Author: Papa Giorgio

Gender Wage-Gap

Published by Papa Giorgio

Originally Posted June 2017
(fixed most links and replaced bad media)

The reason for this page: Below are three posts combined into ONE LONG POST… sorry. In this post you will find all the information to refute and respond to the completely bogus stat Democrats use about the “gender Wage Gap.” This will be a permanent page found tucked away in the “bar” across the top of my blog. IT HAS EVERYTHING for someone who has never heard a counter to this idea, or for someone who “knows it” but is looking for specifics. Enjoy.

This update is with thanks to MRCTV Blogs:

Progressive feminists have labeled today “Equal Pay Day” and have allied themselves with the White House and Democratic lawmakers. The whole theory of the “gender wage gap” rests on this study by none other than The Institute for Women’s Policy Research. The study claims that, when considering every median income for all full time annual workers, women make 21.7 percent less, or more popularly worded, 78 cents for every dollar a man earns.

But, the Independent Women’s Forum calls both the day and the gap “fictitious”:

“Feminist groups and Democratic lawmakers call today Equal Pay Day, a fictitious holiday that’s premised on the notion that the workplace is openly hostile toward women. What’s more it’s a Trojan horse for horrible policy. The statistical difference between women and men’s average earnings isn’t driven by widespread sexism, but largely from different choices men and women make throughout our lives. The Administration and its allies know the wage gap statistic is grossly misleading; in fact, last year the White House conceded the figure is flawed, yet continues to regurgitate it again this year,” said Sabrina Schaeffer, Independent Women’s Forum executive director.

‘If I said 77 cents was equal pay for equal work, then I completely misspoke,’ and apologized, ‘I certainly wouldn’t have meant to say that,” says White House official Betsey Stevenson.

“The White House admitted what IWF has stated all along – that when you control for a number of variables that impact pay – the pay gap shrinks considerably, nearly disappearing.

As Mark Twain said, “Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.” The 77 percent number is merely an average that compares the salaries of all men and women with full-time jobs but does not compare similar jobs. It does not take into account, for example, that more men choose to be engineers and more women choose to be social workers. It also doesn’t account for women taking time out of the workforce and men putting in longer hours.

The U.S. Department of Labor found that, when educational and career choices factor into the equation, women make 94 percent of men bring home.  Childless urban women actually make more than men in all of these major cities. Pew Research also notes that there is a big gender gap in colleges and with college graduates, favoring women.

…read it all…

Video from NewsBusters ~ Alex Castellanos ended up
writing a response to his above “tiff” with Maddow

This is partly an import from a previous post dealing with this topic via my old blog, and partly an update. In my original post entitle, Glass Ceilings, Veteran benefits, and Other Liberal Mantras, I chronicled the following:

The Glass Ceiling

President Clinton said that women make .73 cents on every man’s dollar. He used this as a campaign issue to try and smear Republicans. Kerry said that women make .76 cents on every man’s dollar, and likewise used this stat as a political smear. The question then is this, are these two persons correct?

YES! If you compare all men to all women, then yes, there is a disparage. This stat doesn’t take into account a few things. It doesn’t consider the fact that women tend to choose the humanities when entering college and men seem to choose the hard sciences. So by choice women tend to choose professions that pay less. Not only that, when you compare Oranges to Oranges, you get something much different than expected, or that we would expect from the liberal side of things. If a woman and a man have had the same level of education and have been on the same job for an equal amount of time, the woman makes $1,005 while a man makes $1,000, a difference of $5 dollars every thousand dollars a man earns.

So part of the problem — exemplified by this article in THE NEW YORK TIME’S by a woman Medical Doctor — is the amount of time put into the career versus a male counterpart:

…But the productivity of the doctors currently practicing is also an important factor. About 30 percent of doctors in the United States are female, and women received 48 percent of the medical degrees awarded in 2010. But their productivity doesn’t match that of men. In a 2006 survey by the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges, even full-time female doctors reported working on average 4.5 fewer hours each week and seeing fewer patients than their male colleagues. The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that 71 percent of female pediatricians take extended leave at some point — five times higher than the percentage for male pediatricians.

This gap is especially problematic because women are more likely to go into primary care fields — where the doctor shortage is most pronounced — than men are. Today 53 percent of family practice residents, 63 percent of pediatric residents and nearly 80 percent of obstetrics and gynecology residents are female. In the low-income areas that lack primary and prenatal care, there are more emergency room visits, more preventable hospitalizations and more patients who die of treatable conditions. Foreign doctors emigrate to the United States to help fill these positions, but this drains their native countries of desperately needed medical care.

If medical training were available in infinite supply, it wouldn’t matter how many doctors worked part time or quit, because there would always be new graduates to fill their spots. But medical schools can only afford to accept a fraction of the students who apply…

Continuing with the medical profession example, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES [partly] correctly pointed out that many women look for these lower paying jobs because they allow for greater (family rearing) flexibility:

…The answer, they speculate, is that women are choosing lower-paying jobs on purpose because they offer greater flexibility in hours and are generally more family-friendly. The researchers acknowledge they don’t have the data to prove that this is the case, but the data they do have is consistent with this theory.

If so, they say, that would be a victory for women (and even men.) Studies show that many doctors are burned out and would rather take jobs that allow them to have a good quality of life. Now — thanks in large part to the growing ranks of female doctors — such jobs are available. They just come with lower salaries.

“Instead of being penalized because of their gender, female physicians may be seeking out employment arrangements that compensate them in other — nonfinancial — ways, and more employers may be beginning to offer such arrangements,” the researchers wrote….

Click to ENLARGE

More HERE

…..Thomas Sowell is the most well written on this subject. In fact, in his book, ECONOMIC FACTS AND FALLACIES, he devotes a whole chapter to this topic. In one area he points the following out, and keep in mind that in most countries mining or other hard-labor jobs are much more the norm than in America:

…various countries’ economies, there are still particular industries today where considerable physical strength remains a requirement. Women are obviously not as likely to work in such fields as men are— and some of these are fields with jobs that pay more than the national average. While women have been 74 percent of what the U.S. Census Bureau classifies as “clerical and kindred workers,” they have been less than 5 percent of “transport equipment operatives.” In other words, women are far more likely to be sitting behind a desk than to be sitting behind the steering wheel of an eighteen-wheel truck. Women are also less than 4 percent of the workers in “construction, extraction, and maintenance.” They are less than 3 percent of construction workers or loggers, less than 2 percent of roofers or masons and less than one percent of the mechanics and technicians who service heavy vehicles arid mobile equipment.

Such occupational distributions have obvious economic implications, since miners earn nearly double the income of office clerks when both work full-time and year-round 20 There is still a premium paid for workers doing heavy physical work, as well as for hazardous work, which often overlaps work requiring physical strength. While men are 54 percent of the labor force, they are 92 percent of the job-related deaths.

He goes on to point out that this volunteerism of choices continues onto Ph.D.s,

Given the asymmetrical effects of career obsolescence on women and men, it is hardly surprising that women tend to work in fields with lower rates of obsolescence— as teachers and librarians, for example, rather than as computer engineers or tax accountants. Even as the proportion of women receiving Ph.D.s rose dramatically from the 1970s on, male-female differences in the fields of specialization remained large. As of 2005, for example, women received more than 60 percent of the doctorates in education but less than 20 percent of the doctorates in engineering.

He then goes on to point out that do to life choices based on being close to family [kids], and choices made around work and family:

The most important reason why women earn less than men is not that they are paid less for doing the very same work but that they are distributed differently among jobs and have fewer hours and less continuity in the labor force. Among college-educated, never-married individuals with no children who worked fill-time and were from 40 to 64 years old— that is, beyond the child-bearing years— men averaged $40,000 a year in income, while women averaged $47,000.30 But, despite the fact that women in this category earned more than men in the same category, gross income differences in favor of men continue to reflect differences in work patterns between the sexes, so that women and men are not in the same categories to the same extent.

Even women who have graduated from top-level universities like Harvard and Yale have not worked full-time, or worked at all, to the same extent that male graduates of these same institutions have. Among Yale alumni in their forties, “only 56 percent of the women still worked, compared with 90 percent of the men,” according to the New York Times. It was much the same story at Harvard:

A 2001 survey of Harvard Business School graduates found that 31 percent of the women from the classes of 1981, 1985 and 1991 who answered the survey worked only part time or on contract, and another 31 percent did not work at all, levels strikingly similar to the percentages of the Yale students interviewed who predicted they would stay at home or work part time in their 30’s and 40’s.

In fact, as of a few years ago, women make more of the enrollment statistics in college, but will, through life choices, spend less time on the job that they went to school for than their male counterparts. All this brings me full circle to a great article that updates the above via the Wall Street Journal. They point out that much of the emphasis on this are by special interest groups that want to fix the problem — in my mind’s eye — with outdated thinking that no longer fits the evidence. In a recent VIRAL article found at The Atlantic Monthly “WHY WOMEN STILL CAN’T HAVE IT ALL,” Anne-Marie Slaughter talks about the talent businesses lose due to their inflexibility of allowing women to juggle family and work via a work schedule that doesn’t force an “either-or” schedule on them. BECAUSE when forced into an either-or situation, women choose family. Its in their nature. Here she talks a bit about her column:

CAREER OR FAMILY – Anne-Marie Slaughter

Mona Charen, a favorite author of mine, columnist, and part of the Clare Booth Luce Institute (a conservative policy institute for women), comments on Slaughter’s article in her’s, “GROW UP: LIFE HAS TRADE-OFFS,” by agreeing with her that women were sold a lie. Both in the prevailing view by the left that counters women’s nature as well as statistical lies:

…Even with a supportive husband who was willing to “take on the lion’s share of parenting … (while) I was in Washington,” she found that she didn’t want to be away from her two teenaged sons, particularly when one was having trouble in school.

“Want” is the critical word here. Slaughter made a choice, as adults do. She writes, “I realized that I didn’t just need to go home. Deep down, I wanted to go home. I wanted to be able to spend time with my children in the last few years that they are likely to live at home, crucial years for their development into responsible, productive, happy, and caring adults.”

Slaughter’s wants mirror those of other women (high-earning and otherwise). A 2007 Pew survey found that among working mothers with children 17 and younger, fully 79 percent said that they would prefer part-time (60 percent) or zero (19 percent) work outside the home. Only 21 percent said they would choose full-time employment while their children were young. This was down from 32 percent who preferred to work full time in 1997.

Despite endless repetition by Democrats and feminists, the idea that women earn less than men for the same work is fiction. Single women without children earn just as much, and sometimes more, than comparably qualified young men. Women earn less (over their whole careers) because they choose to. And they choose to because they place more value on child rearing than on money or status.

A better feminist would applaud women for this and stress the incomparable contribution mothers make to society. Instead, feminists define progress as the “first” woman this or that and the degree to which a woman’s life parallels a man’s. Feminists have been missing what’s best about womanhood for decades…

This is much of the left’s “padded” thinking mind you! the WSJ’s article, titled: There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap: A study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30 found that women earned 8% more than men, is a great update to the above:

Tuesday is Equal Pay Day—so dubbed by the National Committee for Pay Equity, which represents feminist groups including the National Organization for Women, Feminist Majority, the National Council of Women’s Organizations and others. The day falls on April 12 because, according to feminist logic, women have to work that far into a calendar year before they earn what men already earned the year before.

In years past, feminist leaders marked the occasion by rallying outside the U.S. Capitol to decry the pernicious wage gap and call for government action to address systematic discrimination against women. This year will be relatively quiet. Perhaps feminists feel awkward protesting a liberal-dominated government—or perhaps they know that the recent economic downturn has exposed as ridiculous their claims that our economy is ruled by a sexist patriarchy.

The unemployment rate is consistently higher among men than among women. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 9.3% of men over the age of 16 are currently out of work. The figure for women is 8.3%. Unemployment fell for both sexes over the past year, but labor force participation (the percentage of working age people employed) also dropped. The participation rate fell more among men (to 70.4% today from 71.4% in March 2010) than women (to 58.3% from 58.8%). That means much of the improvement in unemployment numbers comes from discouraged workers—particularly male ones—giving up their job searches entirely.

Men have been hit harder by this recession because they tend to work in fields like construction, manufacturing and trucking, which are disproportionately affected by bad economic conditions. Women cluster in more insulated occupations, such as teaching, health care and service industries.

Yet if you can accept that the job choices of men and women lead to different unemployment rates, then you shouldn’t be surprised by other differences—like differences in average pay.

Feminist hand-wringing about the wage gap relies on the assumption that the differences in average earnings stem from discrimination. Thus the mantra that women make only 77% of what men earn for equal work. But even a cursory review of the data proves this assumption false.

The Department of Labor’s Time Use survey shows that full-time working women spend an average of 8.01 hours per day on the job, compared to 8.75 hours for full-time working men. One would expect that someone who works 9% more would also earn more. This one fact alone accounts for more than a third of the wage gap.

Choice of occupation also plays an important role in earnings. While feminists suggest that women are coerced into lower-paying job sectors, most women know that something else is often at work. Women gravitate toward jobs with fewer risks, more comfortable conditions, regular hours, more personal fulfillment and greater flexibility. Simply put, many women—not all, but enough to have a big impact on the statistics—are willing to trade higher pay for other desirable job characteristics.

Men, by contrast, often take on jobs that involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions (which is also why men suffer the overwhelming majority of injuries and deaths at the workplace). They put up with these unpleasant factors so that they can earn more.

Recent studies have shown that the wage gap shrinks—or even reverses—when relevant factors are taken into account and comparisons are made between men and women in similar circumstances. In a 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30, the research firm Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8% more than their male counterparts. Given that women are outpacing men in educational attainment, and that our economy is increasingly geared toward knowledge-based jobs, it makes sense that women’s earnings are going up compared to men’s.

(More Here)

In a response to a reader in a previous blogpost on this subject, I pointed out that there are physiological differences between the sexes that are undeniable and that promote women making choices to pause a career and build a home life. Here is my response:

You should know that there is a hard wired difference between men and women, whether by evolutionary means or creative means. A most recent example is what wakes the sexes at night:

Psychologist Dr David Lewis said: ‘There is nothing more likely to leave you feeling drained and depressed than disturbed sleep, especially when this happens over several nights.

A graphic explaining the different sounds which will wake men and women

‘As this unique study shows while some sounds, for instance your partner coughing or snoring beside you, disturb men and women equally, other noises such as a howling wind cause men to be more disturbed than women.

‘Women are more likely to be disturbed by a crying baby.

‘These differing sensitivities may represent evolutionary differences that make women sensitive to sounds associated with a potential threat to their children while men are more finely tuned to disturbances posing a possible threat to the whole family.’

(Daily Mail)

I could call my husband lazy, sexist and insensitive but his failure to hear a crying child while he’s sleeping might not be his fault at all. Researchers have actually found that women are hard-wired to wake up to the sound of a sobbing baby. A 2009 study by the British Mindlab sleeping lab found that a baby’s crying is the number one sound most likely to rouse a woman and didn’t even factor into the male top 10. Men were more likely to wake to the sounds of a car alarm, howling wind, or a buzzing fly.

(DAILY MAIL)

This difference is what the market responds to. The fact that women typically WANT to be at home with their family MORE than the man… AND, women typically CHOOSE jobs that pay less. But free markets is not what the left is about, egalitarianism is.

Below, Michael Medved deals with two issues from President Obama’s recent Executive Order “Payment Fairness Act” push through. He [Medved] deals first with the continuing distortion of Obama’s family history by Obama himself. Then he gets to the meat of the issue (followed by some of the WSJ article mentioned in the clip):

Here are excerpts from the WSJ article:

…In its annual report, “Highlights of Women’s Earnings in 2012,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that “In 2012, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings of $691. On average in 2012, women made about 81% of the median earnings of male full-time wage and salary workers ($854).” Give or take a few percentage points, the BLS appears to support the president’s claim.

But every “full-time” worker, as the BLS notes, is not the same: Men were almost twice as likely as women to work more than 40 hours a week, and women almost twice as likely to work only 35 to 39 hours per week. Once that is taken into consideration, the pay gap begins to shrink. Women who worked a 40-hour week earned 88% of male earnings.

Then there is the issue of marriage and children. The BLS reports that single women who have never married earned 96% of men’s earnings in 2012.

The supposed pay gap appears when marriage and children enter the picture. Child care takes mothers out of the labor market, so when they return they have less work experience than similarly-aged males. Many working mothers seek jobs that provide greater flexibility, such as telecommuting or flexible hours. Not all jobs can be flexible, and all other things being equal, those which are will pay less than those that do not.

Education also matters. Even within groups with the same educational attainment, women often choose fields of study, such as sociology, liberal arts or psychology, that pay less in the labor market. Men are more likely to major in finance, accounting or engineering. And as the American Association of University Women reports, men are four times more likely to bargain over salaries once they enter the job market.

Risk is another factor. Nearly all the most dangerous occupations, such as loggers or iron workers, are majority male and 92% of work-related deaths in 2012 were to men. Dangerous jobs tend to pay higher salaries to attract workers. Also: Males are more likely to pursue occupations where compensation is risky from year to year, such as law and finance. Research shows that average pay in such jobs is higher to compensate for that risk.

While the BLS reports that full-time female workers earned 81% of full-time males, that is very different than saying that women earned 81% of what men earned for doing the same jobs, while working the same hours, with the same level of risk, with the same educational background and the same years of continuous, uninterrupted work experience, and assuming no gender differences in family roles like child care. In a more comprehensive study that controlled for most of these relevant variables simultaneously—such as that from economists June and Dave O’Neill for the American Enterprise Institute in 2012—nearly all of the 23% raw gender pay gap cited by Mr. Obama can be attributed to factors other than discrimination. The O’Neills conclude that, “labor market discrimination is unlikely to account for more than 5% but may not be present at all.”…

Again, and again, the Dems from the President on-down spread this lie! I will now add another post dealing with this myth, lie, political tactic. Below will be a few video/audio clips as well as The Wall Street Journal and Powerline posts/articles on the matter.

Professor Christiana Hoff Sommers was recently interviewed by Larry Elder explains this nonsense in an erudite and concise manner:

Powerline says that the President is in trouble when it can’t even fool CNN: AEI’s Mark Perry sets out the “analysis” proving pay discrimination at the White House here in a form even the folks at CNN can understand. If Obama can’t fool those who want to believe at CNN with this line, who ya gonna fool? Again, Powerline posts (10-20, 2012)Thomas Sowell’s response to the matter:

At the Hofstra University presidential debate this past Tuesday (I’m working from the WaPo transcript here), Candy Crowley called on Katherine Fenton to ask this groaner of a question: “In what new ways to you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?”

This is such an old canard I thought that Governor Romney might challenge the premise of the question. Equal pay for equal work is the law of the land, Katherine. The proposition that the statistical disparity in pay you mention results from employment discrimination has been examined and disproved many times over. The great Thomas Sowell addressed it in chapter 3 of Economic Facts and Fallacies (summarized in the video below). Katherine, the premise of your question falls into the category of “fallacy.”

What is truly scary is that everyone may know your pay at some point… this may be no-longer private:

The first bill President Obama signed into law was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, but five years later, the White House is still talking about the gender wage-gap.

At a White House briefing on Wednesday, Betsey Stevenson, one of President Obama’s economic advisers, said female employees need to know how much their male colleagues earn, so they can tell if they’re being paid equally.

(read it all)

(Via The Lonely Conservative – now defunct ~ see To Love My Country for more) …The Washington Post & the Los Angeles Times slammed [the above] graphic put out by the White House as being sexist.

It pictures two women, one in a pink dress carrying a handbag, the other in an orange dress, and both are wearing oh-so-practical stilettos. This is exactly what working women wear to work every day, right? All those women who are lawyers, and doctors, and cashiers, and investment bankers, and biochemists, and nursing assistants and architects and engineers and cashiers at the Piggly Wiggly? Perhaps this is why Obama was so focused on dry-cleaning bills at the White House signing ceremony? This is just not great messaging or symbolism for a White House that wants to also focus on women in minimum wage jobs. It screams “Sex and the City,” not “9 to 5.”

Ouch!

It didn’t get much better for Senate Democrats. Republicans took a look at their payroll records and found they also have a wage inequality problem.

It turns out President Obama isn’t the only hypocritical Democrat, in fact Senate Democrats have their own problems when it comes to equal pay. We pulled the official payroll records of various offices and calculated the average pay for men and women in each office for the most recent 6 month period available. Since some employees only worked a portion of the six month period, we calculated how much each person was paid per day in order to give an accurate representation. Here’s what we found:

  • Mark Udall pays women 85 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
  • Mary Landrieu pays women 88 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
  • Mark Begich pays women 82 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
  • Mark Warner pays women 75 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
  • Gary Peters pays women 67 cents for every dollar that a man makes.

That means on average, these five Democrats on the ballot in battleground states pay women in their office 79 cents for every dollar made by a male employee.

WH Colluded w/Multiple Agencies in Documents Case vs. Trump

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is Yuge!

Here is JUST THE NEWS article on this:

Just weeks after learning Joe Biden had improperly retained government documents, his administration began working with federal bureaucrats in spring and fall 2021 to increase pressure on Donald Trump for similar issues and eventually prompt a criminal prosecution of the 45th president, according to government memos newly unsealed by a federal judge.

The correspondence, released this week by U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon in Florida, provide the the most extensive accounting so far of how the Biden White House worked with federal bureaucrats to escalate pressure on Trump to return documents to the National Archives even as it slow-walked similar issues involving its own boss.

One email dated May 5, 2021, shows the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) had already consulted the Biden White House about missing Trump records, more than a year before the public would learn that the former president president had kept some classified memos.

“I have had several conversations with [Person 40] since the end of the Trump Administration about various paper records that he believes were not transferred to us,” NARA General Counsel Gary Stern wrote to his colleagues in one May email.

“Person 40” was not identified by name in the document but was listed as working for the Biden White House in the Records Management Office, according to a motion filed by Trump’s lawyers in the case, which was previously redacted.

On August 30, 2021, NARA Archivist David Ferriero began to press Trump records representatives more explicitly about the documents, vowing to make referrals to “the Hill, DOJ, and the White House” if the documents had been destroyed or where not turned over soon.

“As you have seen in the press, the House has requested records,” Ferriero writes in one email chain. “Our ability to respond requires access to the 24 boxes which have yet to be accounted for. At this point, I am assuming that they have been destroyed. In which case, I am obligated to report it to the Hill, DOJ, and the White House.”

By September 2021, Stern had decided to draft a criminal referral against Trump to the Justice Department after documents were still not returned, according to an FBI interview summary with a NARA employee, identified as “Person 53” in the court documents.

“Stern approached [Per. 53] to formally draft a letter to DOJ raising concerns about PRA materials from the TRUMP administration which remained unaccounted for by NARA,” the FBI memo stated.

In his interview with the FBI, Person 53 noted in his “years of experience,” he “understood NARA never had to make such a referral to DOJ…to accomplish such an ask.”

When he circulated the draft letter internally, Stern told colleagues he had been in contact with “DOJ counsel” about the matter and was continuing to communicate with the White House Counsel’s Office, showing the Biden administration was in the loop about the efforts to repossess Trump’s documents.

“In addition, [White House] Counsel is now also aware of the issue, and has asked that I keep them in the loop to the extent that we make any reference to the White House Office of Records Management,” Stern wrote in the email.

While NARA and the White House were engaging DOJ on Trump, Biden aides were trying to figure out what to do with memos Biden kept at his University of Pennsylvania Biden Center office in Washington, some which turned out to be classified.

In March 2021, Annie Tomasini, an assistant to Biden, traveled to the Penn Biden Center to take inventory of documents, according to a House Oversight Committee letter. The Biden White House previously claimed that classified documents were “unexpected[ly] disover[ed]” on November 2, 2022, more than a year after Tomasini’s first visit to the center.

[….]

The new documents provide fresh contrasts in how the Biden administration dealt differently with the discovery of improperly-retained documents by the president and his political rival, Trump.

Sen. Ron Johnson, the top Republican on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, told the “Just the News, No Noise” television show on Tuesday night that the new memos confirm Trump and Biden were treated differently by federal bureaucrats.

Trump was eventually indicted, while Biden escaped criminal charges in part because prosecutors believed he’d be viewed as old and forgetful by a jury. “It’s just another outrageous example of the dual system of justice and just the partisan nature within these agencies,” Johnson said.

“President Biden gets let off scot free because I guess it’s because he’s senile. …. President Trump is being prosecuted to the full extent of the law, because he’s Donald Trump,” the Wisconsin senator said.

The court documents make clear that NARA collaborated and shared periodic updates with both Biden White House officials and Department of Justice officials throughout 2021 and 2022 as their efforts to retrieve classified documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property progressed.

By late January 2022, Stern “consulted” with Deputy White House Counsel, Jonathan Su, who referred the NARA officials directly to the Department of Justice, specifically Associate Deputy Attorneys General Emily Loeb and David Newman.

According to the FBI interview memo, Newman told NARA to refer the matter to both the Archives Inspector General office and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Eventually, the NARA Inspector General would send the referral back to the DOJ, to the Public Integrity Section, according to the court documents.

The case against the former president was ultimately born from this referral. ….

(Read it all)

Julie Kelly’s back with more Trump trial news! A former tabloid executive Daniel Pecker testified today in court in Trump’s NYC case, while the classified documents case in Florida continues to unfold. New details emerge from that case show that the DOJ and other federal agents were heavily involved in the procurement and prosecution of Trump.

Here are the redated documents compared from Julie Kelly’s TWIX (you can link to her TWIXter to see more of the below previously redacted compared to the newer unredacted documents):

WHITE HOUSE ALSO COLLUDED w/PRESS…
the “FREE PRESS” – LOL

Fox News contributor Joe Concha weighs in after a Politico report revealed anti-Trump legal pundits hold off-the-record Zoom calls to discuss the former president’s legal battles.

All the Lefties and #NeverTrumpers were present according to POLITICO:

….The people on the call weren’t affiliated with the investigation or the government. But they would have been familiar to anyone who watches cable news. They were some of the country’s most well-known legal and political commentators, and they were there to get insights into the committee’s work and learn about what to look for at the hearings.

The group’s gathering was not a one-time event, but in fact an installment in an exclusive weekly digital salon, whose existence has not been previously reported, for prominent legal analysts and progressive and conservative anti-Trump lawyers and pundits. Every Friday, they meet on Zoom to hash out the latest twists and turns in the Trump legal saga — and intellectually stress-test the arguments facing Trump on his journey through the American legal system.

The meetings are off the record — a chance for the group’s members, many of whom are formally or loosely affiliated with different media outlets, to grapple with a seemingly endless array of novel legal issues before they hit the airwaves or take to print or digital outlets to weigh in with their thoughts. About a dozen or more people join any given call, though no one takes attendance. Some group members wouldn’t describe themselves with any partisan or ideological lean, but most are united by their dislike of Trump.

The group’s host is Norman Eisen, a senior Obama administration official, longtime Trump critic and CNN legal analyst, who has been convening the group since 2022 as Trump’s legal woes ramped up. Eisen was also a key member of the team of lawyers assembled by House Democrats to handle Trump’s first impeachment.

The regular attendees on Eisen’s call include Bill Kristol, the longtime conservative commentator, and Laurence Tribe, the famed liberal constitutional law professor. John Dean, who was White House counsel under Richard Nixon before pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in connection with Watergate, joins the calls, as does George Conway, a conservative lawyer and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. Andrew Weissmann, a longtime federal prosecutor who served as one of the senior prosecutors on Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation and is now a legal analyst for MSNBC, is another regular on the calls. Jeffrey Toobin, a pioneer in the field of cable news legal analysis, is also a member of the crew. The rest of the group includes recognizable names from the worlds of politics, law and media.

Sometimes there is a special guest, like the Jan. 6 committee staffers (who recalled briefing the group). One Friday last May, after E. Jean Carroll defeated Trump in the first of her two defamation cases to go to trial, her lawyer Roberta Kaplan joined as a guest to talk for roughly half an hour about her strategy for beating Trump in court. Another time, J. Michael Luttig, a conservative legal scholar and former judge who helped lead the public campaign to disqualify Trump under the 14th Amendment, showed up to make his case.

The existence of the call isn’t necessarily surprising: There’s a long history of commentators, journalists and newsmakers discussing current events in off-the-record settings, and similar groups gather regularly today in Washington. The concept has spurred controversy at times — including when news broke during the Obama administration that hundreds of left-leaning writers, commentators and academics had been convening in an off-the-record listserv known as JournoList. (Conservatives complained; journalists offered awkward defenses; the list was eventually shuttered.) But a group of legal analysts and political commentators who are largely up front about their anti-Trump leanings sharing opinions and theories off the record isn’t the same as a bunch of journalists who profess to be non-partisan.

There is also something very 2024 about this group: It’s the perfect emblem of today’s Trump-media-legal-industrial complex……..

JournoList:

The publisher of BigGovernment.com criticizes the liberal-leaning listserv at a tea-party rally in Philadelphia. (Recorded July 31, 2010)

  • Listserve that allowed some 400 liberal and leftist journalists, academics, and political activists to brainstorm and collaborate among themselves between 2007 and 2010
  • JournoList members secretly colluded to discredit and ignore stories that had the potential to harm Barack Obama’s presidential bid in 2008.
  • Held conservatives and Tea Party activists in great contempt
  • Ceased operations in June 2010

Founded in February 2007 by Washington Post blogger/columnist Ezra Klein, JournoList was an online listserve composed of some 400 self-described liberals—mostly journalists, but also some professors and political activists. It functioned essentially as a secret society of email correspondents who shared information with one another, discussed their thoughts on current events, and coordinated the way they reported on certain stories—all off the record. Conservatives were barred from joining the group.

JournoList was shut down by Ezra Klein in late June of 2010, a few days after someone had leaked a number of offensive comments that one of its members—Washington Post political reporter David Weigel—had written on the listserve regarding conservatives. The most damaging leaks, published in The Daily Caller, were laced with obscenities and charged that conservatives were predominantly racists who sought, above all else, to protect their own “white privilege”—even as they used the media to “violently, angrily divide America.” In two of his JournoList posts, Weigel expressed his hope that broadcaster Rush Limbaugh and newsman Matt Drudge would both die.

Weigel was not alone among JournoList members in posting such emotionally charged messages. For instance, Sarah Spitz—a producer for the show Left, Right & Center which aired on the National Public Radio affiliate KCRW—wrote that if Rush Limbaugh were to suffer a heart attack in her presence, she would “laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” because “he deserves it.”

In 2009, when Tea Party activists nationwide advocated for limited government and demanded fiscal responsibility from their elected representatives: 

  • JournoList member Ryan Donmoyer of Bloomberg News saw “parallels here between the teabaggers [a vulgar term referring to a sexual practice] and their tactics and the rise of the Brownshirts” in Nazi Germany.
  • Liberal magazine writer Richard Yeselson attributed the Tea Partiers’ dissatisfaction with government to the fact that “the president is a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama.” Conservative activists, said Yeselson dismissively, were merely a collection of “gun nuts,” “anti-tax nuts,” “religious nuts,” “homophobes,” “anti-feminists,” “anti-abortion lunatics,” “racist/confederate crackpots,” “anti-immigration whackos,” and “pathological government haters.”
  • Blogger Lindsay Beyerstein said of conservatives: “I’m not saying these guys are capital F-fascists, but they don’t want limited government. Their desired end looks more like a corporate state than a rugged individualist paradise. The rank and file wants a state that will reach into the intimate [sic] of citizens when it comes to sex, reproductive freedom, censorship, and rampant incarceration in the name of law and order.”

When the conservative author and historian Victor Davis Hanson wrote an article about immigration for National Review, JournoList member Ed Kilgore, a blogger, reflexively dismissed the piece (without reading it) as “the kind of Old White Guy cultural reaction that is at the heart of the Tea Party Movement.” “It’s very close in spirit,” Kilgore continued, “to the classic 1970s racist tome, The Camp of the Saints, where White Guys struggle to make up their minds whether to go out and murder brown people or just give up.”

Another focal point of JournoList members’ wrath was the Fox News Channel, for its alleged conservative bias. Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, for instance, wrote that he was “genuinely scared” of Fox because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation cannot be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised.” “In order to have even a semblance of control,” he added, “you need a tough legal framework.” Michael Scherer of Time magazine concurred with Davies’ assessment, saying that Fox News president Roger Ailes “understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization.” And UCLA law professor Jonathan Zasloff pondered, “I hate to open this can of worms, but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull [Fox’s] broadcasting permit once it expires?”

Perhaps the most significant revelation about JournoList came to light in July 2010 in The Daily Caller, which reported that when the racist, anti-American rantings of Barack Obama‘s longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright had become an issue during the heart of the 2008 presidential primaries, JournoList members actively conspired to discredit and bury the story. 

This occurred, for instance, after an April 2008 ABC News debate in which: (a) moderator Charlie Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him nearly a year to formally dissocate himself from Wright’s remarks, and (b) co-moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Obama, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?” JournoList members who watched the debate were outraged. Richard Kim of TheNation accused Stephanopoulos of “being a disgusting little rat snake.” The Guardian’s Michael Tomasky wrote: “Listen folks—in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have…. We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”…..

(DISCOVER THE NETWORKS)

CLIMATEGATE

His is an interview from a “fill-in host” on the Hugh Hewitt Show of Chris Horner in 2012 of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)

The so-called “Climategate” scandal erupted in late November of 2009. Its name was coined by the English journalist James Delingpole , on his Telegraph blog. The controversy began when some Russian computer hackers obtained and publicized 1,073 private e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in England, possessor of the world’s largest temperature-data set. The e-mails in question — some of which dated back as far as 13 years, and 241 of which were from 2008 and 2009 — had been exchanged between a number of leading American and British climatologists known for their belief that mankind’s industrial activity was causing a dangerous “global warming” trend in the earth’s atmosphere. In their correspondences, the authors candidly acknowledged that they had intentionally:

  • manipulated scientific evidence in order to provide “proof” that their warnings were justified;
  • conspired to illegally conceal, falsify, or destroy data that did not support their global-warming claims; and
  • plotted to keep opposing scientific views out of the peer-reviewed journals whose editorial boards they controlled.

In a November 22, 1996 email to other top global-warming scientists, Geoff Jenkins — the self-described “front man explaining climate change” — spoke of “inventing” temperature readings and releasing fake “estimates” of temperature data for the year, even before the year was over. He added: “Remember all the fun we had last year over 1995 global temperatures, with early release of information (via Oz), ‘inventing’ the December monthly value, letters to Nature etc etc?  I think we should have a cunning plan about what to do this year….”

Jenkins further pledged to pass along falsified temperature information “selectively to Nick Nuttall [spokesman and ‘Head of Media’ for the United Nations Environment program], so that he can write an article for the silly season.”

In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing the climate patterns of the last two millennia, Phil Jones, a longtime CRU climate researcher, boasted that he had used a “trick” — also employed by another scientist, Michael Mann — to “hide the decline” in temperatures. In another e-mail, a climate scientist referred to global-warming skeptics as “idiots.”……

(DISOVER THE NETWORKS)

See more at W.U.W.T.!

Trump’s “for every new regulation 2 have to go”

Published by Papa Giorgio

The reason for bringing two older posts (2022 and 2021) together and combining them with this Forbes article about Trump’s promise is simple… the Republican base wants less government interference – that is me, the GOP base. The Democrat base wants increased government interference in our daily lives.

Why this “adding of the FORBES article” as a preface of these other posts?

I was asked on the way out of a gathering by a family friend over this past weekend “why I [she] should vote for Trump?” I believe the question COULD HAVE BEEN asked for varying reasons, and as I write a couple of them, keep in mind the opposite could be true:

  • She is a diehard Democrat who is honestly is trying to understand the opposing view of almost half of the voting public. (Alternatively, she thinks that there is no foundation or good reason to vote for Trump and is trying to show the superiority of being “anti-racist” [in modern parlance] or progressive to the point that her vision of caring for the downtrodden is a way to “show up” [so-to-speak] the other side by being on the side of angels.);
  • She is a life-long Democrat who sees the attacks on things such as free-speech and gender and is dismayed on how quickly the political culture of her party has changed and is struggling with where her vote should land. (Alternatively, she supports these agendas, whether in good faith or not [based on false agendas and political propaganda] and is dismayed by the Republican Party — which is defined with these ideas in mind:

sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted (S.I.X.H.I.R.B.)

HILLARY’S version:

  • “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he [Trump] has lifted them up.”

  • Etc, etc.

I think, as human beings – me included – are as complicated as the day is long and we battle many influences and experiences and habits… it would be in some measure a combination of all of the above and much more. I carry many prejudices and experiences that I try to temper with faith, accountability, and checking myself through reading and discussion [putting my viewpoint out in the public to be peer reviewed – sorta].

The largest difference I can point out between her political and economic viewpoint vs. my demographic of religiously conservatarianism is that she thinks mankind and men/women in general are good people… and I believe they are corrupted and fallen in the real sense of original sin.

These two opposite views come out in different senses, say, economics by way of example. Keynsian Economics, the guiding principle founder of much of the Democrat Party’s direction of their economic planning:

John Maynard Keynes hailed the Soviet Union in a 1936 radio interview as,

“engaged in a vast administrative task of making a completely new set of social and economic institutions work smoothly and successfully.”

And in a preface he wrote to the 1936 German edition of his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, Keynes stated that his economic theory,

“is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state” than to “conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire.” (this quote and the above is from James Bovard’s book Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen, pp. 14,20,21)

Another Keynes quote lets the individual in on the result of his theories, which most nations use (i.e., central banking; e.g., the Federal Reserve Bank):

“By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some . . .. The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose.”  (Partially quoted from Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History, by Noble Prize holder in economics, Milton Friedman.)

This last quote is what happens with Keynesian economics!  An unseen taxation of citizens, on top of normal taxation.

Versus

According to Adam Smith, it is when the businessman “intends only his own gain” that he contributes— via the process of competition— to promote the social good “more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.” Smith added: “I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.”

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (New York: Modern Library, 1937), p. 423; from, Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (New York, NY: basic Books, 2007), 57.

I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the End than a conscientious revolution­ary who has, in a sense sincerely, been justifying cruelties and injustices inflicted on millions of his contemporaries by the benefits which he hopes to confer on future generations: generations who, as one terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist. Then he will see the massacres, the faked trials, the deportations, to be all ineffaceably real, an essential part, his part, in the drama that has just ended: while the future Utopia had never been anything but a fantasy.

C.S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night, p. 131.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

  1. S. Lewis, God in the Dock, p. 292.

My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause [the French Revolution], but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated.

Thomas Jefferson, Letter of January 3, 1793, The Portable Thomas Jefferson, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), p. 465; from, Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (New York, NY: basic Books, 2007), 29.

Simply put, one side thinks mankind can qualitatively guide by elitism our economy and lives, whereas the other side does not. “The larger the government the smaller the individual.”

So, with this unnecessarily long introduction, let us get into the FORBES article:

Bookending four years of its infamous one-in, two-out requirement for issuing significant new regulations, the Trump administration quietly just released its status roundup called “Regulatory Reform Results for Fiscal Year 2020.”

According to the administration, agencies in the 2020 fiscal year issued 145 deregulatory actions and 45 significant regulatory actions, for an out-to-in ratio of 3.2 to one.

Of those deregulatory actions, 58 were deemed “significant” by agencies and the administration. Comparing significant-in to significant-out still gives a ratio of 1.3 to one.

[….]

The overall ratio for the entire four-year stretch is 2.5 to one. And since rules considered non-significant may be used to offset significant rules added per E.O. 13,771, the ratios are actually better, as each year’s respective roundup at the White House shows.  

We are not engaging here the debates over whether the cuts in regulations are genuinely highly significant or overblown. Employing different methodologies, the Council of Economic Advisers for its part estimated far more savings from a separate set of Trump-era reforms than the OMB’s year-end reports have claimed. 

But nor does this survey address the warning signs of Trump’s own regulatory actions taken, sometimes of the sort that do not appear in White House Office of Management and Budget compilations. Examples include antitrust regulation, regulation of online content (or the pursuit of it), federal guidance on artificial intelligence, trade restrictions and more. These are capable of swamping regulatory savings.

Note also that E.O. 13771 did not apply to non-significant rules added (although in the year-end updates and in the new Unified Agenda editions, these “Regulatory” actions were also identified). Nor did the Trump order apply to rules mandated by Congress as opposed to ones driven by agency discretion; nor to rules from the so-called independent agencies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In any event, the leading edge of the one-in, two-out has been the claimed capping of spending rather than the ratio of cuts to additions. Criticisms notwithstanding, other presidents have not implemented a program as ambitious as Trump’s.

We know the generation of new regulations dropped significantly under Trump. But in terms of rollbacks, it would naturally become harder for an administration acting alone (with no help from Congress) to pick the “significant deregulatory action” fruit over time capable of generating rapid rule and cost rollbacks. Major rollbacks like those involving Clean Power Plan and Waters of the United States rules entail years of public consultation, writing, and legal challenges. 

So, for the record and for posterity, Table 1 below presents the inventory of the significant regulatory actions eliminated by the Trump administration per E.O. 13,771, broken down by agency as derived from the administration’s fiscal year 2020 chart. Table 2 presents the significant regulations added….

So, was it as “successful” as Trump said or hoped it to be.

No.

Sounds like a politician or contractor to me – no surprise there.

Was it successful in shrinking control over the American business man/woman?

Yes….

which leads into why we should all want to shrink the role of government in our every-day lives:

TWO OLDER POSTS

Here are the two articles mentioned in the below audio by Armstrong and Getty (Hour 1 Thursday, and Hour 3 – same day):

  • America’s Welfare State Is on Borrowed Time — Biden has fully embraced the mad goal of giving 98% of the population lavish benefits at no cost. (WALL STREET JOURNAL | THE RED LINE [no pay wall])
  • Democrats Are Killing the American Dream — Joe Biden’s American Families Plan replaces individual striving with middle class entitlements. (WALL STREET JOURNAL | BLACK REPUBLICAN)

REASON.COM has been on fire as of late:

Since the start of the Covid crisis, the American economy has been turned on its head. Times are good for the big guys — Big Business and Big Government. But what about for the small business owner, the personification of the American dream? Carol Roth discusses Crony Corporatism/Capitalism and is the author of, “The War on Small Business: How the Government Used the Pandemic to Crush the Backbone of America“

UPDATED my “BAM! What Is Crony Capitalism“ with this Prager U video.

BofA and USAA “De-Banking” Conservatives and Christian Orgs

Published by Papa Giorgio

I thought this was an interesting link from WINTERY KNIGHT he provided:

  • Would a bank close your account just because they don’t like your Christian religious beliefs or conservative political beliefs? I try to choose my banks by looking at THEIR POLITICAL DONATIONS. On that score, Bank of America, J. P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and US Bancorp are all bad banks. But is there any evidence that banks discriminate against Christians and conservatives?

My video description:

Dennis Prager notes this is one of his scariest stories he has shared during his radio career. I note personally that I believe this will become a case and go to the Supreme Court… here is some comments from a Long Island-NY site:

  • Nearly two dozen state attorneys general signed onto a letter Wednesday demanding major firms that provide voting advice to corporate shareholders stop backing efforts to “debank” conservatives. Republican Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird led 22 other state attorneys general in sending a letter to the two companies that control 97% of the proxy advisory services market, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, whose advice they say shapes “the choices and activity of businesses and ultimately the United States’ and global economy.” (SOURCE)

Reagan Reese was on the WAR ROOM here, discussing her column at the DAILY CALLER:

One of the left’s biggest political targets recently found himself “de-banked” with no warning and little avenue for recourse, the Daily Caller has learned.

John Eastman, once an attorney for former President Donald Trump, was de-banked twice in the span of several months by two prominent financial institutions, Bank of America and USAA, he told the Daily Caller. His accounts were closed as he faced substantial backlash for his work advising Trump around the time of the 2020 election.

[….]

A number of red state attorneys general — including from Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana and Montana — voiced their opposition to the de-banking trend after the Daily Caller laid out Eastman’s situation. Many of the state AGs pointed to politics as a potential reason Eastman’s accounts were closed.

“No American should lose their bank account because banks want to play politics. Time and time again, we are seeing banks target and cut off those they disagree with and refuse to explain why. That is unacceptable,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird told the Daily Caller.

“De-banking contradicts the very character of our nation, as elites wrongfully use their power to punish their political opponents. Here’s the bottom line: If financial institutions are punishing consumers who don’t fall in line with their political beliefs, that could constitute a violation of both state and federal law,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey told the Daily Caller.

Now, Eastman is being prosecuted by Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis as part of her case against Trump. On March 27, a California judge ruled that Eastman should be disbarred due to his legal advice in the wake of the 2020 election. The case will now move to the state Supreme Court for a final decision.

“I just think this is a terrible trend. I think it’s harmful. I think it prohibits people from bringing their values and the public square into the marketplace. And they have every constitutional right under the Free Exercise clause to bring their values into the marketplace. And I think this is also I think this is something we’re just gonna have to fight against,” Sam Brownback, an attorney and former U.S. Senator whose Christian non-profit was de-banked, told the Daily Caller.

Bill Maher’s Monologue on the Democrat’s Sexualization of Children

Published by Papa Giorgio

Even though Bill Maher is anything but a conservative, he has been pushed by the Left to the center. I will again post the TWIX by Elon — CLICK TO ENLARGE:

Here is a recent monologue by Bill discussing the sexualization of our children… something I [and others] have been noting for many years.

LANGAUGE WARNING:

Bill Maher – It turns out for pedophiles in Hollywood

Postmodernism

Published by Papa Giorgio

Originally posted November 2015… swapped out media today

The Postmodernism of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and Paul-Michel Foucault (1926-84)Geisler Book Apologetics 330

Postmodernism is often viewed as a reaction to modernism. Some see it as a form of extreme modernism. Basically, it is a radical kind of relativism that denies absolute truth, meaning, and interpretation.

Forerunners. The premodern world (before 1650) stressed metaphysics. The mod­ern period (1650-1950) emphasized epistemology, and the postmodern (1950—present) is focused on hermeneutics. The differences have been expressed in terms of an umpire:

  • Premodern umpire: “I call ’em like they are.”
  • Modern umpire: “I call ’em like I see ’em.”
  • Postmodern umpire: “They ain’t nothin’ till I call ’em.”

The forerunners of postmodernism include Hume’s radical empiricism, Kant’s agnosticism, Kierkegaard’s fideism, Nietzsche’s atheism, Frege’s conventionalism, Wittgenstein’s noncognitivism, Husserl’s phenomenologicalism, Heidegger’s existen­tialism, and William James’s pragmatism. The postmodernists Jacques Derrida and Paul-Michel Foucault added to this a form of deconstructionism, in which the reader deconstructs the meaning of the author and reconstructs his or her own meaning.

The Reaction to Modernism. Postmodernism can be seen as a reaction to modernism in the following ways:

Modernism

Unity of thought
Rational
Conceptual
Truth is absolute
Exclusivism
Foundationalism
Epistemology
Certainty
Author’s meaning
Structure of the text
The goal of knowing

 Postmodernism

Diversity of thought
Social and psychological
Visual and poetical
Truth is relative
Pluralism
Anti-foundationalism
Hermeneutics
Uncertainty
Reader’s meaning
Deconstructing the text
The journey of knowing

The Result of Postmodernism. Postmodernism is an outworking of Nietzschian atheism. If there is no Absolute Mind (God), then there is

1. no absolute (objective) truth (epistemological relativism),
2. no absolute meaning (semantical relativism),
3. no absolute history (reconstructionism).

And if there is no Absolute Author, then there is

4. no absolute writing (textual relativism),
5. no absolute interpretation (hermeneutical relativism).

And if there is no Absolute Thinker, then

6. there is no absolute thought (philosophical relativism),
7. there are no absolute laws of thought (antifoundationalism).

If there is no Absolute Purposer, then there is

8. no absolute purpose (teleological relativism).

If there is no Absolute Good, then there is

9. no absolute right or wrong (moral relativism).

In brief, postmodernism is a form of total relativism and subjectivism. At its base, it is a form of antifoundationalism. Foundationalism stressed

1. Law of Existence: “Being is” (i.e., something exists);
2. Law of Identity: “Being is being” (B is B);
3. Law of Noncontradiction: “Being is not nonbeing” (B is not non-B);
4. Law of Excluded Middle: “Either Being or nonbeing” (Either B or non-B);
5. Law of Causality: “nonbeing cannot cause being” (Non-B–/–>being),
6. Law of Analogy: “An effect is similar to its efficient cause” (B—->b).

As antifoundationalist, postmodernism rejects these basic principles of thought. With them it also rejects the correspondence view of truth—that all true statements correspond to reality. Without this foundation and correspondence, one is left in complete agnosticism.

Norman L. Geisler, Christian Apologetics, 2nd Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2013), 9-10.

Dr. Norman Geisler discusses how the postmodern culture destroys the ability to evangelize (if believed). *My Vimeo account was terminated; this is a recovered audio from it. (Some will be many years old, as is the case with this audio.)

Another Crazy Person Up In Flames

Published by Papa Giorgio

“Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities”
Voltaire (1765)

This is sadly part 2 of this topic, the first is here and was inspired by the politically motivated suicide of an Air Force member:

I have always been about reality, and so I will warn you if you are sensitive:

DO NOT WATCH THIS FIRST VIDEO AS IT IS GRAPHIC…
You Have Been Warned

As a history buff of the Vietnam War, I am familiar with self-immolation

While this is said to be suicide… it is quite literally murder – as much as I think euthanasia of people are. The recent self-immolations by the Air Force serviceman and the guy yesterday were suicides… and if someone doused them with gasoline, led a trail away from them and lit the trail – that person would be facing criminal charges. Plain and simple. Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức is doused… let me repeat that… is doused with gasoline by “team monks” during a protest demonstration in Saigon, on June 11, 1963

THE ATLANTIC has an article titled “Stop Glorifying Self-Immolation“ Here are some excerpts, and, it primarily is written with the Air Force kid setting himself on fire:

In 1963, the monk Thich Quang Duc soaked himself [no, he did not – RPT] in gasoline and lit himself on fire to protest the government of the Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem. Within a few years, dozens more had killed themselves the same way. A Quaker named Norman Morrison stood outside Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s office, handed off his 1-year-old daughter to a stranger, and cremated himself. Back in Vietnam, a nun named Nhat Chi Mai wondered to a friend whether the tactic had lost its power through overuse. “Fasting and even self-immolation no longer wake people up,” she said. “We have to be imaginative!” She suggested they take part in a mass public disembowelment. Her friend said she’d think about it. In 1967, Nhat knelt before statues of the Virgin Mary and Quan Am, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and stuck with Plan A. She was 33.

This past weekend, a 25-year-old U.S. Air Force enlisted man livestreamed his self-immolation in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. He said he could no longer abide being “complicit” in “genocide,” and the last comprehensible words he uttered before collapsing were “Free Palestine!” Among the effects of his suicide was to disturb the many people scrolling through social media who (like me) inadvertently saw him dancing and chanting while engulfed in flames, and to inspire many supporters of the Palestinian cause to celebrate his act. The theologian and presidential candidate Cornel West praised his “extraordinary courage and commitment.” “Rest in power,” Jill Stein, the former Green Party presidential candidate, posted on X, with an image of the young man ablaze.

I won’t speculate on the dead man’s mental health. He grew up in a cult, described himself as an anarchist, and generally eschewed what Buddhists might call “the middle way,” a life of mindful moderation, in favor of extreme spiritual and political practice. In addition to being an immoderate act, self-immolation is a violent one, indeed one of the most violent, and if you dislike violence, then you should abhor it no matter your view on the war in Gaza. Self-immolators choose that method over hunger strikes, civil disobedience, marches, and a long menu of other morally exemplary tactics.

It is also a tactic that succeeds and fails depending on the situation, and whether the moment is ripe for horrific violence or (as Nhat speculated) needs violence even more ghastly than can be achieved with gasoline. Virtually no one before Quang Duc had burned himself in protest of anything. The tactic is contagious. Another man had set himself on fire in December outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. Already the D.C. self-immolator is being turned into a hero, and that risks compounding this tragedy for no good reason.

There is a Buddhist tradition of suicide that values the shedding of one’s body as an end in itself. About 1,500 years ago, a Buddhist monk named Daodu declared that his body was “like a poisonous plant,” and burned himself alive to get rid of it. But for nearly all the self-burnings in the modern era, the goal was more worldly: to call attention to alleged injustice and stress one’s devotion to ending it. In a letter to Martin Luther King Jr., the monk Thich Nhat Hanh said that burning oneself will “prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance,” and demonstrate “determination and sincerity.”

The most comprehensive survey of the practice is by the Oxford sociologist Michael Biggs. He notes that some self-immolators inspired others to rededicate themselves to the immolator’s cause, and some—such as Morrison and Quang Duc—really did spur political change. (Diem’s government fell months after Quang Duc’s death.) But “most acts of self-immolation fail to generate any collective response,” Biggs writes.

[….]

I wonder if I am the only one left who would be more moved and persuaded by an absence of fanaticism. 

[….]

I have serious doubts about the value of discussing anything with someone who brings a jerry can and a Zippo to the conversation. The Palestinian cause is already associated with death cultism: Hamas arrives at the conversations pre-drenched. Certain factions of the Israeli right seem excessively open to conflagration too. The tendency to celebrate and encourage this behavior, or even to be moved by it, strikes me as deeply sick. I am moved only to check the inspection certificate on my office’s fire extinguisher.

And RED STATE shows the hero worship of these potential mass killers. In my previous dealing 2-months ago, I noted this – adapted anew:

  • The one positive that I can pull out of these two self-immolators, Aaron Bushnell & Max Azzarello, is, that at least they hurt themselves. It’s tragic. I wish someone could have been able to talk them out of it. But, hurting themselves versus hurting fellow service members or protestors to make a statement… I’m going with the the former. Much of the distorted view within the Left that radicalizes it is a narcissistic victim mentality, and this often leads to violence. So thinking through this, this morning, I would add that had the propensity to harm others as part of his statement based in lies and his egoism.

Again, Voltaire:

  • “Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities”

How did the media try and spin this? That he was a right winger… but MOONBATERY noted the following:

…He left a manifesto, which reveals an unsurprising political orientation.

Azzarello had a paranoid interest in conservative tech billionaire Peter Thiel, believed that “capitalism is unsustainable,” and fretted about fascism and climate change. He had worked for Democrat congresscritters Tom Suozzi and Ami Bera, as well as for the self-described “social justice organization” Liberty Hill Foundation. His LinkedIn photo was a picture of him standing next to Bill Clinton. He described himself as “a huge proponent of left unity” and an “anarchocommunist” — i.e., a radical moonbat of the type you might expect to do something really crazy in a public park.

Nonetheless, the media will spin his viewpoint as nonpartisan even pro-Trump if they think they can get away with it….

And the BEST post so far I have come across on the crazy guy can be found over at POST MILLENNIAL. They post readable pictures of the pamphlets the guy was touting when he burned himself. Here is one of the “political” grabs from  Maxwell Azzarello’s REDDIT posts:

NOT THE BEE notes the media’s attempt to say this guy was a righty: “The media is out there right now hinting that the man who set himself on fire outside Trump’s trial in NYC is a Trump supporter himself.”

They go on to list similar points that the above sites do from his manifesto, like these:

I’ve archived Max’s Substack manifesto here in case it gets memory holed. It is clearly an insight into how people are stressed and hopeless these days, so I wouldn’t recommend reading through the whole thing unless you are able to handle the madness.

I’ll simply highlight a few things here.

  • He says “we are victims of a totalitarian con” before outlining a Ponzi scheme involving tech billionaire Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley Bank, and cryptocurrency that will “take down half the stock market.”
  • He believes the elites set up a “secret kleptocracy” and that the Republican v. Democrat divide is entirely fake, presenting us with opposites like George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton or Trump and Hillary to keep us distracted while they gobbled up all the resources and money.
  • Their reasoning, he argues (and this is the important part) is “capitalism is unsustainable, and they knew it.” He says they wanted to “gobble up all the wealth they could, and then yank the rug out from under us so they could pivot to a hellish fascist dystopia.”
  • He then implies that Walt Disney, The Beatles, George Orwell, “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, and the 1960s film “Easy Rider” were all part of the propaganda machine meant to hide this “secret kleptocracy.” This is an actual quote of his:

When we realize that the secret fascists long planned to use new technology like computers and smart phones to pump us full of misinformation, we realize that Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was ‘predicting’ a future that was already planned out.

So yeah, this guy was deranged.

I’m not writing this to entertain the man’s manifesto. Some of his points may sound valid to you because most insane people start with a few valid points, like elites being greedy, and get more fantastical from there.

Let’s not get sidetracked by that. The point here is to give you an idea of who he was and to dispel the idea that this man was anything close to a conservative or a Trump supporter before the CNN headlines drop….

One last thought, what rolled thru my mind when I saw him pictured with Newt Gingrich… leading some to speculate he was a Republican.

Max is wearing an “Eat the Rich” T-Shirt. I thought it was Ironic because he BBQed himself. After I thought that I thought the pain from this death into a second death — which is eternal seperation from God [more torment than mere flames] — must be unimaginable. And I praise God I do not have to imagine it.

And on that note I exit stage right.

 

Peter Doocy Serves KJP Some Cannibal Tartare (#CannibalGate)

Published by Papa Giorgio

I was amazed at Karine Jean-Pierre’s (KJP) response to Doocy. She said that Biden lying was fine because it was an emotional moment.

What!?

See RED STATE for more of Biden’s 🐎-💩

Per Jesse Watters below, the “fact checks” were out n “full force”

  • “[Biden] off on details” – AP
  • “Biden mischaracterizes” – NBC
  • “Biden’s claim differs” – CNN
  • “Lol” – RPT

JESSE WATTERS

Could you imagine if Trump “mischaracterized” a story like that? Oh-my-goodness.. the 24-hour news cycle would b cray-cray.

Here is Peter Doocey’s after thoughts:

MATT WALSH

Joe Biden invented a story about his uncle being eaten by cannibals. Unsurprisingly, he’s now being accused of cultural insensitivity for it.

FOX & FRIENDS 

F&F discuss a few lies from Biden

“Judge Not” | Abusing Matthew 7

Published by Papa Giorgio

So, I realized because of the below comment on my RUMBLE that I do not have a post dedicated to answering the charge that one “should not judge…”, often in response to critiquing cultural norms. So this comment was on my RUMBLE video titled: “You are Homophobic if You Mention How Badly LGBT People Are Treated in Gaza” — here is the comment:

I will be asking some questions when the time comes, but, for now? I am filling an apologetic pothole in my posts. So here is a short and sweet answer that stands on its own… so you could quit there. Anything after that are merely other answers from apologists that broaden the possible responses for the researcher.

Do not judge. Judging others comes far too easy for most, but in Matthew 7, what does Jesus mean when he says Judge not least ye be judged? Are we to judge not, or Judge righteously? What’s the difference? What does the Bible say about judging people? In this video Pastor Nelson with Bible Munch explains what the Bible says about Judging others to answer the questions, is judging a sin, and what does the Bible mean that we are not to judge others?

Firstly, the statement “you are not to judge” is a judgement. What do I mean? Here are a few examples of this in conversation via Frank Beckwith and Greg Koukl:

You Shouldn’t Force Your Morality On Me!

FIRST PERSON: “You shouldn’t force your morality on me.”

SECOND PERSON: “Why not?”

FIRST PERSON: “Because I don’t believe in forcing morality.”

SECOND PERSON: “If you don’t believe in it, then by all means, don’t do it. Especially don’t force that moral view of yours on me.”

FIRST PERSON: “You shouldn’t push your morality on me.”

SECOND PERSON: “I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that statement. Do you mean I have no right to an opinion?”

FIRST PERSON: “You have a right to you’re opinion, but you have no right to force it on anyone.”

SECOND PERSON: “Is that your opinion?”

FIRST PERSON: “Yes.”

SECOND PERSON: “Then why are you forcing it on me?”

FIRST PERSON: “But your saying your view is right.”

SECOND PERSON: “Am I wrong?”

FIRST PERSON: “Yes.”

SECOND PERSON: “Then your saying only your view is right, which is the very thing you objected to me saying.”

FIRST PERSON: “You shouldn’t push your morality on me.”

SECOND PERSON: “Correct me if I’m misunderstanding you here, but it sounds to me like your telling me I’m wrong.”

FIRST PERSON: “You are.”

SECOND PERSON: “Well, you seem to be saying my personal moral view shouldn’t apply to other people, but that sounds suspiciously like you are applying your moral view to me.  Why are you forcing your morality on me?”[1]

SELF-DEFEATING

“Most of the problems with our culture can be summed up in one phrase: ‘Who are you to say?’” – Dennis Prager.  So let’s unpack this phrase and see how it is self-refuting, or as Tom Morris[2] put it, self-deleting.

  • When someone says, “Who are you to say?” answer with, “Who are you to say ‘Who are you to say’?”[3]

This person is challenging your right to correct another, yet she is correcting you.  Your response to her amounts to “Who are you to correct my correction, if correcting in itself is wrong?” or “If I don’t have the right to challenge your view, then why do you have the right to challenge mine?”  Her objection is self-refuting; you’re just pointing it out.

The “Who are you to say?” challenge fails on another account.  Taken at face value, the question challenges one’s authority to judge another’s conduct.  It says, in effect, “What authorizes you to make a rule for others?  Are you in charge?”  This challenge miscasts my position.  I don’t expect others to obey me simply because I say so.  I’m appealing to reason, not asserting my authority.  It’s one thing to force beliefs; it’s quite another to state those beliefs and make an appeal for them.

The “Who are you to say?” complaint is a cheap shot.  At best it’s self-defeating.  It’s an attempt to challenge the legitimacy of your moral judgments, but the statement itself implies a moral judgment.  At worst, it legitimizes anarchy!

[1] Francis Beckwith & Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Planted in Mid-Air (Baker Books; 1998), p. 144-146.

[2] Tom Morris, Philosophy for Dummies (IDG Books; 1999), p. 46

[3] Francis Beckwith & Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Planted in Mid-Air (Baker Books; 1998), p. 144-146.

Frank Turek talks about the assertion that Christians shouldn’t judge.

So, aside from Matthew 7:1-3 ripped from it’s context, if we let it stand as is, it is self deleting. But the CONTEXT is not that you should merely “not judge… gays, murderers, pro-choice arguments, and the like.” APOLOGETICS PRESS has a great article from which I will except a bit from the meddle of it:

… In Matthew 6:1-4, Jesus instructed us not to do charitable deeds…“as the hypocrites do” (to be seen of men). In 6:5-8, Jesus told us not to pray…“like the hypocrites” (to be heard of men). In 6:16-18, Jesus taught us not to fast…“like the hypocrites” (to be seen of men). Likewise, in Matthew 7:1-5, Jesus was teaching us that judging another is wrong… when that judgment is hypocritical.

But, what if we are doing charitable deeds to be seen of God? Then by all means, “do good to all men” (Galatians 6:10)! What if our prayers are led from a pure heart and with righteous intentions? Should we pray? Most certainly (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:17). Can we fast today, if the purpose of our fasting is to be seen of God and not men? Yes. But what about passing judgment? In Matthew 7:1-5, did Jesus condemn all judging, or, similar to the above examples, did He condemn only a certain kind of judging? Matthew 7:5 provides the answer. After condemning unrighteous judgments (7:1-4), Jesus instructed a person to “first remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” He was saying, in essence, “Get your life right first. Then, in love, address your brother’s problem.” This is consistent with what Paul wrote to the church at Philippi: “Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” (2:4). God never intended for Christians to be recluses who never interacted with those around them. Rather, He gave us the responsibility of helping others by lovingly correcting them when they sin. In Matthew 7, Jesus was not suggesting that a person can never judge. He was saying, when you judge, judge righteously (as when we pray, fast, and do good deeds—do it without hypocrisy—John 7:24). Incidentally, Jesus already had judged the Pharisees. Thus, He obviously was not teaching that we should never judge anyone.

Further proof that Jesus did not condemn all judging can be found throughout the rest of chapter 7. In fact, in the very next verse after His statements about judging, Jesus implicitly commanded that His followers make a judgment. He said: “Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces” (7:6). Disciples of Christ must judge as to who are “dogs” and who are “hogs.” Otherwise, how can we know when not to give that which is holy to “dogs”? Or how can we know when not to cast our pearls before “swine”? Jesus said we must judge between those who are “worthy,” and those who are like dogs and pigs (cf. Matthew 10:12-15; Acts 13:42-46). A few verses later, Jesus again implied that His disciples must make a judgment.

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them (Matthew 7:15-20).

Question: How can we “watch out” for false prophets if we cannot make judgments as to who the false prophets are? According to Jesus, determining the identity of false teachers involves inspecting “their fruits” and making judgments—righteous judgments.

What does the rest of Scripture have to say to those who regard all judging as being wrong?

  • In his letter to the churches of Galatia, Paul commanded those “who are spiritual” to restore those who have been “overtaken in any trespass…in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted” (6:1). Certainly, determining who is spiritual and who has sinned involves making judgments.
  • While addressing an issue in the church at Corinth where a man had “his father’s wife” (1 Corinthians 5:1), Paul wrote through inspiration:

    In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus…. I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person…. Therefore, put away from yourselves the evil person (1 Corinthians 5:4-5,11,13b).

    Paul commanded the church at Corinth to purge a fornicator from its midst. This man’s sin was even to be addressed in a public manner. To follow Paul’s command, the church had to make a judgment. Paul also commanded the congregation to “put away” others who were living in a state of sin. When we make such judgments today, they are to be righteous judgments that are based on facts and carried out in love. Such judging should be performed in a merciful spirit (Luke 6:36-37), and for the purpose of saving souls (“that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”—1 Corinthians 5:5). Judgments are to be made from good (righteous) intentions. But judgments nevertheless must be made.

  • Paul instructed the church at Ephesus to “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them” (5:11). And to the Christians in Rome he wrote: “Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them” (16:17). Were churches going to have to make important judgments to comply with Paul’s commands? Yes.
  • Similarly, the apostle John indicated that “whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him; for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds” (2 John 9-11, emp. added). To determine whether or not we are going to allow someone into our homes, necessitates a judgment on our part.
  • Finally, if all judgments concerning spiritual matters are wrong, then why would Jesus have commanded His disciples to go and teach the lost (Matthew 28:19-20; cf. Acts 8:4)? Before one ever teaches the Gospel to someone who is not a Christian, a judgment must be made. Is this person lost in sin, or saved “in Christ”? If we are to teach the lost today, then it is necessary to determine who is lost and who is not.

If we never can “judge people” in any sense, as many today suggest (through the misuse of Matthew 7:1), then the above commands never could be obeyed. But, they must be obeyed! Thus, (righteous) judgments must be made. ….

Alan Shlemon of Stand to Reason answers the question: “Aren’t Christians commanded not to judge and therefore we shouldn’t judge homosexuals for their behavior?”

CARM end their article with this:

… Since the Bible does not contradict itself, what’s going on? It would seem that Jesus is talking about rash unwarranted judgments, not those judgments that are of sound consideration. This makes sense when we see what judgments Jesus made on people.

  • Matt. 7:5, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
  • Matt. 23:33, “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the sentence of hell?”
  • Luke 11:40, “You foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make the inside also?”
  • John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father . . . “
  • John 8:55, “and you have not come to know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I shall be a liar like you, but I do know Him, and keep His word.”

So, Jesus would not be contradicting Himself. He made spiritual judgments as did Paul the Apostle. But when we make judgments, they need to be according to Scripture and not arbitrary judgments. Here are some commentaries on Matt. 7:1.

  • “The context makes it clear that the thing here condemned is that disposition to look unfavorably on the character and actions of others, which leads invariably to the pronouncing of rash, unjust, and unlovely judgments upon them.”
  • “1–5 warn against criticizing other people without considering how open to criticism we ourselves may be; be judged may well refer to God’s judgment, as well as that of other people. But v 6 indicates that there is also a right kind of judgment which the disciple is called on to exercise (cf. also vs 15–20).”
  • “Jesus did not prohibit judging of any sort, as verse 6 makes clear. Rather, He warned against judging others in way that we would not want applied to ourselves. To judge another person in a harsh spirit is to take on a role reserved only for God. Only the Lord can see beyond the outward appearance to underlying motives and causes in a person’s heart.”

Bill Maher Abortion Statements | Michael Knowles – Tim Pool

Published by Papa Giorgio

Republicans don’t hate women….

Republicans just view it as murder….

It basically *is* murder….

— Bill Maher

Here is another by Faye Wattleton, former president of U.S. Planned Parenthood:

  • “I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don’t know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus.”

So, Bill Maher is all for murder based on the lie of overpopulation.

Timcast

Bill Maher Says ABORTION IS MURDER But That He Is OK WITH IT In Shocking Statement

A flashback to some better known atheists than Maher discussing being Pro-Life! More at my post as well:

If You Say Hamas Kills Gays, You Are Homophobic | Wait! What?

Published by Papa Giorgio

HOT AIR astutely notes this about the following:

As I have argued many times in the past, ordinary people and Leftist activists don’t speak the same language or even use language for the same purposes. 

Ordinary people use language to communicate with others, and hence, we work hard to ensure that what we say creates a correspondence between what we are thinking and what our interlocutors understand.  People lie, of course, but generally speaking words mean the same thing to us as they do to whom we are speaking. It’s an essential part of language. 

Leftists don’t use language that way. Postmodernism, critical theory, or whatever label you want to use for the ideology, holds that words are always expressions of power relationships. Speaking is as much a means of seizing power as bonking somebody over the head, and it is the most effective means of seizing power when you haven’t enough power to destroy your enemies. 

It is in this context that you must understand the claims being made by “Queer” activists, and in particular the “Queers for Palestine” crowd. ….

According to Maya Mikdashi via the DAILY MAIL, Amnesty International is homophobic!

A Rutgers University professor told a seminar discussing the Israel-Hamas conflict that it is ‘violent’ and ‘homophobic’ to raise the issue of how LGBT people are treated in Gaza.

[….]

The event, entitled ‘Palestine is a Feminist and Queer Anti-Imperialist Abolition Struggle’, took place on March 20 and was co-hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Nadine Naber.

[….]

Queers for Palestine’ events and marches, which have proliferated across the US since the start of the war, have been criticized as a misguided show of support for a regime that does not support gay rights.

The Islamic Middle Eastern state follows sharia law, and as noted by Amnesty International, it is not safe for the queer community….

Even Hamas “Royalty” are killed when rumored to be gay!

Gay Palestinians and Gazan see refuge in Israel!

Prager Makes A Common Mistake In Regards To Jesus’ Divinity

Published by Papa Giorgio

Originally posted July 2014 ~ small facelift today

Listening to the Dennis Prager Show the other day, Dennis said two things that caught my attention. They are:

a) he likened Jesus to other Messianic figures;
b) he said the Gospel of John was the only place Jesus called himself “Divine,” God.

I combine the Dennis Prager audio, a similar statement by Bart Ehrman, and then Josh McDowell’s rebuttal. To be clear of what is below.

  1. First, that Jesus refers to himself as Deity (GOD) in the Gospel of Mark;
  2. Second, how did ancient rabbi’s view Isaiah 53;
  3. Then I show Jesus referenced himself as Diety in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

While I deal with two points, the third (Psalm 110) deals both with Jesus being different than past Jewish Messiah’s, as well as showing Prager’s statement about the Gospel of John to be wrong.

So lets deal with this two fold then. I will deal with “B” first, as it is a short response, needing only one example to show Prager’s assumption to be wrong (and remember, he loves truth for truths sake). He seemingly accepts the typical attribution to the age of the books by modern Biblical critics because he accepts their premise that John is the only book Jesus claims divinity. Then, using the attributed idea that Mark is the oldest book and is itself from “Q” material, any claims of Divinity in it should be THAT MUCH MORE powerful (early).

Verses Josh Goes Over: Mark 2:1-12 & Mark 14:60-64

So, that short, succinct, recapping of a challenge I the university class room by a professor is just one example to show a clear claim to Divinity by Jesus in another Gospel other than John.

Now to the larger response, “A.” Jesus is not, was, not, like any other Jewsish pseudo Messiah, He, yes He, is much different. Why? Because he alone has fulfilled the Messianic prophecies in Scripture.

Isaiah 53

The first thing that came to mind about this comment from Prager is how Jewish people/culture have changed the book of Isaiah over time to mean something different than the earlier Rabbis believed. Here, we get into some reading, I will of course put some video to it as well… but a serious subject requires a bit of reading, and I was impacted by Chuck Smith’s and Mark Eastman’s work on the subject, “The Search for Messiah,” of which the following is from…. again, it is long (13-pages to be exact).

This post is meant for the serious student, or Dennis Prager:

In the book of Isaiah there are a group of passages called “The Suffering Servant Songs.” These four vignettes are found in Isaiah 42:1-7; Isaiah 49:1-6; Isaiah 50:4-9; Isaiah 52:13-53:12. We will focus on the fourth suffering servant song since it is the most disputed portion of Isaiah.[1]

“Behold, My Servant shall deal prudently, He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. Just as many were astonished at you, so His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men; So shall He sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths at Him; for what had not been told them they shall see, and what they had not heard they shall consider. Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem him. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people he was stricken. And they made his grave with the wicked; but with the rich at his death, because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he has put him to grief. When You make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the travail of his soul, and be satisfied. By his knowledge My righteous servant shall justify many, for lie shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and lie bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

From the time of the development of the written Talmud (200-500 C.E.) this portion of scripture was believed to be Messianic. In fact, it was not until the eleventh century C.E. that it was seriously proposed otherwise. At that time Rabbi Rashi began to interpret the suffering servant in these passages as reference to the nation of Israel.[2]

One of the oldest translations of the Hebrew scriptures is known as the Targums. These are Aramaic translations of very ancient Hebrew manuscripts that also, included commentary on the scriptures. They were translated in the first or second century B.C.E. In the Targum of Isaiah, we read this incredible quote regarding the suffering servant in Isaiah 53:

“Behold, My servant the Messiah shall prosper; he shall be exalted and great and very powerful. The Righteous One shall grow up before him, lo, like sprouting plants; and like a tree that sends its roots by the water-courses, so shall the exploits of the holy one multiply in the land which was desperate for him. His appearance shall not be a profane appearance, nor shall the awe of an ignorant person, but his countenance shall radiate with holiness, so that all who see him shall become wise through him. All of us were scattered like sheep… but it is the will of God to pardon the sins of all of us on his account…Then I will apportion unto him the spoil of great nations… because he was ready to suffer martyrdom that the rebellious he might subjugate to the Torah. And he might seek pardon for the sins of many.”[3]

According to this commentary, the Messiah would suffer martyrdom, he would be, “The Righteous One” and would provide a way for God to forgive our sins. This forgiveness would be accomplished, not because of our goodness, but on account of the righteousness of Messiah. As we shall see, this is the very message of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament!

A reading from a Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah prayer book contains this passage:

“Our righteous anointed is departed from us: horror has seized us, and we have none to justify us. He has borne the yoke of our iniquities, and our transgression, and is wounded because of our transgression. He bears our sins on his shoulders, that we may find pardon for our iniquities. We shall be healed by his wound, at the time that the eternal will create the Messiah as a new creature. 0 bring him up from the circle of the earth. Raise him up from Seir, to assemble us the second time on mount Lebanon, by the hand of Yinon.”[4][5]

In this beautiful prayer, a commentary on Isaiah 53, we discover several of the ancient beliefs on the mission of God’s righteous Messiah:

1) He would apparently depart after an initial appearance: “Our righteous anointed is departed.”

2) The Messiah would be the one who justifies the people:[6] “Horror has seized us, and we have none to justify us.”

3) The Messiah would be wounded because of our transgressions and would take upon himself the yoke or punishment of our iniquities.[7] 

“He has borne the yoke of our iniquities, and our transgression, and is wounded because of our transgression.”

4) By his wound we would be healed when he reappears as a “new creature.”

“We shall be healed by his wound, at the time that the eternal will create the Messiah as a new creature.”

In the Babylonian Talmud there are a number of commentaries on the suffering servant in Isaiah 53. In a discussion of the suffering inflicted upon this servant we find the following statement:

“This teaches us that God will burden the Messiah with commandments and sufferings as with millstones.”[8]

In another chapter of Sanhedrin we find a discussion on the name of the Messiah. In this remarkable portion of the Talmud we read:

“There is a whole discussion in the Talmud about Messiah’s name. The several discussants suggested various names and cited scriptural references in support of these names. The disciples of the school of Rabbi Yehuda Ha’ Nasi said ‘The sick one is his name,’ for it is written, ‘Surely he has borne our sicknesses and carried our sorrows and pains, yet we considered him stricken, smitten, and afflicted of God.'”[9]

In the Midrash we again find reference to the “Suffering Servant” of Isaiah 53. In characteristic fashion we read one rabbi quoting another in a discussion of the Messiah’s suffering:

“Rabbi Huna in the name of Rabbi Acha says: ‘The sufferings are divided into three parts: one for David and the fathers, one for our own generation, and one for the King Messiah, and this is what is written, `He was wounded for our transgressions.”‘[10]

In a portion of the Midrash, called the Haggadah (a portion which expounds on the non-legal parts of Scripture) in the tractate Pesiqta Rabbati[11] we read an interesting discussion of the suffering of the Messiah:

“And the Holy One made an agreement with the Messiah and said to him, ‘The sins of those which are forgiven for your sake will cause you to be put under an iron yoke, and they will make you like this calf whose eyes are dim, and they will choke your spirit under the yoke, and on account of their sins your tongue shall cleave to your mouth. Are you willing to do this?’ Said Messiah before the Holy One: ‘Perhaps this agony will last many years?’ And the Holy One said to him: ‘By your life and by the life of my head, one week only have I decreed for you; but if your soul is grieved I shall destroy them even now.’ But the Messiah said to him: ‘Sovereign of the world, with the gladness of my soul and the joy of my heart I take it upon me, on condition that not one of Israel shall perish, and not only those alone should be saved who are in my days, but also those who are hid in the dust; and not only should the dead of my own time be saved, but all the dead from the first man until now; also, the unborn and those whom thou bast intended to create. Thus I agree, and on this condition I will take it upon myself.'” (Pesiqta Rabbati. chapter 36)

Another section of chapter 37, Pesiqta Rabbati, says the following:

“The Patriarchs will one day rise again in the month of Nisan and will say to the Messiah: ‘Ephraim, our righteous Messiah, although we are your ancestors, you are nevertheless greater than we, for you have borne the sins of our children, as it is written: `Surely he has borne our diseases and carried our sorrows; yet we regarded him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our sins, bruised for our iniquities, upon him was the chastisement that makes us well, and through his wounds we are healed.’[12] Heavy oppressions have been imposed upon you, as it is written: ‘As a result of oppression and judgment he was taken away[13]; but in his day, who considered that he was torn from the land of the living because of the transgressions of my people?’ You have been a laughing stock and a derision among the peoples of the world, and because of you they jeered at Israel, as it is written, You have dwelt in darkness and in gloominess, and your eyes have not seen light, your skin was cleaving to your bones, and your body withered like wood. Your eyes became hollow from fasting, and your strength was dried-up like a potsherd, as it is written.[14] All this happened because of the sins of our children, as it is written: ‘And Jehovah laid on him the iniquities of us all.’ ” (Isaiah 53:6)

In these fascinating portions of the Midrash we see language which closely parallels Psalm 22.[15] he writer specifically ties together the sufferings of the pierced servant in Psalm 22 (tongue shall cleave to your mouth… dried up like a potsherd) with the servant in Isaiah 53, whose sufferings provide a way for the children of Israel to be saved. The fact that the writer of this portion of the Midrash would tie the sufferings of the servant in Psalm 22 (the pierced one) and Isaiah 53, the despised and rejected one, is nothing less than astonishing. Clearly at least some of the rabbis of the ancient Midrashim believed that the Messiah would suffer and that the sufferings found in Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 belong to the same person.

In the eleventh century C.E. the rabbinical interpretation of Isaiah 52-53 began to change. Rabbi Rashi, a well-respected member of the Midrashim, began to interpret this portion of scripture as a reference to the sufferings of the nation of Israel. However, even after this interpretation took root, there remained many dissenters who still held onto its original, Messianic view.

In the fourteenth century Rabbi Moshe Cohen Crispin, a strong adherent to the ancient opinion, stated that applying the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 to the nation of Israel:

“distort[s] the verses of their natural meaning…As then it seemed to me that the doors of the literal interpretation [of Isaiah 53] were shut in their face, and that ‘they wearied themselves to find the entrance’, having forsaken the knowledge of our Teachers, and inclined after the ‘stubbornness of their own hearts’ and of their own opinion, I am pleased to interpret it, in accordance with the teaching of our Rabbis, of the King Messiah, and will be careful, so far as I am able, to adhere to the literal sense: thus possibly, I shall be free from the forced and farfetched interpretations of which others have been guilty. This prophecy was delivered by Isaiah at the divine command for the purpose of making known to us something about the nature of the future Messiah, who is to come and to deliver Israel,”[16]

Rabbi Isaac Abrabanel (143 7-1508), a member of the Midrashim, made the following remarkable declaration regarding the suffering servant of Isaiah 53:

“The first question is to ascertain to whom this prophecy refers, for the learned among the Nazarenes expound it of the man who was crucified in Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple, and, who according to them, was the Son of God and took flesh in the virgin’s womb, as is stated in their writings. Jonathan ben Uzziel interprets it in the Targum of the future Messiah; and this is also the opinion of our learned men in the majority of their Midrashim.”[17]

Two centuries later we find the comments of another member of the Midrashim, Rabbi Elijah De Vidas, a Cabalistic scholar in sixteenth century. In his comments of Isaiah 53 we read:

“The meaning of ‘He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities,’ is, that since the Messiah bears our iniquities, which produce the effect of his being bruised, it follows that who so will not admit that the Messiah thus suffers for our iniquities must endure and suffer them for himself.”[18]

We have also the writings of the sixteenth century Rabbi Moshe el Sheikh, who declares in his work “Commentaries of the Earlier Prophets,” regarding the suffering servant in Isaiah 53:

“Our rabbis with one voice accept and affirm the opinion that the prophet is speaking of the King Messiah, and we shall ourselves also adhere to the same view.”[19]

These remarkable references from the ancient rabbis leave no doubt that the suffering servant in Isaiah 52:13­53:12 was indeed believed to be the Messiah. Even more remarkable is the fact that the suffering servant of Isaiah is connected with the suffering servant of Psalm 22. Finally, we find the ancient rabbis claiming that the suffering and death of the Messiah would have the effect of freeing us from our sins. This is in complete agreement with the Christian concept of the Messiah!

Even without these ancient references, there are several other reasons why the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 could not be the nation of Israel.

First, the suffering servant is an innocent person without sin:

“And they made his grave with the wicked; but with the rich at his death, because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.” Isaiah 53:9

Israel has an admittedly sinful past; the Hebrew scriptures even admit this fact. Psalm 14:2-3 says:

“There is none that does good, no not one.”

I Kings 8:46 says:

“…for there is no one who does not sin.”

Ecclesiastes 7:20 says:

“For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin.”

Secondly, the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 suffers on account of the sins of others.

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:4)

Thirdly, the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 is willing to suffer.

“He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:7)

In the entire history of their nation, the Jews have never suffered willingly.

Finally, the suffering servant’s end was death.

“Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and lie bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Isaiah 53:12)

The nation of Israel has suffered much, but she has never died. In fact, the nation of Israel was re-gathered back into the land after nearly 1900 years of world-wide dispersion, an event unprecedented in world history.

“Let Israel now say; Many a time they have afflicted me from my youth; Yet they have not prevailed against me.” (Psalm 129:1)

Finally, listen to the words of nineteenth century Jewish scholar Herz Homberg;

“This prophecy is disconnected with what precedes it. According to the opinion of Rashi and lbn Ezra, it relates to Israel at the end of their captivity; the term `servant’ and the use of the singular number referring to the individual members of the nation. But if so, what can be the meaning of the passage, ‘He was wounded for our transgressions?’, etc.? Who was `wounded?’ Who are the ‘transgressors’ Who `carried’ the sickness and ‘bare’ the pains? And where are the sick? Are they not the same as those who are ‘smitten’ and who ‘bear?’ And if ‘each turned to his own way’, upon whom did ‘the Lord lay the iniquity of them all?’ The Ga’on, Rabbi Sa’adyah, explains the whole Parashah of Jeremiah: and there are indeed numerous parts of Scripture in which we can trace a great resemblance to what befell Jeremiah while persecuted by the false prophets. But the commencement of the prophecy, ‘He shall be high and exalted and lofty exceedingly’, and similarly the words ‘with the mighty he shall divide the spoil’, will not admit of being applied to him. The fact is that it refers to the King Messiah, who will come in the latter days, when it will be the Lord’s good pleasure to redeem Israel from among the different nations of the earth…and even the Israelites themselves will only regard him as `one of the vain fellows’, believing none of the announcements which will be made by him in God’s name, but being contumacious against him, and averring that all the reproaches and persecutions which fall to his lot are sent from heaven, for that he is ‘smitten of God’ for his own sin. For they will not at first perceive that whatever he underwent was in consequence of their own transgression, the Lord having chosen him to be a trespass-offering, like the scapegoat which bore all the iniquities of the house of Israel. Being, however, himself aware that through his pains and revilings the promised redemption will eventually come at the appointed time, he will endure with a willing soul, neither complaining nor opening his mouth in the siege and distress wherewith the enemies of Israel will oppress him (as is pointed out from the passage here in the Haggadah).”[20]

Here we have in the clearest term possible the belief that the prophet was speaking of King Messiah. Furthermore, Homberg states that the Messiah, when he comes, will be rejected “as one of the vain fellows, believing none of the announcements which will be made by him in God’s name.” Finally, he sees the rejection and death of the Messiah accomplishing the role of the trespass-offering for the sins of the people. The Messiah suffers not because of the sins of himself, but on account of the sins of the people. Through Messiah’s suffering and death “the promised redemption will eventually come!”

As we will see, in his understanding of Isaiah 53, Herzog has pointed out the very heart of the Christian message!

FOOTNOTES

[1] Messianically applied in Targum of Jonathan, written between first and second century C.E.

[2] See The Messianic Hope, Arthur Kac.

[3] See comments on Isaiah 53 in Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Appendix IX.

[4] Yinon is one of the ancient rabbinical names of the Messiah.

[5] See The Messianic Hope, Arthur Kac, The Chapter of the Suffering Servant.

[6] To justify is to make one acceptable and righteous in the sight of God.

[7] i.e. Our individual sins.

[8] Talmud, Sanhedrin 93b .

[9] Talmud, Sanhedrin 98b.

[10] The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Alfred Edersheim, Appendix IX.

[11] Compiled in the ninth century, but based on writings from Talmudic times from 200 B.C.E.- 400 C.E.

[12] A reference to Isaiah 53.

[13] A reference to the death of the Messiah.

[14] A reference to Psalm 22:15-16.

[15] In fact, there is no other portion of scripture that parallels the language in Pesiqta Rabbati chapter 37 as closely as does Psalm 22.

[16] A Commentary of Rabbi Mosheh Kohen Ibn Crispin of Cordova. For a detailed discussion of this reference see The Fifty Third Chapter of Isaiah According to Jewish Interpreters, preface pg. x, S.R. Driver, A.D. Neubauer, KTAV Publishing House, Inc., New York, 1969.

[17] “The Messianic Hope“, by Arthur Kac, pg. 75.

[18] ibid, pg. 76.

[19] ibid, pg. 76.

[20] From the exposition of the entire Old Testament, called Korem, by Herz Homberg (Wein, 1818). 

Mark Eastman and Chuck Smith, The Search for Messiah ([Co-Published] Fountain Valley, CA: Joy Publishing, 1996; Costa Mesa, CA: Word for Today, 1996), 16-28.

Dr. Erez Soref – The Messiah Is The Purpose Of The Torah

Psalm 110:1-7 ~David’s Son and David’s Lord

THE PRIESTLY KING

A psalm of David.

1 This is the declaration of the Lord to my Lord:

“Sit at my right hand

until I make your enemies your footstool.”

2 The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion.

rule over your surrounding enemies.

3 Your people will volunteer

on your day of battle.

In holy splendor, from the womb of the dawn,

the dew of your youth belongs to you.

4 The Lord has sworn an oath and will not take it back:

“You are a priest forever

according to the pattern of Melchizedek.”

5 The Lord is at your right hand;

he will crush kings on the day of his anger.

6 He will judge the nations, heaping up corpses;

he will crush leaders over the entire world.

7 He will drink from the brook by the road;

therefore, he will lift up his head.

In Matthew 22:41-46 (Mark 12:35-37; Luke 20:41-44), citing Psalm 110, Jesus said, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’ [Messiah]?” Jesus stumped his skeptical Jewish questioners by presenting then with a dilemma that blew their own neat calculations about the Messiah “Lord”(as he did in Ps. 110), when the Scriptures also say the Messiah would be the “Son of David” (which they do in 2 Samuel 7:12.)? The only answer is that the Messiah must be both a man (David’s son or offspring) AND God (David’s Lord). Jesus is claiming to be both God and human, at the same time!

Here is the Matthew 22 verses:

41While the Pharisees were together, Jesus questioned them, 42 “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose Son is He?” “David’s,” they told Him. He asked them, “How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls Him ‘Lord’:

The Lord declared to my Lord,
‘Sit at My right hand
until I put Your enemies under Your feet’?

“If David calls Him ‘Lord,’ how then can the Messiah be his Son?” No one was able to answer Him at all, and from that day no one dared to question Him anymore.

It is bullet pointed thus:

  • Double-question by Jesus (42a)
  • Answer by Pharisees (42b)
  • Second double-question by Jesus (43–45)
  • Silence (46)

Richard B. Gardner, Matthew, Believers Church Bible Commentary (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1991), 329.

MATTHEW HENRY notes the importance of this verse as a call to reflect on WHO Jesus is:

22:41-46 When Christ baffled his enemies, he asked what thoughts they had of the promised Messiah? How he could be the Son of David and yet his Lord? He quotes Ps 110:1. If the Christ was to be a mere man, who would not exist till many ages after David’s death, how could his forefather call him Lord? The Pharisees could not answer it. Nor can any solve the difficulty except he allows the Messiah to be the Son of God, and David’s Lord equally with the Father. He took upon him human nature, and so became God manifested in the flesh; in this sense he is the Son of man and the Son of David. It behoves us above all things seriously to inquire, What think we of Christ? Is he altogether glorious in our eyes, and precious to our hearts? May Christ be our joy, our confidence, our all. May we daily be made more like to him, and more devoted to his service.

Walter A. Elwell also notes that “Only a person who recognizes Jesus as both God and man could understand and answer the question of verse 45.”

Jesus is truly the son of David (1:1–17), but not merely so. For he is preeminently the Son of God (16:16) and thus David’s Lord. As Jesus now reveals, the Old Testament itself (Ps. 110) witnesses to Messiah’s deity, to both the distinction of person and the identity of being between God the Father (“the Lord”) and God the Son (“my Lord”). The Pharisees do not acknowledge Jesus’ messiahship, much less his deity. Only a person who recognizes Jesus as both God and man could understand and answer the question of verse 45.

Walter A. Elwell, Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, vol. 3, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1995), Mt 22:41.

See also Hebrew University professor Israel Knohl’s supposed discrepancy with this idea and Jesus’ genealogy, HERE. Also, a great excoriation of this Psalm comes via The Rosh Pina Project, and, while it is a longer article, his opening is worth the posting here:

This is the most quoted Psalm in the New Testament (about one-third of quotes from the Tanach come from this Psalm.) For example Psalm 110:4 in Hebrews 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:3, 11, 15, 17, 21, 24, 28). Words about sitting at God’s right hand are echoed in Mark 14:62, Acts 2:34ƒ and Hebrews 10:12ƒ.

Psalm 110 is also a very disputed psalm. There was a time when few did not consider this a Messianic Psalm, today the few are those that continue to affirm the Messianic nature of this Psalm.

Modern Liberal scholars who presume that foretelling prophecy does not exist approach this text with a bias. They say it must all speak of a contemporary situation from the time of the writer. There is some truth to the fact that this must have meant something at its time of writing. But, there is implicit in this a failure to accept the essential futuristic foretelling aspect that defines prophetic writing as prophecy.

The fact that the Psalm starts with נְאֻ֤ם יְהוָ֨ה “ne’um Adonai“, a classic prophetic phrase, firmly fixes the prophetic nature of this Psalm.

Since the Rosh Pina Project is down, see JESUS PLUS NOTHING’s post