Jeb Bush Says It’s a Time to ‘Celebrate’ His Father and the Trump Family Has Been ‘Gracious’

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Jeb Bush, son of the late former President George H.W. Bush, told the Wall Street Journal Tuesday that his family was celebrating the legacy of his father and praised the Trumps for being “gracious.” . . .

“What people want to talk about is: Well why isn’t the president giving the eulogy? And it’s because we have a unique circumstance here,” he explained. “My brother was president. It’s like, I’m sorry. First dibs, as we used to say. I don’t know how to explain it other than that.” . . .

Bush described his father as “the most generous, kind person you’d ever meet,” and said he hoped his father’s “kindler, gentler” approach would prevail over the more combative style of politics.

“My dad will be surrounded by friends inside the National Cathedral and many that couldn’t get in. The guy has built a network that is pretty amazing,” he said. “People want to share their love for him, and it’s just a great time to be his son.”

“This is a time to celebrate George H.W. Bush, not to grieve his loss, and that’s what we’re doing as a family right now,” he emphasized. (Read more from “Jeb Bush Says It’s a Time to ‘Celebrate’ His Father and the Trump Family Has Been ‘Gracious'” HERE)

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Dr. Frankenstein of CRISPR Gene-Editing Infamy, Now Missing After Opening Pandora’s Box

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A Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, has allegedly created the first gene edited twin babies (born this past month) using the fairly new technology: CRISPR-Cas9. If reports are true, he has brought science a giant leap closer to “designer babies.”

Creepy CRISPR’s History

CRISPR-Cas9, commonly known as “CRISPR,” was largely created in 2012 by Jennifer Doudna, a University of California-Berkeley scientist, and Emmanuelle Charpentier. This technology makes gene editing much easier with greater precision. The changes made are also passed on through many generations of the cells.

CRISPR is currently being used in adult cells as well as embryos. Previously, all human experimentation with this technology used donated embryos not “designated” for pregnancy. Sadly, during these experiments, numerous human embryos were destroyed until Jiankui eventually implanted a few into their mothers.

Jiankui’s initial objective in using CRISPR was to find a way to give HIV-positive fathers a chance to have babies resistant to HIV. He thought this was important, at least partially because of the stigma associated with people with HIV in China. But other scientists have pointed out that using CRISPR for such purposes was wholly unnecessary and reckless, as there are many other ways to protect against HIV, and CRISPR remains experimental.

Unintended Consequences

With respect to potential problems with CRISPR, studies suggest that the gene editing technique creates “off-target DNA damage” much more frequently than once thought. Two studies have also shown that this technology may increase cancer risk. Since CRISPR is also still relatively new, other side effects will likely be discovered with time.

As to ethics of using this new tech on humans, Jiankui has posted a video in which he specifically discusses gene-edited “designer babies.” He says that is an unethical use of CRISPR and is not what he is using it for. In yet another video, he attempts to devise moral boundaries for CRISPR with “five principles.” Curiously, his recent use of CRISPR squarely violates these principles.

For example, Jiankui’s second principle only allows CRISPR gene editing “when the risks of the procedure are outweighed by a serious medical need.” Today, HIV-positive fathers are already at low risk to pass on the virus to their babies. Moreover, other methods such as “sperm washing” can prevent the father from passing HIV onto his child. Finally, Jiankui’s last principle decrees that “[e]veryone deserves freedom from genetic disease.” Of course, HIV is not a genetic disease; it’s viral, not hereditary. For Jiankui to equate HIV with a genetic disease is troubling.

Nevertheless, He Jiankui’s research has had one benefit: it has accelerated the question of whether and/or how this technology should be used in the future. Many scientists (including Jennifer Doudna) have warned that Jiankui’s research was irresponsible, even atrocious. This mirrored the scientific community’s consensus as early as 2015 that genetic tampering with human embryos intended for pregnancy should never occur without far more research.

Not 100% Bad

On the brighter side, there’s hope that CRISPR can be used in humans to treat genetic diseases “such as sickle-cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, and chronic conditions such as Type 2 diabetes or Alzheimer’s.” It may even be used to eliminate HIV in adult cells. It is also being used in agriculture, and there are potentially thousands of other ways it may be used.

But who should be the arbiter as to how CRISPR ought be employed in the future? Should it be the scientific community? Probably not. As we have already seen in the case of Jiankui, the scientific community is pretty much unable to guide itself on how to use this technology. So do we leave it to lawmakers and the courts to decide CRISPR’s fate? As we can readily see from legalized abortion and assisted suicide, the Supreme Court does not always rule in a way that promotes life. In reality, neither science nor politics may be competent to determine the ethics of this technology.

We are already seeing how CRISPR is being used for ethically questionable projects. In China they are using the technology to enable two female mice (or two male mice) to create offspring. A leader in biohacking, Dr. Josiah Zayner, has created a website exclusively for the purpose of teaching others and selling inexpensive DIY kits on how to use CRISPR at home. He believes that “consumer genetic design” will be a big part of the future of this technology.

CRISPR Scientist “Disappeared”

Frightening stuff, even for the godless communists. In fact, on December 3rd, the official Chinese press reported that Jiankui “disappeared.” This was just a day after he apparently had been placed under house arrest for his troubling work.

But whatever the immediate outcome of Jiankui’s Frankenstein-like experiments, there seems to be little question that Pandora’s box has been opened. Eventually, designer babies will be ubiquitous.

And a new caste system will arise: super, genetically modified humans versus the rest of us. Like the Tower of Babel, the Creator’s intervention is the only wildcard; man, left to his own devices, will never stop playing god.

Whoa: Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Forklift He Intended to Use to Assassinate Trump

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By Townhall. Who is Gregory Lee Leingang? Well, he’s the North Dakota man who just pled guilty to stealing forklift he intended to use to kill President Trump last year. Leingang had intended to use the forklift to ram the president’s motorcade. It got stuck in the gate on the day of Trump’s visit to Andeaver Mandan Refinery. Leingang fled, but was later apprehended by local police (via Grand Forks Herald):

Leingang reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors, entering a guilty plea on Friday for attempting to enter or remain in a restricted building and on grounds while using a dangerous weapon, that is, a forklift.

U.S. Assistant State’s Attorney Brandi Sasse Russell said Leingang was aware that the president was coming to town on Sept. 6, 2017, to give his speech at the Andeavor Mandan Refinery, an area which had been cordoned off for the motorcade route.

Prior to the president’s arrival at around 2 p.m., Leingang had stolen a forklift in Mandan and entered the motorcade route, according to Sasse Russell.

“The intent was to basically try to get to the limo, flip the limo and get to the president and he wanted to kill the president,” Sasse said.

(Read more from “Whoa: Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Forklift He Intended to Use to Assassinate Trump” HERE)

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Inside One Man’s Failed Plan to Use a Stolen Forklift to Assassinate Trump

By The Washington Post. . .The arrest capped off a string of crimes Leingang committed in the region that day, according to Mandan Deputy Police Chief Lori Flaten.

Earlier that morning, Leingang had set two fires in Bismarck, on the other side of the Missouri River, and had stolen a truck from the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, Flaten said.

Leingang later abandoned the truck, then crossed the river over to Mandan and made his way to a sports complex under construction near the Mandan oil refinery — “which is where he got the forklift,” Flaten said. (Read more from “Inside One Man’s Failed Plan to Use a Stolen Forklift to Assassinate Trump” HERE)

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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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