Okay, it’s an unusual Top 5 post for today because 1) I’m actually providing links to 6 articles; 2) 3 of those articles are mine from Vital Signs Blog; and 3) there is a “popcorn” list of news items that you may well have missed from the last week or so. Let’s get to ‘em.
* “Stranded at La Veta Pass: A Rescue Story” (A Personal Testimony) (Denny Hartford, Vital Signs Blog)
From the article — A hitchhiker’s lot is a lonely one. And not only lonely but anxious, exasperating, humbling, and occasionally dangerous. Believe me, I know. And as the cold, snowy weather of winter whirls around this December night, I am remembering one particularly miserable and frightening experience from my long ago days of thumbing a ride.
It was the winter of 1969. I was a student at Trinidad State Junior College, some 200 miles from my home…
* “For the Watchmen on the Walls: Prayer and Advocacy Priorities for 2025” (Denny Hartford, Vital Signs Blog)
From the article — It is hoped that this list of 10 priorities will help motivate and provide some direction for your own intercession and advocacy efforts. We encourage you to use them as stimulants to fervent prayers, conversations, social media, letters to political officials and others, and bringing these critical issues before your pastors as you encourage them to best enlighten, inspire, and protect their flock.
* “John Stossel Blows the Lid Off the Scam That Is Recycling” (An eye-opening 7-minute video)
About the video — John Stossel is back to ruin your preconceived notions of things with some very inconvenient truths. In this case, these truths are going to be very inconvenient to the environmentalist crowd who thinks recycling is actually benefiting us as much as they think.
* “The American university is rotting from within: The modern academy is a threat to reason, liberty and Western civilisation.” (Joel Catkin, spiked!)
From the article — The Western world has many enemies – China, Russia, Iran, North Korea – but none is more potentially lethal than its own education system. From the very institutions once renowned for spreading literacy, the Enlightenment and the means of mastering nature, we now see a deep-seated denial of our common past, pervasive illiteracy and enforced orthodoxy.
The decay of higher education threatens both the civic health and long-term economic prospects of Western liberal civilisation. Once a font of dispassionate research and reasoned discussion, the academy in recent years has more resembled that of the medieval University of Paris, where witch trials were once conducted, except there is now less exposure to the canon.
* “Denny’s Letter to Santa Gets an Interesting Response” (Denny Hartford, Vital Signs Blog)
From the article — Dear Santa,
Season’s greetings, my old friend. Please know that you remain in my highest regards for your ongoing generosity to mankind. While others may forget your good and noble work, I never shall. Anyhow, here is my “Santa letter” for this year. What I most want for Christmas this year, dear sir, may be beyond even your North Pole magic but I’ve pared down my requests to just three things. And they aren’t entirely self-centered items. Indeed, they are things that are certainly directed for the common good. Here we go.
* “The Anti-Woke King of Hollywood Lets Loose: Taylor Sheridan’s shows explain how and why we got Trump again.” ( Rick Marin, Commentary)
From the article — Such is the 54-year-old writer-director-producer’s Midas touch with “flyover country”—as New York and Hollywood have long dismissed their red-state viewership. Even more remarkable is how this unfettered clout is manifesting itself in his writing. He offered confusingly mixed political messages in the first couple of years of Yellowstone—though not so mixed that its audience didn’t immediately understand what he was trying to say and make the show the biggest hit on television, despite airing on the Paramount Network, which you had to search high and low for in your cable package. Now his mix of cultural conservatism, libertarian/Jeffersonian objection to federal overreach, and muscular foreign policy is fully out of the closet.
And now…in the recent news — news that you’re probably not hearing much about if you’re only plugged into the Democrat Party channels.
* In both England and Wales, the most popular name for baby boys is Muhammad…
* Key scientific evidence about the dangers of covid “vaccinations” is still being carefully and comprehensively censored by the Biden administration, the governments of Europe, and the liberal press.
* Chinese Communist Party officials have used a climate nonprofit to funnel millions of dollars to U.S. universities and left-wing groups to promote replacing fossil fuels with “green energy.”
* The latest Democrat outrage? 77 House Democrats called for an arms embargo on Israel.
* It turns out that “climate scientists” have all along been completely ignoring the effects of isoprene in the atmosphere, making all of their climate models remarkably out of whack.
* The “nonbinary” spokesperson from Google’s latest ads is screaming about women who dare complain about having to share bathrooms with “untraditional sexes.”
* One of the new words for 3rd grade spelling bees? Womyn.
* One of the columnists from the L.A. Times has resigned after moves by that newspaper to be a bit less politically one-sided. Said the columnist, “Now is not the time to be balanced.”
* The ProPublica smear against Pete Hegseth (completely invented and knowingly so) just missed being successful. And rather than apologize, ProPublica is trying to cast themselves as journalistic heroes.
* Elton John is speaking out against the legalization of marijuana. “I maintain that it’s addictive,” he said. “It leads to other drugs. And when you’re stoned — and I’ve been stoned — you don’t think normally.” The singer-songwriter added, “Legalizing marijuana in America and Canada is one of the greatest mistakes of all time.”
* Among those pardoned by Joe Biden? Michael Conahan, one of the infamous “kids for cash” judges who took wads of money under the table from for-profit detention centers in exchange for wrongly sending juveniles to their facilities. The case was widely considered to be one of the worst judicial scandals in Pennsylvania history. And then there was Democrat Rita Crundwell, the former comptroller of Dixon, Illinois who was found guilty of a $54 million embezzlement scheme, believed to be the largest municipal fraud in U.S. history.
* Remember how Senate Democrats buried Mayorkas’ impeachment? It gets worse. The Biden-Harris administration spent over $1.6 million in taxpayer money on the defense of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during his impeachment proceedings.
* The Democrats and the Democrat media who are complaining about Donald Trump buying the election? The Kamala Harris campaign raised 1.5 billion dollars. That was about 3 times what the Trump campaign managed to raise.
* The stripper who accused those Duke lacrosse players of raping her 18 years ago finally confessed to the fact that she made it all up.
* University of Michigan DEI administrator Rachel Dawson claimed the university was “controlled by wealthy Jews,” and that Jewish students were “wealthy and privileged” and not in need of the university’s diversity services. (She was fired.) The university has experienced countless antisemitic incidents in the past year.
* You don’t think Big Pharma is piping the tune America is foolishly dancing to? The CDC announced that there are 200 “routine vaccines” for 2025. The number of “routine vaccines” in 1985? 7; that’s right, seven. And for adults and pregnant women in 1985? Zero.
* Europe is in free fall. Mass immigration woes. Rapes of white women perpetrated by young Muslim males that goes without redress (even reporting). Censorship. Increasing anti-Semitism and anti-Christian actions. Economic collapse.
* The Biden administration’s F.B.I. is crazy, still holding that conservative Christians (especially pro-life advocates) are a major terrorist threat.
* The left is applauding political violence. From restaurant workers in Washington D.C. saying they can’t wait to throw food in the faces of Trump administration people who try to eat at their establishments to leftist political officials excusing (even applauding) the murder of a health company executive, “progressives” are proving to be the real fascists.
* Communist China now controls half the world’s catch of fish with thousands upon thousands of fishing ships taking over waters as far away as Argentina.
* It turns out that almost 20% of the $200 billion that the Biden administration gave away under the banner of “covid relief” ended up being given to fraudulent recipients, including criminal gangs.