Saturday, August 17, 2024
Friday, August 16, 2024
Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Tuesday, August 13, 2024
Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, 85, recovering after ‘mild’ stroke, his office says
By Allie Griffin
Published Aug. 13, 2024, 8:28 p.m. ET
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) had a “mild” stroke over the weekend and was rushed to the hospital, his office announced Tuesday.
The 85-year-old former House majority leader “experienced a mild ischemic stroke and sought medical treatment” on Sunday night, his deputy chief of staff Margaret Mulkerrin said in a statement.
“Mr. Hoyer has responded well to treatment and has no lingering symptoms,” she said. “He expects to resume his normal schedule next week.”
The Democrat’s office didn’t state what hospital he was treated at or if and when he was released, but thanked his caretakers.
Rep Steny Hoyer
Rep Steny Hoyer, 85, suffered “a mild ischemic stroke” Sunday night, his office said.
ZUMAPRESS.com
“Mr. Hoyer’s wife and family extend their deepest thanks to his medical team,” his spokesperson said.
Hoyer announced that he was stepping down from his leadership position among House Democrats in November 2022 after several decades as a top Dem.
He continued to serve Congress since then and is an active member of the Appropriations Committee.
Hoyer’s health also made headlines in 2018 when he was hospitalized for a short time with pneumonia while he was House majority leader.
Rep Steny Hoyer
He has no lingering systems after undergoing medical treatment and is expected to return to his normal schedule next week.
Rod Lamkey – CNP / MEGA
The Maryland Democrat contracted COVID-19 in February 2022 — becoming the 32nd lawmaker to test positive for the virus at the start of the year.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) suffered a stroke that “technically” killed him just two days before his Democratic primary victory.
“I didn’t have a near-death experience, because technically I had died,” Fetterman, 54, said of his life-altering stroke.
The medical episode sidelined him from the campaign trail for nearly three months and caused him to develop auditory processing challenges, which requires him to use closed-captioning monitors to follow along with people’s speeches.
Psychological bias links good deeds to a belief in God, research says
News Release 8-Aug-2024
Psychological bias links good deeds to a belief in God, research says
New Zealand, where 49% of respondents in the 2018 census indicated no religious belief.
Participants read a description of a man who took a path of increasing benevolence, from helping stray animals as a child to, as an adult, giving food and clothes to homeless people. Sometimes, during bitingly cold weather, he offered a spare room to homeless families.
Half of the participants were asked which is more probable: The man is a teacher or the man is a teacher and believes in God. The other half were asked the same question, but the options were “the man is a teacher” or “the man is a teacher and does not believe in God.”
The most logical response would be to guess the man is a teacher, a group that would include both teachers who believe and teachers who are atheists. But people have been found to pick the less likely option to this type of question if it matches a strong social stereotype in their minds.
The results were striking. U.S. respondents were nearly 20 times more likely to guess that the helpful man believed in God than that the man was an atheist. In New Zealand, respondents were 12 times more likely to guess that the helpful man was religious.
The bias intuitively connecting religious belief to socially uplifting behavior was significantly stronger than that found with the study’s inverse, “dark side” conditions, which looked for stereotypes of atheists as antisocial. The bias was there, but far less powerful.
“So instead of a stereotype of atheists as immoral driving the effect, the stereotype of the moral person of faith may be the more important force,” Holbrook said. “We replicated the findings of the earlier studies linking evil with atheism, but we found that the effects linking prosociality with faith were remarkably larger.”
The study’s results fit with a theory about the historical development of major world religions that emphasizes cooperation. Belief that a powerful being or spiritual force rewards positive moral behavior – and punishes immoral behavior – is shared by all major religions. This kind of belief might help members of religious groups trust one another, cooperate and grow.
“Strangers with little in common beyond their shared spiritual beliefs in moralizing gods might be more inclined to trust and less inclined to exploit one another,” Holbrook said.
Of course, the UC Merced experiments and similar research measure only what stereotypes people project onto others – how they think someone would act based on what they believe.
“Our evidence indicates that people stereotype believers as more likely to care about and help others. But this theoretical model suggests that the stereotype might actually have had merit in the past as major religions grew or may possibly be true even now — people who believe in God might actually be more likely to help others,” Holbrook said. “The evidence that believers are more prosocial is currently mixed, and it’s a question that calls for more research.”
Method of Research
Survey
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Intuitive Moral Bias Favors the Faithful
Article Publication Date
7-Aug-2024
COI Statement
None.
Psychological bias links good deeds to a belief in God, research says
Peer-Reviewed Publication
University of California - Merced
Experiments conducted by UC Merced researchers find that people who perform good deeds are far more likely to be thought of as religious believers than atheists. Moreover, the psychological bias linking kindness and helpfulness with faith appears to be global in scale.
Research on the mental link between moral behavior and religious belief goes back more than a decade. Prior research, however, emphasized the dark side of this equation, with participants asked whether they assumed it was more probable that a serial killer believed in God or was an atheist (people in nations all over the planet thought the latter was more likely).
The UC Merced studies, conceptualized by cognitive science graduate student Alex Dayer and published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, flipped the switch to the bright side: What if someone was a “serial helper,” prone to extraordinary benevolence?
The research found that the stereotype of an extraordinarily good person being religious was dramatically stronger that of an extraordinarily cruel person being an atheist, said co-author Colin Holbrook, a professor in the university’s Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences .
“Though we also found that people intuitively link atheism with immoral behavior, people appear to associate believing in God with being generous, helpful and caring to a much greater extent,” Holbrook said.
The research consisted of experiments conducted in two nations with disparate levels of religious belief:
University of California - Merced
Experiments conducted by UC Merced researchers find that people who perform good deeds are far more likely to be thought of as religious believers than atheists. Moreover, the psychological bias linking kindness and helpfulness with faith appears to be global in scale.
Research on the mental link between moral behavior and religious belief goes back more than a decade. Prior research, however, emphasized the dark side of this equation, with participants asked whether they assumed it was more probable that a serial killer believed in God or was an atheist (people in nations all over the planet thought the latter was more likely).
The UC Merced studies, conceptualized by cognitive science graduate student Alex Dayer and published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, flipped the switch to the bright side: What if someone was a “serial helper,” prone to extraordinary benevolence?
The research found that the stereotype of an extraordinarily good person being religious was dramatically stronger that of an extraordinarily cruel person being an atheist, said co-author Colin Holbrook, a professor in the university’s Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences .
“Though we also found that people intuitively link atheism with immoral behavior, people appear to associate believing in God with being generous, helpful and caring to a much greater extent,” Holbrook said.
The research consisted of experiments conducted in two nations with disparate levels of religious belief:
The United States, where 47% of the population describes itself as religious, according to a recent Gallup poll.
New Zealand, where 49% of respondents in the 2018 census indicated no religious belief.
Participants read a description of a man who took a path of increasing benevolence, from helping stray animals as a child to, as an adult, giving food and clothes to homeless people. Sometimes, during bitingly cold weather, he offered a spare room to homeless families.
Half of the participants were asked which is more probable: The man is a teacher or the man is a teacher and believes in God. The other half were asked the same question, but the options were “the man is a teacher” or “the man is a teacher and does not believe in God.”
The most logical response would be to guess the man is a teacher, a group that would include both teachers who believe and teachers who are atheists. But people have been found to pick the less likely option to this type of question if it matches a strong social stereotype in their minds.
The results were striking. U.S. respondents were nearly 20 times more likely to guess that the helpful man believed in God than that the man was an atheist. In New Zealand, respondents were 12 times more likely to guess that the helpful man was religious.
The bias intuitively connecting religious belief to socially uplifting behavior was significantly stronger than that found with the study’s inverse, “dark side” conditions, which looked for stereotypes of atheists as antisocial. The bias was there, but far less powerful.
“So instead of a stereotype of atheists as immoral driving the effect, the stereotype of the moral person of faith may be the more important force,” Holbrook said. “We replicated the findings of the earlier studies linking evil with atheism, but we found that the effects linking prosociality with faith were remarkably larger.”
The study’s results fit with a theory about the historical development of major world religions that emphasizes cooperation. Belief that a powerful being or spiritual force rewards positive moral behavior – and punishes immoral behavior – is shared by all major religions. This kind of belief might help members of religious groups trust one another, cooperate and grow.
“Strangers with little in common beyond their shared spiritual beliefs in moralizing gods might be more inclined to trust and less inclined to exploit one another,” Holbrook said.
Of course, the UC Merced experiments and similar research measure only what stereotypes people project onto others – how they think someone would act based on what they believe.
“Our evidence indicates that people stereotype believers as more likely to care about and help others. But this theoretical model suggests that the stereotype might actually have had merit in the past as major religions grew or may possibly be true even now — people who believe in God might actually be more likely to help others,” Holbrook said. “The evidence that believers are more prosocial is currently mixed, and it’s a question that calls for more research.”
Method of Research
Survey
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Intuitive Moral Bias Favors the Faithful
Article Publication Date
7-Aug-2024
COI Statement
None.
Monday, August 12, 2024
Saturday, August 10, 2024
Thursday, August 08, 2024
Wednesday, August 07, 2024
Tuesday, August 06, 2024
Former Secret Service Chief Wanted To Destroy Cocaine Evidence
By Susan Crabtree - RCP StaffAugust 05, 2024
Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and others in top agency leadership positions wanted to destroy the cocaine discovered in the White House last summer, but the Secret Service Forensics Services Division and the Uniformed Division stood firm and rejected the push to dispose of the evidence, according to three sources in the Secret Service community.
Multiple heated confrontations and disagreements over how best to handle the cocaine ensued after a Secret Services Uniformed Division officer found the bag on July 2, 2023, a quiet Sunday while President Biden and his family were at Camp David in Maryland, the sources said.
At least one Uniformed Division officer was initially assigned to investigate the cocaine incident. But after he told his supervisors, including Cheatle and Acting Secret Service Director Ron Rowe, who was deputy director at the time, that he wanted to follow a certain crime-scene investigative protocol, he was taken off the case, according to a source within the Secret Service community familiar with the circumstances of his removal.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi denied that Cheatle or Rowe or anyone in Secret Service leadership asked for the cocaine evidence to be destroyed. Guglielmi, however, ignored a detailed set of questions asking if an agent or officer had been removed from the investigation and whether anyone has been retaliated against for rejecting leadership’s orders or requests during that process or afterward.
“This is false,” Guglielmi said in a statement. “The US Secret Service takes its investigative and protective responsibilities very seriously. There are retention policies for criminal investigations, and the Secret Service adhered to those requirements during this case.”
The discovery of the bag of cocaine posed an unusual problem for Cheatle, who resigned in the face of bipartisan pressure after the July 13 assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
Monday, August 05, 2024
Signs of the Times #78 God Made Trump?
Signs of the Times #78
God Made Trump?
Originally posted Aug. 5, 2024.
Quote of the Times:
“He’s an outsider, he’s not them, he’s not part of the club, he’s uncontrollable, he has not been through the initiation rites, he doesn’t belong to the secret society… they have no idea how to relate to him.” Newt Gingrich, former speaker US House of Representatives, interviewed by Fox News, answering the question: ‘Why do the Republican Party leadership hate Donald Trump?’ Mar. 3, 2016. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO-NA73FsW8
“Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo.” Donald Trump, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2016/07/21/trump-americanism-not-globalism-is-our-credo.html
“It’s time to put Trump in a bull's-eye.” President Joe Biden, speaking to donors, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-trump-bullseye/
Some people believe that Trump is ‘controlled opposition.’ The concept of controlled opposition comes from the book ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ – where it is stated – “we will create our own opposition.” It may very well be that Trump is controlled opposition, but events since he became President in 2016 would suggest that the big picture is much more complex than that.
The warfare against Trump has been phenomenal and unprecedented in US history – this proves that ‘the powers that be’ obviously consider him a threat to their agendas and their hegemony. However, all the warfare and lawfare tactics up until now, including the latest assassination attempt, have failed. The failed assassination has burnished Trump’s hagiography considerably. Many believe that Trump was saved by divine intervention – giving great impetus to a video circulating in the cybersphere called ‘God Made Trump.’ Thus, there are many polishing Trump’s halo at present, and not just the Evangelical Christians, but even more vigorous polishing is been done by the Jews - especially those of the Chabad variety, who are openly asserting that Trump could be the Moshiach (a prophet in the same league as Moses), or maybe he is a type of Cyrus (the Persian King who freed the Jews and sent them back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple).
Those who are interested in Bible prophecy and last day events know that God has a systematic timeline of events that will occur before Christ comes and the history of the world ends. They also know that the enemy has a false counterfeit timeline of events that most of the Christian and Jewish world has fallen victim to. These false prophecies all revolve around Israel, a new temple in Jerusalem and Armageddon in Israel. Is it not logical that the enemy will attempt to make his false prophecies come true, thereby negating the impact of God’s true biblical prophecies? Will Donald Trump, ‘the God Made Man’ be the instrument in the enemy’s hand’s to bring these dangerous delusions to fruition?
Donald Trump is a mixed bag. He wants to drain the swamp and he wants to make America great again – and many applaud him for that. But he is also a rabid Zionist, he will do anything for Israel, including going to war for Israel. He proved his Zionist credentials during his first term in office, when he ordered the US embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (something every other US President refused to do) and his announcement that the Golan Heights (formerly part of Syria) was now Israeli territory.
The momentum towards a greater conflict in the Middle East took a nauseating turn when the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, received 58 standing ovations from the US Congress (they were applauding a man that the International Court of Justice has declared to be a war criminal). Because of the fawning adulation he received in America he can now go back to Israel wrapped in the American flag. He can tell his compatriots that they have received Americas endorsement to do whatever they liked. And if they get into trouble America will send in the cavalry to rescue them – Yippee, Armageddon here we come.
There is still five months to go before Trump can be anointed as Moshiach or Cyrus or whatever. There is still time for ‘the powers that be’ to try to kill him again- One ominous sign of the times is the recent release from Russian custody of the assassinator in chiel – Paul Whelan. Paul Whelan was part of the recent prisoner swap between America and Russia. He was given a hero’s welcome by Joe Biden, who took a pin form his own jacket and pinned it onto Whelan. Paul Whelan was imprisoned in Russia because he was caught with a thumb drive with the names and addresses of Russian snipers for hire. He was in Russia for the purpose of recruiting snipers. Paul Whelan is an arms dealer. But he is a specialised arms dealer. He recruits snipers; he trains them, and he outfits them with specialised weapons (he is almost certainly a CIA operative). What a happy coincidence that he turns up hale and hearty just before the US election. Watch out Donald, they have unfinished business with you…
God bless,
Bruce Telfer.
.Notes:
- ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ is a forgery. It is Jesuit misinformation. The Jesuits were clever enough to realise that some observant people would detect the ‘hidden hand’ behind most of the major events perpetrated upon the world. Therefore, they created the Protocols of Zion which outlines their own nefarious deeds, but with the publication of the Protocols, the blame for all the evil they perpetuate, falls on the Jews. Therefore, the ‘hidden hand’ remains hidden.
- ‘The powers that be’ are not a united front. For example, in America there are different factions jockeying against one another for power and influence. Some of them can be easily identified, such as the Bush dynasty faction, the Clinton faction, the Obama faction. Then there are the foundations such as the Rockefeller Foundation or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And the elephant in the room – the Deep State. These entities sometime work together and sometimes they oppose one another. Controlled opposition is usually controlled bu one or more of these factions.
- Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jarad Kushner are Jewish, and both are members of the Chabad sect. Jarad was one of Trump’s inner circle of advisors in his administration.
- Netanyahu and Trump are close friends, they had a private meeting during Netanyahu’s recent visit to the US. Netanyahu, went back to Israel with Trump’s endorsement too.
Sent from Outlook
Sunday, August 04, 2024
The Signs of Jesus' Coming
The Signs of Jesus' Coming
...largely missed by a world that has rejected Him
AUG 4
Recently, the nation celebrated Independence Day. This is a time when the citizens pause to commemorate the birth of the greatest experiment in human civilization. Here’s how the birth certificate of that experiment partially reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness ” (Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1776).
But we are witnessing, just as the Bible predicted, the unravelling of the fabric of that experiment. As the foundation of western civilization, the Bible not only foretold the rise of the American Experiment; but also prophesied of it’s role in salvation history and its ultimate demise. The idea of America has attracted millions from around the world and has impacted more lives than any other system of government ever existed in the annals of human history. But, even as we celebrate that great idea, perhaps half of the population are advocating for its demise.
One obvious sign of the dissipation of the American Experiment is the recent ruling of the US Supreme Court making the president immune from prosecution for any criminal acts committed while in office. That ruling was in response to former president Donald Trump’s appeal to the highest court in the land claiming immunity from criminal prosecution for attempting to unlawfully and violently overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election which he knew he lost.
One of the dissenting justices concluded that the majority opinion has made the office of the presidency a seat of unbridled corruption. Justice Sotomayor, in her blazing dissent, declared: “The court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding”. She concluded: “Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency…It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.” The peaceful transfer of power after a presidential election and the idea that no man is above the law are foundational cornerstones of the American Experiment.
Highly respected Constitutional scholar and former federal judge, J. Michael Luttig, echoed Sotomayor’s cries: “This is indeed an historic day in constitutional history as well as for the nation and represents the unsouling of America…America’s democracy and rule of law are this country’s heart and soul”. He added: “Our democracy and the rule of law are what had made America the envy of the world and the beacon of freedom to the world for almost 250 years now. Today, the Supreme Court cut that heart and soul out of America…No longer can it be said that in America no man is above the law” (J. Michael Luttig, Huffington Post, July 2, 2024).
Quite interesting is that there is virtually no mention of the fact that the entirety of the justices making that preposterous ruling are Roman Catholics. Perhaps it’s not politically correct to report the obvious. The question to this writer’s mind is, was this ruling made for the advancement of Rome’s agenda which is antagonistic to the ideals of the American Republic?
Saturday, August 03, 2024
Thursday, August 01, 2024
Chaos
Volume 43 Issue Eight August 2024
Last Trumpet Ministries · PO Box 806 · Beaver Dam, WI 53916
Phone: 920-887-2626 Internet: http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org
“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” I Cor. 14:8
Chaos
“For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
Titus 3:3-7
What a month! As we finally say goodbye to July 2024, many frazzled Americans might be asking themselves, “What just happened?” From start to finish, the month was a whirlwind that brought us one chaotic event after another. We are living in a time that stands apart from any other time that we’ve known before.
We began the month with record-breaking Hurricane Beryl, which was the earliest Category-4 and Category-5 hurricane ever recorded during a hurricane season since records have been kept. On July 1, 2024, this monster storm made landfall on Grenada’s Carriacou Island and promptly flattened hundreds of buildings (1) before strengthening to a Category-5 hurricane with sustained wind speeds of more than 160 miles per hour. (2) The storm also made unwelcome visits to Jamaica and southern Mexico before slamming the American state of Texas as a Category-1 hurricane on July 8, 2024. More than two million people were without power in Texas the morning after the storm’s arrival. (3) The hurricane’s remnants then went on to spawn sixty-five tornados between July 8-10 in the states of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, and New York. (4) Hurricane Beryl served as a salient metaphor for the stormy month that was about to unfold.
A Disastrous Debate
Politicians, celebrities, journalists, and pundits are telling us that the 2024 presidential election is the most important election this country will ever have. It has been presented as an existential fight for democracy that will ultimately decide the fate of the United States of America. Of course, they said the exact same thing about the 2020 election. Nevertheless, as a result of this frenetic and desperate election cycle, panic has already ensued, which spawned drastic and unprecedented events.
On June 27, 2024, CNN broadcasted what was supposed to be the first of two debates between former President Donald Trump and current President of the United States Joe Biden. While the debate went on, Democrats watched with stunned disbelief as their candidate, Joe Biden, delivered a performance so poor that it led to immediate calls from his own political party for him to drop out of the race.
As I watched the panic unfold, I couldn’t help but wonder: “Hasn’t anyone been paying attention?” The debate went exactly as I expected it to as Joe Biden's cognitive decline had been evident for years. In fact, I wrote about this problem in the February 2023 issue of the Last Trumpet. One of the things I noted in that issue is that Biden had referred to his Vice President Kamala Harris as President on multiple occasions, even going as far as to call her a “great president” on October 24, 2022. (5) Perhaps he was just jumping the gun a bit?
Throughout his presidency, Biden’s appearances have been carefully planned and controlled. Press conferences have been rare, and it was decided in advance which reporters, if any, would be called on by the President. When he was interviewed on radio or television appearances, Biden’s team would give the questions to the interviewer in advance. Despite all of these efforts to carefully prepare the President and control his environment, he still made one mistake after another throughout his presidency. For example, at a recent NATO summit, President Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin.” (6) (Vladimir Putin is the President of Russia.) At a campaign stop in Las Vegas, Nevada, Biden seemingly forgot the name of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and called him “the black man” instead. (7) In perhaps the most bizarre gaffe of his career, on July 5, 2024, he referred to himself as a black woman. “By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first black woman, to serve with a black president.” (8)
Given his history, why were people so surprised by his debate performance? Perhaps one of the reasons that liberal Americans were caught off guard is because left-leaning media outlets made a concerted effort to hide Biden’s diminished mental acuity. In a piece published by CNN on July 2, 2024, an anonymous member of the White House Press Corp was quoted as saying, “The right-wing media was calling him senile from day one, and that wasn’t true. Then whenever you report on the age you were in some ways solidifying, giving credence to some people that were actually of bad faith.” (9) In other words, reporters weren’t doing their jobs and reporting the truth because it would have made the President look bad.
Alex Thompson, a White House reporter for Axios, blamed the White House for the cover-up. “The White House’s response every single time it has come up for three-and-a-half years has been to deflect, to gaslight, to not tell the truth – not just to reporters, not just to other Democrats, but even at times to themselves about the president’s limitations at his age,” Thompson said. (10) Famous sports broadcaster Bob Costas also accused the Democrats of deception. In reference to Biden’s poor showing at the debate, Costas said, “That one atrocious night was simply writ-large what could be seen for years and years, that he is in serious decline.” He then added that it “makes you wonder whether we’ve been gaslit by the Democrats.” (11) For those unfamiliar with the term, “gaslight” means “to cause (a person) to doubt their judgment, memory, or sanity through the use of psychological manipulation” or “to deceive (a person or group of people) through repetition of a constructed false narrative.” (12)
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