We do live in interesting times

 J. B Shurk, at the American Thinker today has a very interesting piece entitled, appropriately enough, What an Interesting Time to Be Alive. In it, he writes about Western so called "democracies" that are supposed to be promoting the freedom, liberty, and opportunity of their people, but instead are censoring free speech and in some cases scuttling democratic elections. What he paints is a picture of governments offering "democracy" while behind the scenes controlling the outcomes to favor themselves.

At the same time, he notes that there seems to be a new revival of Christianity taking place among both old and new alike. Personally, I have been concerned about the neopaganism that seems to be flourishing in the United States. But of course there is little I can do about it. The Lord sends his Spirit out into the World, and finds those He wishes. We can only help by providing pastors to minister to those the Spirit brings in.

A lot of people are anxious these days. They are worried about nuclear war, mass government surveillance, artificial intelligence, lab-created disease, central bank digital currencies — you name it! I’m worried about those issues, too. However, there is a part of me that relishes the opportunities we have to shape the future. This is an interesting time to be alive.

This is not the age of tranquility. There have been epochs for which that description might be apt — when people were born and died without experiencing much change during the course of their lives. The technologies that existed never advanced. The universe of human knowledge never expanded. Time stood more or less still, as if humanity were stuck in amber.

We’re not stuck in anything. The technological revolutions from the late nineteenth century forward have remade the world time and again. We’ve gone from telegraphs to telephones to cellular phones to smartphones. Mass communication has evolved from printed newspapers to radio broadcasts to television news to internet chatrooms, email, and social media. In the last twenty years, individuals have seized control over the instruments of mass communication — becoming self-created news reporters, entertainers, influencers, and celebrities. In the last ten years, governments and their corporate allies have tried desperately to claw back control over the mass media monopoly they once had.

Part of the reason so many are anxious is because news stories are designed as click bait to bring eyes in for advertisers. Whole narratives are built on speculation about things that might be or could happen. But most of the things speculated about never do happen, and in the meantime, people have spent money on things that were not needed. One such hoax is the "climate change" narrative. Of course, the climate is always in a state of flux. It has been much warmer in times past, and somewhat cooler as well. I prefer warmer, myself. But the climate scam is designed to stampede people into asking for the governments of the World to "do something," and that something takes away your freedom and your liberty and tax you into poverty. You will, as they so aptly put it, own nothing. But they assure us you will be happy - or else.

The “greenies” rejected Jesus Christ but told us that we’re all going to die for our “fossil fuel” sins. The central bankers and globalist oligarchs joined this self-hating bandwagon because the “climate change” religion offered them a chance to maximize wealth and power. For years, they have elevated a line of “global warming” popes — Al Gore, Klaus Schwab, John Kerry — all claiming to have influence with planetary gods that might be willing to save us from Armageddon if we do exactly what the rich people vacationing in Davos, Switzerland say.

The World Economic Forum updates its globalist bible every year so that laypeople know what to believe and what to worship. The “climate change” clergy even promote young know-nothings such as Greta Thunberg, who play-acts as a modern, “truth”-telling “green” Jesus. Global “elites” love the “net zero” religion because they can make up new commandments as needed, condemn naysayers as selfish apostates, and rebrand totalitarianism as philanthropic virtue. “Global warming” pseudoscience allows the U.N., the WEF, and other religious denominations to tell everyone else how much to pay in taxes, how much freedom to give up, and how to behave.

And yet, Shurk sees a new Christian revival coming. From Shurk's pen to God's ear:

And yet there is substantial evidence that a very real Christian revival is gaining energy. Older people who have perhaps lost their way are picking up dusty Bibles to see just what truths lie within. Well known commentators — including Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Russell Brand — are doing something that few could have predicted even five years ago: they are publicly discussing the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Young people, too, are finding their way to Christ. What would have seemed quite unusual last decade is becoming almost commonplace: athletes, musicians, actors, and academics are bearing witness to Christ’s purposeful influence upon their lives. Even politicians who forgot Jesus’s name as they became worshipful converts to the “green” religion are slowly recovering from decades of amnesia and remembering the King of kings.

I don't listen to Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan or Russell Brand for theological wisdom, but I suppose lots of people do. They wouldn't be talking about such things publically unless it attracted audiences. So, I see Shurk's point. Even more, Shurk thinks we are winning, based on the old idea that when you are taking flak you know you are over the target.

Yet they are afraid. They are losing. We are winning. How do I know? Their absolute abandonment of even the pretense of supporting free speech is a dead giveaway. Western leaders are so fearful of losing power that they have become overtly pro-censorship.

Former European commissioner Thierry Breton openly brags that Europe and U.S.-NATO scuttled the recent Romanian election because voters chose the “wrong” leader. He promises that Eurocrats will do the same in Germany if German citizens vote “incorrectly” this year. How can a prominent European statesman defend such brazenly anti-democratic tyranny? He blames free speech. Voters, he alleges, are reading and listening to the wrong voices.

Breton’s authoritarianism echoes placeholder-president Joe Biden’s denunciation of Mark Zuckerberg’s “shameful” decision to purge left-wing “fact-checkers” from their years-long role as professional censors who monitor and delete public debate on Facebook and other Meta platforms. Biden called the move away from government-directed censorship “completely contrary to everything America is about.” The so-called “leader of the free world” and a man constitutionally duty-bound to defend the Bill of Rights thinks it’s “un-American” to protect the First Amendment.

We do indeed live in interesting times

Another Reason Gun Control Never Works (As Advertised)

 Yesterday, we discussed how several gunmen broke into a gun store and stole firearms.  These miscreants are prohibited from possessing firearms because they were convicted felons.  But they acquired them anyway.  No law would respected our right to keep and bear arms would have prevented them from acquiring guns.  Today, we will discuss another way felons get guns: by having someone with a clean record buy them.  This is known as "straw purchasing" and is also illegal.  The story is at Bearing Arms and is entitled Burnsville Shooter's Girlfriend Pleads Guilty To Buy Killer's Gun.

A little less than a year ago, an armed felon opened fire on law enforcement, killing two officers and an EMT. He was a convicted felon who couldn't have a gun at all.

It was later learned that his girlfriend purchased the firearm for him.

Of course, while the killer was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and could be assumed guilty, she was still alive, which means her guilt needed to be established somehow.

Well, now it has as she's entered a guilty plea in court.

So, yet again we see another way that people that are prohibited from possessing guns by reason of being a convicted felon nevertheless acquire guns. Again, no law that would not infringe on our right to keep and bear arms could be written to prevent felons from getting guns in this way. As pointed out yesterday, even if all guns were magically to disappear from the United States jurisdiction tomorrow, smugglers could bring them in along with whatever other contraband items they smuggle. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle.

As a side note, I want to also point out that the Mainstream Media constantly harps on something called "gun violence" as if it is the guns that are killing and maiming people. But when it is a stabbing, they don't talk of "knife violence," or if a vehicle, they don't talk of "car violence." These terms of silly. Everyone knows that knives and cars are tools and can be used or misused at the will of the operator. Guns are no different. The MSM spokespeople should be called out for misuse of the English language.

Why Gun Control Never Works (As Advertised)

At Bearing Arms Tom Knighton tells us This Is One Major Reason Gun Control Never Works. Knighton has pointed out that criminals don't buy guns at gun stores, don't fill out 4473 forms or jump through any of the other hoops law abiding gun owners do. But he forgot about this trip to the gun store:

Gun control advocates, trying to sell the idea of gun restrictions, routinely claim that it's entirely possible to respect the right to keep and bear arms while creating laws that keep guns out of criminal hands. Of course, these restrictions never impact criminals because criminals don't go to gun stores.

...snip...

However, something happened in Pennsylvania that made me realize I'm not entirely correct. Plenty of them do, in fact, get guns from gun stores and do so without a straw purchase.

It's just that gun control that claims to respect our gun rights is never going to prevent something like this.

Police are investigating after a Bethel Park gun store was broken into early Monday morning.

Bethel Park Police and a forensics unit from Allegheny County were on scene at the Allegheny Arms & Gun Works store located in the Millennium Shops along Library Road in Bethel Park early Monday morning.

...

"We know that four suspects broke into this business and removed the firearms - the amount [of firearms] is undetermined at this time," said ATF Assistant Special Agent Joseph Price.

Police said the break-in happened before 4:30 a.m. and they didn't waste any time.

"They were probably in the store for under four minutes," Agent Price said. "In and out, four minutes."

...

The investigators said that in the latest burglary, the suspects shot their way in and used hatchets to bust up display cases.

The suspects are believed to be four white males, all wearing black.

Authorities believe the vehicle used was stolen and if you know anything, you're being asked to contact Bethel Park Police.

The truth is that even if there were no gun dealers, criminals would stage thefts from police and military armories. And if they can smuggle drugs into the United States, what makes gun-grabbers think they can't smuggle in firearms at the same time? The point is that criminals will find a way to get guns because they need them to protect not just themselves, but their property as well. They can hardly go to the police and swear out a complaint. They would be laughed out of the police station.

See, those who want guns will find a way to get guns. That often involves theft, which means that sooner or later, gun grabbers will start grabbing guns. "You can't have handguns because criminals use those. You don't need a handgun for hunting, anyway," they'll argue, all while continuing to pretend they're respecting your Second Amendment rights.

They'll do this all while knowing this isn't the only avenue for crime guns out there, but that won't matter.

No matter what you do, gun control will never work because criminals will just shift in how they get guns. Even now, the bad guys are listening to news reports about so-called ghost guns and figuring that's the way they should go. Somehow find a way to ban all of that and they'll just find something else--though banning 3D printing isn't likely to work either.

You'll never stop the bad guys from getting guns. The only people that will ever be stopped are law-abiding folks like you and me.

Which, if we're being frank, is really who they want disarmed anyway.

Whew! Our Coffee Habit Is Safe!

 Vijay Jayaraj tells us at the American Thinker today that Your cappaccino is safe despite climate fearmongering. Of course, I was not worried since I know that climate alarmism is just one big scam designed to take money out of your and my pockets and put it into the pockets of globalist oligarchs. But let Jayaraj tell it:

An estimated 21 billion pounds of green coffee are produced annually across more than 25 million acres worldwide. U.S., Brazil, and Japan are the top coffee-consuming countries.

Though late to the caffeinated party, China is now driving global demand. In the 2023-2024 crop year, China’s consumption reached nearly six million 60-kilogram bags, while domestic production stood at less than two million bags. The balance was imported

.

But will this global java joy be interrupted by production shortfalls caused by climate change? A simple Google search will yield thousands of news articles about how a warming world is killing Arabica and Robusta coffee beans.

You will notice that Mr. Jayaraj believes that the climate scam is real, or at least he believes it an be ignored because he says this:

Indian coffee traders say that the impact of climate change “is minimal for now.”

...snip...

This was confirmed by India’s Commerce Ministry, which has allayed fears about weather disruptions and projects higher coffee output for 2024-25. The Indian Coffee Board has set a 10-year road map for doubling the country’s coffee production and exports.

He then points to improvements in farming practices as well as improvements in the coffee trees themselves. Wherever there is significant money to be made by growing a crop of something, there you will find scientists working to improve the plants that produce that crop. It has been a long time coming, but as more and more people are finding coffee enjoyable, there is more and more incentive to seek better farming methods and plant more productive coffee trees. This is always the way it works. Unlike deer, that can not adapt except by natural selection, people are able to use their ability to reason as a tool to improve their condition. The coffee farmer makes more money, and we get more coffee at a better price: a win-win.

He also notes that if temperatures do rise, the coffee growing regions will simply move to higher elevations and further from the equator. I personally think the coffee growing regions will be expanding putting more acreage under coffee production.

Even if temperatures do rise significantly, coffee production can be moved to cooler locales at higher altitudes and at latitudes farther from the equator. For instance, conducive to growing both Arabica and Robusta are Southern California and alternative regions in existing coffee-producing countries like Brazil and India.

In Colombia, researchers modeled “climate suitability and crop-yield for current and future climate scenarios” and included factors such as soil constraints, pest infestation and socio-economic elements. They found that the “foothills along the eastern Andean Mountain ranges, the high plains of the Orinoquía region and the wet parts of the Caribbean region” are highly favorable to growing coffee if average temperature were to increase.

In Ethiopia -- one of the world’s largest coffee producers -- climate change was found to increase the suitable growing area by as much as 44% by 2080.

Likewise, the plateaus in China’s Yunnan Province are expected to have acreage suitable for growing coffee increase significantly in scenarios assuming future warming.

None of this takes into account improved coffee hybrids that can increase yields by 30-60%. Researchers have now found that these varieties have greater resistance to climatic changes and to pests.

So there you have it from someone in the know. Our coffee fancy is safe. But I knew that all along. It is why Malthus and neomalthusians like Paul Ehrich are wrong.

Facts just coming to light may exonerate Derek Chauvin in the George Floyd death case

 Mike McDaniel at the American Thinker today in a post entitled George Floyd: Did a police administrator commit perjury? discusses the Derek Chauvin case concerning the death of George Floyd . Many of us have known or at least suspected that the police officers involved in the arrest of Floyd were just doing their jobs and did so within standard operating procedures of the Minneapolis Police Department. But like the case of George Zimmerman killing Travon Martin in self defense, or the case of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the media, a certain segment of the Black community, and the Left seemed to want to tar and feather the "white guy." The Left I understand wants to create as much chaos as possible in order to sow distrust of the police in the minds of the average citizen. In the case of certain segment of the Black community, it is anybody's guess why they participate in this scam.

I’ve been covering the George Floyd case since its inception. Floyd was a drug-addicted violent felon. Among his arrests/convictions were three armed robberies, six burglaries, three car thefts, and holding a gun to the belly of a very pregnant robbery victim. When Minneapolis PD officer Derek Chauvin and three others met him, he was trying to pass a counterfeit bill and resisted arrest. Such behavior is not usually associated with saints, but the Democrats/socialists/communists (D/s/cs) in control of Minneapolis gave him special dispensation.

Floyd actually died from his drug-induced, severe health problems, but the narrative demanded he be killed by a supposed “choke restraint” applied by Chauvin, who was convicted and is currently in prison, having survived one shanking there. At Chauvin’s trial, despite clear evidence the technique applied by Chauvin was not only taught at the MPD Academy, but was standard operating procedure (SOP), the mob demanded his conviction and they were rewarded. Now it appears, the truth is coming out:

"Fourteen current and former police officers with the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) have signed sworn declarations which say they believe MPD Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell perjured herself when testifying in former MPD officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial.

Specifically, the group of former officers say they believe Blackwell perjured herself when she testified in court that the restraint method Chauvin used to subdue George Floyd in May 2020 was not a part of MPD officer training. In that trial, Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

However, many say the knee-on-neck restraint Chauvin employed was trained under the maximal-restraint technique (MRT), a restraint the MPD taught and allowed until 2023."

This wouldn’t have come to light were it not for a lawsuit filed by Blackwell against Alpha News, a reporter and producer and a publishing company.

“With this motion, 33 former MPD officers who served with Blackwell, and one who currently serves with her, have sworn that MPD trained this restraint as part of the ‘maximal-restraint technique’ (‘MRT’) and otherwise. Indeed, 14 of these officers have sworn—under oath—their belief that Blackwell perjured herself,” wrote attorney Chris Madel in this week’s motion.

These officers, according to the motion, “swore that this training was well known—indeed, common knowledge—and omnipresent.”

Please read the whole post by McDaniel. Let us hope that the lawsuit filed by police administrator Blackwell ends up exonerating Chauvin:

Those 14 statements were among dozens of declarations submitted by lawyers representing Alpha News in a defamation lawsuit brought by Blackwell last October against Alpha News, Alpha News reporter Liz Collin, producer J.C. Chaix, and a publishing company. In her lawsuit, Blackwell alleged that the Alpha News documentary film The Fall of Minneapolis and a book authored by Collin wrongly accused Blackwell of lying.

This week, lawyers for Alpha News filed a 113-page motion with 592 footnotes to have the case dismissed with prejudice.

German Fascism Rising?

Also today, Liberty Doll tells us that Germany wants to disarm an entire political party. Now, when a European country describes a person of movement as "right" or "far right," we have to remember that the Nazis were also described that way, and we know that the Nazis were socialists. Hardly right. Socialists are kissing cousins of Communists. In any case, the party being disarmed is the Alternative for Germany or AfD. The AfD has been cut out of the ruling coalition and is being accused to being a threat to Germany's democracy by the Social Democrats and the Greens. Hmmmmm. Sound familiar?

The Liberty Doll can be found here. Go and watch.

Why Have Gun Sales Declined?

 Tom Knighton, at Townhall.com asks Why Gun Sales Were Down For December(?) Citing numbers from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) Knighton motes that Year over year for December gun sales have fallen from 1.776 million to 1.643 million firearms. The question is why? Have we finally begun to satisfy the desire to have a weapon around just in case of violent attack?

Knighton has his own ideas on the reasons why people are buying fewer guns.

With that said, why? Why were gun sales down, not just for December but for 2024 as a whole when compared to 2023?

Of course, this is going to just be speculation, but I think part of it was because the writing was on the wall that Democrats weren't really going to win in the 2024 election.

The one thing about guns that Democrats are great at is selling them. The threat of a gun ban looming tends to get a lot of people into gun stores and buying firearms, particularly those that are most likely to be banned.

From the moment of the first debate between Trump and Biden, it was clear where things were going. Kamala Harris taking over didn't help all that much, especially as the media bent over backward to such a degree that even your ordinary voters couldn't help but see it. Democrats alienated pretty much everyone who wasn't in their camp and the voters saw it.

What that meant, though, was that a lot of people just didn't see the threat of gun control as being all that real for the first time in a few years.

That means there just won't be as many gun sales.

We should all hope that Knighton is correct and that some sanity will return to America. As a Lutheran, I believe that man is fallen, and inclined to do the wrong things. But the more people who at least try to do the right thing, in otherwords the more sane we become, the less need for constant access to weapons we will have. But we will never eliminate the need entirely until Christ comes again.