'Fiducia Supplicans' Fallout; Foreigners Bought 3 Million Acres of U.S. Farmland Last Year...more

Franklin Graham says Pope Francis doesn't have the right to bless 'what God calls sin'  The Rev. Franklin Graham slammed Pope Francis for approving a measure that will allow Roman Catholic priests to offer blessings to same-sex couples, warning that such "blessings" will not "save you from the judgment of God."

  In a Facebook post on Monday, the son of legendary evangelist Billy Graham responded to news that the Vatican will allow priests to bless same-sex couples, though not in a way that endorses their unions. 

  "So-called 'blessings' from religious leaders won't save you from the judgment of God!" wrote Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse.

"Pope Francis has now approved Catholic priests' blessing' same-sex couples. But none of us, including the Pope, has the right to 'bless' what God calls sin. 'Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…' (Isaiah 5:20)."

Albert Mohler: Did Pope Francis Really Give Blessing to Same-Sex Couples? The Complicated Disaster of the News Coming Out of the Vatican  But the point I want to make is that's exactly the effect that document's going to have, and I think it's intellectual dishonesty to suggest anything to the contrary. I think the Vatican knows exactly what the effect is going to be. I think liberals in the Roman Catholic Church know exactly what the result is going to be. And so, I think as we look to begin a new year in just a matter of days, you're going to have people who are going to say, "You know what happened back in 2023? Well, the Roman Catholic Church came to peace with the blessing of same-sex couples," and that pretty much is going to be the whole story the culture takes. And so just to point to the obvious, evangelical Christians standing on biblical authority, the faith once were all delivered to the saints who have no room to negotiate, we're going to find ourselves abandoned by many others in the culture who at least used to say the same thing.

And again, the Roman Catholic Church is still going to say, marriage can only be this, but they're not going to say, these are the only couples who can be blessed by the church. And I can only hope that evangelical Christians summon enough theological courage to say we can't bless what scripture doesn't allow us to bless, period. It doesn't mean we don't love people, it does mean we cannot bless the fact that they are in a same-sex relationship. We can't bless what the scripture condemns, that would be unfaithfulness, it in itself would be sin. So, the wake-up call for evangelical Christians is this, guess what, even greater courage is going to be required of us in days ahead. In other words, Merry Christmas. Podcast at link

Former homosexual: Pope Francis is inviting humanity to join Satan in mocking Christ and His Church And now forces within the Church — powerful western prelates, celebrity priests, and those within the vast bureaucracy of the Roman Catholic Church — increasingly seek to normalize homosexuality and consecrate same-sex couples as “married.” They act as allies of the Evil One as they display more faith in modern secular political correctness than they do in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God.

   Their lack of faith — their disbelief — is the fissure, the structural crack in the foundation of the Church now creeping up its brittle walls — allowing the smoke of Satan to pour into the Church.

   Same-sex marriage serves one purpose only: to ridicule, obscure, and annihilate Christ’s relationship with his Bride, the Church. It is Satan’s very public expression of his contempt for Christ and his Bride, representing his disdain and loathing for God’s plan since before the beginning of time. And Pope Francis has now, through garbled messaging, invited his shepherds and flock to align themselves with what will prove to be Satan’s greatest coup.

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Fairfax County School Board Member Karl Frisch Sworn In On Stack Of Explicit ‘Banned’ Children’s Books   The books reportedly include “The Perks Of Being A Wallflower,” “Lawn Boy,” “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” “Gender Queer” and “Flamer.” “All Boys Aren’t Blue” describes graphic sexual encounters involving boys, and Flamer contains sexual interactions. “Gender Queer” contains images of a boy performing fellatio on another man as well as images of a boy masturbating. The images are so graphic that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had his live news feed cut after showing the images during a press conference in March.

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NY Gov. Kathy Hochul Approves Slavery Reparations Commission  Hochul is already being blasted for approving this plan, with many critics citing California’s experience with its greedy, racialist commission.

A commission to study the possibility of giving reparations to black New Yorkers was officially created by Gov. Kathy Hochul Tuesday — prompting critics to blast the move as “unlikely to lead to anything, after the failures of such efforts elsewhere “unrealistic” and “divisive.”

New York’s new commission follows a similar one in California, which hasn’t shown any serious signs of acting on its reparations panel’s eye-popping proposal of a $1.2 million payment to nearly every black citizen.

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Achieving Equity Through Mediocrity: Chicago Moves To Eliminate "High-Achieving" School Programs  Eleven “high-achieving selective-enrollment schools” will be eliminated, according to Chicago Board of Education CEO Pedro Martinez, to reduce “stratification and inequity.” 

As we have previously discussed, major cities with failing public education programs are erasing performance gaps in their schools by decapitating the top performers rather than elevating the performance overall. Other schools have also eliminated or lowered proficiency standards to achieve higher passage rates.

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Foreigners Bought 3 Million Acres of U.S. Farmland Last Year, Now Control 2% Of The U.S.  Interest in U.S. farmland from other countries was once rare, but has skyrocketed in recent years, apparently largely because of foreign-controlled wind energy farms. “Foreign holdings of U.S. agricultural land increased modestly from 2012 through 2017, increasing an average of 0.6 million per year. Since 2017, foreign holdings have increased an average of nearly 2.9 million acres annually, ranging from 2.4 million acres to over 3.4 million acres per year,” USDA said.

Citizens of the United Arab Emirates controlled 46,496 acres; Venezuelans 28,218; Saudis 18,586; Egyptians 17,645; firms tied to Iran 2,463, Syrians 2,574; Pakistanis 1,677; Cuban investors controlled 848 acres; and Russians 73 acres. One firm listing its country as the “State of Palestine” had possession of 11,381 acres.

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How AI images, deepfake videos, and manipulated information will permit more left-wing lies to spread in the media   In the digital age, where manipulated videos and deepfakes pose a growing threat, the importance of ensuring video authenticity cannot be overstated. And even if the video evidence is determined to be real, distortions in audio caused by gunshots, video issues related to frame rates and digital artifacts, and the limitations of the human eye can mean missing crucial evidence that might sway a case one way or the other.

   But here's the catch: the public seldom hears about these intricacies. We, as experts in our field, could inundate you with technical details for hours, but these nuances rarely make headlines. Our methods, the tools that clarify what people saw and heard during an incident, often stay hidden behind the heavy curtain of media spin.

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This Silence Is Not Golden...the Covid response ruined everything the world identified with America: freedom, rights, decentralism, commerce, individual liberty, and bravery in the face of trial At least the UK held public hearings, even if they were gamed from the start. There is a smidgeon of honesty that they held them at all. After all, the Covid era of public policy, in the US and all over the world, was the worst deployment of compulsory public policy in our lifetimes. It affected the whole of life in ways that were unthinkable even a year before. It was not an act of nature. It was designed and deployed by men in power. 

A chronicle of what’s been shattered yields a litany of horribles: educational losses, ruined businesses, rampant mental illness, medical injury, homelessness, job upheaval and loss, depleted arts, wrecked families and communities, inflation, ruined national accounts, a generation of students traumatized, bitter political divisions, and a widespread lack of hope in the future.

Pfizer mRNA Vaccine Makes ‘Aberrant Proteins,’ Experts Concerned About Autoimmunity Events A study shows that Pfizer vaccines were significantly more likely to produce proteins that some experts believe may increase cancer and autoimmune risk.

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Now that’s the spirit.. 😂 pic.twitter.com/FAJKb4mn10

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) December 18, 2023