with the convoluted structure it creates.  But beyond that, it seems totally clear to me there's something wrong with this man's mind, and he's certifiable. 

Green Energy

2024 Promises the Expansion of the Green Energy Scam - January 17, 2024 By Vince Coyner -  Years ago, I wrote a post about how cheap air travel to Europe was ruining America. My point was that the Americans visiting Europe were confusing what they experienced as a tourist with the reality of life in Europe. These progressive American fans of two-hour lunches and 6 months of maternal and paternal leave didn’t have a clue about how average Europeans lived. Indeed, a couple of years later, the Foundation For Economic Education came out with a study that showed the poorest 20% of Americans were better off than the average European. Basically, the average European suffers from high taxes, high prices, tiny homes and cars, and, increasingly, less freedom. But tourists sipping tea in London or shopping in Paris rarely, if ever, see this, or understand it if they do.......

 

Final thought:   Will Rogers once said, “Never miss a good chance to shut up.”  That thought never crossed the minds of these nitwits. After all, the peasants are in dire need of their elite wisdom. Right?   Of course, It would be nice if their views were predicated on history, logic, facts, and reality versus intimidation by thugs and imbecilic ideologues.

The Secret Democrats Refuse To Acknowledge: America's Emissions Are Dropping Faster Than Paris Targets

By Lawrence Kudlow , Special to the Sun | November 1, 2021 

 

One of the most interesting climate change points to me that is never mentioned by President Biden and all the existential threat crowd is just how well the United States has done in cutting carbon emissions in the last 20 years. They never talk about it. Don’t you think that’s odd?

While they’ve been blaming America — as they always do — our emissions have dropped from the 2005 baseline some 20%, or even slightly more, through the end of 2020. The Paris climate accord target was 25% by 2025. So we nearly hit it 5 years early. You know why? Two words. Natural gas.

Plus, there’s a third word: Fracking. American free enterprise, private sector ingenuity, and technology adapted an old process and retooled it to generate a revolution in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. There was no government plan. It came out of private enterprise. Natural gas, of course, is a clean burning fuel, which has partly replaced both oil and coal.

In the last 20 years, natural gas use in America has more than doubled. That’s because It’s cheap, clean, and accessible through the new technology. The demand for liquefied natural gas is growing exponentially all around the world.........To Read More....

The elites are laughing in our faces

COP26 promises to be a grotesque spectacle of decadence and hypocrisy. 

Brendan O'Neill chief political writer 1st November 2021

COP26 is gearing up to be a grotesque spectacle. We are about to witness Versailles levels of extravagance and hypocrisy. The rich, the powerful and the full of puffed-up virtue will gather in Glasgow to pontificate to the rest of us about how much we are harming the planet with all our waste and hubris. They'll arrive in their private jets to bemoan the scourge of air-industry emissions. They'll tuck in to five-star meals in between wondering out loud if the little people should eat less meat. They'll rest their weary, virtuous heads on plump, silk pillows after long days of discussing how to rein in the material aspirations of the masses. It promises to be one of most nauseating displays of oligarchical conceit of recent times.

It feels like the elites are just laughing in our faces now. So the other day we had the UK's chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, saying everyone will have to eat less meat and fly less if we are going to get a handle on this climate-change thing. A little later it was reported that around 400 private jets will fly into COP26, carrying world leaders and big-business execs to the plush surrounds in which they'll wring their manicured hands over mankind's carbon crimes. Ordinary people are guilt-tripped for taking one poxy flight a year to escape the trials and vagaries of life in capitalist society for a couple of weeks............To Read More.....

 

 

SALT Deductibility, Hypocrisy and Good Government

Gary M. Galles  – October 6, 2021 @ American Institute for Economic Research

The Trump tax reform imposed a $10,000 ceiling on state and local tax (SALT) itemized deductions for federal income taxes, paired with a doubling in the standard deduction. Ever since, Democrats with higher income residents and higher state and local taxes have been pushing to undo the SALT cap (while ignoring the benefits of the standard deduction expansion, which were far more balanced across citizens).

Governors of high tax blue states have opposed the SALT limit because “the cap on SALT deductions established a system of double taxation, where 11 million Americans were forced to pay taxes on the amount they paid in State, local, and property taxes,” according to six Democratic governors writing in April. Ways and Means Committee member Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) called it “critical middle-class relief,” asserting that “SALT benefits flow to all communities.” Now a group of congressional Democrats is threatening to hold the latest mega-tax-and-spend proposal hostage to get what they want.

The campaign turns a deaf ear to the hypocrisy of Democrats wanting to give tens of billions of dollars of federal tax expenditures to a very lopsidedly high-income group, while pushing a punish-the-rich tax proposal justified as making them pay their “fair share.” But what is more important, and has received even less discussion, is that SALT deductibility does not follow from “good government” principles...............

SALT deductibility does create serious issues, however. SALT was the largest itemized deduction, allowing itemizers to export a substantial portion of their burdens onto other Americans through the federal tax code. If I faced a 30percent federal marginal tax rate, paying $100 more in SALT lowers my federal tax bill by $30. It only costs me $70. Because that subsidy rises the more property is owned and the higher the income of the owner, the distortion overwhelmingly favors the richest, with the middle-class (who own less property, earn less, and face lower marginal tax rates) getting far smaller benefits, and non-itemizers getting no subsidy at all. In the process, it also subsidizes high state and local tax states at others’ expense.............To Read More.....

Liz Cheney, flamin' hot hypocrite

July 23, 2021 By Monica Showalter

The term "Republican in Name Only" or RINO is flung around loosely, but it doesn't get more deadly accurate when the person involved is Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

Having gotten herself a spot on House speaker Nancy Pelosi's 9/11 commission, and declaring that she was "honored" to have gotten Pelosi's own invitation (kid you not), she decided to horn in on the very real rift between Pelosi and her own party leader, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, over the committee personnel.  That rift came when McCarthy yanked all five GOP nominations to the commission after Pelosi rejected Reps. Jim Banks and Jim Jordan as threats to the "integrity" of the commission, in an unprecedented move.  McCarthy said Democrats don't get to pick and choose their Republicans for the commission.

According to Cheney, as reported by the Federalist and Daily Caller, "I agree with what Speaker Pelosi has done."  According to Oil City News, a local media outlet in Caspar, Wyoming, she also said this:...........

 Pelosi's hypocrisy is legion, and it's expected.  Cheney's is something else.........To Read More....

Here We Go: Major Texas Democrat Stripped of Leadership Post for Fleeing the State

By Bryan Preston Jul 15, 2021

 

State Rep. Joe Moody (D-El Paso) has been stripped of his position as speaker pro tem in the Texas House following his decision to flee the state in order to stymie the ongoing special session that Gov. Greg Abbott called.

House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, announced the removal of Moody as speaker pro tem in a memo Thursday morning before the House was set to return on Thursday. He gave no statement but said the removal was effective immediately.

“The most important titles in my life will never change: Dad, Husband, El Pasoan,” Moody said in a statement. “Nothing political has ever even cracked the top three, so nothing has changed about who I am or what my values are.”

Moody is (or was) one of Speaker Phelan’s closest Democrat allies. Two of the terms he used to describe himself — Dad and husband — are gender-specific terms forbidden by the rules adopted by the Democratic leadership in the United States House of Representatives...........To Read More...

My Take - Interesting piece that exposes the Democrat party's hypocrisy.  Allegedly the Democrat Party now all of a sudden supports voter I.D., but at the same time Democrats in state legislatures are fighting it like the plague, and it is a plague to their party, for without voter fraud they can't win except in soviet socialist states like New York and California.  Not to mention the fact Kamala Harris supports and lauds their leaving Texas refusing to do the job taxpayers are paying them to do.  Hypocrisy, lies, and childish tantrums.  Three excellent words to define their party. 

Big-Government Republicans Enable Big-Government Democrats

March 29, 2021 by Dan Mitchell

I get asked why I frequently criticize Republicans.

My response is easy. I care about results rather than rhetoric. And while GOP politicians often pay lip service to the principles of limited government, they usually increase spending even faster than Democrats.

 

Indeed, Republicans are even worse than Democrats when measuring the growth of domestic spending!  This is bad news because it means the burden of government expands when Republicans are in charge.  And, as Gary Abernathy points out in a column for the Washington Post, Republicans then don’t have the moral authority to complain when Democrats engage in spending binges.

President Biden is proposing another $3 trillion in spending… There are objections, but none that can be taken seriously. …Republicans had lost their standing as the party of fiscal responsibility when most of them succumbed to the political virus of covid fever and rubber-stamped around $4 trillion in “covid relief,”… With Trump out and Biden in, Republicans suddenly pretended that their 2020 spending spree happened in some alternate universe. But the GOP’s united opposition to Biden’s $1.9 trillion package won’t wash off the stench of the hypocrisy. …I noted a year ago that we had crossed the Rubicon, that our longtime flirtation with socialism had become a permanent relationship. Congratulations, Bernie Sanders. The GOP won’t become irrelevant because of its association with Trump, as some predict. It will diminish because it is bizarrely opposing now that which it helped make palatable just last year. Fiscal responsibility is dead, and Republicans helped bury it. Put the shovels away, there’s no digging it up now.

For what it’s worth, I hope genuine fiscal responsibility isn’t dead.  Maybe it’s been hibernating ever since Reagan left office (like Pepperidge Farm, I’m old enough to remember those wonderful years).

Subsequent Republican presidents liked to copy Reagan’s rhetoric, but they definitely didn’t copy his policies.

• Spending restraint was hibernating during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.
• Spending restraint also was hibernating during the presidency of George W. Bush.
• And spending restraint was hibernating during the presidency of Donald Trump.

I’m not the only one to notice GOP hypocrisy.  Here are some excerpts from a 2019 column in the Washington Post by Fareed Zakaria.

In what Republicans used to call the core of their agenda — limited government — Trump has been profoundly unconservative. …Trump has now added more than $88 billion in taxes in the form of tariffs, according to the right-leaning Tax Foundation. (Despite what the president says, tariffs are taxes on foreign goods paid by U.S. consumers.) This has had the effect of reducing gross domestic product and denting the wages of Americans. …For decades, conservatives including Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan preached to the world the virtues of free trade. But perhaps even more, they believed in the idea that governments should not pick winners and losers in the economy… Yet the Trump administration…behaved like a Central Planning Agency, granting exemptions on tariffs to favored companies and industries, while refusing them to others. …In true Soviet style, lobbyists, lawyers and corporate executives now line up to petition government officials for these treasured waivers, which are granted in an opaque process… On the core issue that used to define the GOP — economics — the party’s agenda today is state planning and crony capitalism.

Zakaria is right about Republicans going along with most of Trump’s bad policies (as illustrated by this cartoon strip).*

The bottom line is that Republicans would be much more effective arguing against Biden’s spending orgy had they also argued for spending restraint when Trump was in the White House.

P.S. It will be interesting to see what happens in the near future. Will the GOP be a small-government Reagan party or a big-government Trump party?

Or maybe it will go back to being a Nixon-type party, which would mean bigger government but without mean tweets. And there are plenty of options.

• Common-good capitalism
• Nationalist conservatism
• Reform conservatism
• Kinder-and-gentler conservatism
• Compassionate conservatism

If they make the wrong choice (anything other than Reaganism), Margaret Thatcher has already warned us about the consequences.

*To be fair, Republicans also went along with Trump’s good policies. It’s just unfortunate that spending restraint wasn’t one of them.

 

A Message for LeBron James

Wayne Allyn Root Sep 06, 2020

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Pro sports in America are dying in front of our very eyes. This will be a story taught in business schools across America for decades to come. The story is about how to kill a multibillion-dollar empire overnight with just your big mouth. It's about killing the goose that laid the golden egg. It's about the massive disconnect between sports stars and their customers -- the people who pay their grossly inflated and obscene salaries. You are killing yourselves. It's clearly suicide. Stop talking politics. You're going to be playing in front of empty stands forever..............

Before I get to the reason pro athletes should keep politics away from their sports, let me ask LeBron James and his NBA pals a few very important questions.

• LeBron, how come you never said a word, let alone threatened to end the season, over black-on-black violence in big cities across the USA? Thousands of black young men are dying on the streets of inner cities. Why don't you care?
• LeBron, how about Chicago? Why doesn't it bother you that 50 to 100 innocent citizens are being shot there nearly every weekend? The victims are virtually 100 percent black. Why isn't that worth a boycott?
• LeBron, how about the innocent little black children murdered in gang shootings in big cities across America? It happens every day. Why doesn't that bother you?
• LeBron, how about the millions of black babies aborted? Why not cancel the NBA season for that? Why doesn't that bother you?
• LeBron, has any sports league EVER stopped playing or postponed playoff games for a hero cop murdered, or a hero soldier murdered? That's not important to you?
• LeBron, did you or your NBA pals stop playing to honor the black retired police captain in St. Louis killed by a thug during riots?
• LeBron, did the NBA or any other sports league postpone games or threaten to end the season when a sniper murdered five Dallas cops in one day? Why didn't that bother any pro athletes?
• LeBron, did you or any pro athletes demand games be stopped for the little boy shot in the head and murdered two weeks ago? He happened to be white. The man accused of murdering him happens to be black. 
• That has to be one of the most shocking crimes in recent American history. Who kills a smiling, happy 5-year-old on his bicycle, execution-style? But I never heard a peep from one NBA player. Why? You didn't notice?

Is the execution of a 5-year-old less important to you than a white cop killing or wounding a black criminal who has a long criminal record and refuses to obey orders from a police officer? Really?
LeBron, isn't it strange that neither you nor your NBA pals ever gave a damn about human rights violations in China? There are billions of dollars to be made looking the other way, while communist China abuses, arrests, tortures, and murders its own citizens. China is said to have concentration camps for Muslims. But you know that, right? Obviously, none of that is a problem for NBA players if billions of dollars are at stake..........To Read More....

Cartoon of the Day

Has the Church Become Politically Pragmatic?

By Michael Ware November 6, 2016

When we talk about Christians and politics, many become uncomfortable. There are those who believe that the Church should not be in political affairs. Either they are misinformed about the issue of the separation of Church and state, or they misunderstand Matthew chapter five.  In either case, we have seen a significant shift in the way Christians choose the people they will vote for politically. And a recent survey reveals how quickly thinking has changed.   Evangelical Focus reports......To Read More....

My Take - He asks the wrong question. The right question is "when have the chuches not been politically pragmatic?"

After the first century and the apostles died and everything changed.  Sectarian forces created splits,  which already started at the end of the first century.  While John, the last living apostle was still alive, the Sect of Nicolaus was condemned by him. After he passed, and the governing council set up in Jerusalem was dispersed -  I assume that happened when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 C.E. - everything was a crap shoot.

The Council of Nicea was convened by Christain bishops in Bithynia,Turkey in 325 C.E. Who prisided over it? Roman Emperor Constantine, and it was he who decided what Christian doctrine on the Trinity would be.....and there is absolutly no evidence he was a baptized Christian at that time and only sketchy evidence he may have been baptized at his death.  Furthermore he reversed that position on more than one occasion when it was politically convenient, and the "church" went along with it. 

That pattern repeated with the Protestant churches over the centuries also.  Have there been people of strong faith and character who stood up to this kind of thing? Sure, but they either weren't in charge, or if they were, when they died those who took over became "politcally pragmatic".   The correct answer, as demonstrated by reality and history, is the "chruch" has "never" failed to ultimately become politcially pragmatic! 

But there's a question he fails to address.

He believes theological shifts have taken place allowing for people to believe God's standards are "flexible", then no matter what a person does all is forgiven because ethics are no longer taught in the churches. 

If that's true, and it certainly appears to be true overall - then, if they stand for nothing it really means they'll stand for anything.  Is that a clear demonstration of what the leaders of these organizations believe in?  The Democrats moral stands support many things condemned in the Bible, and they atheism has been made clear at one of their conventions where they booed God.  If that's so, and it is, then the other question we need to ask is:  How can a Christian be a Democrat and not be a heretic? And then we need to ask: What exactly do these chruches stand for?  And if they stand for nothing, anything or everything, then we absolutely need to ask:  Why do we need them? 

The McCain Guest List! Do You Really Care? Does it Really Matter?

By Rich Kozlovich

Yesterday Eliana Johnson  posted this article, "Top 2008 campaign aides shut out of McCain funeral" saying:

"Campaign manager Steve Schmidt, senior adviser Nicolle Wallace, and longtime strategist John Weaver were snubbed, as was former running mate Sarah Palin.  John McCain’s funeral will spotlight some of the late senator’s political rivals – but some of his closest campaign aides are being excluded from the proceedings.   Three of the most prominent members of his 2008 presidential campaign – campaign manager Steve Schmidt, senior adviser Nicolle Wallace, and longtime strategist John Weaver — were not invited to any of McCain’s services, according to three people familiar with the guest list."

My 93 year old mother uses a phrase I think fits this story: "This falls under the category of who gives a s..."!    And I agree! 

The author missed the real significance of all of this.  The real story about these former aides isn't who was invited, who was left out, who was told not to come, what they did, what they said to whom or about what.  The real story about these three former uninvited campaign aides is this:

"All three former McCain advisers are now affiliated with MSNBC."

Because the real story is about the actual character of John McCain!

Are we're to believe McCain hired people to get him elected President of the United States whose personal political views were philosophically antithetical to his own?  This is the real story, and this was the real McCain, and the real reason he lost the election.    People seem to forget it was reported an estimated  five to six million conservatives absolutely refused to vote for him.  Why?  Conservatives knew him for who he really was, and the rest of the country isn't Arizona. 

I'm willing to acknowledge hero status for his service, irrespective of all the counter claims, but having once been a hero doesn't give someone a pass on the rest of life.  And for most of his life I found him to be corrupt (Try the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal, where the Phoenix New Times referred to him as the McCain: The Most Reprehensible of the Keating Five), vindictive, (Did Sarah Palin really deserve that, a must read article by Monica Showalter.) ungrateful, self serving, deceptive and untrustworthy, and many of those who are slobbering all over themselves to praise him now felt the same way, on both sides of the aisle.  Many of those who vilified him during his political career are now vilifying Trump for not slobbering over himself as they've done.  What they should be doing is praising Trump for being gracious about a man he most likely despised.

Trump saying, "My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain.  Our hearts and prayers are with you!", wasn't enough.  Flying the flag at half staff according the the protocol of the "1954 proclamation by then President Eisenhower" wasn't enough.    Not showing up at the funeral in spite of McCain's request he not attend wasn't the right thing to do.

It's clear no matter what Trump did it wasn't going to be enough to appease these hypocrites. 

Slobbering and absolute obeisance to the, "John McCain was the greatest American to have ever lived myth", was now called for, and demanded by these hypocrites.  And make no mistake about this - if he had done that they would have gleefully called him a hypocrite and would have claimed that was proof he wasn't worthy of the Presidency. 

The hypocrisy by the media and political cowards over McCain's life and death is gaggable, and now he will pass off into history - and I hope everyone will remember I said this.  The circus has left town, and history will not be kind to John McCain!   Not any more than it's been kind to Ted Kennedy. 

Another "lion" of the Senate.

One more thing.  Who started the war between McCain and Trump?

The Joy and Necessity of Driving Liberals Nuts

Mar 19, 2018 Kurt Schlichter

 Is the foundation of our revolt against the elites – which the liberals and the Fredocons call “Trumpism” because they don’t want to face the fact that Normals are tired of their corruption and incompetence – merely trolling by a bunch of malcontents?

True, we do enjoy messing with them. You look at the avatar of the movement, Donald Trump, and he’s the Trollmaster Level XII Emeritus. This guy lays down the smack, and a lot of Americans are delighted by his antics.

But is that all this is? Is our movement simply about slamming the people we’re annoyed at and nothing more?

Of course not............Napoleon (allegedly) warned that you should never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake............We are blessed with an enemy that refuses to even try to understand us, but do we ever understand them.   And that means we know their weaknesses.

After all, the establishment has been in our faces all our lives. We can’t not know them because there is no way to avoid them. The media, entertainment, politics – it’s all them all the time, so we know what makes them tick, and where to plant the charges to bring down the whole stinking edifice.

It’s just a matter of pushing their buttons............To Read More....

Gore, Trump and Liberal Hypocrisy

Newt Gingrich

The media is beside itself that Wednesday night, in the final presidential debate, Donald Trump said he would wait until the election actually occurs to judge whether or not it was carried out fairly.
Apparently, some people think that when a Republican says he will watch closely to make there’s no corruption of the vote, he is a “threat to democracy” and even a “domestic insurrectionist.”
While on the other hand, they think that when a Democrat sends thousands of lawyers and observers to every polling place in the country to monitor voting and watch for irregularities--as Hillary Clinton will undoubtedly do--they are heroic defenders of the American people......To Read More.....