Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

Ninth Circuit Could Lose Its Liberal Lustre Under Trump

Tuesday, 22 January 2019 06:50
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 21, 2019: 

President Donald Trump has the opportunity to turn the Ninth Circuit from blue to red before the end of his first term. In October, after months of fruitless negotiating with California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, the president finally gave up and nominated three conservative judges from the Federalist Society to fill three of the six vacancies on the court.

Not only is the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals the largest in the country, covering nine states including Hawaii and Alaska, it is arguably the most liberal in its rulings. More than 80 percent of them, when reviewed by the Supreme Court, are reversed. Of its 29 judgeships, 16 were nominated by Democrat presidents, while only seven by Republicans.

But Trump has already filled two open slots,

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Bankers to Take Massive Haircut in Proposed Puerto Rican Bankruptcy Settlement

Tuesday, 22 January 2019 06:44
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 21, 2019:  

The judge sorting out the Puerto Rican bankruptcy got it right. Said Judge Laura Taylor Swain (appointed to the position by Chief Justice John Roberts back in 2017): “There is no decision that can perfectly reconcile all concerns.”

That’s an understatement. The primary revenue source to pay interest on Puerto Rico’s $74 billion in debt is the island’s sales tax. There are barely three million citizens living on the island, and almost 85 percent of them live in poverty. So the sales tax revenue stream comes primarily from tourists [Correction: most of the sales tax – 11.5 percent! – is borne by the locals]. It turns out that that revenue stream has been overcommitted, some of it illegally, in order to support the government’s profligate spending.

All Swain has to do is

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Investors Holding Puerto Rican Bonds Are About to Learn Important Lessons

Tuesday, 22 January 2019 06:39
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This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, January 21, 2019:

Bond investors trusting big dog Wall Street bankers like Goldman Sachs are about to learn (or relearn) at least two very important lessons: 1) don’t trust them; and 2) don’t assume the U.S. government will bail you out if things go south.

Like they are in Puerto Rico.

The island’s debt crisis dates back to 1973 when

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The “Church” Continues to Fail to Reach and Keep Young Adults

Saturday, 19 January 2019 15:18
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This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, January 18, 2019:  

I love my church. My wife and I have been attending there for nearly 50 years. It is our spiritual home until He comes or takes us Home. We sing in the choir. We deliver plants to the homebound and call on those in assisted living. We tithe. We believe the Gospel – the Good News – that Jesus Christ died for our sins and nailed our account books to His cross.

But lately we’ve noticed a distinct change. Our church is trying to become more “relevant” in order to “reach young people.” The problem is demographic: half of the church’s members are 65 or older. The church’s membership is half what it was when we joined. Giving, in real terms, has declined as well.

What to do? The church changed its logo and its mission statement. The former logo showed His cross emblazoned on a field of blue. Now it’s a silly combination of the church’s name, using its first two letters. It was designed by a local PR firm which was chosen because – ready? – it was secular and “tuned in” to the local culture.

It’s mission statement? It sounds like an ad for our local utility company, which gives life and light to the city.

For years, LifeWay Resources has been tracking the decline in membership and the walking away from the church of teenagers upon graduation for decades. Its current survey, released earlier this week, confirms the national trend. LifeWay, a creation of the Southern Baptist Convention, asked 2,000 young adults between the ages of 23 and 30 (who had a history of regular church attendance while teenagers) 55 questions about their faith. Said LifeWay:

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Opening Salvo Calling for Trump’s Impeachment Launched by The Atlantic

Saturday, 19 January 2019 15:11
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, January 18, 2019:  

The Atlantic magazine launched the first official establishment impeachment broadside against the president on Thursday. Authored by the magazine’s political editor Yoni Appelbaum, the article charged that the president “has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us — of every race, gender, and creed — are created equal.”

One might question Appelbaum’s understanding of those “founding documents,” but at least his magazine is consistent: It hates Donald Trump and wants him removed or so damaged politically that he cannot complete more of his agenda.

Back in 2016 the magazine, for only the third time in its 162-year history, endorsed a candidate (Hillary Clinton) for president. But it wasn’t an endorsement of Clinton so much as a repudiation of Trump:

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Survey: Two Out of Three Teenagers Leave the Church as Young Adults

Friday, 18 January 2019 06:44
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, January 17, 2019: 

To most, LifeWay’s survey confirms what they think they already know: Young people are leaving the church once they get out of the house and onto a college campus.

LifeWay Research, a creation of the Southern Baptist Convention, asked 2,000 young adults between the ages of 23 and 30 (who had a history of regular church attendance while teenagers) 55 questions about their faith. Said LifeWay: “Two-thirds of [those] who attended a Protestant church regularly for a least a year as a teenager [said] they also dropped out for at least a year between the ages of 18 and 22.”

There was scarcely any good news in the study, said Scott McConnell, LifeWay Research’s executive director: “The good news for Christian leaders is that churches don’t seem to be losing more students [today] than they were 10 years ago.” He added: “The reality is that Protestant churches continue to see the new generation walk away as young adults. Regardless of any external factors, the Protestant church is slowly shrinking from within.”

Those surveyed were asked why. A third said

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VW Expanding its Chattanooga Plant Again, Investing a Billion Dollars and Creating Jobs

Wednesday, 16 January 2019 14:35
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, January, 16, 2019:  

Following the announcement that Volkswagen America was going to be expanding its Chattanooga plant to build electric vehicles (EVs), President Trump was delighted. He tweeted: “Congratulations to Chattanooga and Tennessee on a job well done. A big win.”

It was a big win for the president, who invited the CEOs of VW, BMW, and other foreign car manufacturers to the White House in December to persuade them to invest more in the United States. At the same time VW made its announcement at the Detroit Auto Show on Monday, BMW management announced its own expansion plans of its production facilities in the United States. With VW’s financial commitment of $800 million for Tennessee and BMW’s financial commitment of $600 million added to the $340 million VW announced last March for its Chattanooga facility, those two automakers are investing almost $2 billion in their U.S. automobile manufacturing plants. Their expansion plans will require more than 2,000 additional workers, adding to the already robust manufacturing resurgence taking place in the United States.

That resurgence has added nearly 500,000 manufacturing jobs in just the last two years, the most in more than 20 years.

Following the announcement by VW’s CEO Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen AG, his American counterpart, Scott Keogh, CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, added, “We could not be prouder to build the future of mobility here in the United States. We’re known as ‘the peoples’ car’ for a reason, and we plan to build EVs for millions, not millionaires.”

What Keogh didn’t say was that

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Maduro’s Second Six-Year Term Won’t Last Six Months

Wednesday, 16 January 2019 14:29
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This article was published by the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, January 16, 2019:

This writer is happy to declare that his prediction (see Sources below) about Maduro’s longevity appears to be dead wrong. Washington has just issued credible threats that it will turn off Maduro’s cash flow by prohibiting exports of crude from his state-owned PdVSA oil company to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.

Last Friday, this writer thought that Maduro could not only remain as Venezuela’s dictator for another six-year term, but for as long as he wished. Now his tenure is likely to be measured in months.

An unnamed White House official told the Wall Street Journal on Monday that, “until now, we have been going around the edges. Now, it’s a new dynamic: we are no longer going to be tinkering around the edges.”

Earlier the Journal pointed out that

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Pressure Building to Remove Venezuela’s Marxist Dictator

Wednesday, 16 January 2019 05:43
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, January 15, 2019:  

Minutes after Marxist Nicolás Maduro inaugurated himself for a second Term as Venezuela’s president last Thursday a majority of the 35-member Organization of American States (OAS) voted not to recognize its legitimacy. This followed disclaimers from 60 countries around the world that his reelection last May was, in the words of President Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton, “not free, fair or credible.”

His phony inauguration was preceded two days earlier by the announcement of additional sanctions on more of Maduro’s top officials by the U.S. State Department for allegedly

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Ninety Percent of Guns Used in Crime Not Obtained From Gun Stores/Shows

Wednesday, 16 January 2019 05:36
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 14, 2019:  

The Department of Justice just updated its decades-old study asking criminals where they got the guns they used in committing the crime for which they were currently incarcerated. After asking 287,000 prisoners in 2016 where they got the gun they used, 90 percent of them “did not obtain it from a retail source” and less than one percent obtained it from a gun show.

Half of them obtained their firearm from the “underground” market, while just six percent said they stole it. The survey reported that “most of the remainder had obtained it from a family member or a friend, or as a gift. Seven percent had purchased it under their own name from a licensed firearm dealer.”

In other words, current or pending laws banning “assault weapons” (usually variants of the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle) almost totally miss the mark,

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Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2018 Bob Adelmann