Installed candidate Kamala Harris  agreed with a protestor this week that Israel is committing “genocide.” During a campaign stop Thursday at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a pro-Hamas UWM student began yelling out while the Democratic presidential nominee was speaking. “I am so invested in you all, in every way,” Harris said. “And in genocide, right?” […] The post Harris Agrees with a Protester Saying Israel Committed “Genocide” appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

American lawyer and conservative legal activist Leonard Leo wants the conservative movement to become as “impactful and effective as possible.”And he plans to do this by financially backing conservative groups that are focused on more than just ideas and policy, but on “operationalizing and weaponizing” those ideas to “crush liberal dominance at the choke points of influence and power.”  Leo is one of the most prolific fundraisers in American politics. He’s also one of the most consequential figures on the American Right. As a leader of the Federalist Society, he has worked for decades to foster strong judicial and legal appointments, and as an advisor to former President Donald Trump on judicial selections, he helped Trump choose the three conservative Supreme Court justices instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade.  After Trump, Leo is quite possibly the man most hated by the Left. And with an estimated $1 billion to spend on aligned groups, the conservative activist holds the attention of both sides of the aisle. In a rare interview with The Daily Wire, published Sunday on the Morning Wire podcast, Leo laid out his vision for how he can use his influence in the movement to empower the types of work that will be necessary to compete with the Left, and win. “As someone involved in philanthropy, I want to make sure that the conservative movement is as impactful as possible in doing things like defending the rule of law, and improving our society and culture,” he shared with The Daily Wire. “That means that the participants in our movement, the many organizations that are involved in trying to improve our society and our culture and the law and politics and public policy, need to be as impactful and effective as possible.” LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW: Leo informed recipients of his 85 Fund in September that the fund is conducting a review of where its dollars are going — and in the future, he’ll be focused on funding groups that are doing far more than just research. “Vastly insufficient funds are going toward operationalizing and weaponizing those ideas and policies,” he wrote in the letter, prompting a slew of dramatic headlines from liberal media.  “When you get to a certain point in a movement’s history, while you always have to continue to develop ideas and to educate, what becomes even more important is operationalizing those ideas, taking the principles and philosophy that you’ve developed, and finding ways to make those a reality in our culture,” Leo continued. “The Left has been very effective at this over the past couple of decades, and it’s time for the conservative movement to be much more leveraged in the way it tries to implement its beliefs.” Part of the Left’s strategy has been to build different kinds of layered institutions and structures, Leo explained to The Daily Wire. First, they developed ideas and philosophies to educate societal influencers and coming generations of academics and professionals. Then they created institutions that could mobilize the people behind those ideas, and created networks that could generate calls to action, protests, and philanthropy. “They’ve mobilized people,” Leo said. “They’ve created infrastructure to get the word out, to train people to be leaders, and for those leaders then to have the resources they need to create communities of people who will go out and do everything from protesting and demonstrating, to writing in the popular press, influencing the entertainment industry, putting pressure on academic institutions, sometimes even litigating, and sometimes working in various international organizations like the United Nations to effect change.”  Leo’s letter to grant recipients describes how activists on the Left have created “large funding engines,” both 501(c)(4) as well as 501(c)(3), that push litigation, launch aggressive campaigns, and build extensive networks and talent pipelines. Two of the most prominent leftist funding engines are the “constellation of groups” run by the influential left-wing consulting organizations Arabella Advisors and Tides Network Foundation, which spend over $1 billion a year furthering leftist goals. Students for Justice In Palestine activists protest in Los Angeles, California (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) Leftist groups have been very effective in driving anti-Semitism on college campuses through Students for Justice in Palestine, a 501(c)(3) that has politicized an entire “generation on Palestine,” Leo noted, quoting the New Yorker. He also pointed to the Voter Registration Project, another 501(c)(3) that Leo says has poured over $120 million into groups in swing states to “register Democratic-leaning demographics.” And he mentioned how the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, a 501(c)(3) functioning as a “trade group for activists and healthcare providers who profit from radical transgender policies,” pushes ideological “Standards of Care” used by activists to “strong-arm existing trade groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics and British Medical Association into supporting WPATH’s agenda.” Leo wants the conservative movement to be as effective and aggressive, especially given the fights on the horizon. He says the Right will need to build talent pipelines, leverage litigation, and launch “campaign-style tactics to beat back things like ESG and DEI.” And particularly at this moment in time, he argued, after a major Supreme Court case that dealt with how federal agencies interpret the law, the conservative movement is well-positioned to challenge the administrative state. “The regulatory state is now something that’s very much in play,” he said. “Those are very leveraged activities where there’s been some real entrepreneurial spirit by conservatives, but that needs to happen more than it does. And that’s something that we’re just really trying to stress test the movement about, really.”  Leo mentioned examples of those talent pipelines and networks on the Right: in business and finance, the Teneo Network, in entertainment, the Moving Picture Institute, in journalism, the Fund for American Studies, the College Fix, and the National Journalism Center. “You need to strengthen those networks,” he said, “and you need to build new networks like those where we don’t presently have them.” “It’s all well and good to educate people,” he reflected. “But it’s very important to take the best and brightest of your movement, the people who have the best strategic vision, the folks who have the greatest capability of entering into and helping to control the choke points of society, it’s really important to find those people, to identify them, to recruit them, and then to make sure that they are part of an effort that’s implementing our philosophy and ideas.” The Left has also leveraged litigation as a “tip of the spear strategy” for decades to pursue its ideological agendas in welfare reform, civil rights, and so forth, Leo said. He believes the right should do the same, using “operationalized litigation as a vehicle for affecting the social and cultural change it wants to see.”  “It could be challenging government actions so that you can reinvigorate things like the separation of powers and checks and balances and federalism, those structural protections that really advance the dignity and worth of the human person by limiting government power,” he explained. “It could be challenges to government policies that relate to DEI or other parts of the woke cultural agenda.”  There’s nothing wrong with research, policy development, education, and the creation of ideas, Leo said, explaining that there will always be a place for such things in the conservative movement. “Ideas constantly have to be tested,” he noted. “New situations always require new thinking and new education. But as a movement matures and evolves, which the conservative movement has done, it’s time to take what you already know, and to operationalize it, and that means being at the tip of the spear, filing those lawsuits, building those talent pipelines, placing personnel in positions of influence in culture, society, and government, launching campaign-style tactics to beat back things like ESG and DEI. That’s the kind of thing that needs to be done.” And then, Leo argues, conservatives should be trying to influence social and cultural institutions. “Infiltrating the press,” he said. “Infiltrating entertainment.” “These are things that go beyond the normal policy research, white papers, conferences, seminars, educational programs that millions and millions and millions of dollars are spent on every year in the conservative space,” he explained. “And again, there’s a place for some amount of that, but it can’t be at the expense of bringing the conservative movement to the next level and really operationalizing its ideas.”  Leo isn’t arguing that the conservative movement is “prehistoric” or unsuccessful in its efforts to change culture. But he does believe conservatives are, to a certain extent, risk-averse by their nature. He described an independent streak amongst conservatives, compared to what he described as the Left’s more “collectivist” way of thinking and organizing. “It’s hard to mobilize the conservative movement in the same way,” he said. “I think some of that does need to change. I think we need to band together more effectively and more frequently. I think we need to test new strategies a little bit more than we do.” He also emphasized that conservatives have had some recent victories, pointing to changes in the legal space, such as the transformation of the federal judiciary and the”beginnings of the deconstruction of the administration state,” as a “huge victory and success.” Liberal group Demand Justice projects “Stop The Steal” on the U.S. Supreme Court (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Demand Justice) For decades, Leo argued, the conservative movement has talked about the structural constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. The conservative movement has educated the country about the importance of that structure, and it has demonstrated — “quite clearly,” according to Leo — that “those aren’t just antiquarian notions, but they’re very important in the here and now.” “Those provisions in our Constitution, they’re what really ultimately protect the dignity and worth of the human person,” he said. “If you look at the course of human history, what has been the greatest threat to human dignity, it’s been the state. It’s been the government. It’s been overreach by the governing power.” Now that the movement has educated the public about those issues and developed concrete theories and approaches, Leo believes conservatives can “operationalize” those ideas by supporting litigation projects that “beat back the administrative state using those constitutional tools, by demonstrating that this excessive power that the administrative state has impinges on the separation of powers.” “It violates the checks and balances of our Constitution,” he argued. “It stops the states of the power that they have and their people have to make decisions. And in all of that, the point we’re making in that litigation is that if you really want to defend the freedom and the dignity and worth of ordinary people in this country, you need to make sure that the regulatory state comports with our Constitution.” “Not surprisingly, the plaintiffs and a number of these different kinds of challenges to the administrative state are very average, ordinary, but wonderful people who produce great value in society,” he added. “They’re small lobstermen and fishermen, for example, from New England and from the Gulf Coast.”  Where is the conservative movement best positioned to weaponize its ideas? Leo says that’s in challenging the administrative state. “We are very committed to supporting that enterprise, to as much of an extent as we can,” he said. “We know the ideas. We know how to communicate them. We know how to get people to embrace them. We know how to implement them. And so now it’s just a matter of operationalizing and weaponizing it by incubating litigation and by building talent pipelines of people who can pursue that.” “And then of course,” he added, “when you have an opportunity, when you win elections, for example, you want to have talent pipelines of people who embrace those ideas who can enter into the administrative state and properly clip the wings of these agencies when they overreach.”  Former President Donald Trump with Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh and his family in Washington, DC.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Pressed on how the 2024 election, and potentially another Donald Trump presidency could affect his plans, Leo declined to guess at any outcomes. He’s never been a good predictor when it comes to elections, he said. “Elections obviously matter, but … politics and public policy is downstream from culture,” he argued. “It’s downstream from societal norms. And so if the conservative movement wants to ultimately be successful, it obviously has to be very engaged on issues of politics and public policy. It has to engage leveraged activity like litigation in the legal policy space.” But at the end of the day, according to Leo, the movement needs to be focused on building those pipelines and infrastructure that affect the broader society and culture. “In a way,” he said, “I think that’s even more important than what happens in a particular election cycle. So yes, very important what happens in November, I don’t want to undercut that, but in the medium term, what’s perhaps even more important than elections is the conservative movement building beachheads in areas like news, entertainment, business and finance, corporate C-suites, educational institutions, so that you can begin to have a much more level playing field within society and culture regarding traditional principles, western, traditional America based values.” “Work hard at the politics,” he concluded, “but don’t lose sight of those other social and cultural institutions that do ultimately call the shots in our lives.”

‘When he called me, the first thing that happened was, you know, I screamed'

'Some people never learn'

A California dog groomer gave his dog a spooky makeover for Halloween and turned her into a skeleton. Known for his extreme dog grooming designs, Gabriel Feitosa has previously transformed dogs into foxes, cheetahs, and even giraffes. But this year, Gabriel Feitosa went all out for Halloween by giving his standard poodle a makeover—spending hours […] The post Dog Groomer Turns His Poodle into a Skeleton for Halloween–Using a Nontoxic Dye for Pets (Video) appeared first on Good News Network.

Speaker: Here's Why Biden Didn't Restore Trump's Border Policies

Both the polls and prediction markets suggest Donald Trump has at least an even (or better!) chance of re-taking the White House on Election Day. That alone demonstrates the former President’s remarkable political staying power — especially because, at this point in the 2016 election, the liberal media were sure that their months of hostile negative coverage had succeeded in destroying the Republican presidential candidate’s chances of winning. Eight years ago, broadcast evening news viewers were deluged with negative stories about Trump: the infamous Access Hollywood tape; charges of mistreatment from various women; his refusal to release his private tax returns; his allegedly insensitive or racist rhetoric; and his supposed lack of temperament for the presidency. A compilation of evening news coverage from that fall looks and sounds a lot like what’s being served up this year. Viewers heard Trump accused of “racial insensitivity,” “lewd” and “vulgar” behavior, of being someone who “doesn’t understand world affairs.” Trump’s campaign speeches fomented “outrage,” and his rallies had been “swallowed by fear, anger and misinformation.” Thanks to Trump, “[Republicans] may be staring at a total collapse of the party by Election Day,” NBC’s Chuck Todd predicted eight years ago. Watch: Across the wider media landscape, the tone was even fiercer. “To paraphrase Henry Adams, the movement from George H.W. Bush to Donald Trump disproves Darwin,” ex-Newsweek editor Jon Meacham sneered on the October 16, 2016 edition of CBS’s Face the Nation. “You’re a mother. You’re a woman. Are you more offended by the phrase ‘average Americans’ or ‘grabbing a woman’s genitals?’” MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle scolded Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on MSNBC Live, October 19, adding: “I don’t let my kids watch Donald Trump in the fear that he will say to a woman in the audience, ‘You’re fat.’ In fear, that he’ll make fun of someone with special needs. I don’t ever want my kids to say that.” That evening, MSNBC’s Joy Reid painted Trump’s concerns about voter fraud as racist. “It is a dog whistle to people who want to believe that African Americans are cheating. The dog whistle to the far right, the Breitbart crowd....It is feeding the Breitbart people who feel that black people are stealing our elections.” Following the final presidential debate that night, the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman fretted: “There was a casual contempt in Donald Trump’s voice for 225 years of American political tradition. Donald Trump is a force for chaos. He always has been. If he can’t take something and win something himself, he will destroy that thing and make it impossible for other people to have it....[Trump] is saying that if ‘I can’t have the presidency, I’m going to make it not worth Hillary’s time to have it.’” On CNN International’s Amanpour the next day (October 20), filmmaker Ken Burns, a fixture on taxpayer-subsidized PBS, wailed: “I don’t recognize my country anymore. This is so terrifying. I think this is an existential moment for the United States of America. I think this is the greatest threat since the Cuban missile crisis and the Second World War....The Trump campaign is taking a play, their playbook is out of the National Socialist party in Germany.” “This campaign is now about a neo-fascist — I keep coming back to that — sociopath....He is setting himself up as the head of....a real neo-fascist movement,” journalist Carl Bernstein growled on CNN’s New Day October 21. “Is there going to be remnants of a neo-fascist movement that he leads in this country after this election? It’s a dangerous thing. We’re in a dangerous place.” “[Trump’s] most recent comments about the legitimacy of the election, with their whiff of Third-World tumult, have perversely made some immigrants feel right at home,” New York Times reporter Yamiche Alcindor wrote in an article that appeared the next morning. “In their minds, they said, questions about a president’s legitimacy were inseparable from chaos and bloodshed, and thus they could not stop themselves from thinking the worst.” “Maybe this party needs to crash and burn. This version of the Republican Party needs to die,” New York Times columnist Tom Friedman demanded on that Sunday’s Meet the Press (October 23). “So out of the ashes, just as a new Democratic Party came out of the post-McGovern, post-Dukakis era, that we will get a Democratic Leadership Council movement, a sane Republican Party.” “The man [Trump] is a bigot,” ex-MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann thundered on GQ.com’s The Closer. “He has shown no commitment to free elections in this country, he is a bully with severe anger management problems, combined with a desire to have and use nuclear weapons. And he’s not running for president, but for dictator.” By late October, the media seemed to genuinely believe that their attacks had worked. On the October 23 World News Tonight, correspondent Jonathan Karl noted that Democrat Hillary Clinton had a lead among men as well as women: “If those numbers remain anything like that, you could be looking at not just a loss, but a blowout.” The next night, October 24, CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley warned: “Time is running out for Donald Trump....No candidate down this far this late has ever recovered.” Two days later, Karl was back on Good Morning America: “Donald Trump is down 17 points among women. You do not get elected President of the United States if you are down 17 points among women.” By November 2, NBC’s Chuck Todd advised Nightly News viewers that Trump “can win all the battleground states, sweep out west, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and he would still come up short.” Moments later, campaign strategist Nicolle Wallace tried to slap down any remaining hope that was left on Team Trump: “Here’s the cold hard truth for them: The best case scenario, if they do everything right, they lose with 266 electoral votes. Here’s a compilation of the media’s October 2016 election predictions:     Just six days later (November 8, 2016), Trump won 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227, becoming the 45th President of the United States. As many of the same liberal reporters and pundits pour forth venomous anti-Trump coverage that sounds a lot like what they were saying eight years ago, the question: Why do they think it will be different this time? For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.                          

According to the Bible, what will hell be like?The descriptions are awful, and the occupants are unsettling. Jesus said "the devil and his angels" would be there (Matthew 25:41). He taught that the unrighteous would be there (Matthew 25:41-46). John the apostle described it as "the second death" (Revelation 21:8) and the "lake of fire" (Revelation 20:15). It is a place of unceasing punishment (Revelation 20:10; Matthew 25:46), and thus it is a place from which there is no escape.Growing up, I used to imagine that those who go to hell would, at some point (and probably sooner than later), come to their senses and repent. If the prodigal in the parable (Luke 15:11-32) came to his senses when he was eating pig slop, surely the horrors of hell would provoke deep sorrow and repentance.Have you ever wondered whether there will be repentance in hell? Should we imagine that those in hell will eventually cry out to God for salvation, only to have their cries rejected? Will they plead for his redemption, pledge themselves to him, and renounce their wickedness, only to have their desperate cries met with divine contempt?We should not imagine those things because we have no biblical reason to suppose that the wicked will ever be repentant in hell.Hell is full of hardened hearts. And repentance doesn't flow from a hardened heart. Repentance is a gift of God. It is a work of the Holy Spirit. And in the New Testament, repentance is unto salvation.Will they wish they weren't in hell? Yes. Will they wish the punishment would cease? Of course. Consider the language of the rich man in Luke 16, when he says, "I am in anguish in this flame" (Luke 16:24) and describes his abode as "this place of torment" (Luke 16:28).Jesus described the emotions of hell's occupants when he said, "The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:41-42; see also Matthew 24:51).Should we imagine this "weeping" as being tears of repentance? No repentance is specified. Weeping is not the only thing mentioned. We read about weeping and gnashing of teeth. Together, that pair of descriptions — tears and teeth — is an image of distress and rage. The "gnashing of teeth" denotes rage and hostility. The inhabitants of hell are hostile, angry, rageful.Hell is full of hardened hearts. And repentance doesn't flow from a hardened heart. Repentance is a gift of God. It is a work of the Holy Spirit. And in the New Testament, repentance is unto salvation. There is never true repentance without salvation. Peter said, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins" (Acts 2:38). When addressing those who might be opposed to the gospel, Paul said, "God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will" (2 Timothy 2:25-26). And, of course, Paul is talking about people alive on earth, not about people in hell.Faith and repentance are the result of the gracious work of the Spirit, as the Lord opens our eyes to see the ugliness of our sin and the beauty of redemption. He convicts us, and we experience genuine contrition, a godly sorrow. According to Paul, "Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death" (2 Corinthians 7:10).Those in hell will never desire to worship God. They will never love the Lord. They will never repent. Instead, their hardness of heart will bear the fruit of all the horrors of sin.If there is any grief in hell, it is a worldly grief and not a godly grief. Godly grief produces repentance, the repentant are saved, and God is glorified because his Spirit's merciful work illuminates the sinner's heart and reveals the glory of Christ to him.It is unthinkable that repentant people would not be saved. And because those in hell will not be delivered from their judgment, there can be no genuine repentance in them. The Spirit will not produce repentance in the hearts of the wicked who cannot be redeemed from the second death.There will not be any saving grace or common grace in hell. There will only be the unrestrained rage of the godless, who, in their unending unrepentance, will indulge their blasphemies and hatred to the uttermost. If heaven is a place of love and hope, hell is a place of hate and despair.Those in hell will never desire to worship God. They will never love the Lord. They will never repent. Instead, their hardness of heart will bear the fruit of all the horrors of sin. The wicked in hell will be embodiments of iniquity, living manifestations of spiritual darkness. They will never want to flee to Christ, for they will despise him and blaspheme him forever.When we reflect on the abode of the wicked, let us rejoice that there is good news of a Savior who welcomes sinners to him even now. When people flee to Christ, he will never refuse them. In fact, he saves them and keeps them — forever.This article was originally published by Dr. Mitchell Chase at his Substack, Biblical Theology.