“I understand it sounds a bit stiff and the production isn’t great." The post “It sounds a bit stiff”: when Green Day tried to match The Rolling Stones first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Before the Book of Geneses begins to tell the story of how Joseph’s brothers kidnapped and sold him, it states: “Jacob settled in the land where his father had sojourned, the land of Canaan.” The word I translate here as settled has in Hebrew the double-sense it has in English: (1) he lived in a place; and (2) experienced peacefulness and tranquility — a settled life. An old tradition sees in this word a back story, the picture of an aspiration and a mindset that is only hinted at in the Bible’s sparse way of storytelling: Jacob wished to live in tranquility but the troubles with Joseph suddenly came upon him. When the righteous wish to live in tranquility, the Holy One, blessed be He, says: “Is it not enough for the righteous what has been prepared for them in the World to Come, that they also wish to live in tranquility in this world?!”  (Genesis Rabba 84:3) The aspiration of good people, of whom Jacob is a paradigm, is peace and wholeness. Like Jacob, they wish to avoid the jagged conflicts of the world. Like Jacob, they find that they must confront evil. Like Jacob, they devoutly wish that after they defeat evil in that confrontation, no further confrontation will be needed. And all too often, like Jacob, they find that the next confrontation will be even more trying than what came before. But God tells us that to be fully free we must not only receive it as a gift, but participate in forging our own freedom. But like Jacob, in this reading, we can understand that tranquility and peace is assured us in the end, and thus we will have an internal tranquility even as we engage in further difficulties. Like the Zen archer, we can envision the arrow already hitting the bullseye even as we draw the bow. Jacob was a free man who could stand even before Pharaoh with commanding dignity and purpose. In that way, he is a model for all free people, for all who stand for human dignity and liberty, and refused to be cowed by human tyrants pretending to divinity. Jacob’s dignity was not gotten on the cheap. His relationship to God grew beyond the childish expectation for all things to be taken care of for him. He discovered that God Himself called on him to be a giver as well, to struggle, to wrestle, even in his spiritual life. Of course, life’s a miracle, a great gift given from Above. But he was being asked by God to rise higher to a gift that could only be his if he joined in its making. This is our freedom as well. We may properly understand our Constitution and the freedoms it protects as wondrous gifts bequeathed us by those who came before. But that is not enough for true liberty. We can see by our own experience that liberty must be won again and again, not merely accepted as a gift. Recent Encroachment on Our Freedom We have experienced in the last decade things we never thought to experience in our America: The FBI and national intelligence used to win presidential elections; The free press suppressed by a fascist-like collusion between gigantic corporations and an entrenched governing class that holds itself unaccountable to the people; The subversion of citizenship by the illegal opening of the borders to all comers, who are then provided with services and advantages financed by the very citizens whose laws the government deliberately refuses to enforce; The transformation of our great institutions of education and of culture into centers of indoctrination intolerant of dissent or debate; The use of our laws to make partisan opponents into political prisoners; the toleration of violent and murderous antisemitism on the campuses, on the streets, and in the halls of Congress; Moral obfuscation, tolerated and promoted by the government, in which those who aspire to commit genocide are treated as the victims when their intended prey refused to submit to death and expulsion. In short, all those great ideals and principles for which Americans sacrificed blood and treasure in the fights against Nazism and Communism abroad and for a color-blind system of law here at home — all those ideals which we thought were finally established and set and the victory won — all those ideals had to be fought for once again. The decisive victory of the last election was a signal victory against the great assaults on constitutional liberty. But, like Jacob, we must not expect an immediate end to our labors. Changing the culture, even when we seek only to return to once-established norms, is a long-term project. Easy gains result in easy losses. Freedom is indeed a gift from God. But God tells us that to be fully free, we must not only receive it as a gift, but participate in forging our own freedom as well. In the struggle against Nazism, Churchill would always be up front with the public about the sacrifice required. He offered it first of himself, “blood, tears, toil, and sweat,” and so led by example. He suffered for his steadfast opposition to Nazism back when those in power coasted along and peddled the false hope of an easy peace established by betraying others. He toiled unceasingly once given the power and saw the job through. We might say of this November’s election what Churchill said of the battle of El Alamein that “this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” It is a turning point in the fight for constitutional liberty which we ought to celebrate. But long work remains. And so the message of God to Jacob: Know that for the good there is peace and wholeness in the end. Knowing that enables our every action to be infused with the calm strength and persuasive presence of the goal of peace. Then, in the midst of the ongoing struggle, not only will we be able to act clearly and effectively, but others will feel our resolution and incline towards our cause. See already the seemingly unlikely group of people drawn together in our cause. Imagine then the vision so clear and strong through our work that it can unify at last our entire country, and so the world. It is our religious vision, not as a heavenly dream alone, but as a vision of the earth as God meant it, in which we are free because we are in the image of our Maker. As He offers a world to us, and fashioning us in His generous image, we become truly free as we choose that image, and so govern ourselves that we may offer freedom to others. Celebrate this turning point and then see the work through. READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: Love and Deterrence Bonhoeffer Exposes the Left’s Blindness The post We Won, but True Freedom Requires More Work appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

On Thursday, Kevin Ray Underwood was executed in Oklahoma, after having been convicted of the horrific murder of a ten-year-old girl. Oklahoma City’s Archbishop Paul Coakley lamented the murderer’s death at the hands of the justice system, writing on social media, “Sadly, Underwood was put to death, becoming the fourth Oklahoma inmate executed this year, continuing a disturbing trend in our state.” However, the Church has long endorsed the use of the death penalty, at least in certain circumstances. Coakley continued to say that “the death penalty — the intentional taking of another life — stands as an inhumane method of punishment, going against the respect for human life and dignity that is so necessary, bringing harm to society.” Over the past half century, Catholic leaders have become increasingly critical of the death penalty. Starting in the late 1970s, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) declared that “non-lethal options” for punishing violent crimes should be preferred and began advocating for the abolition of the death penalty. In 1992, Pope St. John Paul II revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church and, regarding the death penalty, wrote: If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. In 1995 encyclical Evangelium vitae, the Pontiff continued that train of thought, arguing that legal punishment “ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society.” The subsequent 1997 revision of the Catechism reflected this firmer opposition to the death penalty: The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor. If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. The late Pope Benedict XVI also called for an end to the death penalty in 2011, although, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he clarified in 2004 that a Catholic may legitimately “be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war” without being “unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion.” Ratzinger said that while non-violent policies are, of course, to be encouraged and promoted, “it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment.” He added, “There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.” Pope Francis has taken the most stringent stand yet against the death penalty. The incumbent Pontiff has advocated abolishing the death penalty and commuting death sentences to less final punishments. In 2015, Francis stated, “Today the death penalty is inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime committed.” He insisted that the death penalty is an offense “against the inviolability of life and the dignity of the human person, which contradicts God’s plan for man and society” and “does not render justice to the victims, but rather fosters vengeance.” In 2018, Pope Francis revised the Catechism to declare the death penalty “inadmissible.” He acknowledged, “Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.” However, the Pope noted that “more effective systems of detention” and “an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes” render the death penalty morally obsolete. He concluded, “Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,’ and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.” Church Support for Death Penalty However, the Church has long endorsed the use of the death penalty, at least in certain circumstances. St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the great Doctors of the Church, advocated for the death penalty in theory, although he was often critical of its use in practice and personally intervened in several cases to request mercy for those sentenced to death. In The City of God, Augustine wrote that “there are some exceptions made by the divine authority to its own law, that men may not be put to death.” He argued that when the death penalty is used in accordance with just law, then legitimate authorities “have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, ‘You shall not kill.’” In his treatise On the Sermon on the Mount, Augustine cited the example of holy men, like the prophet Elijah, who had utilized and even carried out the death penalty. He wrote, “But great and holy men … punished some sins with death, both because the living were struck with a salutary fear, and because it was not death itself that would injure those who were being punished with death, but sin, which might be increased if they continued to live.” At the dawn of the fifth century, Pope St. Innocent I upheld the legitimacy of the death penalty in Ad Exsuperium, Episcopum Tolosanum. He wrote that “power was granted by God, and to avenge crime the sword was permitted; he who carries out this vengeance is God’s minister,” according to Scripture. He continued, “What motive have we for condemning a practice that all hold to be permitted by God? We uphold, therefore, what has been observed until now, in order not to alter the discipline and so that we may not appear to act contrary to God’s authority.” In both the Summa Contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologicae, the ingenious St. Thomas Aquinas, yet another Doctor of the Church, proffered one of the strongest Catholic defenses of the permissibility of the death penalty. The death penalty, Aquinas explained, first protects the common good. It may also serve as a means of redressing “crimes of irreparable harm or which are particularly perverted.” Aquinas wrote, “If a man is a danger to the community, threatening it with disintegration by some wrongdoing of his, then his execution for the healing and preservation of the common good is to be commended.” Additionally, the death penalty may be an instrument of justice, in which case it is not only morally permissible, but actually virtuous. The death penalty may also, Aquinas observed, be a means of achieving the salvation of whomever has been sentenced to death, confronting the hardest hearts with their own mortality and forcing them to either accept or reject finally God’s mercy. Pope St. Pius V, in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, Pope St. Pius X, and Pope Pius XII have all endorsed the moral permissibility of the death penalty. Returning to present day Oklahoma, Underwood was convicted of the murder of ten-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin. He had abducted the girl, who lived in his apartment building, and bludgeoned her to death with a cutting board. He then raped her corpse and dismembered her body and stored it in a plastic container in his bedroom closet. According to police, Underwood planned to behead the dead girl in his bathtub and cook and eat her remains. Surely, Aquinas would argue, this man has debased the human dignity which God had entrusted to his care, making himself no more than an animal. Butchering a ten-year-old girl and raping her dead body before chopping it up into pieces would seem to fall under the Angelic Doctor’s criteria for “crimes of irreparable harm or which are particularly perverted.” While Archbishop Coakley is no doubt following the lead of the Holy Father in addressing the use of the death, he could perhaps have chosen a different case to emphasize publicly. READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: The Democrat Party’s Noxious ‘God Problem’ Hostility Toward Christians Skyrockets Across Europe The post The Church Needs to Regress on the Death Penalty appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was a heinous crime allegedly done by Luigi Mangione out of rage against the machine. Presumably, his target was someone who profits from our broken healthcare “machine” or system. President Obama was overt in Washington’s theft of taxpayer dollars intended to pay for care. Public frustration with, anger, and even “hatred” toward healthcare may seem justified based on facts, but violence is never the answer. Healthcare seems to turn hard-earned taxpayer dollars into massive health industry profits and wasteful bureaucratic spending. And what does the public get? Questionable insurance policies with promises of care that never materialize, drugs that don’t work, and physicians who spend most of an appointment looking at a computer screen rather than talking with patients. Last year, the U.S. spent $4.8 trillion on its healthcare system, 17.5 percent of our GDP and more than the entire GDP of Japan. American families spent $31,065, on average, on healthcare costs in 2023, of which 83 percent went to insurance companies. (READ MORE: Federal Bureaucracy Is Biggest Healthcare Rent-Seeker) Insurance is one of the most profitable industries in the country, so Mr. Thompson may have seemed a symbol of the evils of capitalism against which Mr. Mangione railed in court. Insurance companies typically generate profits by not paying for medical care. They use a 3-D strategy — delay, defer, deny — which was dramatized in the 1997 movie, “Rainmaker,” where a greedy insurance executive denied a claim for payment for the treatment of a cancer patient, claiming the therapy was experimental and therefore not covered. The young man died despite having a potentially treatable condition. People holding a health insurance policy have been led to believe they will receive timely care. Yet the healthcare machine assigns them a provider. A pharmacy benefits manager chooses their medications. With insurance, the maximum average wait time to see a primary care physician in a mid-sized city is 132 days. Some patients with either Medicaid or Tricare insurance wait so long for care, they die while waiting. Thus, while nothing exonerates the murder of another person, public outrage seems justified. Federal Bureaucracy Impedes Care Moreover, private insurance is not the biggest culprit in taking our money and denying us care. That trophy goes to Washington. Just recently, Elon Musk, co-leader with Vivek Ramaswamy of the non-governmental DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), expressed shock at the “skyrocketing administrative costs” of the federal healthcare bureaucracy. He refers to healthcare spending that provides no care. The word bureaucracy is too insignificant to express all the costly activities between Washington passing a healthcare law and the impact on Americans. The process invariably generates BARRCOME — bureaucracy, administration, rules, regulations, compliance, oversight, mandates, and enforcement. One look at the organizational chart of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) proves how convoluted, complex, confusing, and costly is Washington-controlled healthcare. Estimates of the cost of BARRCOME range from 31 percent to more than 50 percent of U.S. healthcare spending. Between 1970 and 2010, when the number of physicians doubled, healthcare bureaucrats increased by more than 3,000 percent! No wonder a businessman like Musk would be appalled at an industry where half the money expended produces no value for consumers. In 2023, Americans paid $4.8 trillion for “healthcare.” Washington took possibly $2.4 trillion of it and paid for BARRCOME workers, not care providers. President Obama was overt in Washington’s theft of taxpayer dollars intended to pay for care. To defray the cost of ACA BARRCOME, former President Obama and Congress redistributed nearly $800 billion from expected spending on Medicare even as revenue increased, thereby extending the date of insolvency for the program. There is good reason for Americans’ rage against the healthcare machine. But violence, including murder, cannot be justified. While insurance can be a target for change, the bigger, more appropriate offender is federal spending and the resulting bloated bureaucracy. (READ MORE: Harris’ Healthcare Destroys Health CARE) Hopefully, the DOGE will use deregulation, spending cuts, and government employment termination rather than life termination to improve patient care at a lower cost. Musk and Ramaswamy have set a goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget. Reducing healthcare BARRCOME would accomplish that task while providing more dollar-efficient, more accessible, and affordable health care. –– Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science; former Director of Center for Healthcare Policy at Texas Public Policy Foundation; former Director of New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange; and author of 12 books, including multi-award winning, Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare: StatesCare and Market-Based Medicine.  Follow him on X.com @DrDeaneWor contact viawww.deanewaldman.com.   Vance Ginn, Ph.D., is president of Ginn Economic Consulting, host of the Let People Prosper Show, and previously chief economist of the Trump White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Follow him on X.com at @VanceGinn.  The post Rage Against the (Healthcare) Machine appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Once again, as December comes to an end, my job looks more like that of a chicken sexer than that of a columnist. Fortunately, I don’t have to dig into the underbelly of every idiot, but simply observe them from afar. I spot them instantly from any distance. Here is my 2024 list of Idiot of the Year Award nominees that I am honored to share once again with my friends and readers of The American Spectator. Idiots of the Year Mitch McConnell, Silkworm That friend you would never invite to your birthday party. Leonardo DiCaprio You know your career is bottoming out when every day you look more and more like the Titanic and less and less like its movie. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Model I’ve found that she looks a lot better, when she’s on TV, if you substitute her voice for an ACDC record. Pedro Sánchez, Brothel Doorman The apprentice dictator who is ruining my country is surrounded by corruption cases. We no longer have any doubt that in all cases there is a common secret “x”: him. Ursula von der Leyen, Friend of the Wolves Last year, von der Leyen’s pony, Dolly, was fatally attacked by wolves, and von der Leyen then decided to change the wolf protection law she pushed through in the EU. Nothing has been the same for Dolly since the attack, yet von der Leyen is still just as much of an idiot. Whoopi Goldberg, Tourist in Her Own Country All her life she has been threatening to leave the United States if Donald Trump wins the election. What’s the problem, North Korea is waiting for you! Joe Biden, Ventriloquist El Cid, the legendary Spanish knight, is said to have won his last battle after his death. The opposite is said of Biden. Claudia Sheinbaum, Illiterate Sheinbaum, that woman whose last name sounds like when a balloon you were blowing up slips out of your hands, has faithfully followed the example of her infinite stupid predecessor. Taylor Swift, Girlfriend of I Don’t Know Who How can being so beautiful be so ugly? Enmanuel Macron, Pupil of His Wife The typical Frenchman who is delighted to meet himself. But the rest of us are not. George Stephanopoulos of the Synchronized Opinion Team He has a last name that is impossible to pronounce out loud without breaking a tooth or having a stroke. Otherwise, he has never been a journalist, just a partisan. Ali Khamenei, Bearded Butcher For some strange reason, everything that is wrong in the world goes through his beards. Kamala Harris, Lady Who Laughs Loud She made everyone believe that she was going to win the election and then did not even receive the votes of her own family. Later, she fled, but not without her flask of whiskey. Diosdado Cabello, the Evil Almost every year Maduro appears on this list. It’s not that the dictator hasn’t made merits this year, but every once in a while I feel that we should also give the second-tier idiots a chance. Bill Gates, Blue Screen We will always be grateful to him for his discreet support of Harris with a succulent donation. Harris has as much of a future as Gates’ vegetable meat. Greta Thunberg, the Girl Behind the Banner Maybe it’s time for her to resume her education. She doesn’t look like she made the most of it the first time around. Paul Krugman, Tarot Futurist Our favorite economist-comedian is sad because this year he has been wrong again in his electoral forecast, and that is not news, but the fact that Trump won has him imprisoned in melancholy. He has left the NYT, now he just needs to abandon stupidity. Antonio Guterres, Friend of All My Enemies The infamous warmed-up guy has been looking like he’s about to go on maternity leave lately. Have I forgotten anyone? I’m sure I did. Let me know in the comments or on my X account @itxudiaz. I will personally review each case and submit it to the National Idiot Screening Committee (NISC). READ MORE from Itxu Diaz: Flying Drones Over NJ Krugman’s Farewell Blues in the Times   The post The Fifth Annual Idiot of the Year Awards appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from Peak Prosperity: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

by John Kiriakou, Consortium News: After all the bureau’s crimes, Americans need somebody who is willing to tear this organization down to its bare studs. On the surface of things, Kash Patel is the kind of person most of us would want to keep out of government. A MAGA true believer, and Donald Trump’s choice […]