Sky Links, 9-26-20
2021 An angel visited me on rosh hashanah
-Tomi Arayomi
-Michael Flynn
The time for spiritual growth as a nation is upon us. Ripping faith out of the fabric that is America is what the Marxist left is attempting to do. We cannot allow this to happen. This current assault will absolutely be stopped if each of us does our part.Words mean little when action is required, and now, it is time for thoughtful selfless action to protect and maintain the integrity of our nation, a nation that has much to be grateful for.Our rich past is filled with strength and imperfections that make us who we are today. It is a storied past filled with heroes and villains, adversity, challenge and the will to overcome. Cherishing this past is the only way we may ensure our children will not repeat the suffering our forefathers endured.Americans in the past have prevailed during the direst of situations: wars, civil unrest, tyranny and challenge from external factions. Now, the only way to triumph in the face of evil is to stand up for and hold to account what is rightfully ours by birth, law and the light from God’s grace.We will prevail. We must prevail. Every community leader, those who have yet to step up, now need to take that step and support our country, our communities, our first responders, our faith-based institutions and our children.Let’s do it. Let’s retake our shining, hopeful city on the hill. Our future, our children’s future, our neighbors and our republic depend upon each of our actions and efforts to stand up for and realize our American dream today and every day.May God bless America!
A Black Defense of Freedom of Conscience and Amy Coney Barrett
-The Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies
Fellow Americans,
Every individual has the right to follow their conscience, a right that is a founding principle of this nation, protected by the First Amendment. As bishops, pastors, other clergy and intellectuals from the various Pentecostal-Charismatic and Full Gospel denominations we write to appeal to the sense of justice of every American, and to the American tradition of individual freedom. Our society benefits in immeasurable ways from service of people of faith, Republican and Democrat, in particular as they care for the needy. The right to serve through a variety of avenues, especially through public service, must never be hindered by discrimination on the basis of religious belief.
As Christians, when we see others being abused and mistreated, we must speak out in defense of their rights. We must defend the rights of our fellow Christians, of people of other faiths and of those who hold no faith. Today we stand with, and speak in defense of, Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
As black Christians we will not stand by in silence as our sister in the faith is persecuted for the “political crime” of her beliefs. We do not know whether she will be nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, for which she is by all reports under consideration. But we do know that attacks on her Christian beliefs and her membership in a charismatic Christian community reflect rank religious bigotry that has no legitimate place in our political debates or public life. We condemn these vile attacks—which began three years ago during the process of her confirmation for the judicial post she currently holds. As the descendants of slaves we are particularly sensitive to acts of discrimination and we demand an end to this reprehensible conduct.
-Michael Barone
Were the lockdowns a mistake? To that nagging question, the answer increasingly seems to be yes.Certainly, they were a novelty. As novelist Lionel Shriver writes, “We’ve never before responded to a contagion by closing down whole countries.” As I noted in May, the 1957-58 Asian flu killed between 75,000 and 116,000 people in the United States, between 0.04% and 0.07% of the nation’s population then. The 1968-69 Hong Kong flu killed about 100,000, 0.05% of the population.The current death toll of 185,000 is 0.055% of the current population. It will go higher, but it’s about the same magnitude as those two flu outbreaks and less deadly for those under 65. Yet, there were no statewide lockdowns, no massive school closings, no closed office buildings and factories, restaurants, and museums. No one even considered shutting down Woodstock.Why are attitudes so different today?
Does Sweden have herd immunity?
-Sebastian Rushworth
The only forcible restriction imposed by the government from the start was a requirement that people not gather in groups of more than 50 at a time. After it became clear that covid was above all dangerous to people in nursing homes, an additional restriction was placed on nursing home visits. At no time has there been any requirement on people to wear face masks in public. Restaurants, cafés, hairdressers, and shops have stayed open throughout the pandemic. Pre-schools and schools for children up to the age of 16 have stayed open, while schools for children ages 16-19 switched to distance learning.
My personal experience is that people followed the voluntary restrictions pretty well at the beginning, but that they have become increasingly lax as time has gone on. As a personal example, my mother and my parents-in-law stayed locked up in their homes for the first six weeks or so of the pandemic. After that they couldn’t bear to be away from their grandchildren any longer.
In my earlier article in August, I mentioned that after an initial peak that lasted for a month or so, from March to April, visits to the Emergency Room due to covid had been declining continuously, and deaths in Sweden had dropped from over 100 a day at the peak in April, to around five per day in August.
At the point in August when I wrote that article, I hadn’t seen a single covid patient in over a month. I speculated that Sweden had developed herd immunity, since the huge and continuous drop was happening in spite of the fact that Sweden wasn’t really taking any serious measures to prevent spread of the infection.
So, how have things developed in the six weeks since that first article?
Well, as things stand now, I haven’t seen a single covid patient in the Emergency Room in over two and a half months......The restriction on visits to nursing homes is going to be lifted from October 1st. The older children, ages 16-19, who were engaging in distance learning during part of the spring, are now back in school, seeing each other and their teachers face to face. The Swedish public health authority has recommended that the government lift the restriction on gatherings from 50 people to 500 people......So, to conclude: Covid is over in Sweden. We have herd immunity. Most likely, many other parts of the world do too, including England, Italy, and parts of the US, like New York. And the countries that have successfully contained the spread of the disease, like Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, and Australia, are going to have to stay in lockdown for at least another year, and possibly several years, if they don’t want to develop herd immunity the natural way.
You know who isn’t worried about a second wave of COVID-19? Sweden. The stolid Scandinavian kingdom has just carried out a record number of COVID-19 tests and found a positive rate of just 1.2%, the lowest since the start of the pandemic. As Sweden’s case rate drops below Norway’s and Denmark’s, those commentators who spent April and May raging against what a Washington Post op-ed called its “experiment with national chauvinism” and predicting colossal fatalities have suddenly gone quiet.“Sweden has gone from being one of the countries with the most infection in Europe to one of those with the least infection in Europe, while many other countries have seen a rather dramatic increase,” says Anders Tegnell, the state epidemiologist.True, and it has happened not despite the absence of a lockdown but because of it. Sweden encouraged people to work from home, made university courses remote, and banned meetings of more than 50 people but otherwise trusted its citizens to use their common sense. The authorities judged that since hospitals could cope, there was no need to buy time by ordering people to stay indoors. That judgment has been amply vindicated.A cause for unalloyed joy, you might think. Here, after all, is proof that a country can contain the coronavirus without depriving children of an education, piling up backlogs of non-coronavirus medical conditions, or leaving a smoking crater where its economy used to be.But the rest of the world is far from pleased. Indeed, the tone of most foreign media coverage remains affronted, and you can see why. After all, if Sweden’s strategy was viable, the rest of us ruined ourselves for nothing. That is a disquieting thought, almost an unbearable one. But Sweden forces us to confront it.
‘A cure must not be worse than the problem’ is a thesis that is more relevant than ever in the current situation. We note, however, that the collateral damage now being caused to the population will have a greater impact in the short and long term on all sections of the population than the number of people now being safeguarded from corona.In our opinion, the current corona measures and the strict penalties for non-compliance with them are contrary to the values formulated by the Belgian Supreme Health Council, which, until recently, as the health authority, has always ensured quality medicine in our country: “Science – Expertise – Quality – Impartiality – Independence – Transparency”.We believe that the policy has introduced mandatory measures that are not sufficiently scientifically based, unilaterally directed, and that there is not enough space in the media for an open debate in which different views and opinions are heard. In addition, each municipality and province now has the authorization to add its own measures, whether well-founded or not.Moreover, the strict repressive policy on corona strongly contrasts with the government’s minimal policy when it comes to disease prevention, strengthening our own immune system through a healthy lifestyle, optimal care with attention for the individual and investment in care personnel.
This is a good article on the steps from voting to the electoral college vote. States have till December 8th to declare a winner or not participate. If all states do not send electors, then the winner is the one with a majority. If there was a tie, then the Republicans in the house and senate decide. The house Republicans have a 26 to 23 advantage over the Democrats in "delegations", which is what counts for this. Bottom line: no matter how much drama or chaos there is with counting votes, they have to decide or opt out by Dec. 8th.
The Slow Roll
-Larry Schweikart
It’s well known that the Democrats have announced their plan to delay the counting of votes in the November presidential election as long as possible. Some think they want it to go to the US Supreme Court, where John Roberts might again abandon conservatives and stick it to Donald Trump. Remember, despite the polls, increasingly the murmurs coming from the Democrats are that they will drag the vote-counting out until 2021 and/or put the matter into the courts.
Can they do this? Is it possible? The fact is, almost no one knows.
C. S. LEWIS AND HIS STEPSONS - A CONVERSATION WITH DOUGLAS GRESHAM
-Jonathon Van Maren
-Jonathon Van Maren
While the relationship between Lewis and Joy Davidman has been a matter of endless fascination to Lewis fans and academics alike, many have ignored the fact that the marriage made Lewis a stepfather. But Davidman’s boys (ages 11 and 12 at the time of the marriage) became Lewis’s stepsons, and these relationships shaped the last decade of his life. Lewis dedicated The Horse and His Boy to Douglas and David Gresham. While Douglas has weighed in with two books—Lenten Lands and a short biography of Lewis—David has virtually vanished from the historical record. In the 1993 film Shadowlands, for example, David Gresham is nonexistent. Even in his brother’s memoir he makes only a handful of brief appearances.David died several years ago in a secure Swiss mental hospital, and Douglas has finally broken his silence about a hitherto unknown aspect of life at The Kilns. His earliest memories, he told me, were of his brother, who was later diagnosed as schizophrenic. “When I was a small child,” Douglas said, “he was continually trying to get rid of me. This went on into our teen years.” Douglas said he recalls “running like crazy or defending myself from my rather insane brother. . . I would never have said anything to harm him or upset him while he was alive, because oddly enough I still loved him as a brother. In fact, I wept when he died.”For decades, despite a booming cottage industry of Lewis biographies and endless academic theorizing about the last years of Lewis’s life, Douglas kept to himself the fact that Lewis struggled mightily to help his mentally ill stepson. “We didn’t tell anybody,” he told me. “The only reason I’m releasing it now is because people should know what Jack put up with and what Warnie put up with and how heroic they were to do it at all.” It is time, he added, “that people understand what Jack and Warnie went through. Jack and Warnie didn’t know what the heck to do.”
China's Dark Turn
-John Stossel
Announcing OBAMAGATE The Movie!
-Ann and Phelim Scoop
2-Hop Spying
-John Spiropoulos
-Excerpts from: G. EDWARD GRIFFIN (April 3, 1969) MORE DEADLY THAN WAR: THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION IN AMERICA
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.-Romans 8:28
We ask, "why is this this happening?", and somebody quotes Romans 8:28. But, do we really understand what this verse is saying to us, in the context of the chapter and the whole letter?
An alternative translation, based on the context, might be:
"Now we know that the Holy Spirit works together in all things with those who love God, who are called according to His purpose."
-David (@Biblical Hermeneutics)
The preceding context of Romans 8 is discussing the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. Romans 8:26-27 are discussing how the Holy Spirit helps us in our prayer life. Therefore, when we reach Romans 8:28 the context is a discussion about the Holy Spirit and the believer working together.
Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Successes
-Bruce Thornton
Most important, Trump's actions have put paid to the long, failed, expensive "peace process" and its magical thinking of "land for peace," "two nations living side-by-side in peace," moral equivalence, and endless summits and agreements -- all to hide the UN, EU, and progressive American despicable demonization of Israel. That calumny has been so relentless, unjust, and irrational that it has become the face of post-holocaust anti-Semitism.
The agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are likely the beginning of a cascade of Arab Sunni nations, perhaps even Saudi Arabia, normalizing relations with Israel. To be sure, this sea-change is based solely on those states' national economic, military, and geopolitical interests, reflecting the old tribal wisdom that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." If this happens, Donald Trump will go down as the most consequential foreign policy president since Ronald Reagan. But don't expect a Nobel Peace Prize. If Reagan, engineer of the collapse of the Soviet Union, was passed over for Mikhail Gorbachev -- which is like recognizing the bravery of a man who fled his burning house instead of staying to redecorate -- Donald Trump doesn't stand a chance.
Why are there so many Left-Leaning Artists?
-Coleman Hughes with Ayishat Akanbi
In Search of the Biblical Church
-Steve Atkerson and friends
-Paul Sperry
Former CIA Director John Brennan personally edited a crucial section of the intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and assigned a political ally to take a lead role in writing it after career analysts disputed Brennan's take that Russian leader Vladimir Putin intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump clinch the White House, according to two senior U.S. intelligence officials who have seen classified materials detailing Brennan's role in drafting the document..................................RealClearInvestigations has learned that one of the CIA operatives who helped Brennan draft the ICA, Andrea Kendall-Taylor, financially supported Hillary Clinton during the campaign and is a close colleague of Eric Ciaramella, identified last year by RCI as the Democratic national security "whistleblower" whose complaint led to Trump's impeachment, ending in Senate acquittal in January.The two officials said Brennan, who openly supported Clinton during the campaign, excluded conflicting evidence about Putin's motives from the report, despite objections from some intelligence analysts who argued Putin counted on Clinton winning the election and viewed Trump as a "wild card."The dissenting analysts found that Moscow preferred Clinton because it judged she would work with its leaders, whereas it worried Trump would be too unpredictable...These same analysts argued the Kremlin was generally trying to sow discord and disrupt the American democratic process during the 2016 election cycle. They also noted that Russia tried to interfere in the 2008 and 2012 races, many years before Trump threw his hat in the ring.
U.S. Attorney John Durham has taken over aspects of U.S. Attorney John Huber's notoriously unproductive investigation into the Clinton Foundation, Fox News reported on Thursday.
In November of 2017, Huber was tasked to evaluate "certain issues" involving the Obama-era Uranium One deal with Russia, and potential corruption related to the Clinton Foundation, but nothing ever came of it...Huber's inquiries reportedly ended in January of 2020 with no results...According to Fox News, parts of Huber's Clinton Foundation probe have been incorporated in Durham's investigation.The New York Times on Thursday first reported that Durham has turned his attention toward the Clintons, seeking documents and interviews about how federal law enforcement officials handled an investigation into allegations of political corruption at the Clinton Foundation.FBI agents in 2016 were denied permission to subpoena the Clinton Foundation because they supposedly didn't have sufficient evidence to do so. But frustrated agents argued that they had plenty of evidence, including evidence that was captured on a wiretap in an unrelated investigation, according to the NYT. At the time, former Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann led the Fraud Section at the Department.It is not clear whether Durham will be able to complete his investigation before the election, but Attorney General William Barr has not ruled out the possibility of additional criminal charges.
‘Trump Was Right’: Explosive New FBI Texts Detail Internal Furor Over Handling Of ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ Investigation
-Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway
Newly disclosed internal FBI notes and text messages detail the extent of the FBI's desire to take down Trump and his associates at any cost.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents tasked by fired former Director James Comey to take down Donald Trump during and after the 2016 election were so concerned about the agency’s potentially illegal behavior that they purchased liability insurance to protect themselves less than two weeks before Trump was inaugurated president, previously hidden FBI text messages show. The explosive new communications and internal FBI notes were disclosed in federal court filings today from Sidney Powell, the attorney who heads Michael Flynn’s legal defense team.
“[W]e all went and purchased professional liability insurance,” one agent texted on Jan. 10, 2017, the same day CNN leaked details that then-President-elect Trump had been briefed by Comey about the bogus Christopher Steele dossier. That briefing of Trump was used as a pretext to legitimize the debunked dossier, which was funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign and compiled by a foreign intelligence officer who was working for a sanctioned Russian oligarch.
‘Get Trump’: FBI Whistleblower On Mueller Team Details Real Reason Flynn Was Targeted
-Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway
Barnett painted a picture of a Special Counsel that was run the opposite of the way a typical FBI investigation would be. “Typically investigators push for legal process and have to explain the need for the request to the attorneys. Barnett said the SCO attorneys were pushing for legal process and just wanted investigators to sign affidavits they prepared,” he said, according to the report. He said every request was “green-lighted” and that seasoned FBI agents were viewed as a “speed bump” to the attorneys leading the investigations.The situation was so extreme that Barnett and others joked about how it was like a game, which they referred to as Collusion Clue. “In the hypothetical game, investigators are able to choose any character conducting any activity, in any location, and pair this individual with another character and interpret it as evidence of collusion,” Barnett said, according to the report of his interview.
Betrayed Trust, Part One: New Testimony, Emails & Other Documents Portray Ravi Zacharias as Predator in Sexting Scandal
-Julie Roys
In 2017, the famous late apologist, Ravi Zacharias, claimed in a Christianity Today (CT) article that a Canadian woman had sent him “unwanted” nude pictures in an attempt by the woman and her husband to extort millions from Zacharias. The explanation effectively absolved Zacharias of wrongdoing in a major sexting scandal and preserved the reputation of Zacharias and his $40 million ministry. (Zacharias, who’s been hailed as “the greatest Christian apologist of this century,” died on May 19, 2020.)However, emails, testimony, and other documentation recently obtained by The Roys Report tell a much different story.They instead portray Zacharias as someone who befriended, groomed, and then initiated a sexting relationship with a married woman, Lori Anne Thompson. Then, when Thompson told Zacharias she was going to tell her husband about the illicit relationship, emails show Zacharias threatened suicide.Months later, after Thompson and Zacharias had signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) confining them to silence, Zacharias publicly released a statement to CT, painting Thompson as the predator.
-Julie Roys
Dr. Kelly Victory Straight Doc Talk on Dose Of Dr. Drew.
Judge Declares "Stay-at-Home" Order UNCONSTITUTIONAL
-Viva Frei Vlawg
-Viva Frei Vlawg
Fireside Chat 175: Peggy Hall & Pastor Rob McCoy
Discerning False Election Prophets - Interview with Mario Murillo
Dr. Victor Davis Hanson joins us for a New Jersey Constitutional Republicans Virtual Conversation
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