The latest report on homelessness in the United States from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development found that 653,104 Americans were homeless in 2023. The level climbed for the 6th year. The numbers increased from 2019 to 2020, and finally, from 2022 to 2023, they grew by 12%. It represented in one year, […] The post Record Numbers Are Homeless in America appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

A video from several years ago was banned today on a YouTube channel I rarely use. It was a Fox News report of an interview with Dr. Oz, a TV personality and Cardiac surgeon. He said some promising results were obtained from using hydroxychloroquine with Z-Pac to cure COVID. He added that it’s important to […] The post YouTube Banned This Dr. Mehmet Oz Video from 2021 appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

'dangerously inept'

While the 2024 presidential race remains extremely close, voters have consistently given former President Donald Trump their strongest support on the issue of immigration and border security. A just-released ABC News/Ipsos poll showed Trump with a 10-point lead (46%-36%) when it came to who voters trusted most to handle immigration, a higher margin than on any other issue. That matches a Wall Street Journal poll of swing state voters which found, according to Friday’s New York Post, “on ‘who is best able to handle’ illegal immigration — which voters say is their second-top concern — respondents give the ex-prez a 16-point lead (52% to 36%).” Even among Latino voters — a bloc that is largely supporting Vice President Kamala Harris — an NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll found a strong plurality (47%) favored the former President’s policies to “secure the border and control immigration,” vs. only 34% who trusted Harris on this issue, an astounding 13-point margin. Trump’s high approval on the issue is remarkable because, for the entire four years of his presidency, the media elite savaged his immigration policies as “cruel,” “evil,” “inhumane,” “torture,” “profoundly racist” and akin to the policies of Nazi Germany. “Children are being marched away to showers, just like the Nazis said,” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough wildly charged back in 2018. “The Statue of Liberty, I think, is weeping right now,” fretted CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King that same year.   Liberal journalists hammered this theme throughout Trump’s presidency, yet it seems the Biden administration’s abject incompetence on the issue turned out to be more persuasive than years of media rhetoric. Here are 25 quotes showing how the media have deplored President Trump’s immigration policies, all from the NewsBusters’ archives: ■ “From the birther campaign to the talk of Mexican rapists, Trump has always trafficked in fear-mongering. This time, to stoke those fears and present himself as the country’s protector, he chose to punish ordinary men, women and children who are fleeing terrorism and violence, who are willing to brave the odds, bear the hardships and separate from family and home, all to try to come to America. These people are the road kill of Trump’s posturing. But something else is being destroyed along with it: The image, reputation and good will of the United States as the beacon of the world. As someone noted over the past few days, Donald Trump seems to want to turn off that lamp on the Statue of Liberty.”— Host Fareed Zakaria on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, January 29, 2017. ■ “We can imagine a future of jackboots crashing through our doors at 2am, trucks in the streets to take people to the internment camps, bright lights and barking dogs — and worse....In its first week, the Trump administration demonstrated its contempt for Mexicans, for Muslims and for Jews. I imagine the true list is longer. Much longer. Should we keep quiet as we watch this? Is this why America was created?...Our long national nightmare may have just begun.”— Former White House correspondent for U.S. News & World Report Roger Simon in his February 1, 2017 Politico column. ■ “Of all the actions Trump has taken, none has been as cruel, thoughtless or divisive as deporting hundreds of thousands of young people who’ve done nothing but go to school, work hard and present themselves to the government. The party of Lincoln has become the party of Charlottesville, Arpaio, DACA repeal and the Muslim ban. Embodying the very worst sentiments and driven by irrational anger, it deserves not defense but extinction.”— Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin in September 4, 2017 online blog post “Ending DACA would be Trump’s most evil act.” ■ “This [ending DACA] is one of the most cruel acts we’ve seen in the presidency in a long time....Increasingly there is a sign out there that’s been hung up in the White House or outside the White House saying, if you’re not white, you’re not especially welcome.”— CNN’s Senior Political Analyst David Gergen on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, September 5, 2017. ■ “What kind of person would send back people who have been working here, who have contributed to this country, who have children here, who will be separated from their children from their communities? What kind of inhumane beast? Are you raised by wolves?”— Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin on MSNBC’s AM Joy, January 14, 2018. ■ “Mr. Trump also used those he invited to send a darker message. In a passage on immigration, he pointed out four relatives of people murdered by undocumented immigrants; he had invited the victims’ families to sit in the box with his wife, Melania. This was showmanship, too, but of a much darker kind, meant to whip up fear against undocumented immigrants by implying that they’re more dangerous than native-born Americans. Study after study shows that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans.”— New York Times movie critic James Poniewozik during a live-blogging session for Trump’s State of the Union speech, February 28, 2018. ■ “Let me be very clear. The addition of a citizenship question [to the Census] is to keep immigrants and their families in the shadows, it is to disenfranchise cities with large immigrant and minority populations and it is to skew congressional redistricting that happens in 2020 to disenfranchise largely Democratic states and cities that have large minority and immigrant populations. That is why there’s a citizenship question.”— CBS News correspondent Alex Wagner on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, April 20, 2018. ■ “We went straight to the facility, the location where kids and their parents were reunited. All I can say after talking to the people, watching the people, listening to the people, the Statue of Liberty, I think, is weeping right now.”— Co-host Gayle King discussing border detention centers for children on CBS This Morning, June 18, 2018. ■ “Children are being marched away to showers, just like the Nazis said they were taking people to the showers, and then they never came back. You’d think they would use another trick.”— Co-host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, June 15, 2018. ■ “Increasingly, Donald Trump is turning this nation into Nazi Germany and turning these [detention centers] into concentration camps.”— CNN political commentator Donald Johnson on CNN Newsroom, June 16, 2018. ■ Host Andrea Mitchell: “You posited that it’s either incompetence or evil. I would suggest that it could be both — that there is an evil desire to deter by making an example of these people, and then it was carried out with no planning — and that is the rank incompetence that makes it even that much worse.”MSNBC Legal Analyst Mimi Rocah: “Absolutely, and you’re right. It shouldn’t be presented as an either, or. It could be both.”— Discussion of Trump administration immigration policy on MSNBC Live, July 10, 2018. ■ NPR’s Latino USA anchor Maria Hinojosa: “It looks like this President really doesn’t care about our lives, whether we’re in cages, whether we’re in freezers in those immigrant detention camps, or whether we are dead in Puerto Rico.”...USA Today columnist Kurt Bardella: “People aren’t stupid. They realize that ultimately this is a racist party, and I don’t know why any single person who isn’t a white person would vote for a Republican right now.”— MSNBC’s AM Joy, September 15, 2018. ■ “S-hole countries, putting kids in cages, investigating and trying to take away people’s immigration rights, revoking people who have been allowed to come here as asylum seekers. This is white nationalism as a policy, and they can try to claim efficiency all they want, but they never demonstrate the numbers.”— The Root’s politics editor and MSNBC political contributor Jason Johnson on MSNBC Live, September 24, 2018. ■ “When he [Donald Trump] invokes this question of immigration and you say it plays with the Republican base, it’s all about a certain conception of whiteness. This man, this moral monster is playing to those base instincts....So it may play politically and if it does it shows that the country is profoundly racist.”— MSNBC contributor and Princeton professor Eddie Glaude on MSNBC Live, October 30, 2018. ■ “If Jesus were today or Trump was back then, he would have been separated from his parents. Joseph and Mary would have been put in a separate detention center — he would have been put in a separate detention center, and he might likely have died in custody like another child did over the holidays.”— SiriusXM radio talk show host Mark Thompson on MSNBC Live with Stephanie Ruhle, January 2, 2019. ■ “Mr. Trump is not the first president to ask for money for a wall. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush built fences and walls along the southern border. Barack Obama maintained the resulting system of roughly 700 miles of physical barriers. So why don’t we want Mr. Trump to build his wall? What is different? The difference is that Mr. Trump’s wall is a symbol of hate and racism.”— Univision anchor Jorge Ramos in a January 9, 2019 New York Times op-ed. ■ “The wall originated as a device to jog the President’s memory, to make sure to remind him to cater to the most xenophobic part of the base of the Republican Party because there is a cluster of people in the Republican Party who catapulted Trump to his win in the primaries who hate and/or fear immigrants and not only that, these are people who define their political life by stemming and stopping the invasion of people who do not look like them....Those people cannot be appeased because what they want is not policy. What they want is an ethnically pure America.”— Host Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s All In, January 10, 2019. ■ “If you refer to immigrants as an infestation as the President has, if you promote bigoted stereotypes about their unique depravity and talk about them as a nefarious band of infiltrators you will promote the conditions for cruelty as surely as affect follows cause. There is a body count to the President’s rhetoric now, and unless something changes, it is going to grow.”— Host Chris Hayes discussing the death of a migrant child, as aired on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, May 22, 2019. ■ “[Donald Trump] is not only criminalizing, but he’s also demonizing and dehumanizing immigrants.”— Univision anchor Maria Elena Salinas on MSNBC Live with Craig Melvin, June 27, 2019. ■ “We did open the door quite a bit with past policies to President Trump having these kids tortured essentially in these incarcerated, you know, states that they have right now....What we have right now is torture....What we have now is, essentially what you stated before, a Guantanamo Bay for children.”— Rolling Stone senior writer Jamil Smith on MSNBC’s AM Joy, June 29, 2019. ■ “You now have a President, as you said, talking about exterminating Latinos.”— Host Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, August 5, 2019. ■ “In the case of separations, you had 5,400 plus kids who are permanently traumatized, tortured systematically by the U.S. government, in the words of Physicians for Human Rights.”— Correspondent Jacob Soboroff on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, July 9, 2020. ■ “[Donald Trump aide] Stephen Miller always encourages Trump’s most aggressive and most violent impulses, which Trump appreciates because every time he listens to a more moderate adviser he gets pummeled and ridiculed by his base as weak, which Trump hates. He wants to be seen as a killer and Stephen Miller shares his instincts for violence. He has his fingers on the pulse of his most violent voting base who want to see these really hostile policies separating children from parents, systematically turning away the most vulnerable, most desperate people at the U.S./Mexico border.”— KPBS San Diego reporter and author Jean Guerrero on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, August 10, 2020. ■ “This is considered torture — taking breast-feeding children from their moms and separating families in this way. And all I could think of when we were preparing for this segment today talking to my producers is whether or not these are considered international crimes, meaning: Should members of this administration come up before The Hague for what they’ve done. Jeff Sessions, the former, you know, DHS head, all of them….and Donald Trump maybe?”— Host Joy Reid on MSNBC’s The ReidOut, October 7, 2020. ■ “We’ve gone from indecency to decency….We’ve gone from what can only be called idolatry and false religion under Trump, this worship of greed and this lust for conquest, one American over another, to really what the religion, the true religion is supposed to be, at least when I grew up in church….We try to love our fellow man, we try to be brothers and sisters, we try to care about the poor, the immigrant, we try to care about those in need. That’s the creed. That is the Christian creed. It’s what it was supposed to be before it was about stealing the children of migrants.”— MSNBC’s The ReidOut host Joy Reid on MSNBC’s live coverage of Joe Biden’s Inauguration, January 20, 2021. For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.                          

Welcome to America, the land of systemic racism, rampant sexism, and unchecked white privilege. This is the propaganda you have been fed for years. I am not happy about it. You're not happy about it. And Michael Huemer is certainly not happy about it.'After you control for crime rates or rates of violence against police officers, the police are less likely to shoot blacks than whites.'In "Progressive Myths," Huemer, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, takes aim at the core beliefs of modern progressive ideology, systematically dismantling them with sharp, uncompromising logic. Huemer isn’t afraid to confront the narratives that have deeply embedded themselves in our cultural and political institutions — narratives that have, for far too long, undermined free thought and intellectual honesty. It's a bold move, especially in a time when facts are often treated as negotiable. Nuance, on the other hand, is now considered a dirty word.Never mind the gapThe academic’s approach is rather simple: Lay out the facts, strip away the emotional overtones, and let the data do the talking. One of the first myths Huemer tackles is the gender pay gap, the idea that women earn less than men for the same work. As Huemer tells Align, “That is false; after you control for obviously relevant variables such as occupation, hours worked, experience, and education, the pay gap disappears.” This is the kind of claim that sends activists into overdrive — because it’s uncomfortable. It challenges the prevailing narrative that American society is an unjust, patriarchal hellscape and that women are perpetual victims of systemic sexism. The gender pay gap, when adjusted for context, doesn’t support the melodramatic cries of inequality. In fact, it reveals a more complex picture — one in which personal decisions and yes, biology (another dirty word), play significant roles in determining salary. Systemic nonsenseThen there’s the issue of police shootings and systemic racism — two other sacred cows Huemer is only too eager to slaughter. Relying on evidence rather than emotional accounts, the philosopher debunks this myth with precision: “After you control for crime rates or rates of violence against police officers, the police are less likely to shoot blacks than whites.” Let that sink in for a minute. “This,” he adds, “has been corroborated with experimental evidence in simulators, which show that police take longer to shoot black suspects than white suspects and make fewer mistakes, when all other factors are held constant.”Progressives often depict a land where every cop is a racist eager to pull the trigger and where black Americans live in constant fear of being shot by police. But the vast majority of police interactions do not end in violence. Yes, racism exists, but the notion that America is a racist dystopia is a gross exaggeration. For instance, 94% of Americans approve of interracial marriage — a statistic that tells a far different story than the one progressives want you to believe. If you listened to the media, you'd think there was a "white supremacist" lurking on every corner, ready to spew racial hatred. But the real America is far more integrated and tolerant than the doomsayers would have you believe.The world is melting!Huemer also zeros in on climate change. Unless you’ve been living under a rock on a distant planet, you’re familiar with the dire warnings — melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and apocalyptic forecasts. As Huemer points out, “Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously claimed the world would end by 2030 if we didn’t address climate change. In 2019, 38% of Americans surveyed believed global warming was likely to literally wipe out the human race.”Huemer is quick to debunk this hysteria, noting, “These exaggerated claims come from political activists, not the scientific community.” Rather, “Their projections of global warming’s impacts are far more measured. For example, it might increase the death rate by a quarter of a percent by mid-century, cost the world 2.5% of GDP by 2100, and cause ocean levels to rise by a couple of feet.” Not great but certainly not the end of the world.Pigeon politicsThe problem, as Huemer sees it, is that people want to believe these myths. They feel right. These people crave ideological certainty, even if it’s built on shaky foundations (or no foundations at all). And that’s where the real danger lies. When people are emotionally invested in a narrative, objective findings become irrelevant. They’ll latch onto any assertion, no matter how dubious, if it supports their worldview. Media companies and activists are all too happy to provide the material, knowing full well that proof cannot compete with panic.In the end, Huemer’s book is not just a critique of progressive myths; it's also a plea for intellectual integrity. His willingness to confront uncomfortable truths in an age of comforting lies is both refreshing and, frankly, brave. It’s no wonder he expects some backlash. “I assume I will receive some hate mail and some personal attacks on the internet,” Huemer quips with the nonchalance of a man who’s well aware that rational debate has become a rarity in our polarized age. He’s wise to ignore the haters. Arguing with unreasonable people, as Huemer knows, is a lot like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, it’ll just knock over the pieces, defecate on the board, and strut around as if it's won.

This last week, after a furious morning of teaching back-to-back classes, I plopped my tired body into my office chair and began eating my lunch. With these few minutes between responsibilities, I opened my computer to check the news as I ate my food. Before the first bite was swallowed, my screen was flooded with a predictable flood of stories that entirely captured my already-exhausted attention: A famous musician had been arrested for sexual abuse, another war was looking to break out in a distant land, another politician had been caught lying, and another church leader had fallen. Soon, these tidbits of devastation consumed me as I nearly forgot the lunch before me. This world of knowledge was displacing me from being present to where I was — and needed to be. Knowledge is a gift from God. However, knowledge and information are not the same thing. In the information age of our moment, something often gets ignored by the content that consumes our lives. While we can all celebrate the gifts of living in an information age, we can also acknowledge its pitfalls and deceptions. One of these, I believe, is that there is a form of knowledge that displaces us from being present to God and each other. This knowledge is the kind of knowledge that is not used to love, serve, or help others. Rather, it is knowledge that is known for sheer distraction and novelty. This is the knowledge of good and evil.God’s command not to eat from the 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' implies they did not know evil. But after disobeying God’s good command, they gain a new knowledge that would be their ruin. A little backstory: Humans were created in a state of sinless innocence. In the beginning, they knew only the good — what God had said to them. Trusting, obeying, and relying on God’s word, they were attached to God as babies are to their parents, living in a sacred Edenic environment, initially free of deception, betrayal, or sin. This original state reflected the nature of the God who created it. A good God creates only good things, and the biblical witness consistently describes God as a creator of perfect works (2 Samuel 22:31, Matthew 5:48). As Deuteronomy 32:4 says, “He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just.” The first humans, likewise, are portrayed as beings embodying this state of innocence and goodness, existing in a world free of sin, shame, and the repercussions of the curse.As the creation story states, “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (Genesis 2:25). Creation was in mint condition. Solomon’s words underscore this state of being: “God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes” (Ecclesiastes 7:29). The Hebrew word yashar, used here to describe their "uprightness," has a broad range of meanings throughout the Hebrew Bible, including straightness, honesty, uprightness, integrity, and consistency. This language appears to describe not only the humans’ physical condition but also their moral state. Their bodies worked the way they were supposed to. And there was no taint of sin, deceit, deception, or evil within them. Thus, when God instructed the humans to eat freely from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they willingly obeyed, knowing and trusting that what God said was true and reliable (Genesis 2:16-17). This highlights two core features of this state of innocence. First, the state of innocence was freely chosen. Considering that the first words God spoke to humans were “you are free” (Genesis 2:16), it’s evident that their moral uprightness was neither forced nor coerced. They genuinely trusted and believed God’s word. And they genuinely lived in a space where they were given the possibility to stumble. To that end, second, it appears as though God has built into his good world a distinct possibility for self-chosen rebellion. By placing a forbidden tree in the center of Eden, God allowed the humans the opportunity to choose disobedience. Innocence, in this sense, is a state of moral freedom that inherently assumes the possibility of disobedience. God’s acknowledgment of this is evident when the humans do disobey, holding them responsible for their actions: “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” (Genesis 3:11)So, is this a perfect world? The word “perfect” can be somewhat misleading. It’s critical to note that the creation account of Genesis 1-3 never once utilizes the language of perfection to describe creation. Instead, time and again, creation is described as “good” (Hebrew tov) on each successive day. A pattern that repeats itself through day six when everything is declared as tov me'od — or “very good.” Never once is Eden described as “perfect.” Even the passage in Deuteronomy referring to God’s works as “perfect” requires clarification. The Hebrew word tammim does not align with the Western concept of perfection. Rather, it refers to something unscathed, free of blemish, or complete. For many, the idea of perfection implies a world without pain, difficulty, or frustration. A way to think about this is to consider the problem of pain. Was this good world God had made a world free from pain? Ponder this question: Could those first humans, in their state of innocence, have stubbed their toe so badly as to break it? An interesting consideration in this discussion is the human nervous system, which every human has. This intricate network of nerves coordinates nearly every aspect of human movement. When we pick up a glass of water, the nervous system moves our muscles. When we feel thirsty, our nervous system communicates our body’s needs. When we can’t breathe underwater, the nervous system signals pain to our brains that we need to head up for air. A biblical theology of creation reminds us that every part of the human body was designed and purposed by God. If God created humans to live in a place like Eden, supposedly free from pain or injury, why would he give them a nervous system? The nervous system was not an evolved system of nerves after Eden. Humans had a nervous system in this state of innocence.God’s brilliant creation of the nervous system seems to signal that God knew in advance that pain would be a real possibility in this state. In fact, Genesis 3:16 clearly suggests that one consequence of living in a sinful world is that the process of bearing and raising children would become significantly more painful than it would have been without sin. However, this assumes that childbirth in a sinless world would still have been difficult and painful. “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain, you will give birth to children” (Genesis 3:16). This doesn’t seem to be the introduction of pain into Eden. Rather, this indicates an increase in pain for those who will soon be banished from Eden.This is why the word “perfect” may not be the best way to describe Eden. What the Bible means by perfect differs greatly from what a Western reader thinks of as perfect. In a Western world defined by luxury, affluence, and comfort, we often imagine Eden as a place of perfection that more resembles an all-inclusive resort than the creation story depicts. The tree of knowledge of good and evil was, as my friend Gerry Breshears often says, a 'dangerous' tree. It was good. But very, very dangerous.It would be more accurate to say that Eden, in its state of innocence, was “good” — not perfect. To add to this, only one being is described as “perfect” throughout all of scripture: God. Neither humans, creation, the cosmos, nor spiritual beings in their pre-rebellious state are given this designation. Even when humans are compared to God, it is clear they are not like their creator. “Be perfect, therefore,” Jesus says, “as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Jesus knew the situation. God is perfect. Humans are not.Humans were created in a state of sinless innocence. In the beginning, they knew only the good — what God had said to them. When the serpent speaks, he assumes they did not yet know evil (Genesis 3:5). Later, New Testament writings declare that when the humans ate from the tree, they entered into sin at that moment; assuming they were not sinful beforehand (Romans 5:12, 1 Timothy 2:14). Good was all they knew; there was nothing else to know. The creation they experienced was marked by the goodness that only comes from a good, holy, and righteous creator. Everything God made reflected his nature, and that was the human experience. Before the serpent’s deception, the humans were without guile or evil, having known only the good. This changes once they eat from the forbidden tree. God’s command not to eat from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” implies they did not know evil. But after disobeying God’s good command, they gain a new knowledge that would be their ruin.At first, they knew only good. Now, they know good and evil.The one tree that the humans were not to eat from was not a bad tree. No. It was a good tree that God had made. The tree of knowledge of good and evil was, as my friend Gerry Breshears often says, a “dangerous” tree. It was good. But very, very dangerous. The same goes for all knowledge. Knowledge is good. To know is a gift from God. But some knowledge is simply not for us. It may be good to know. But as the tree of knowledge of good and evil teaches us, being good does not mean it is for us. Sometimes, the good thing is out-of-bounds. At this moment, we are being tempted to believe that all knowledge (as did the first humans with the first tree) is to be ours. That we can conquer through knowing. And that everything is for us. But this is killing us. As I ate my lunch, I felt a deep sense of shame and hollowness. Rather than enjoying the ham and pickle sandwich my wife had prepared for me earlier that morning, I enmeshed myself in a world of gossip, news, and punditry that did nothing to form me into being a present person to the Holy Spirit. The news needs to be read. And evil needs to be exposed. But more than ever, I’m beginning to experience that there is a form of knowledge that displaces us from the Eden of the ever-present presence of God. As we learn to navigate this new information age, we would be wise to recognize that our world isn’t all that different from that of the first humans. Distraction is the devil. Part of formation in our world is to re-embrace the godly restraint of recognizing we don’t get to have everything we want. Secularity can only give us a gas pedal. It takes the Spirit to learn to brake. It’s healthy to see that not all knowledge gets to be mine. Some ignorance is a gift — especially the ignorance of evil.Editor's note: This essay was originally published at Dr. A.J. Swoboda's Substack and was republished with permission.