Woody takes on screens?
I wasn’t expecting much from Toy Story #5, but with Woody and the crew taking on tech, I’m looking forward to this…
3 dodges that can derail any discussion
Apologist Greg Koukl on the how skeptics will use “the ad hominem fallacy, the genetic fallacy, and the straw man fallacy” to avoid having honest discussions. And he shows how to get discussions back on track.
US vice president thinks aliens are demons
J.D. Vance took that position based on his Judeo-Christian worldview. Creationist Gary Bates agrees.
The Netherlands House of representatives just passed legislation that would tax unrealized capital gains at 36 percent. That means, if your retirement stock portfolio grew from $50,000 to $150,000 this year, you would have to pay government $36,000 on that $100,000 increase in value. One big problem? You don’t actually have any of that money yet – it’s still invested in your stocks. So, as this article shares, a “person would either have to sell the stocks, dig into their savings, or take out a loan to pay the government.” And, as anyone who has stocks knows, that $100,000 increase could take a sudden drop at any time too.
So what does such a tax encourage? To steer clear of investing, where the losses will still hurt, and your gains will be taxed before you’ve even realized them.
If you think a tax on unrealized gains could never happen in Canada, consider the similarity behind our property taxes. As I spotted on the ‘Net, from a fellow named Ron Rule:
“Imagine if income taxes were based not on how much you made, but how much your town decided you could have made. That’s basically how property tax works. The assessor decides what your house is worth, then taxes you as if you paid that price.”
Property values in places like Hamilton and Toronto have doubled in a decade, which means that people who bought homes before the market went crazy are now getting taxed on gains they won’t “realize” until they sell their house. And if they bought a $500,000 home in 2015, and are now paying taxes on a house worth $1 million, the taxes may well force them to sell – their assessed increases, never actually seen in their bank account, might just drive them out of their home.
A biblical case for border security
US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wrote this back before Donald Trump became president again. There is a certain sense in which I would suspect all readers would be united about border security. We lock our house doors, as Franklin Graham put it, not because we hate those outside, but because we love those inside. So we’d all be united in wanting to keep the drug and sex traffickers and other criminals out.
But what of those who have no nefarious intent, and are simply looking for a better home? The practical observation in that case is, we can only start to consider those situations once the border is secure, so we can then sift the latter from the former. I wonder if Mike Johnson would support sponsorship programs, so that the individuals he speaks of, perhaps working through their churches, could act in rescuing some?
Pierre Poilievre tells Joe Rogan he supports letting doctors kill their patients
Last month Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre made an appearance on the most popular podcast in the world. Federally, his party has been leading the opposition against euthanasia for the mentally ill, and we can be thankful for that. But, in an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, he told Rogan that he actually supports giving people the choice to murder themselves.
That’s a problem, and for the mentally ill too, because if euthanasia is a right and is good medicine for some, then how can you deny this treatment for others when it could instantly alleviate their affliction? If it is mercy to kill some sufferers, why isn’t it mercy to kill other sufferers too? What fixed standard can Poilievre (or Joe Rogan) appeal to that would permit death to be used to “help” the physically ill, but not the mentally ill? What immovable line can you draw once you’ve decided killing is caring?
The lady below is coming out hard against Poilievre, and makes a very compelling practical argument against every form of euthanasia, highlighting the many enormous abuses underway in Canada’s euthanasia culture. But the problem with her practical argument is that it invites a practical solution. Have better laws. Spend more on palliative care. Making the waiting time longer, etc.
But no practical solution will safeguard life so long as a culture doesn’t value life. And we will only value life when we no longer thing its value comes from us, or from others, or from what we can do or experience. It is only when a culture looks upward and understands that life – our own life – is not ours to dispose of as we wish, but is entrusted to us by God above, that it can draw a fixed line: Do not kill (Ex. 20:13).
(This woman, Kelsi Sheren, takes God’s name in vain several times, and drops an f-bomb or two, but I’m sharing the video anyway, because she presents here, in 20 minutes what you may not have heard in months of the mainstream media’s euthanasia coverage.)
