Taking a child, he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”

Mark 9:36-37

Built a gate today. Not bad!

Update: Drone Strike Thought To Have Taken Down ISIS Actually Hit A Chuck E. Cheese In Ohio - The Babylon Bee

The Biden administration has unleashed another devastating strike on ISIS-K, blowing one of their hideouts to smithereens.

A righteous strike!

U.S. Military Acknowledges Kabul Drone Strike Killed 10 Civilians, Including Seven Children - WSJ

The acknowledgment of the botched airstrike also underscored likely limitations of future U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the country. Military officials have insisted that they would be able to monitor, detect and interrupt militant activity despite having no presence on the ground in Afghanistan, but by using an “over the horizon” approach from distant bases. Counterterrorism and intelligence officials have said that information would be less reliable without information from the ground.

General Milley Is Releasing A Revised Version Of ‘The Art Of War’ – And We’ve Got Exclusive Excerpts - The Babylon Bee

“Keep your friends close and your enemies on speed dial.”

Enraged Joel Osteen Flips Over Tables Being Used To Give Bibles Away Instead Of Selling His Book - The Babylon Bee

He said to them, “My house will be called a house of profit, but you are making it a den of prayer!”

Not cool.

He fashioned a whip out of his collectible neckties and drove all from the Lakewood sanctuary and into the gift shop.

General Milley Rides Through Streets Of Beijing Shouting ‘The Americans Are Coming!’ - The Babylon Bee

“Hey look, those Chinese generals are my buddies, they deserve fair warning—I’ve known them for ten years now, and they are always so nice to me. They were super supportive about that whole Afghanistan withdrawal thing—those friendships are more important than some job,” explained General Milley, America’s highest-ranking military officer.

Amazon Is Doing It. So Is Walmart. Why Retail Loves ‘Buy Now, Pay Later.’ - WSJ

“Our goal is financial inclusion for all,” said Julia Unger, Walmart’s vice president of financial services.

No, your goal is higher sales.

Benedict’s creature creation.

Yellen, IRS Push Democrats to Require Banks to Report Taxpayers’ Annual Account Flows - WSJ

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig pressed lawmakers Wednesday to give the Internal Revenue Service more information about taxpayers’ bank accounts, as the Biden administration tries to salvage its struggling tax-compliance proposal.

Let’s just quarter an IRS agent in every home.

The IRS can also get bank account information during audits.

Yes.

Rep. Don Beyer (D., Va.), who likes the bank-reporting idea, said the publication of wealthy people’s tax records by the news organization ProPublica earlier this year also sapped support because of privacy concerns.

You don’t say.

Facebook Tried to Make Its Platform a Healthier Place. It Got Angrier Instead. - WSJ

A proprietary algorithm controls what appears in each user’s News Feed. It takes into account who users are friends with, what kind of groups they have joined, what pages they have liked, which advertisers have paid to target them and what types of stories are popular or driving conversation. (Emphasis added.)

Nice company, the Facebook.

Newsom Orders New Lockdown So French Laundry Will Be Available For Victory Dinner - The Babylon Bee

According to sources, California’s middle-class mail-in ballots are really excited for their mail-in ballot kids to keep wearing masks at school, and for their mail-in ballot wives to be barred from spending money at hair salons, which will now be closed forever.

Record Number Of Americans Converting To Whatever The One Religion Is That Doesn’t Allow Vaccines - The Babylon Bee

President Biden said that his wife is a doctor and she got the injection, no big deal. Plus, Pfizer’s CEO has estimated that the naturally immune getting vaccinated will lead to the additional benefit of him getting this baller yacht he saw in Dubai.

Woman Attending Ultra-Exclusive Gala For The Elite In Expensive Designer Dress Lectures Nation On Inequality - The Babylon Bee

At publishing time, the woman had momentarily considered that maybe she is actually part of the wealthy bourgeoisie and not an oppressed minority, but she quickly brushed the disturbing thought aside.

Labor Shortages Give Low-Pay Workers a Raise. Inflation Eats It Up. - WSJ

Overall consumer prices rose 5.3% in August from a year earlier, a slightly slower pace than in June and July but still near a 13-year high, said the Labor Department. That means that for the lowest-earning tier of workers, “real” wages—pay adjusted for inflation—fell 0.5% in August from a year earlier, according to data from the Atlanta Fed and the Labor Department. That contrasts with 2.1% annual growth in the two years before the pandemic.

5.3% is more than double the target rate. It’s been like this for months. Yet policy makers sit on their hands in their ivory towers and call it “transitory” and Congress muses about another $5T in new spending on top of the $2T in March, on top of the $2T in 2019.

Democrats rush tax bills through Congress - Washington Examiner

Congress spent a year and a half drafting and passing the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The Ways and Means Committee worked for six months on the bill before it went to the floor. Yet, in the next few days, the committee plans to rush another major rewrite of our tax laws through the committee, with no amendments, no debate, and not one public hearing. Members of the committee will be asked to approve this massive bill without a Congressional Budget Office score, and with no analysis of the bill’s impact on inflation, investment, jobs, or economic growth.

Rep. Neal wanted it this way, because the longer proposals are public, the more opposition that builds.

This is no way to legislate, no matter the party, policy, or bill.

The fact that Apple rearranges the cameras on iPhone every year for no other purpose than to signal that you have the latest phone is so telling of how pointless the upgrade is.

Joe Biden’s Presidency Is Incredible—No, Really - WSJ Opinion

Remember that vaccine that Kamala Harris said a year ago she probably wouldn’t take because Donald Trump was responsible for it? Well, now she and her boss say we’ve all got to take it or else the federal government will have us fired from our jobs. This followed a declaration on the vaccine by Mr. Biden, shortly before taking office, that he wouldn’t “demand that it be mandatory.”

Democrats Release Details of Proposed Tax Increase - WSJ

The changes, when combined with the expanded child tax credit available to households with no income, make the income-tax system much more of a tool for redistribution, said Lawrence Zelenak, a law professor at Duke University. “It’s using the income tax to take money from only half the population and using it to distribute money to half the population,” he said.

That’s weird. I thought taxes were for funding collective expenses.

“We are committed to enacting a law that will include meaningful SALT relief that is so essential to our middle-class communities, and we are working daily toward that goal,” they said.

Kind of seems like a state issue, not a federal one.

The Internal Revenue Service would get nearly $80 billion over a decade to beef up enforcement. That matches the administration plan, which would roughly double the size of the tax agency.

Good thing Senate Republicans negotiated this out of that Infrastructure Bill! Looks like everyone was wrong when they said it would just get stuffed in the other… oh, wait.

Local newspapers would get a new payroll tax credit for employing journalists. Labor-union members would get a new deduction for up to $250 in dues, even if they don’t itemize their deductions.

Looks like the lobbyists have been busy!

TransUnion Nears $3.1 Billion Deal for Neustar - WSJ

The Biden administration has also signaled interest in establishing a government-backed consumer-credit firm.

This is the first I’ve heard of this, but we already have 3 major credit reporting firms and a handful of smaller ones. Why do we need government to duplicate this invasive effort? To say nothing of the gigantic cybersecurity risk it would create.

I’m noticing a trend.

2x4 is neither 2 nor 4.

It took twenty years for the date to become meaningless to a lot of people.

• President George W. Bush

Today we commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the attacks of September 11th. Two decades on, the events of that day continue to have profound impacts on our lives as Americans. Sadly, a whole generation has grown up in a post-9/11 world, and today is a story from a textbook as opposed to a lived experience.

The documentary crew gained access to all of the key players from the Bush administration and chronicled their experience on September 11, 2001. President Bush, the Vice President, his Chief of Staff, members of the National Security team, Secret Service agents, members of the White House press corps, and military leaders all sat for interviews. What resulted was a compelling and visceral tick-tock of that fateful day.

Watching, I felt the emotions from 9/11 come back. Although I was in middle school, I was in a military family stationed nearby. My dad went off to war, again, as a result of 9/11. It was incredible how the sounds and images of that day are so ingrained in me.

The human toll is hard to fathom. Not only did nearly 3,000 people lose their lives, but so many more died slow deaths over the twenty years that followed as a result of their rescue work in the days that followed.

There is no doubt this was a difficult documentary to watch. It was even more painful watching it in the shadow of the disastrous surrender in Afghanistan. It was very well done and I hope that it will help those too young to remember and those not born yet just why September 11th is such an important day in our nation’s history.

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