Burger King offers an adult meal for Valentine's Day in Israel.
The NFL threatens the state of Texas over a proposed transgender bathroom bill.
And North Korea's dictator has his half-brother assassinated in Malaysia.
Skywatch TV for Wednesday, February 15, 2017.
I'm Derek Gilbert.
First up, new danger at the Orville Dam in California.
Storms expected to hit the area as early as tonight.
And wet weather is expected to continue through the rest of the week.
Could bring another two to four inches of rain to Lake Orville.
Another storm coming Friday could drop one to three inches more.
Work crews have been repairing the damaged emergency spillway since Monday, dumping 1200
tons of rock per hour onto the hillside and then mixing concrete slurry to try to cement
the stone into place.
Workers at a quarry nearby cutting rock as fast as they can, some of the boulders as
much as six tons in weight to try to fill the hole caused by the excessive rainfall.
The main spillway is also damaged, but in spite of the large hole in the concrete chute there,
the spillway remains open as officials try to drain the lake enough to accommodate the
new rainfall that starts up tonight.
Russia has told the Trump administration it does not plan to return Crimea to Ukraine.
This is a response to President Trump's remarks that he expects Moscow to give it back.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Marina Zakharova said, we don't return our territories.
Crimea is a territory of the Russian Federation.
Just a little history, Crimea became part of the Russian Empire in the 18th century,
but it was reassigned to Ukraine in 1954.
However, after the coup in Ukraine in 2014, Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia.
See, most Crimeans are ethnic Russians, about 58% of them, and only about 25% are Ukrainian.
Now, President Trump is trying to drag the Obama administration into the ongoing uproar
over what progressives hope is an opportunity to hamstring his administration.
National Security Advisor Michael Flynn resigned Monday night after growing concern in the
White House over contacts between Flynn and the Russian ambassador during the transition
period after the election before the inauguration.
Call this a victory for the neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment in Washington.
To be honest, we do these so-called potentially illegal contacts between Flynn and Ambassador
Sergei Kizlyak are only illegal because of a 1799 law called the Logan Act, which is
basically never enforced by the federal government.
The Logan Act forbids private citizens from negotiating with the country in a dispute
with the federal government.
Usually it's trotted out to threaten American citizens who disagree with policy in Washington,
D.C.
Flynn is an out-of-the-box thinker who threatened to overturn the orthodox line on Russia that
Russia is and always will be an enemy of the United States.
I'm not suggesting that President Putin isn't looking out for his own best interest in his
dealings with the United States, but when you've got the two most heavily nuclear-armed
nations on earth, why is it a bad idea for the two of them to try to find ways to get
along?
Well, making this even more odd is that Flynn was the designated National Security Advisor
at the time of these contacts when he would be expected to make contact with the heads
of other governments around the world to try to establish relationships to make for a smooth
transition of power.
But this whole thing threatens the official narrative that Russia is to blame for American
foreign policy disasters in the Middle East and, oh yeah, Hillary Clinton's disastrous
run for president.
The bigger question here is why the intelligence community was listening in on Michael Flynn's
phone calls in the first place and who in the intelligence community leaked transcripts
of those calls to the press, the Washington Post especially, which is essentially the
neocons' house organ for leaking stuff to the public that they want us to know.
Chairman of the House Intelligence Community, Republican Congressman Devin Nunez of California
says he wants answers from the FBI and he'd better get them.
We'll see what happens.
Now, as we go through our annual ritual of collecting all the paperwork we need to file
our income tax returns, it looks like the IRS this year is not going to reject returns
that don't answer the health insurance coverage question.
This is how the IRS is responding to President Trump's executive order, directing federal
agencies to provide relief to taxpayers from the burden of Obamacare.
So what does that mean for you and me?
Are we going to have to pay the penalty for not carrying coverage?
Don't know, ask your tax experts, but the IRS is saying it reserves the right to follow
up on those returns that don't indicate health insurance coverage status.
A woman suspected of assassinating a half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has been
arrested in Malaysia.
She was taken into custody at the airport in Kuala Lumpur where the attack took place
Monday morning, reports suggest that 46-year-old Kim Jong-nam, who had called his younger brother's
regime a joke, was attacked by two North Korean operatives, female operatives.
The reports vary on this.
Some say they threw a poison cloth on his face, others say they attacked him with poison
needles and others said spray.
Not quite sure.
Officials are still reviewing security cam footage, which is where they got this picture
of the woman wearing the LOL sweatshirt, kind of creepy.
Kim Jong-nam died on the way to the hospital in Kuala Lumpur.
This woman who was identified from security camera footage reportedly 28 years old and
traveling on a Vietnamese passport.
His half-brother, by the way, is not the only victim of Kim Jong-un since he took power.
Officials have been purged from North Korea's inner political circle, including Kim's uncle.
In Greece, the capital city of Athens will soon have its first mosque since the end of
Ottoman rule.
150 years ago, the Greek parliament has approved plans to build a state-funded mosque at a cost
of about a million bucks.
Supporters of the plan say that it could prevent the potential radicalization of tens of thousands
of new Muslim refugees living in Athens.
Needless to say, not everyone is on board with the plan, not least of which the Greek
Orthodox Church.
Of course, Western progressives have another brilliant idea for preventing the potential
radicalization of Muslims, that is, reducing our carbon footprint to head off global warming
because you see warmer temperatures make people grouchy and thus more prone to violence.
Seriously, this is according to a new paper published by the Association for Psychological
Science in this paper.
The authors argue, and I quote, when people get uncomfortably hot, their tempers, irritability
and likelihood of physical aggression and violence increase, end quote.
Now, there's some actual science to the study involved, but this is a summary statement here,
and they spent taxpayer money on this state university.
So climate change not only equals a spike in violent crime in our cities, it also equals
a greater likelihood of civil war.
Look, violent Islam has been a problem for more than 1400 years.
During that time, average temperatures around the world have gone up and down.
During most of that period, people didn't have access to sport utility vehicles and
other carbon burning implements and machinery.
People have been killing each other in large numbers since the days of Nimrod, ever since
somebody figured out how to take a piece of bronze and put an edge on it.
Of course, when you're dealing with another army that only has clubs, the edged weapon
is a weapon of mass destruction.
Climate change is not responsible for violent Islam.
Now thankfully, not all violent jihadists are very bright.
I don't mean to be flippant here, this is a sequence of images taken from a camera in
the city of Raqqa, which is the Islamic State's capital city.
It's currently being attacked by Syrian rebels and government troops, and it would be ISIS
suicide bomber was caught on film on camera as he tried to take out a squad of rebel soldiers.
Here you see soldiers by a tank next to a building around the corner.
You see the ISIS fighter emerge.
He then detonates his vest, but you see the distance between him and the tank.
This is the follow-up footage.
No one injured except the suicide bomber himself.
Of course, social media has had some fun with this sequence of footage suggesting that perhaps
he needed more practice with the suicide vest before actually taking it out into public.
Anyway, coming up, a toy maker in the United States announces the first transgender doll
for kids.
That and more straight ahead on Skywatch TV.
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A mass fish kill leaves thousands of dead shad in the Little River in Windsor, Ontario
that's across from Detroit, Michigan.
Environmentalists not really surprised by this though, this one's not really a mystery.
Shad normally don't swim this far north and they are prone to temperature shock, a rapid
temperature change in the river left thousands dead.
US scientists softening their stance on genetic modification of human embryos, a new report
from the National Academy of Sciences, supports germline engineering.
That's changes to the DNA that can be passed down to future generations.
But they say only in cases where there are no reasonable alternatives and only when it
prevents passing along serious diseases.
Now of course the phrase reasonable alternative leaves a truck sized loophole.
Preventing disease of course is how this type of genetic modification will be sold to the
public but the question is how to prevent it from being used to engineer traits like
strength, beauty and intelligence into future generations.
The answer of course is that you can't.
Because the technology is reliable, money will dictate that those techniques be made
available to those with the means to pay for it.
And thus those haves will not only be financial haves but they will become genetic haves and
there will be a greater gap between the genetic haves and the genetic have nots.
Once it's available the people who can pay for it will use their resource to make sure
their children have genetic advantages over everyone else.
But these breakthrough technologies are also going to lead to scams.
We're already starting to see this with stem cell therapies.
Ten years ago we were promised miracle cures via stem cell and now today you can buy stem
cell treatments for everything from aging skin to male pattern baldness.
We'll start seeing the same thing soon with the DNA sequencing.
Companies that have promised to tailor a weight loss program for you based on the sequences
of your DNA.
The truth is we haven't decrypted the human genome well enough to be able to do that
yet.
Save your money.
Well another professional sports league has decided to focus on re-engineering society
instead of just promoting the entertainment value of their sport.
The national football league threatening the state of Texas that it won't host any
future Super Bowls if the state enacts a new transgender restroom law.
The legislature there considering a bill mandating that people can only use bathrooms
and changing facilities that match their birth gender instead of how they feel on a given
day.
The question here is why is this any of the NFL's business?
What is the NFL doing sticking its nose into this particular social issue?
Of course it's not the first one.
We talked about the NHL mandating that each team have an LGBTQ diplomat or ambassador
on each team.
The NCAA threatened the state of North Carolina with no future tournament sites for the men's
basketball tournament and women's basketball tournament if they passed a similar bathroom
bill.
But there are seven other states considering similar legislation right now.
Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.
Which means the NCAA, NHL, NFL could soon run out of places to play if these bills are
all enacted and turned into law.
Still, the onslaught against God's creation, male and female, creativity them, continues.
A toy maker in New York state set to release the first transgender doll on the market.
This is based on 16 year old boy living as a girl, Jazz Jennings, star of a reality show
on TLC called I Am Jazz.
This toy will sell for 90 bucks.
It's aimed at ages eight and older.
Now, I've not watched the program on TLC, but a writer at newsbusters.org last year
did, wrote a review of the show and made a pretty strong case that I Am Jazz actually
makes a better case for the anti-transgender movement than it does for the LGBT cause.
Turns out that the program I Am Jazz often focuses on his emotional issues and how much
time and effort his mother and grandmother spend making sure that Jazz does not run out
of his happy pills.
You see, he was diagnosed with clinical depression in the sixth grade and he's been on medication
for it ever since.
I think the obvious question here is, is it possible that the young man's transgenderism
is a side effect of his depression instead of the other way around?
And maybe, maybe is it possible that the emotional issues are a side effect of the powerful hormone
blockers he takes to suppress his body's expression of male characteristics and the powerful female
hormones he's taking to try to encourage the expression of female physical characteristics?
His body is essentially fighting these competing hormones that are flooding his bloodstream.
And if that doesn't suggest that gender is really determined by genetics, then what does?
Again, we don't pick on stories like this because we're trying to be mean-spirited or
hateful.
In my view, it is tragic that young people like Jazz Jennings are being enabled by those
who are closest to them, the ones who should be protecting them, instead of enabling them
to pursue a lifestyle where statistics put out by LGBTQ activists document that 41 percent
of transgender people will attempt suicide at some point in their lives, or if they're
just left alone, other statistics indicate between 70 and 90 percent of young transgender
boys and girls will grow out of the phase by the time they hit maturity.
Of course, just asking the question, regardless of how we try to present it, and pointing
out that the parents of Jazz Jennings and other transgender kids are pushing them into a lifestyle
where there's a very hyper likelihood that they'll try to kill themselves, makes us
the haters.
So it's not really a surprise that a new survey shows that while Americans are feeling warmer,
more open to religions in general, the one religious group that Americans are not feeling
better about compared to a 2014 survey, evangelical Christians.
Surprise, surprise.
Finally, another sign of the times in which we live, our age in which we conflate lust
with love.
In Israel, Burger King restaurants offered a special adult meal for Valentine's Day,
6 p.m. to midnight only, adults 18 and up.
It's like a kiddie meal except for grown-ups.
The meal included two whoppers, two orders of fries, two beers, said, yeah, in Israel
you can get beer with your fast food, and an adult toy, your choice of a feather duster,
scalp massager, or a blindfold.
Again, conflation of love and lust.
Well, we keep forgetting to ask this issue, speaking of love anyway, the February issue
of Skywatch TV Magazine, now available.
A little piece in here from Tom Horn about his love.
Great mind-bending article from Josh Peck and article from best-selling author Joel
Richardson.
My piece in here on the goddess who is clearly the spirit of our age, Inanna, the ancient
Sumerian goddess, also known to us as Astart, Aphrodite, and Venus, but a look at what her
real characteristics were like, what she was really like, the goddess of war and extramarital
carnal love.
And I use that term very loosely.
Yeah, if there is a spirit of the age, boy, Inanna sure is a good candidate for it.
Skywatch TV Magazine, single-year subscriptions available at the Skywatch TV store, skywatchtvstore.com.
Find us online at skywatchtv.com.
This week, in addition to our regular network program, you'll find a web exclusive featuring
Joel Richardson, Dr. Gordon MacDonald, Josh Peck, and myself, four of us contributed to
the new book I Predict with 12 Global Experts Believe You Will See by 2025.
That's our web exclusive this week only at skywatchtv.com and the Skywatch TV channels
on Roku and YouTube.
My website, my social media stuff, you'll find that all linked at DerekPGilbert.com.
And thank you for watching as we keep watch.
I'm Derek Gilbert, and this is Skywatch TV.
I'm Derek Gilbert, and this is Skywatch TV.
