These Loony Leftist Marxist folk hate with a passion conservative Bible believing Christians and conservative non-believers. If you do not walk in step with their views you are on their hit list. Yes, a hit list! ‘The founder of Extinction Rebellion wants to put a bullet in the brains of business owners and politicians.
Today, I’ll play some secretly-recorded audio of Extinction Rebellion’s co-founder Roger Hallam obtained by Guido Fawkes, saying that his followers should “put a bullet in [the] head” of those responsible for harming the environment.
Extinction Rebellion made itself famous in London in 2019 where over 1,100 arrests were made over the course of eleven days. BBC News reported that the ongoing protests ran a police tab of $12.9 million. The group blocked the subway and tried to grind the city to a standstill.
If Hallam were a conservative, his organization, and the descendants of those in his organization would be canceled for many generations.
Twitter, Google and You Tube social media giants are so far Left and Loony there is probably no hope of ever salvaging them. Here’s Tony Haller explaining.
The Australian state of New South Wales is the home of Sydney, Australia. The present state government is supposedly a conservative one but the facts seem to prove otherwise. This government has swallowed the Climate Scam poison hook line and sinker! This government is pouring millions into non-reliable renewables such as solar and wind. Nuclear is completely off the table if the Premier has anything to do with it. HOWEVER, when one thought Victoria was the most left leaning state there was then New South sales steps up for the trophy. The NSW Treasury has forgotten what it is supposed to be about and has taken on the role of being ‘diverse’.
Download https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-07/p2019-398635.pdf. Type in hetrosexual and see what comes up! Then type in lesbian. Type in rights and right and read what comes up. Type in other words and read what comes up. This government department has lost its focus.
This NSW government has gone mad and wild. Where are those who are not following the leftist loony path to destruction?
I send these to my Federal and state member here in Australia trusting they will read them and perhaps change their mind of these tax dollar wasting renewables. These members of Federal and state Parliament claim the title ‘conservative’ but have swallowed the Climate Scam poisonous lie along with most of their collogues. ‘In a post Covid world, anyone railing about carbon dioxide gas and not promoting nuclear power sounds positively unhinged.
If CO2 really was about to destroy the planet, Extinction Rebellion, Greta and her worshippers would be talking about switching to nuclear power like their lives depended on it.
Instead, for reasons that escape the logical and rational, we’re told that the only way forward is backwards: ie a life dependent upon the time of day and the weather.
Climate alarmists railing about carbon dioxide gas and not talking about nuclear power generation, can’t be taken seriously. Nuclear power is the only stand-alone power generation source that does not emit carbon dioxide gas during the process.
Whatever your views on climate change, the idea that trying to run modern, civil societies on sunshine and breezes might somehow prevent it is, of course, a complete nonsense.
Norman Rogers details the grotesque hypocrisy of those attempting to force us all to run on sunshine and breezes.
Nuclear to Replace Wind and Solar American Thinker Norman Rogers 13 August 2020
In the words of James Hansen, the scientist most responsible for promoting global warming, wind and solar are “grotesque” solutions for reducing CO2 emissions. Michael Shellenberger, a prominent activist, has the same opinion. Hansen and Shellenberger, as well as many other global warming activists, have come to the conclusion that nuclear energy is the only viable method of reducing CO2 emissions from the generation of electricity.
Nuclear reactors don’t emit CO2. Coal and natural gas do. Hydroelectric electricity does not emit CO2 either, but opportunities for expansion are limited. In the United States most of the good sites have already been developed.
Wind and solar are grotesque because there are many problems. Promoters of wind and solar simply lie about the problems. Reducing emissions of CO2 by one metric tonne, 1000 kilograms or 2204 pounds, is called a carbon offset. Carbon offsets are bought and sold, usually for less than $10 each.
If you build wind or solar plants to displace electricity from natural gas or coal plants, you will generate carbon offsets. Each carbon offset generated will cost about $60 if electricity from a coal plant is displaced. If electricity from a natural gas plant is displaced the cost per carbon offset will be about $160. Wind and solar are expensive methods of generating carbon offsets.
Wind and solar are not remotely competitive with coal or natural gas for generating electricity. The promoters of wind and solar lie about this constantly, claiming that they are close to competitive. The lies have two major components. They ignore or misrepresent the massive subsidies that wind and solar get, amounting to 75% of the cost. Then they compare the subsidized cost of wind or solar with the total cost of gas or coal. But wind or solar can’t replace existing fossil fuel infrastructure because they are erratic sources of electricity.
The existing infrastructure has to be retained when you add wind or solar, because sometimes the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. The only fair comparison to the compare to total cost of wind or solar per kilowatt hour (kWh) with the marginal cost of gas or coal electricity. That marginal cost is essentially the cost of the fuel.
The only economic benefit of wind or solar is reducing fuel consumption in existing fossil fuel plants. It is hard to build wind or solar installations that generate electricity for less than 8-cents per kWh, but the cost of the fuel, for either gas or coal, is about 2-cents per kWh. Wind and solar cost four times too much to be competitive.
Wind and solar run into difficulty if they are the source of more than about 25% of the electricity in a grid. Getting to 50% generally involves adding expensive batteries, further destroying the economics and the usefulness for CO2 reduction.
The only justification for wind and solar is the reduction of CO2 emissions, but wind and soar are limited and costly for this purpose. CO2-free nuclear energy can be both economical and practical. That, clearly is the reason why prominent global warming activists are advocating nuclear, rather than wind and solar to alleviate the supposed global warming crisis.
Neither nuclear nor coal is currently cost competitive with natural gas. It’s not that nuclear or coal are so expensive as it is that natural gas, thanks to fracking, is incredibly cheap. Gas that cost more than $10 per MMBtu (million British thermal units) a decade ago, now costs less than $2. Gas-generating plants are very cheap to build and incredibly efficient. A gas plant using a combination of a gas turbine and a steam turbine can turn 65% of the energy in the gas into electricity. By contrast a coal plant struggles to reach 40%.
Both coal and nuclear are handicapped by well-organized and unprincipled political opposition from the Sierra Club and similar organizations. The Sierra Club hates natural gas too, but most of their efforts go into scaring people with the imaginary danger of coal. The Sierra Club doesn’t need to expend much effort scaring people with nuclear because the nuclear industry has already been destroyed in the U.S. thanks to previous efforts of the environmental movement.
Coal and nuclear have one very important advantage over gas. They have fuel on site to continue operating if fuel deliveries are interrupted. For coal this is around 30 days, for nuclear more than a year. Some gas plants can temporarily use oil from local tanks, but in most cases that won’t last long. Gas deliveries can be interrupted by pipeline failure or sabotage. The pumping stations on natural gas pipelines are increasingly powered by electricity, rather than gas, creating a circular firing squad effect.
Nuclear electricity is a young industry with a big future. That future is materializing in Asia given the successful propaganda campaign to make people afraid of nuclear in the U.S. and in much of Europe. Nuclear fuel is extremely cheap, around four times cheaper than gas or coal.
Nuclear reactors don’t have smokestacks and they don’t emit CO2. New designs will dramatically lower costs, increase safety and effectively remove most of the objections to nuclear. It is an incredible contradiction that most environmental organizations advocate wind and solar and demonize nuclear. In the future nuclear may be cost competitive with natural gas.
It is an intellectual and economic failure that the 30 U.S. states with policies designed to reduce CO2 emissions, called renewable portfolio standards, mostly explicitly exclude nuclear power as part of the plan. Instead they effectively mandate wind and solar. There are signs of reform as some states have provided support to prevent nuclear power stations from being closed.
The global warming hysteria movement is surely one of the most successful junk science campaigns ever launched. Predicting a catastrophe is a great way for a science establishment to gain fame and money. The many responsible scientists that object are attacked, if not fired. Money trumps ethics every time. The environmental movement needs looming catastrophes too, so they act as PR men for the science establishment.
The tragedy is that our legislators swallow these lies and waste billions on boondoggles like wind and solar. It is ironic that increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere has a bountiful effect on plant growth, greening the Earth and increasing agricultural production. Rather than a threat, CO2 is a boon.
Even if Donald Trump gets reelected things will not get any better in the USA. Why? Because, the God of the Bible and His Word have not only been banned in government schools and universities but supposedly many calling themselves ‘evangelicals’ don’t even believe God’s Word. The reality of this disbelief is seen in the recent disgusting devilish deceitful lifestyle of ‘evangelical’ Jerry Falwell Jr. Nevertheless, ‘Every four years, there is a tremendous amount of discussion about “evangelical voters” and the influence that they will have on the outcome of the presidential election. Most of the pundits on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News speak of evangelicals as if they were this monolithic group that all generally vote the same way and generally believe the same basic things. Perhaps that was somewhat true at one time, but now things have dramatically changed. As you will see below, surveys have found that large numbers of evangelicals are abandoning core evangelical beliefs at a rate that is staggering. In fact, it has gotten to a point where I am not even sure what an “evangelical Christian” is anymore. I figured that a good place to look for a definition of “evangelical Christian” in 2020 would be on the official website of the organization that is supposed to be representing us on a national level. According to the National Association Of Evangelicals, there are certain distinct beliefs that set evangelical Christians apart from the rest of the population… Evangelicals take the Bible seriously and believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The term “evangelical” comes from the Greek word euangelion, meaning “the good news” or the “gospel.” Thus, the evangelical faith focuses on the “good news” of salvation brought to sinners by Jesus Christ. That definition seems quite soft to me, but let’s run with it. Evangelicals are supposed to believe that Jesus is Lord, but it appears that nearly a third of them do not really understand what that means. According to one recent survey, a whopping 30 percent of all evangelicals believe that “Jesus isn’t God”… More than half of American adults, including 30% of evangelicals, say Jesus isn’t God but most agree He was a great teacher, according to results from the 2020 State of Theology survey. Even though the Bible and traditional teachings of the Christian Church hold that Jesus truly existed as both man and God, among the key findings of the biennial State of Theology survey from Ligonier Ministries conducted with LifeWay Research, is that 52% of American adults believe that Jesus was a great teacher and nothing more. I don’t understand how this could possibly be happening. Either evangelical churches are doing an exceedingly poor job of teaching basic theology, or evangelicals are rejecting that teaching in staggering numbers. Let’s take a look at another issue. According to a survey that was conducted last year, 61 percent of evangelical Christians want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade… In a 2019 survey, most Americans (70%) said they oppose overturning Roe v. Wade. But several states have enacted laws designed to challenge the ruling in recent years, including bills passed in seven states (among them Louisiana) that seek to ban almost all abortions. White evangelical Protestants (61%) are much more likely to say they want the high court to completely overturn Roe v. Wade than are Catholics (28%), white Protestants who are not evangelical (26%) and religious “nones” (10%). It is great that evangelicals are more likely than any other group to want Roe v. Wade overturned, but why isn’t the number for evangelicals 100 percent? According to the survey, 35 percent of evangelicals actually want the Supreme Court to keep Roe v. Wade in place. But those two things should be mutually exclusive. If you are an evangelical Christian, it should be impossible for you to support Roe v. Wade. How in the world could more than a third of all evangelicals want to keep abortion legal? And when it comes to gay marriage, we see numbers that are even more alarming. The following comes from an article that was authored by Jim Denison… Two reports caught my eye this week. One: In 2007, 90 percent of evangelicals said their church forbid (63 percent) or strongly discouraged (27 percent) “homosexual behaviors.” In 2020, that figure has dropped to 65 percent (33.7 percent forbid, while 31.4 percent strongly discourage). Two: In 2008, 34.4 percent of evangelicals between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five supported same-sex marriage. In 2018, that figure had risen to 56.1 percent. How are these numbers possible? In the old days, it was well understood that “evangelical Christians” were against abortion and gay marriage. But now a new generation of “evangelical Christians” has come along that is changing all of the old definitions. Like I said, I am not sure that I can even define what an “evangelical Christian” is anymore. At this point, a lot of “evangelical Christian” young people don’t even like using words that directly relate to evangelism… For example, 35% of young adults and 38% of teens said the word “convert” tops the list of objectionable mission-related words for them. And 31% of young adults and 30% of teens also rejected the term “winning souls.” If you don’t believe in “converting” people or “winning souls”, how in the world can you even call yourself an “evangelical”? I simply don’t understand. Sadly, this is yet more evidence of the rapid decline of the Christian faith in much of the industrialized world. According to researcher Ronald F. Inglehart, this decline has really picked up speed since 2007… But since 2007, things have changed with surprising speed. From about 2007 to 2019, the overwhelming majority of the countries we studied–43 out of 49–became less religious. The decline in belief was not confined to high-income countries and appeared across most of the world. Growing numbers of people no longer find religion a necessary source of support and meaning in their lives. Even the United States–long cited as proof that an economically advanced society can be strongly religious–has now joined other wealthy countries in moving away from religion. And the decline in the United States has been particularly noticeable. According to Inglehart, since 2007 the U.S. has moved away from religion faster than any other country… From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the world’s more religious countries, with religiosity levels changing very little. Since then, the United States has shown the largest move away from religion of any country for which we have data. Near the end of the initial period studied, Americans’ mean rating of the importance of God in their lives was 8.2 on a ten-point scale. In the most recent U.S. survey, from 2017, the figure had dropped to 4.6, an astonishingly sharp decline. In a recent interview with Dr. Steve Greene, I discussed the fact that God has been trying to call this nation back to himself for a very long time, but we have been racing the other direction. The numbers that I have just shared with you are evidence that we desperately need revival, and that is what we should be praying for. Because the only hope for America is a return to God, and right now that is definitely not happening.’https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=4264
Politicians will have a LOT to answer for in ten years time when it comes to daily energy via the electric grid. Of course by then they will be in retirement and still living off the tax dollar. However, I digress, here in Australia the two major political parties MUST be in bed with someone who has shares in wind turbines and solar panels. The Federal and state governments are pouring billions into these holes. In Queensland there is one brave journalist who has forced the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) ‘…to face truth about curtailment capers with the grid Catallaxy Files Cardimona 26 August 2020
If you’re a wage slave at a left-wing newspaper (BIRM) you probably, literally, can’t afford to rock the boat, so I dips me lid to Tony Raggatt at the Townsville Bulletin. Well done, that man.
From today’s print edition…
POWER CUT SYSTEM FAULT TONY RAGGATT Ergon denies load shedding
A SYSTEM fault led to a lowcost electricity tariff supplying power throughout regional Queensland being inadvertently switched off, distributor and retailer Ergon Energy says.
Ergon was commenting after consumers raised concern about the outage, which lasted for about eight hours on Sunday.
The residential Tariff 33 is an interruptible supply used by consumers to cut the cost of their electricity bills but which is normally available for a minimum of 18 hours each day.
It is commonly used for pool pumps, hot water systems and air conditioners.
On Sunday, consumers complained in Facebook posts about not being able to use their air conditioners at a time when the air was thick with smoke from fires.
Some also questioned whether authorities were load shedding – cutting power to protect system security or mitigate damage to infrastructure.
But a spokeswoman for Ergon said the cutting of Tariff 33 was a system fault and not load shedding.
“For customers connected to Tariff 33 in regional Queensland, a system fault led to the tariff being inadvertently switched off for a number of hours,” an Ergon spokeswoman said.
“Tariff 33 channels were progressively restored throughout the day, with all channels returned to normal by 3.30pm.”
The spokeswoman said technical experts were investigating the cause of the fault, which had not occurred before.
Consumers on Facebook said the failure seemed odd at a time when demand on the system was low.
An independent candidate for the state seat of Hill, Tolga resident Peter Campion, said generation records showed the outputs of the Mount Emerald wind farm and the Sun Metals solar farm in North Queensland had been curtailed this month well below capacity.
Mr Campion said the reason for this was that one of the units of Rockhampton’s Stanwell coal-fired power station was offline and the level of intermittent power needed to be cut to maintain system stability.
A spokeswoman for regulator the Australian Energy Market Operator confirmed the reliance on coal-fired power but not Stanwell’s role.
“In order for inverter-based generation to be able to generate at full capacity in central and North Queensland – wind and solar farms including Sun Metals solar farm – a minimum amount synchronous generation – typically coal, hydro and gas power stations – must be online,” the spokeswoman said. [well that is something, they got to mention to the c word].
“The limits for inverter based generation depend on the specific combination of synchronous generators online at the time.”
Politicians are usually voted in to help a nation NOT to destroy it! However, many of the climate scammers have lied about their true colors and have been elected to office. That’s why it is no surprise that ‘Australia’s blackout capital, South Australia is what happens when hubris and ideology trumps sound engineering.
Notwithstanding that costly debacle, there are still plenty of rent seekers with the audacity to suggest that we’re just a heartbeat away from an all wind and sun powered future.
As David Bidstrup details below, those claims simply don’t add up.
The quest for complexity Catallaxy Files David Bidstrup 26 August 2020
Today’s local paper had an “opinion piece” about the pursuit of the chimera, (a thing which is hoped for but is illusory or impossible to achieve), of “carbon free electricity” entitled “Time to face electricity grid challenges”.
The author is Finn Peacock, CEO and Founder of Solarquotes, an organisation that promotes solar systems for domestic consumers.
After a bit of “Covid 19” tripe like “It is heartening to see Aussies steadfastly applying social distancing. This long-term thinking and trust in our medical officers will help us get through the pandemic with as little death and misery as possible-despite the short term inconvenience and cost”, (Tell that to the citizens of the DPRV), he proceeds to lay out a plan to reduce the “emissions” from electricity generation from 700 grams to 30 grams of CO2 per kWh.
He says “To get there we have to build vast amounts of wind and solar plus add an astonishing 20 GW of storage”. Clearly he has a problem as storage needs to be quoted in GWh. We need to know how long the storage will last when “fully charged”. Typical batteries that exist or are proposed in good old SA are rated at 100 MWh, (0.1 GWh), and cost around $100 million each or $1 million/MWh.
He talks about the recently released AEMO 20 year “plan” saying “many are claiming it is evidence that moving to 100% renewables will be easy, cheap and low risk. Others claim such a high penetration of renewables is delusional, expensive and impossible”.
Some time ago I analysed the 2018 generation data made available by Andrew Miskelly of Aneroid Energy. He collects it straight from the AEMO data and it is recorded in 5 minute increments for every generator.
The total consumption for 2018 was just under 197 GWh and “Reliable” generators produced 84%. Hydro produced 8%, wind 7% and solar 1%.
If the “polluting fossil fuel devil machines” are removed from the equation the annual deficit is 165 GWh. In order to make up this deficit with wind and solar only, (no one will be building hydro because the greenies will stop them), their installed capacity needs to be increased nearly eleven fold. This would raise the installed capacity of wind to around 64GW from 6 and a bit and solar to 27 GW from 2 and a bit.
This is only part of the story though. Demand drives the system and generation must meet demand constantly and within tight parameters of voltage and frequency. The temptation to look at “annualised” figures misses the times when demand is low but generation capacity is high, like times when the wind blows at night but no one wants much electricity. The answer is that this ”excess electricity” will be stored and used when the wind falls over or solar systems go to sleep at night.
The challenge that these folks need to meet is to look at a full year in detail and show how they would manage to meet demand at all times and quantify what would be needed to do it. I suspect that it is an impossible task, at the best it would be prohibitively expensive and there would be times when generation capacity would be over supplied and idle. There would be other times when nature conspires against it and there is a shortfall and a system failure. Their analysis should include the quantity of “storage” and allow for the losses in charge/discharge cycles, battery life, solar panel life and wind turbine life.
The man writing the article has boundless optimism:
“Things will go wrong. A grid without baseload is possible. But don’t believe the commentators who say it will be easy, we’ll be learning as we go. Yes there may be blackouts if things go wrong but the lights will come back on and we’ll learn from every outage until the new grid is as reliable as today’s grid”.
I am/was an engineer and one of the basic principles was to seek simplicity whenever possible. Complexity costs time and money and increases the chances of a cock-up exponentially. We need to remember that the best, simplest and most reliable means of meeting electricity needs has been trashed because some people think “emissions” will fry us all. It matters not that there is no proof of this and that the whole edifice is built on nonsense and sophistry. In a sane world we would have reliable thermal generation that is matched to the demand and that performs all the functions needed for a stable energy grid, just like we had until the idiots took over.’https://stopthesethings.com/2020/09/03/keep-it-simple-stupid-why-no-country-will-ever-be-powered-by-wind-solar-power-alone/
How did Hitler get away with killing millions of innocent people? Ask Victoria’s Premier Dan Andrews! ‘Australian law enforcers have arrested an expectant mother for allegedly planning a protest against the Covid-19 lockdown in the state of Victoria, drawing ire and accusations of thought policing online.
The Victoria Police descended on the woman’s house earlier in the day, presenting a search warrant and accusing her of “incitement” – ostensibly by making a Facebook post calling for a socially distanced rally against the quarantine measures across the state.
Videos of the 28-year-old – dressed in pajamas and visibly caught off-guard by the police intrusion – were widely shared on social media, showing her flanked and confronted by officers. One of them claims she broke the law “in relation to a Facebook post [and] in relation to the anti-lockdown protest,” while another puts the irons on her.
“In front of my children!” she counters, adding, “I’m happy to delete the post, this is ridiculous.” The woman also pleads with the officer to let her undergo a scheduled ultrasound scan, but those words appear to fall on deaf ears.
Those viewing and sharing the video seemed to be astonished at the reason for the 28-year-old’s arrest. Some enraged online commentators went as far as to call it “full-blown fascism in Australia,” while others referred to Orwellian narratives.
“Free speech is dead in Australia,” one proclaimed, calling officers a “thought police unit.”
As the day progressed, local media suggested the woman was organizing a “Freedom Day” protest rally on Facebook, scheduled to take place on Saturday. Now, she will have to stand trial at the Ballarat Magistrates’ Court in January next year.
Meanwhile, a controversial Liberal Party backbencher Craig Kelly, who staunchly opposes the lockdown, shared the video, saying it was “what you’d expect to see in Nazi Germany.”
The story comes as anti-lockdown sentiment, in response to the restrictions being heavy-handedly enforced across Melbourne and Victoria, is gaining traction. This weekend, a sizable cohort of protesters defied social distancing and mask-wearing rules. At one point, the gatherings descended into chaos and clashes with police, who made dozens of arrests.
Victoria’s lockdown measures involve a nighttime curfew, enforced by police. During the day, residents are only allowed to go outside for limited shopping, exercise, working, or seeing a doctor.
The state government of the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) is supposedly on the conservative side of politics. Sadly, this NOT exactly true as this government in many ways is not much different from those on the left of politics. When it comes to the Ponzi Scam of climate change this state government has swallowed the lie hook line and sinker. These politicians who spend other people’s money have a Plan for you! The Ponzi Scheme is the Net Zero Plan Stage 1: 2020-2030 and ‘…is the foundation for NSW’s action on climate change and goal to reach net zero emissions by 2050. It outlines the NSW Government’s plan to grow the economy, create jobs and reduce emissions over the next decade.
The plan aims to enhance the prosperity and quality of life of the people of NSW, while helping the state to deliver a 35% cut in emissions by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. The plan will support a range of initiatives targeting electricity and energy efficiency, electric vehicles, hydrogen, primary industries, coal innovation, organic waste and carbon financing.
Under the plan, businesses will be supported to modernise their plant and increase productivity, while farmers will have access to new markets and technologies. The plan will also help to drive down the cost of living and provide consumers with more information to help them make more environmentally and financially sustainable choices.
Isn’t it sad when a professing Christian’s life arrives to the place where rumor and fact become indistinguishable. So it is with Jerry Falwell Jr. Here are THREE ARTICLES from secular sources on Falwell Jr. The first article is from a little over two years ago, the second from almost three years ago and the third is a very recent article. Falwell Jr. and Liberty University have a lot to answer for. This is the Good Ole Boys Club at work and Me thinks, most of it is fact.
From Rolling Stone we read ‘Falwell, 57, is the president of Lynchburg, Virginia’s Liberty University, one of the nation’s most prominent Christian colleges. More importantly, he’s President Trump’s principal liaison to evangelicals, the political involvement of which was fashioned largely by Falwell’s televangelist father, Reverend Jerry Falwell, Sr., who co-founded the Moral Majority movement in the ’80s. Falwell is not a pastor himself, but he’s taken on an overlarge role in the evangelical community after building Liberty University into a national powerhouse of Christian education.
Falwell’s profile has grown since he cozied up to Trump, who, according to Falwell, offered to install Falwell in his Cabinet as secretary of education, an offer he says he turned down. He has defended Trump unconditionally since publicly registering his support in the form an endorsement in January 2016, just before the Iowa caucuses. The endorsement was surprising not only because Trump embodied everything evangelicals detest, but because Falwell allegedly had already agreed to endorse Ted Cruz, to the point that Cruz’s campaign had written up a press release to announce the news, according to the Times. When Cruz’s campaign asked Falwell to make his support official, Falwell said he was not permitted to endorse primary candidates. Shortly thereafter, he endorsed Trump. “Clearly, something changed that led him to endorse Trump, and I would like to know what that was,’’ then-Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler told the Herald.
So what’s this about a “pool boy”?
In 2012, Falwell and his wife Becki visited the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. While there, they befriended a 21-year-old pool attendant named Giancarlo Granda. Granda soon began traveling with the Falwells, both to their home of Virginia to hike and water ski, according to the Times, and to the Cheeca Lodge in the Florida Keys, according to the Herald. The latter paper published photos of the trip to the Keys, with Granda smiling next to Falwell, the two looking like father and son. Just months after the friendship commenced, the Falwells offered to help Granda, who had practically no business experience, set up a venture in Miami. After consulting with his friend Jesus Fernandez Jr. and Fernandez’s father, they agreed to open a hostel. Falwell ponied up $1.8 million.
Why did Falwell (who was nearly 50 at the time) and his wife invite a 21-year-old hotel pool boy to travel with them on multiple occasions, and then put up seven figures for him to open up a hostel in Miami Beach that Politico described as a “cesspool of vice”?
Uhhhhh…
What about the salacious photos?
The relationship between the Fernandez family and the Falwells and Granda eventually went sour, and the Fernandezes sued, claiming they were being muscled out of a deal in which they were promised a controlling stake. The lawsuit, and many of the details of the Falwells’ relationship with Granda, were not know until Buzzfeed News reported on it in May 2018. Though it was not included in the lawsuit or Buzzfeed’s report, multiple compromising photos of the Falwells became a central element of the legal battle, according to the Times, which spoke to several people involved in the case.
Falwell has denied the existence of the photos — or at least that they’re of him — but the Herald reviewed three of them, which show Falwell’s “wife in various stages of undress.” When they were taken or by whom is not known, but, according to the Herald, two of them appear to have been taken at the Falwells’ farm in Virginia, and one at the Cheeca Lodge.
THEN THERE IS THIS ARTICLE by a graduate of Liberty who is also a homosexual. ‘”It’s actually that one,” our Uber driver said, pointing with one hand and shifting into reverse with the other. “Right here?” I asked, thinking he must have gotten the address wrong. All I saw was a liquor store.
“That’s it,” he said, crawling to a stop. Miami Hostel, 810 Alton Road, a dilapidated boarding house quietly hidden behind non-descript storefronts.
The trunk opened, and as my partner, Andy, pulled out our luggage, I took a deep breath and surveyed my temporary home away from home. This building in front of me, nestled quietly in a relatively rundownstretch of South Beach, contained three different businesses: an Italianrestaurant, a liquor store and a hostel.
As the Uber pulled away, Andy stood, slowly shaking his head. What had I gotten him into? “It’s probably not as terrible as it looks,” I told him. “Let’s go.”
The first thing I noticed was the almost eye-level gray gate with an odd, oval sign declaring that the hostel was—for lack of a better term—a safe space.
NO
SOLICITING
FUNDRAISING
POLITICS
SALESMEN
RELIGION
The “no religion” sign on the hostel’s front gate. | Brandon Ambrosino
“That’s weird, right?” Andy chuckled and opened the door. By then, he and I already knew, thanks to a tipster that the owner of the Miami Hostel was none other than Jerry Falwell III, better known as Trey, who purchased the property with financial help from his father, Jerry Falwell Jr., a man who pretty much embodies everything on that sign: the fusion of religion with politics, aggressive fundraising and a slick, salesman-like approach to public faith. It was Falwell Jr. whose early endorsement of Donald Trump in the 2016 primaries—he hailed him for living “a life of loving and helping others as Jesus taught in the great commandment”—was seen as pivotal in helping Trump secure the evangelical vote.
At Liberty University, the Christian private school at which Falwell Jr. is the president and Trey is the vice president for university operations—and from which I graduated in 2011—all manner of vice is prohibited. Students, whether on campus or off, and whether school is in session or not—cannot consume alcohol or tobacco. Co-ed sleeping arrangements are verboten. And, in the words of “The Liberty Way,” the school’s student handbook, “homosexual conduct or the encouragement or advocacy of any form of sexual behavior that would undermine the Christian identity or faith mission of the University” are strictly prohibited. Any one of these transgressions could get you saddled with reprimands, financial repercussions, and even expulsion. And yet, here we were, in perhaps the gayest 6 square miles in the United States—South Beach, Miami—staying in Falwell’s gay-friendly flophouse with an on-site liquor store.
At least that’s the story I thought I was there to report. The more I dug into it, the larger and more byzantine the story became—and the more questions it raised. Though Liberty University officials declined to comment on the record for this story, senior-level sources at the university agreed to answer many of my questions. But rather than settling the matter, the answers they provided begat new and more serious inquiries that go beyond mere charges of hypocrisy over owning a hostel, and point to dubious behavior by Liberty University—actions which, according to several tax-law experts I consulted, could violate IRS rules.’https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/25/jerry-falwell-miami-hostel-liberty-university-trey-falwell-215528
THIS THIRD ARTICLE centers in on Falwell Jr’s wife. ‘A former Liberty University student says Becki Falwell, the wife of the university’s then-President Jerry Falwell Jr., jumped into bed with him and performed oral sex on him while he stayed over at the Falwell home after a band practice with her eldest son in 2008.
The student was 22 at the time of the encounter, near the start of Liberty’s fall semester. He said she initiated the act, and he went along with it.But despite his rejection of further advances, he said, Falwell continued pursuing him, offering him gifts and engaging in banter through Facebook messages.
How did all this continue for so long? I have spoken of the Good Ole Boys Club in several articles and this is exactly how it works. Whether it is Falwell Jr. and Liberty University or the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE) and missionary Dr. Donn Ketcham https://sadsaga.wordpress.com/ it is all a part of the way the Good Ole Boys Club works.
whatyareckon 