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Trump launches new National Faith Advisory Board with Paula White at helm

Lamenting the current state of faith and religion in America as “not good,” former President Donald Trump launched a new National Faith Advisory Board last Thursday, with his spiritual advisor and televangelist Paula White at the helm.

“A lot of things have happened and a lot of things have happened with respect to faith and religion and they’re not good things. They are not good, they’re not good at all,” Trump said on a call with faith leaders during which he complained about how the 2020 election was stolen from him, according to a clip published online. “It’s really a very sad event what took place on November 3rd, and what they did.”

“Everyone on this call made a critical contribution to our movement over the past five years. And we’ve had tremendous success and then we had a horrendous result to an election that was won. We won that election and now numbers are coming out that are shocking to people and it’s a shame,” Trump insisted.

Before the call last Thursday, the faith group co-founded by Jenny Korn and Amanda Robbins Vargo, who worked at the Office of Public Liaison in the Trump White House, sent an email to faith groups accusing the Biden administration of pursuing an “anti-faith agenda” the Jewish Daily Forward reported.

“We accomplished so much together at the White House during the Trump administration. We are seeing all our hard work being unraveled by the new administration and their anti-faith agenda,” the email said. “We will protect our religious freedoms here and abroad, in order to worship and live according to our faith.”

According to the Forward, the new advisory board is expected to “organize regular conference calls and events with prominent leaders in the coming months.” 

Religion News Service reported that White, who called on angels from Africa to help deliver victory to Trump in his reelection bid last November after overseeing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, noted that the new National Faith Advisory Board would include “70 executives.” She also highlighted the “unprecedented victories, influence and access” to faith groups that resulted from Trump’s faith advisory board during his term.

Trump added that fighting for religious liberty was one of his “greatest honors.”

“One of my greatest honors was fighting for religious liberty and for defending the Judeo-Christian values and principles of our nation’s founding,” he said Thursday.

Still, the former president expressed surprise about his showing with Catholic and Jewish voters, arguing that both groups got much support from his administration.

“I’m a little bit surprised that we didn’t do better with the Catholic vote,” Trump said. “I think now they would give us a vote. I think we got about 50 percent of the vote. And yet, we did a lot for the Catholic vote. So we’ll have to talk to them. We’re going to have to meet with the Catholics.”

Pointing to his poor showing among Jewish voters, the former president argued that the faith community needs to be more united.

“Look what I did with the embassy in Jerusalem and what I did with so many other things … Israel has never had a better friend, and yet I got 25% of the vote,” Trump said. “I think they have to get together. There has to be a little bit more unity with the religious groups all represented on this call.”

When asked about his own faith in God, the former president noted: “It’s all based around God — it’s so important. God is so important to the success of what we’re doing. Because without God, we have nothing.”

‘America Is Trending Pro-Life’: Voters Support Texas Heartbeat Law, 46-43 percent, Poll Shows

A plurality of likely voters supports a new Texas that prohibits abortion once a heartbeat is detected, according to a new national survey.

The Rasmussen Reports poll found that 46 percent of U.S. likely voters support the law, while 43 percent oppose it and 11 percent are undecided.

The survey of 1,000 likely voters asked, “The Supreme Court has refused to block a new Texas law that effectively prohibits most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Do you support or oppose the Texas law?” It was conducted between Sept. 5-6.

The law, which went into effect on Sept. 1, requires abortion doctors to check for a fetal heartbeat and prohibits an abortion if one is detected. A heartbeat is typically detected around the sixth week of pregnancy.

Lila Rose, president of the pro-life group Live Action, touted the poll’s results.

“Despite the insane media bias & lies, more Americans support banning abortion after the baby’s heartbeat can be detected than support it,” Rose tweeted. “America is trending pro-life!”

The law is unique in that it allows citizens to sue those who violate it. The text of the law says “any person” other than “an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity” may “bring a civil action against any person who … performs or induces an abortion in violation” of the law. It also allows lawsuits against anyone who “aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion.”

Those who sue and win could be awarded at least $10,000 for each illegal abortion.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the law, although the majority also said abortion clinics had “raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality” of the law.

Abortion clinics, the court said, had not demonstrated that the high court could legally get involved.

“Federal courts enjoy the power to enjoin individuals tasked with enforcing laws, not the laws themselves,” the majority opinion said.

Abortion clinics say the law impacts about 85 percent of abortions in the state. 

A Planned Parenthood spokesperson on Tuesday said the organization will keep fighting the law in the courts.

“Texans are being denied their constitutional right to abortion after six weeks of pregnancy,” said Jacqueline Ayers of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Georgia Bulldogs football coach says team, which is more than 90% vaxxed, is experiencing ‘highest spike’ of COVID, including sports medicine director

University of Georgia football coach Kirby Smart did not get much time to enjoy his Bulldogs’ impressive 10-3 win Saturday over the Clemson Tigers. 

Instead, he’s dealing with a COVID spike among players and personnel — on a team that is more than 90% vaccinated, ESPN reported.

What’s that now? 

Georgia, fresh off an impressive win over No. 3 Clemson, is set to host the University of Alabama-Birmingham in its first home game of the 2021 season on Saturday, but now multiple Bulldogs are going to be sidelined for a while with COVID, Smart told reporters Monday. 

The news of the infections not only has the coach in a quandary about who on his roster will be available to play this weekend, but it also has him concerned since all of the COVID-19 cases are among people who are fully vaccinated on a team where nearly everyone has received the jabs.

“I’ll be honest with you, I’m as concerned as I’ve ever been, because we have three or four guys out with COVID and we have a couple staff members that have been out with COVID here recently,” Smart said, according to ESPN.

“We’re at our highest spike,” he added.

And it’s not because players and personnel are unvaxxed, he was sure to point out, which means he’s concerned for everybody, not just the unvaccinated who have received the brunt of criticism from health experts.

“People are talking about vaccinations, well these are people that are vaccinated,” Smart said, though he did not identify who had tested positive. “We’re talking about breakthroughs, and so that concerns you not only for the players on your team that are unvaccinated, that are playing and not playing, because we want everybody to be safe. But it concerns me for the players that are vaccinated that we could lose them.”

Smart told reporters last month that more than 90% of his players, coaches, and staffers had been fully vaccinated, ESPN said.

The coach, naturally, is disappointed. 

“This is the highest we’ve been since fall camp right now,” he said. “I think there’s this relief that you guys feel like everything’s back to normal, well it’s really just not for us right now.”

Lest anyone think the only people connected to the team getting invected are careless players and trainers, Georgia’s sports medicine director, Ron Courson, who is also fully vaxxed, was diagnosed with COVID-19 last week and has had a “tough run” of it, according to Smart.

“Ron’s doing good, he’s had a tough run,” Smart said. “Ron’s the hardest worker I’ve ever met in my life, and he’s never not been at this building on any day. Never not been here two days in a row, including spring break and off time, and it’s killing him, I think, to not be here. His health seems good and, hopefully, he’ll be back.”

PayPal to acquire Japanese “buy now, pay later” firm Paidy for $2.7 billion

PayPal (Nasdaq: PYPL) agreed to acquire Paidy, a Japanese installment payments enabler, for around $2.7 billion.

Why it matters: This sets up a global consolidation spree in the “buy-now, pay-later space,” following Square’s agreement last month to buy Afterpay for $29 billion.

Bonus: Addi, a Bogota-based “buy-now, pay-later” startup, today announced $75 million in new Series B funding led by Greycroft.

ROI: Paidy has raised $585 million from firms like PayPal Ventures, Arbor Ventures, Visa Ventures, Unusual Ventures, SBI Holdings, Eight Roads, Goldman Sachs, Itochu Corp., JS Capital Management, Tybourne Capital Management, Soros Fund Management and Wellington Management.

The bottom line: “Japan is the third largest e-commerce market in the world, and so this is a significant move by PayPal to gain more market share both in the country and the region, specifically in the area of providing deferred payment services as an alternative to credit cards,” TechCrunch’s Kate Park writes.

If Getting Vaccinated Isn’t a ‘Personal Choice,’ What Is It?

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis set off a firestorm last Friday when he dared challenge the orthodoxy that justifies mass vaccination mandates.

At a Friday press conference, DeSantis had the temerity to suggest that the vaccine might not be a healthy choice for all.

“It’s about your health and whether you want that protection or not. It really doesn’t impact me or anyone else,” DeSantis said.

The question shouldn’t be whether our choice to be vaccinated or not “impacts” people other than ourselves. It clearly does, since COVID-19 is an infectious disease and getting vaccinated can help stop the spread of the coronavirus. (It should be noted that the vaccine is not a magic bullet in stopping the pandemic.)

The question is whether or not we not have control over what goes into our own bodies and whether the state can coerce people to take the shot “for the good of society”? Dr. Fauci is sure he knows the answer to that question.

NPR:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is “completely incorrect” to suggest vaccines are a personal choice with no broad implications, says Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease authority.

“If [DeSantis] feels that vaccines are not important for people, that they’re just important for some people, that’s completely incorrect,” Fauci said after being asked about DeSantis’ views during an interview Tuesday with CNN.

DeSantis never said the vaccines “are not important for people” or that they’re “important for some people.” That’s an outright lie — something Dr. Fauci is noted for. DeSantis never said anything remotely close to being construed as vaccine discouragement. He was saying that getting vaccinated or not getting vaccinated is a personal choice.

Perhaps Fauci and others who are piling on DeSantis for his inelegant but accurate statement might want to tell us: If vaccination isn’t a “personal choice,” whose choice is it? Is it the government’s choice to vaccinate an individual or not?

In response to DeSantis’ comments, Fauci said on Tuesday: “Yeah, that’s not true at all.”

Aside from the personal benefit of being protected against the coronavirus, Fauci said, “When you have a virus that’s circulating in the community and you are not vaccinated, you are part of the problem. Because you’re allowing yourself to be a vehicle for the virus to be spreading to someone else.”

“So it isn’t as if it stops with you,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said, adding that if an unvaccinated person becomes infected, they could pass the coronavirus on to older people or those who are otherwise more vulnerable.

Fauci and others are dancing around the real issue; Does the state have the power to coerce people to get vaccinated? And if Fauci and others try and dismiss that argument, then why the hell are they yelling at people about not getting vaccinated? Are they trying to show us how responsible and caring they are?

If you’re not going to advocate for the government to tie people down on a gurney and stick them with needles full of vaccines, then stop your carping, your declarations of supposed moral superiority that show us how much better you are than the rest of us.

If they spent half as much energy promoting the vaccine, building trust and confidence the old-fashioned way — telling the truth and being transparent — as they do in looking for ways to criticize those who are hesitant or unconvinced, we might close out this pandemic the way we should; With the freedom to choose what goes into our bodies.

US Gasoline Prices Expected to Fall Under $3 Per Gallon By Fourth Quarter

US gasoline prices, retailing at seven-year highs above $3.15 per gallon due to peak seasonal demand and outages from Hurricane Ida, are expected to fall to under $3 by the fourth quarter of this year, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday.

“US regular gasoline retail prices averaged $3.16 per gallon in August, the highest monthly average price since October 2014”, the EIA said in its Short-Term Energy Outlook Report for September. “We forecast that retail gasoline prices will average $3.14/gal in September before falling to $2.91/gallon, on average, in 4Q21.”

The EIA said the drop will be in line with expectations that the profit margin for processing gasoline will decline from currently elevated levels and refinery runs will normalize after the fallout from Hurricane Ida.

“Estimated gasoline margins surpassed 70 cents/gal in late August. We expect margins will remain elevated in the coming weeks as refining operations in the US Gulf Coast remain disrupted”, the EIA added.

National Archives Slaps ‘Harmful Content’ Warning On Constitution, All Other Founding Documents

The National Archives Records Administration placed a “harmful content” warning on the Constitution, labeling the governing document of the United States as “harmful or difficult to view.” The warning applies to all documents across the Archives’ cataloged website, including the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.

“NARA’s records span the history of the United States, and it is our charge to preserve and make available these historical records,” the administration said in a statement. “As a result, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions. In addition, some of the materials may relate to violent or graphic events and are preserved for their historical significance.”

The NARA, which is responsible for preserving and protecting documentation of American heritage, noted that so-called harmful historical documents could “reflect racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic/misogynoir, and xenophobic opinions and attitudes; be discriminatory towards or exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, religion, and more,” and “include graphic content of historical events such as violent death, medical procedures, crime, wars/terrorist acts, natural disasters and more.”

Along with committing to diversity and equity, the NARA said it would “[work] in conjunction with diverse communities, [and] seek to balance the preservation of this history with sensitivity to how these materials are presented to and perceived by users.”

This isn’t the first time the National Archives has catered to a leftist view of history. In June, the National Archives’ racism task force claimed that the Archives’ rotunda, which houses founding documents, is an example of “structural racism.” The task force also pushed to include trigger warnings around displays of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, which are all in the rotunda. 

The warning is a blanket statement atop all documents in the archived catalogs that links to a “Statement on Potentially Harmful Content.” 

As news of the website’s warning circulated on Twitter, the NARA issued a standard response to those concerned by the “harmful” label on the Constitution.

“This alert is not connected to any specific records, but appears at the top of the page while you are using the online Catalog. To learn more about why the alert about harmful language appears in our Catalog, please go to ‘NARA’s Statement on Potentially Harmful Content,’” the tweet said.

‘Do I have to sue CNN?’ Joe Rogan lashes out at liberal network for claiming he took ‘horse dewormer’ to fight Covid-19

Podcast host Joe Rogan says he rapidly recovered from Covid-19 after taking a stack of medication, including ivermectin. Now he’s talking about suing CNN for calling the anti-parasitic drug he took a “horse dewormer.”

“Bro, do I have to sue CNN?” Rogan asked during an episode of his podcast released on Tuesday. “They’re making s**t up. They keep saying I’m taking horse dewormer. I literally got it from a doctor.”

“It’s an American company. They won the Nobel Prize in 2015 for use in human beings and CNN is saying I’m taking horse dewormer. They must know that’s a lie,” Rogan fumed.

Rogan fell ill with Covid-19 just over a week ago, recovered, and tested negative within three days. He attributed his speedy recovery to “[throwing] the kitchen sink at it,” and taking a cocktail of medications including ivermectin, monoclonal antibodies, azithromycin, and intravenous NAD.

His use of ivermectin, however, caught the media’s attention. An anti-parasitic drug, ivermectin has shown some promise in treating Covid-19 and has been given to patients in some Latin American countries, but has not been approved as a therapeutic by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ivermectin has been shown to fight Covid-19 by working as a protease inhibitor, preventing the virus from replicating. The fact that drug firm Pfizer is developing its own protease-inhibiting Covid pill has led some commenters to accuse the media of unfairly demonizing ivermectin, which is a cheap, generic drug.

Ivermectin is also used in veterinary medicine, albeit in much larger doses than on humans. CNN and other critics used this to criticize Rogan for treating his case of Covid-19 with a “livestock drug” and “horse dewormer.”

CNN wasn’t the only outlet to conflate Rogan’s prescribed ivermectin with the veterinary version. The Washington Post reported that the podcast host was treating his infection with “unproven deworming medicine.”

The media’s antipathy toward ivermectin is shared by the FDA, which put out a snarky tweet last month warning Americans away from veterinary blends of the drug. “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it,” the tweet read.

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