Watch: Chris Pratt Reads Luke’s Gospel at Disneyland’s Candlelight Ceremony, Speaks of God’s Love for His Children

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For some inexplicable reason that can only be described as a Christmas miracle, Disneyland has continued to uphold its overtly religious Candlelight ceremony every year since the park opened in 1955. A ceremony filled by light and wonder, where visitors to the “happiest place on earth” are invited to remember the holiest event in history, complete with traditional Christmas hymns like “Silent Night” and a reading of Luke’s Gospel from a celebrity guest.

This year’s reading was offered by none other than Chris Pratt from Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Past narrators include Darth Vader’s alter-ego James Earl Jones, Dick Van Dyke and Ginnifer Goodwin, whose vocal talents could be heard in “Zootopia.”

According to Theme Park Insider, the annual Candlelight processional offered at Disneyland is markedly different than the one offered at Disney World’s Epcot. For 63 years, the Disneyland event has remained “an exclusive affair, playing just four shows across two nights on the first weekend in December.” No seats are offered to the public and it’s invitation-only. Spectators, however, can watch the show in designated standing room-viewing areas in the perimeter of Main Street’s Town Square.

“The show begins with a live orchestra performing an overture of holidays songs, as the choir proceeds down Main Streets,” reports TPI. “As they enter Town Square, we hear the 600 voices for the first time, as the orchestra accompanies their procession on to the stage, illuminated by their candles and the Star of Bethlehem on the Main Street train station.”

“More than a dozen local school, church, and community choirs joined singers from the Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios cast,” the report continues. “The program includes all the greatest hits of the holiday choral repertoire, including ‘Away in a Manger,’ ‘Angels We Have Heard on High,’ ‘What Child Is This?’ and ‘Silent Night,’ interspersed with the telling of the Christmas story from the Bible.” (Read more from “Watch: Chris Pratt Reads Luke’s Gospel at Disneyland’s Candlelight Ceremony, Speaks of God’s Love for His Children” HERE)

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Women Now Claim This Popular Disney Song Promotes Sexual Assault

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An all-male a cappella group at a prestigious university will no longer sing one well-known Disney song because some audience members — and one sophomore who wrote an article about it for the student newspaper — found it to be “uncomfortable.” . . .

One of the school’s all-male a cappella groups, the Princeton Tigertones, will no longer perform its popular rendition of “Kiss the Girl” from The Little Mermaid after the complaints. During their performance, the group invites a woman from the audience to join them as they sing and “playfully dance with her for a bit,” according to Inside Higher Ed. As the song reaches a close, the group invites a male audience member, pretend to groom him, and then put the two together, asking that they kiss, as the song suggests. The random couple complies, “sometimes on with a peck on the cheek, sometimes briefly on the lips,” Inside Higher Ed reported.

On November 26, sophomore Noa Wollstein wrote an opinion article for the Daily Princetonian asking the Tigertones to stop singing the song because it “is more misogynistic and dismissive of consent than cute.”

“Its lyrics raise some serious issues. The premise of the song, originally sung in the Disney film The Little Mermaid, is that the male Prince Eric, on a date with the beautiful female Ariel, should kiss her without asking for a single word to affirm her consent. Despite the fact that an evil sea-witch cursed Ariel’s voice away, making verbal consent impossible, the song is clearly problematic from the get-go,” Wollstein wrote.

She claims that if you take away the mermaids and the magic, the “message comes across as even more jarring.” She cites the lyrics “It’s possible she wants you too/There’s one way to ask her/It don’t take a word, not a single word/Go on and kiss the girl, kiss the girl” and ““she won’t say a word/Until you kiss that girl,” as problematic. These lyrics, she insists, “unambiguously encourage men to make physical advances on women without obtaining their clear consent.” (Read more from “Women Now Claim This Popular Disney Song Promotes Sexual Assault” HERE)

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Climate Hysteria: U.N. Climate Summit Warns Climate Change Is Going to Kill Everything

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By Daily Wire. Naturalist Sir David Attenborough sounded the climate change hysteria alarm on Monday at the opening ceremony of the United Nations Climate Conference, warning that civilization is about to collapse.

“Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale,” Attenborough began. “Our greatest threat in thousands of years: Climate change.”

“If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon,” Attenborough claimed. “The world’s people have spoken. Their message is clear. Time is running out. They want you, the decision-makers, to act now.” .

(Read more from “Climate Hysteria: U.N. Climate Summit Warns Climate Change Is Going to Kill Everything” HERE)

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Climate Change Could Lead to ‘a Collapse of Our Civilization’ According to Sir David Attenborough

By USA Today. . .The 92-year-old TV presenter blamed humans for the “disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years.”

The United Nations’ conference, known as COP24 (the informal name for the 24th Conference of the Parties), is an annual gathering of the world’s top experts on climate change.

Also speaking at the conference, the head of the U.N. didn’t have many encouraging words, either: “Even as we witness devastating climate impacts causing havoc across the world, we are still not doing enough, nor moving fast enough, to prevent irreversible and catastrophic climate disruption,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the thousands of delegates from almost 200 countries who gathered in the city of Katowice, Poland.

“We need a complete transformation of our global energy economy, as well as how we manage land and forest resources,” Guterres said. “We need to embrace low-carbon, climate-resilient sustainable development.” (Read more from “Climate Change Could Lead to ‘a Collapse of Our Civilization’ According to Sir David Attenborough” HERE)

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If We Don’t Cut Debt and Spending, the U.S. Is Poised for Another Financial Crisis

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. . .Here’s the thing about inflation and fighting it: In the short term, raising interest rates actually accelerates inflation. From April 1977 through April 1980, the Fed very cautiously raised interest rates, just a little at a time, hoping to gently rein in inflation. Instead, inflation took off like a bull out of a rodeo chute.

The Fed responded by accelerating interest rates with panicked leaps, adding as much as a percentage point a month for several months between 1980 and the peak in 1981. Interest rates on three-month Treasuries jumped from 7.07 percent in June 1980 to 16.30 percent in May 1981. . .

Picture this: There’s a stack of privately held money that’s almost as much as all the things that can be made and sold within a given year. The people who hold onto that money are content with keeping it in low-interest bank accounts, their mattress, or a safe. Sure, they might lose 2 percent of the value to inflation every year, but that’s more than worth it because the cash acts as a hedge against uncertainty.

The higher inflation gets, the more expensive it is to hold cash. High inflation makes it more likely that these stocks of money will be spent or converted to assets, pushing prices up even higher. It’s like a fire and it feeds on itself accelerating with panic buying. Only by paying recession-inducing higher interest rates on bonds and bank accounts can saving cash become economical.

Here’s where we are today: If everything goes according to plan, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculates that, by 2020, more than half of all personal income taxes will be required to just service the national debt, and those interest payments will exceed our military budget. However, if inflation kicks off, we have much more privately held money sitting on the sidelines now than we did back in 1981. If people become afraid to hold cash because inflation is eating it up too quickly, the tsunami will be unstoppable. (Read more from “If We Don’t Cut Debt and Spending, the U.S. Is Poised for Another Financial Crisis” HERE)

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NeverTrump Clings to Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theory Despite Lack of Evidence

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The NeverTrump movement has gone from pushing allegations that Donald Trump treasonously colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election from its rightful owner Hillary Clinton, to pretending that his attempts at business deals in Russia, which were legal and the subject of widespread reporting during the election, are evidence of unspecified crimes.

The main barrier to the Russia-Trump collusion theory — an information operation that was secretly bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, spread by a compliant media, and weaponized by the highest levels of federal agencies — is the lack of evidence for it. But that lack of evidence hasn’t been much of an obstacle for either the so-called mainstream media or the leaders of the NeverTrump movement.

The news that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pled guilty to a process crime was enough to convince them of Trump’s guilt, despite the lack of evidence. The guilty plea was reportedly related to Cohen lying to Congress about when he talked to others about attempts at a deal in Moscow. Yet the attempts at a deal in Moscow have been known for years.

In fact, a major reason anyone knows in-depth details about the Trump Tower Moscow plan that went nowhere is that Donald Trump, Jr. testified about the plans beginning more than a year ago, in front of multiple committees in 2017. Transcripts of that testimony were made publicly available last May. It’s unclear why some journalists and media activists are attempting to spin this information as shocking and new since it’s been public for months, even before this testimony. Here’s The New York Times talking about the Moscow Trump Tower in August 2017, for instance.

For the most recent hysteria, various pundits took information that had been public for years, threw some fresh wrapping paper onto it, and claimed that this public information, which clearly wasn’t evidence of treasonous collusion with the Russian government to steal an election from Hillary Clinton when it was initially reported, became new bombshell evidence because they finally managed to hear about it, despite touting themselves as experts on the matter since 2016. (Read more from “Nevertrump Clings to Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theory Despite Lack of Evidence” HERE)

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Why the Brexit Deal Has Become Such a Tangled Mess

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On Tuesday, President Trump said the withdrawal agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union designed to codify Brexit “sounds like a great deal for the EU.” This reflected the majority of political thought across Great Britain over the last fortnight, which has panned the agreement Prime Minister Theresa May obtained:

At some point, negotiations with the EU always seemed destined to hit a reality check. The gap between what many British leaders want and what May could deliver has placed the United Kingdom in the midst of high-stakes political drama with a far-from-certain outcome. . .

From the outset of the treaty process, the EU held most of the negotiating cards, for two big reasons. First, British business fears the prospect of a “no-deal” Brexit. Under this scenario, the U.K. would exit the European Union next March 29—the date currently scheduled for Britain’s withdrawal—with no agreement in place governing future relations between the two entities. Overnight, border and customs checks would go into place, and tariffs would be re-imposed on British goods entering the EU and vice versa.

A no-deal Brexit has terrified the business community, ranging from the banking sector, where London’s reputation as a financial capital relies in large part on its EU ties, to concerns about supply chain interruptions. To give but one example of the uncertainty plaguing industry, the head of Britain’s Food and Drink Federation testified before a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that “warehouses around the U.K. for frozen and chilled food are ‘for all practical purposes booked out at the moment’”—businesses are stockpiling supplies to try and avoid disruptions next spring.

A no-deal Brexit also would create political uncertainties in Northern Ireland. Without an agreement governing customs between Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom exiting the EU) and the Republic of Ireland (a sovereign state that will remain in the EU), a no-deal Brexit could lead to the re-imposition of a “hard border” between the two nations. (Read more from “Why the Brexit Deal Has Become Such a Tangled Mess” HERE)

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The Migrant Caravan’s Forgotten Victims

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There’s been a lot of talk about compassion to the migrant caravan at America’s southern border, but what about compassion for those put at a disadvantage by specious asylum claims?

In the ongoing debate about the column of migrants, those who are skeptical of the asylum claims being made and those who simply want a more measured approach to handling those claims are told that they have no compassion for people coming from Central America looking for a better life in the United States.

But if we’re really going to have a conversation about compassion, we need to get a few things straightened out.

First, unless those looking for a better life have either suffered or have legitimate reason to believe they will suffer persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinions, they do not meet the legal baseline for refuge or asylum. Period.

Second, there is reason to believe that a majority of those claiming asylum from Central America do so with no intention of following through. According to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security regarding the migrant caravan:

The low statutory requirements and legal loopholes in our laws encourage aliens to claim credible fear at our Southern border knowing they will be promptly released into the interior with work permits pending the determination of their full claim. In recent years, data shows that more than 65 percent of asylum seekers at our border are from Central America – of those 89 percent pass their initial credible-fear interview. Yet, the harsh reality is that 31 percent of aliens who pass that initial interview do not even show up for their hearing, while a staggering 40 percent of aliens who pass their initial interview do not even file an application.

This suggests that too many of those who claim asylum while crossing the border appear to be using our asylum process as a fallback after being apprehended.

Third, having previously worked at a nonprofit that advocated for persecuted religious minorities as well as reported on the state of global religious persecution, I have seen firsthand the need for a substantive asylum process, because I have met the people it is meant to serve: Religious minorities from oppressive regimes, political dissidents, survivors of genocide.

Looking at religious persecution alone shows how bad things are worldwide. A 2018 Pew Research study shows that 28 percent of countries had “high” or “very high” restrictions on religion and 27 percent show “high” or “very high” social hostility to religion.

It is good that we have a means for people fleeing persecution to seek and find asylum on our shores. It’s awful to see the process for those legitimately in danger clogged by those who aren’t. Our asylum process should never be a plan B for those who seek to circumvent or break our immigration laws for economic benefit, especially when it puts the legitimately persecuted at a disadvantage.

It’s a simple fact (and one that both my colleague Jon Miller and I and have previously discussed) that resources are finite, and when government agents spend time sorting out frivolous asylum claims from economic migrants at the border, it takes up time and resources that could be otherwise applied to other applicants who don’t have the geographic advantage of being able to form a caravan and travel over land.

G.K. Chesteron once wrote: “The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”

This is apparent in our ongoing debate about immigration. Compassion is important, but it can’t be separated from the truth of who needs our compassion the most. (For more from the author of “The Migrant Caravan’s Forgotten Victims” please click HERE)

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U.S. Lawmakers: McDonald’s Must End Distinction Between Boys’ and Girls’ Toys

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The Left’s ideological war on gender differences continues: Lawmakers in Michigan are proposing legislation to end the distinction between “boy toys” and “girl toys” at fast food restaurants like McDonald’s.

More than a dozen lawmakers introduced a resolution into the state House Wednesday that “urges food establishments and franchises to stop gender classification of kid’s meal toys,” John Hogan reports for The Detroit Free Press. The resolution was introduced by state Rep. Leslie Love, D-Detroit, and has 14 co-sponsors.

“Often, the designated ‘boy toys’ are action figures or building toys; typically in primary colors, whereas ‘girl toys’ are often stuffed animals and are usually in a pastel color scheme,’’ the resolution states.

“This is a significant issue as billions of these meals are sold every year and this practice can influence and limit children’s imaginations and interests by promoting some toys as only suitable for girls and others only for boys.’’

It ought to go without saying that little boys are different from little girls, but here we are. The Left believes these “stereotypes” are harmful to children, and so McDonald’s needs to get with the program.

The Michigan state legislature is a full-time legislature, and this are the sort of initiative you get when lawmakers have too much time on their hands. (For more from the author of “U.S. Lawmakers: McDonald’s Must End Distinction Between Boys’ and Girls’ Toys” please click HERE)

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THIS Is Who the ‘Criminal Justice Reform’ Advocates Want Released onto Our Streets

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Everyone loves stories. I’ve written dozens of articles over the years tackling every aspect of crime, incarceration, drug trafficking, and the truth about the federal prison population, to debunk the widespread myths of the political class supporting the Soros-Koch jailbreak agenda. But facts, trends, and rational arguments covering every angle of this issue fall on deaf ears in the political class. Like good liberals, the pseudo-conservatives supporting “criminal justice reform” trot out sob stories about the guy who did nothing but take a whiff of marijuana and was supposedly locked up in federal prison for life. Well, if you want stories that more accurately depict who federal prosecutors target for long sentences, here is your man: Sergio M. Robles, aka Checko.

An article from Tuesday at the Chicago Tribune reads, “Gang member tied to 2 murders sentenced to 27 years.”

That is essentially the whole story of federal prison and the federal criminal justice system. Most of the people targeted by federal prosecutors on racketeering, drug, and firearms charges are hard-core gangbangers responsible for most of the urban warfare in this country and are often tied to murders or committed them directly. However, given how hard it is to land a conviction, prosecutors often hit them on drug charges instead. This allows virtue-signaling leftist groups as well as pseudo-conservatives to come and agitate on their behalf by obscuring their backgrounds and depicting them as low-level offenders. But there’s nothing like looking at a fresh federal case when we all know what happened, such as the case of Robles in Cedar Lake, Indiana.

Looking at the headline, your average person would say, “Twenty-seven years for two murders? Why not life in prison or the death penalty?

The reality is that he wasn’t convicted on murder charges. He was convicted on drug charges and RICO. Thus, this is the the type of case where agitators could come several years from now and declare outrage over locking someone up for 27 years on RICO and drug charges. But really, he was only targeted because he was a Latina Kings gang leader responsible for much of the murder and mayhem spilling over from Chicago into northern Indiana. The stiff sentencing allows prosecutors to get him off the streets. Obviously, those who only commit RICO and drug trafficking aren’t sentenced to this long. Just last week, a major Latina Nations gang member in Chicago was convicted on drug trafficking and 17 firearms charges! Yet he still was only sentenced to nine years, even though he is likely responsible for a lot of drug deaths. Why? At the end of the day, there was no murder.

“Checko” was sentenced to 27 years on RICO and drug charges because he’s a gang leader responsible for murder. Here’s the synopsis of the case from the U.S. Attorney’s office:

At sentencing, Robles was held responsible for participating in the December 2003 murder of Jonathan Zimmerman in Hammond, Indiana, and the May 2008 murder of Jose Cortez in East Chicago, Indiana. The Latin Kings suspected Zimmerman was involved in a drug transaction with counterfeit currency. Accordingly, Zimmerman was shot and killed by a co-defendant. Jose Cortez was shot to death by another co-defendant because the Latin Kings believed Cortez was a member of a rival street gang. According to documents in this case, Robles possessed a firearm in furtherance of the gang’s activities and was involved in a conspiracy to distribute 150 kilograms of cocaine and 1,000 kilograms of marijuana.

It’s important to understand that this was part of a broader prosecution of 21 members of the Latin Kings gang. Many of these gangs are fueled by the influx of illegal aliens and are responsible for the increased death toll in the Chicago area. These are not the exceptions, but the general rule, of federal prosecutions on drug and firearms charges. According to Texas’ Department of Public Safety, the Latin Kings are on par with MS-13 in terms of “Tier 1” threat level to Texas and are responsible for the distribution of drugs. This is the nexus of immigration policy, the drug crisis, and criminal justice “reform.” It is beyond Orwellian that at such a time as this, lawmakers are crafting a bill that will provide numerous sentencing reductions and early-release provisions to the people in federal prison responsible for the drug crisis and for the murder in major cities.

People with short memories forget that this how Reagan’s federal sentencing policies lead to a 70 percent decline in violent crime and homicide the following decade. All of these gangbangers engaging in firearms and drug trafficking were committing most of the murder, armed robbery, and aggravated assault. By having stiff sentencing for those crimes, which were easy to prove, prosecutors were able to deter or remove the violent criminals from the streets when it would otherwise be tough to land convictions on the more violent crimes. This is the big lie of those who say we lock up too many people for “nonviolent crimes.” They are ignorant of the federal system, as distinct from the state criminal justice system. The feds only go after dangerous people, especially in recent years.

Those engaging in small-time drug dealing won’t even be pursued by federal prosecutors, certainly not for simple possession. If someone is prosecuted for relatively low-level dealing, it’s because prosecutors believe they are likely responsible for mayhem in the city and are top gang leaders. That is what any good federal prosecutor will do.

Which brings us back to Checko. Ironically, the drug trafficking charge is actually pretty light, much lighter than the typical case we see in the federal prison and exactly the type that would get reduced sentencing and early release under the First Step Act. Yet he is a murderer and a gangbanger, which is why they threw the book at him. Someone who is truly a first-time offender already has access to multiple safety valves and would never be sentenced to anything close to 27 years.

This is the heart of the big lie underpinning the jailbreak movement. Chuck Grassley, Mike Lee, and many other supporters will trot out props of cases where people were locked up for 30 years on seemingly light charges. Yet they will never publicly release what is called the “presentencing report,” which is the document that the judge uses to determine the sentencing. This tells the full story of the life of the convict. If he truly was just a one-time, relatively low-level drug dealer, without evidence that he likely committed murder or a career of other harmful crimes, he wouldn’t be sentenced to such long imprisonment. Of course, there are always mistakes in any justice system, but for every one person over-sentenced, there are thousands of others under-sentenced or even unconvicted. These people never seem to trot out the victims of those crimes who never achieved justice.

So the next time you see the Gang of Jailbreak use a sob story as the poster-child of over-incarceration, just remember that the very gangsters fueling the murder problem in Chicago and the drug crisis nationwide are overwhelmingly the people prosecuted in the federal system on what they refer to as “low-level offenses.” In reality, these are the people whom Trump referred to as “animals.” (For more from the author of “This Is Who the ‘Criminal Justice Reform’ Advocates Want Released onto Our Streets” please click HERE)

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Pregnant with Twins and Facing Leukemia, This Mother Just Found a Bone Marrow Match

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By Life Site News. A California mother of three facing leukemia while expecting twins received news last week that may save her life after tens of thousands stepped up to potentially donate bone marrow.

Susie Rabaca was praying for a perfect match so she could stay alive for her kids. She is due December 6 with her twins and needs a bone marrow transplant to save her life. . .

In a Facebook post Thursday, the pregnant mom said:

“With tears running down my face and my heart full of hope I want to say THANK YOU LORD! And thank you from the bottom of my heart to every single person that has said even 1 prayer for me and my family! Thank you to my family, friends, people around the country that I don’t even know that have shown support and especially that have signed up for BE THE MATCH!!!!! Journey isn’t over but a huge step forward!!! Thankful for you all lots of love! Keep Praying thank you!!!!”

(Read more from “Pregnant with Twins and Facing Leukemia, This Mother Just Found a Bone Marrow Match” HERE)

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Pregnant Mom with Cancer Makes Plea for Help, Finds ‘Perfect Match’

By Fox 61. A pregnant mother who has leukemia has finally found help after her story went viral, WCVB reports.

Last week, Julie Korinke, of the registry Be The Match, which helps transplant patients, said even though 30 million people were on the worldwide registry, none were a match for the mother, Susie Rabaca. . .

Around 40,000 people signed up to donate within days of the Southern California woman’s story airing Nov. 22, and she found the bone marrow donor she needed, the news station reported.

The nonprofit says it helps around 6,100 transplant patients each year. (Read more from “Pregnant Mom with Cancer Makes Plea for Help, Finds ‘Perfect Match’” HERE)

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