Shannon Watts Doesn't Realize Criminals Go Armed Without Permits

 At the Truth About Guns website Grace Stevens has a short piece entitled Shannon Watts discovers that politicians care about what their constituents really want as elections get closer. Shannon Watts is distressed that states are passing permit less carry, otherwise known as Constitutional carry. Watts is concerned that letting those who have no criminal history to carry their arms will cause more deaths. Of course, what Watts does not take into consideration is that criminals already carry without a permit. They cannot get a permit because they are not permitted to own a firearm in the first place. So, if criminals are going to carry, even though they may not possess firearms, why not allow those who can possess them, to carry them without needing a permit. Acquiring a permit requires extra money that could be used for ammunition and range time, and jumping through various bureaucratic hoops.

It all makes sense if you think that criminals obey gun laws even though they don't obey other laws.  The people that are being allowed to carry without a permit are not the causing crimes in the first place.  Meanwhile, the actual criminals are going to carry law or no law.

Enough Is Enough

 Kurt Schlichter today has a piece entitled People Are Getting Tired of One Way Tolerance. Frankly, I have been tired of it for years. One way tolerance is no tolerance at all. It is merely surrender, which is what those imposing it on us want.

There was a time not long ago when even the most b(i)ased (sic) conservative was willing to live and let live with all manner of divergent and bizarre people, but live and let live has become “I live and you submit” and that’s just not going to work out in the long run.

The tolerant have been rewarded for their tolerance with intolerance, and if you look, you can already see the backlash brewing. The breaking point may have been when the man who won the women’s swimming championship and all the smart, moral people of our garbage elite demanded we celebrate it. Or it might be weirdos trying to chat up our kindergarteners about sex. Or it might be CRT. Regardless, people are getting fed up. There’s a difference between living your life as you wish and making the rest of us live their lives as you wish too, especially when it’s a lie or when it means some freak gets to groom our kids.

Tolerance is good, but tolerance only works if it goes both ways. And that’s not happening anymore. It’s been weaponized, and if dumb people don’t stop their idiotic provocations they are going to see the emerging backlash grow and grow. It’s human nature – and human nature, contrary to the fantasies of the Marxists, has not been repealed.

Of course, the teaching of Critical Race Theory, or CRT is bad enough. First, it tells people that their race is their destiny. Besides being a terrible message, it is untrue. The proof is when you are being lectured by "people of color" who are making multiple millions of dollars. Clearly I am not oppressing Will Smith, or Lebron James, or Wynton Marsalis, or...well, the list is too long to continue. The point is these people worked hard to get where they are, and they had talent to start with. But, when they start talking about gender and sex to our children, I have to say that enough is enough in a very loud voice. If someone approached your child on the street and started talking about these things, you would have the pervert arrested.

Cultural aggressions like CRT are bad, but it’s the gender insanity that has really become intolerable. Tolerance has given way to intolerance in return, and the pushback is coming; in fact, the signs are that it is here. Regular folks are done with people demanding that we pretend men can become women, or that women can become men (and who never seem to want to compete in men’s sports), or that anyone can ever be a non-binary two-spirit gender-bent otherkin.

And we’re not pretending that the demand for access to our little kids for cringey conversations is okay – it’s not. At best – and at best it’s still pretty bad – it means trying to enlist our children into the ranks of the gender-confused. At worst, it’s the Lincoln Project. Regardless, the creeps insisting our kids belong to them have gone too far. Look at Virginia. Look at Florida. You’re looking at the future, a future of “Oh, hell no!”

Maybe the "education establishment" should get back to teaching the things we want our kids to learn. For instance, learn to write a coherent sentence, basic arithmetic and mathematics, and scientific knowledge based on the real world, not some wonky climate change theory. Oh, and wouldn't it be great if they taught kids to actually critically think and evaluate what they read. But that would require the teaching of honest history, the good, the bad and the rest, and maybe philosophy? Is that too much to ask? Oh, yeah, and skip the CRT and the cringy stuff.

Free Speech Wins in Finland (At least For Now)

 Joy Pullman, at The Federalist has the news from Finland that Finnish Court Rebukes State Prosecution of Christians for Saying God Made Men and Women differently. I have been following this case. Finland has "hate crimes" laws, which includes "hate speech," as do other countries in Europe and Canada. These laws are redundant if their true purpose were to protect people's rights to say what they believe. Of course, if someone says something false about you that ruins your reputation, or writes something about you that is outrageously untrue, you have recourse to slander and libel laws. No need for "hate speech" laws. But "hate speech" laws are actually intended to allow Leftists to harass normal people for their normal beliefs. The prosecution is the punishment.

As noted, a court has rebuked the state prosecution of Paivi Rasanen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola of hate speech for repeating what the Bible says about sex and marriage.

Prayers from around the world were answered joyfully today when a Finnish court ruled unanimously in favor of two Christians the government prosecuted for publicly stating the Bible’s teachings about sex.

“If this kind of questioning of free speech is possible in a country like Finland, which has a reputation regarding free speech internationally, the same is possible anywhere,” said Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen during a livestreamed press conference this morning U.S. time.

Rasanen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola were acquitted of all four “hate crimes” charges against them for speaking the Bible’s teachings that sex is rightly reserved for lifelong marriage between one man and one woman. The three-judge court not only cleared the two Christians but ordered the prosecution to pay their legal costs, ruling that in a free country courts have no place deciding permissible religious views.

The following is my belief, but it is my understanding that God intended for a man and a woman to come together, for life, for the purpose of raising children in accordance with God's laws. Through the actions of sin, some of us may find ourselves attracted to the same sex. But it is not that a person may be fee; such attractions that is the sin, but the carrying out of homosexual acts. But Jesus died on the cross to save everyone, gays and lesbians included. But in order to be saved, one must confess one's sins, and ask for forgiveness, and repent. Repentance means to change one's mind. Our God does love gays and lesbians, but He also insists that we follow Him, not ourselves.

The Prosecution Is the Punishment

Pohjola said of course he and Rasanen would have continued to proclaim their faith if the court had agreed to effectively criminalize free speech and Christianity in Finland. The possibility of an appeal means Christianity and free speech are still at risk in the Western country ranked No. 3 for its commitment to the rule of law.

“Everyone should be free to share their beliefs without censorship, and we see the great threat that can come from these hate speech laws, which often shut down public debates and constitute not only a threat to freedom of speech and religion but also to democracy itself,” said Paul Coleman, the executive director of Alliance Defending Freedom International, a legal nonprofit assisting with this case.

Rasanen and Pohjola are exceptional people, with great courage. But not everyone has such courage, and so they censor themselves. It makes it seem as if the Leftist arguments are the ones winning the debate. But it isn't true. These laws need to be repealed. Either speech is free, or it is not. One has to trust that evil speech will eventually be drowned out by righteous speech.

I pray that I will be equally courageous for my Saviour.

The False Gospel of Satan

 Where you go to church matters, more than you know.  I am currently reading a book by Archbishop Vigano that speaks of the same things, in more detail, that Janet Levy writes about at the American Thinker entitled The False Gospel of the Enemies Within the Church. Note that Vigano's book, A Voice in the Wilderness: Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano on the Church, America, and the World is a long tome, some 400 plus pages. If you are not Catholic, some of it may seem obscure. On the other hand, Levy's article is very approachable.

Christianity has been intricately intertwined with the history and development of America and greatly contributed to its strength. Judeo-Christian morality, in fact, has been the compass and one of the most powerful influences on Western society. So, the Marxists see Christianity as the main obstacle to overthrowing Westphalian principles of sovereignty. To them, the church is the most crucial institution to conquer to usher in the New World Order. They know that if the churches fail – especially in America, which represents the phenomenal success of capitalism and individualism – the entire culture, including politics, will move to the Left.

Most Americans will be surprised to learn that an unholy crusade to infiltrate the bastions of Christianity and co-opt churches in the revolution began more than a hundred years ago. It is now threatening to gain critical mass.

This danger is the subject of a new film, Enemies Within the Church, produced by Cary Gordon, Trevor Loudon and Judd Saul. It chronicles the destructive infiltration of the churches and the injection of “wokeism” -- Marxism, social justice, Critical Race Theory, gender fluidity – into church doctrine. The choir of radical Left ideology, having targeted and gradually co-opted the media, Hollywood, Big Tech, the unions and the political parties, set its sights on penetrating and controlling the churches, a difficult, long-term endeavor. And, as the film explains, the communists eventually succeeded in penetrating the Bible colleges, seminaries, and pulpits of many denominations to push Christianity into the direction they want.

Vigano calls out, alternatively "modernists", free masons, communists, and the homosexual mafia. Levy cites communists and globalists. What all these people have in common is that they are Satanists, in that they have been influenced by Satan to do evil.  They are nihilists, and believe in power and politics above all.  But there is Truth and Light and Life on the one hand, and there are lies, and darkness and death on the other. Abortion, for example, is not from God but from Satan. Identity politics, denies the creation of mankind, ALL mankind, in the image of God. Which side are you on?

Rational Christianity

 Nicholas J. Kaster has an excellent book report on Eric Metaxas book Is Atheism Dead at the American Thinker today. The article is entitled Eric Metaxas makes the case for God. Metaxas brings together much of the evidence for the existence of God from a variety of sources including science and archeology. Metaxas shows that a belief in God is not irrational. More, he shows that God first fashioned a universe that would bring about thinking people who would recognize Him and have a relationship with Him. Moreover, he has also intervened in history. While Metaxas is himself an Evangelical Christian, he makes few claims about theological matters, leaving those to others.

Unfortunately, the whole article is one long pull quote. The discovery of the Big Bang made for a distinct beginning, just as the Book of Genesis tells us. Then there is the unbelievably fine tuning of the universe. Could that have happened just randomly? What about the theory of evolution? Evolution proposes that random mutations, most of which would be unfavorable, account for the wide variety of species on Earth. Yet there is not enough time for evolution to have taken place without some intelligent guidance. But worse, the theory proposes that life emerged from nonliving matter on the Earth's surface. However, once one understands how complex the simplest forms of life are, and how each of the systems must be in place for the life to exist at all, to continue to believe that the cell came about by random events becomes untenable.

The field of Biblical Archeology has grown steadily in the twentieth century. It even has its own Biblical Archeology Review. Importantly, archeology has proven the existence of figures and places mentioned in the Bible, which lends authenticity to the rest of it. Importantly, no archeological discovery contradicts the Bible.

Whether you believe in God or not is ultimately a matter for the Holy Spirit.  But understand that those who believe in God and worship Him are not irrational.  In fact, believers are happier and more resilient.  Indeed, if you are on the fence, you might want to repent by opening your mind.  No one can save you but God himself, and please note that Jesus is calling you.

'I'm mad as hell, and I won't take it anymore!'

 I have become extremely disappointed with the Republican party.  It is hard to find the words to express just how disappointed I am.  But, while I am disappointed with Republicans, I would not quit the party to join the Democrats, whom I view as evil.  Nor would I join the Libertarians, whom I view as misguided and naive.  Plumbing the depths of my disappointment with the Republicans is, perhaps, not possible, but J. B. Shurk comes close with his article at the American Thinker today entitled The Hostile Takeover of the Republican Party.

Being a Republican voter is no easy thing. Social media censor you. Companies fire you. The Department of Justice persecutes you. Democrats assault and harass you. And all the while, most Republican Party "leaders" stand back and do nothing as they watch. We've got the only political party in modern history controlled by a small group of elected officials who fundamentally disagree with the prevailing viewpoints of 90% of the voters who put them in office. Election after election, their unstated yet indisputable campaign slogan is simply, "Vote for us because we don't hate you quite as much as the other guys." (I'm not even sure that's true!)

...snip...

Name another profession whose whole business model is centered on creating problems where none exists, so that the same people who created them can spend enormous sums of money guaranteed to make things worse. Only politicians could declare a "war on poverty," waste tens of trillions of dollars, and get more poverty. Only criminal kingpins could declare a "war on drugs" while keeping America's unprotected borders open to narco-terrorists and subsidizing the pharmaceutical industry in its efforts to hook Americans on opiates. Only an unpatriotic Uniparty invested in making money, not achieving victory, could spend two decades at war, accomplish little, botch retreat, and then repopulate the homeland with nationals from the same countries we've been fighting. If poverty, drug use, and global threats to peace have never been worse, then the politicians are winning! Stealing taxpayers' wealth to create crises that require stealing more from taxpayers is the normal business cycle of the ruling class. Only policy failure can produce success!

Once people grasp this perverse incentive structure for elected criminals, then seemingly inscrutable problems become easy to understand. Is it true that the U.S. government was actually investing money in the same Chinese bio-weapons lab that may have unleashed COVID-19 upon the world? Why would the feds use taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous experiments in a communist country that is arguably America's most serious geopolitical foe? Those reasonable questions presume that officials infused with a bare modicum of ethics or morality represent us. Ask instead: has the "health emergency" given our gangster government more authority? Has it allowed congressional criminals to spend recklessly on an ever-mutating problem? Has it widened the divide between the powerful and the powerless? If so, then aiding our enemies in the development of bio-weapons has been a rousing success. Once you accept that the Uniparty produces for mass consumption both misery and misery's antidote, then any manner of duplicitous treachery against American citizens makes perfect sense.

Of course you should go read the whole article. It is hard to believe that all this isn't by design. It has to dawn on one that our elected scavenger class intends these results. After all, they can't be so stupid as to believe that their policies will bring about an independent, self sufficient middle class. These are Rhodes Scolars, graduates of Harvard Law School, Yale, and other "elite" schools. These are places the average joe can't get into. And please note that every . single . policy and policy proposal always runs inthe same direction. If this was just randon, some of these policies might strengthen the middle class. But no, these policies and laws universally hurt the middle class. And when we notice, we are gaslighted. No, we are just trying to help out those down on their luck. But of course, that is our job, not government's. Even people in foriegn countries have noticed:

It's difficult to look at all this carnage and not ask, as El Salvador's president has, whether there is a "deliberate plan" to "destroy the U.S. from within." Seen from the globalist cartel's obvious goal of restoring a system of feudalism where a small number of lords can control a continent of serfs, the answer is clear: yes!

I am not sure what to do about it, but the first thing is I won't vote FOR people who do not represent my values. I woun't vote for the Democrats, of course, but I don't want hold my nose and vote for the lesser evil. To make a movie reference, "I'm mad as hell, and I won't take it anymore!"

More tips to fight inflation

 Another article on ways to save during the inflation which is, of course, only going to get worse.  At The Federalist today, Jordan Boyd has an article entitled & Practicle Tips to Fight Inflation and the People Who Exacerbate It. He suggests a "variety garden" and keeping backyard hens. But there are other tips that you might want to take advantage of as well. Go read the whole article at the linked piece.

If they can make you believe absurdities, they can make you commit atrocities

 Andrea Widburg again has an excellent article citing a Tucker Carlson Tonight monologue. If you didn't watch it, or don't have it recorded, Widburg has his monologue embedded her the post at the American Thinker entitled Tucker savages Ketanji Brown Jackson, transgenerism, and tech tyranny. Jason Whitlock said it best when he quoted Voltaire "If they can make you believe absurdities, they can make you commit atrocities." This is what I mean by being "demoralized."

Even before Ketanji Brown Jackson's extraordinary statement that she does not know what a woman is, I'd concluded that she's a dim bulb and, really, the judicial equivalent of Kamala Harris: an uninspiring Black woman who's floated effortlessly upward through affirmative action and fealty to leftism. I'd spent the day mentally writing an attack on her, only to see Tucker Carlson hold forth with an incendiary monologue that attacked her "I'm not a biologist" lunacy, the whole transgender madness that the left is advancing, and the real agenda of remaking society in an ugly way, especially through the death of free speech.

As you watch it, keep in mind a point I've made repeatedly: the giveaway that this whole transgender thing is a con is the word "transgender." If swimmer Will Thomas really were a woman (and really believed he is a woman), he wouldn't call himself a "transgender woman." He'd just say, "I'm a woman." The same is true for Richard Levine, the assistant secretary for health.

Yes, you should watch Carlson's monologue, but you should also read Widburg's article because she offers some expanded thoughts.

If you watched the whole video, you saw that Tucker covers Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal's express attacks on free speech, which he considers a danger to a "healthy" society, a danger that he and others like him must destroy. 

Here's a different way of thinking about the social media sites' role in America. Combing the principles behind the First Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes what Agrawal is saying and doing unconstitutional and unlawful — as in, attorneys general need to step in to stop them.

The Civil Rights Act arose because private businesses were shutting their doors to people based on race. One could argue that freedom of association gave these businesses the right to choose who was allowed to enter. But that's not the path Congress chose. Instead, in Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress stated:

(a) Equal access All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

In a way, social media are places of public accommodation. Today's censorious tech giants, rather than being in the business of selling food, lodging, or entertainment (the targets of the Civil Rights Act), are in the business of selling and re-selling ideas. If they close their doors to classes of people they dislike, their monopolistic status means that the targeted class is out in the ideological cold.

Like I said, go read Widburg's post.

Nationwide Famine?

 John Klar has a scary piece today at the American Thinker entitled Food, famine, fear: Beware the great agricultural reset. Again, this is all by design. Corporate monopolists, industrial agriculture, and our scavenger class scooping up their share of the profits for enabling them are to blame.

Americans awakening to the Orwellian Rule of Joe Biden and his crew of thieves have noticed that the perpetual lying is designed to inculcate pliancy through fear. When the COVID-19 hysteria began to wane, Big Brother Biden switched gears to the Ukraine crisis. Intriguingly, both crises have been caused by the government Biden heads – COVID-19 was crafted in Wuhan, and the Obama administration set the scene for making Ukraine America’s pawn in the current conflict. Conning Americans with one fear-lie to eclipse the previous, the biggest lie is yet to come. It is called Build Back Better, and it will unleash a greater terror than any virus or war: nationwide famine.

This dire warning is constructed not on fantasy but fact. As many watchful Americans have noticed during COVID-19, the nation’s grocery stores are not guaranteed to be chock full forever. The threats to Americans’ industrial food supplies are numerous and growing, compounded exponentially by escalating inflation. And whether Biden blames food scarcity on COVID-19, Putin, or Donald Trump, the grumbling bellies of children will be indifferent.

...snip...

Back to the fear factor. Americans dizzy with fear-spinning from 911 and the “War on Terror” to date are so conditioned to fake “red lights” and “orange lights” to gaslight them into terror, that they are blind to the very real threat of food system collapse. For years now the rabid Left has ideologically pummeled Americans with false fears – a nonexistent “systemic racism,” active shooter drills and warped reporting on gun violence, hand-wringing and child-torturing over the End Times Climate Catastrophe.

But the real threat is corporate-dominated food production, enabled by bipartisan legislators for decades. Americans will soon see this growing threat is much more real than yellowcake uranium from Niger. And the AOC-Biden crew have already revealed their plan to “rescue” Americans by building corporate domination back better – totalitarianism is not complete without controlling food supplies.

So, you live on a small urban lot or a modest suburban lot. What can you do to put at least some food on your table? The first thing is you can raise some vegetables in a "victory garden." You can pickle cucumbers, for example. In fact, you can pickle a lot of things to store them for the winter.  You can also can foods to preserve them. Make relish and chili sauce with excess tomatoes.

You can be creative here. Composted coffee grounds make an excellent soil amendment, and coffee grounds can be used to grow oyster mushrooms. Mushrooms in turn provide proteins to your diet. If you can raise backyard hens, you will have eggs, and hens will help keep down insect pests. They will, however, decimate your garden so you may have to figure out a way to protect your plants. Stock up on beans and lentils now. And if you have a farmers market, begin shopping there for locally grown foods. Ultimately, our hope to break this unholy alliance up is to raise more food locally and regionally the way our grand parents did it.

Meanwhile, we are in for tough times.

To Err is Human, To Really Screw Things Up Takes A Computer...

 There is a saying that to err is human, but to really screw things up takes a computer. As humerous as that statement may be, it seems to be the theme of Anthony J. DeBlasi's article at the American Thinker entitled Planning An Exit From Reality. People are often so taken with the apparent ability of computers to do things that they think that they can do anything. Sadly, this is an illusion. Your "smart" phone is not really so smart. What computers do is access stored information faster than we humans. But that is because it is already stored. They do not generate information. They are not actually "smart." They are more like idiot savants and one trick ponies.

Here's the problem, though.

Global planners aiming to remake the world in their image are in fact, it seems to me, trying to reinvent reality and repeat mistakes of the past on a grand scale – mistakes that thwart efforts for better life for the world’s inhabitants. Their belief that high technology hitched to unimpeded power leads to a new and better world is in fact the re-endorsement of hoary old thought and action that treat humans as chattel – the Master/Slave Syndrome in its latest and greatest iteration.

What I have to say regarding this mega-misappropriation of science and technology in planning a “better world” begins with reference to a disturbing and forgotten fact . . .

In his writings and lectures, J. Bronowski made clear to fellow scientists and laymen that all rational systems, including mathematics and physics, have inescapable and permanent dead ends, beyond which it is impossible to proceed. This is significantly premised by the abandonment, before mid-the 20th century, by scientists themselves, of the belief that science can actually explain the world. Abandoning this traditional concept of the role of science threw a dream of Enlightenment thinkers into the dustbin of history. Breakthroughs like relativity, the uncertainty principle, subatomic deconstruction of classical mechanics, and much else of modern physics made it increasingly hard to maintain the old confidence in “total knowledge through science.”

Stated another way, this intrinsic limit of science to unravel all mysteries about the world – a fact still in limbo among the general public – tells us that strictly logical systems are ultimately circular. This means that their starting assumptions (givens, premises) can lead only so far along a path to their intended conclusion before a point is reached where further advance ceases to be linear, requiring a reexamination of the original assumptions. If these are not altered (for whatever reason) in order for the system to maintain its internal consistency, then the system’s integrity and intended purpose are compromised.

...snip...

Extensive and intensive personal interface with programming, programmers, and managers force me to join the naysayers. I’m hardly the only one that notices a huge red flag. What reason is there to turn the world over to brain-trusts whose minds are wrapped around technologic progress instead of being intensely focused on justice for people? Granting, “for the sake of argument,” the possibility of preternatural human intelligence, but aware of the propensity for error and malfeasance in any profession, what can be expected from an artificially constructed world controlled by humans or biorobots capable of amplifying to the nth degree of magnitude the mistakes and crimes of the past? I see a scenario worse by far than Huxley’s Brave New World or Orwell’s 1984.

I am always amused by the idea of self driving cars. The number of scenarios that automobiles with human drivers can encounter are no doubt limited, but still quite a large number. But, beyond that though, the number of correct reactions spreads to near infinite. In theory, this fits into the wheel house of the idiot savant. So it is interesting that they haven't made it work yet. But perhaps it's just that you can't teach a machine compassion, sypathy, empathy, or ehtics...it doesn't have a conscience.

To take for granted that science can explain everything, that technology can do everything is foolhardy, to say the least. To then apply any “knowledge” and “expertise” gained from such manipulation of science and technology to the human domain is reckless, to say the least. This is not the same as using science and technology to improve life on earth but is the application of scientism – the imitation of science – to achieve a non-scientific goal. Combined with politics, scientism is at best fraudulent, at worst, disastrous – something we have witnessed over the past couple of years in the “official response” to Covid-19. “Mr. Science” Anthony Fauci and friends may cry foul against valid criticism of their actions, but they can’t forever hide their hypocrisy. The fact is, their plan to use the Covid-19 “pandemic” to “reset the world” – necessarily involving tactics that treat the world’s population in much the same way as lab animals – is outlined by Mr. Great Reset Klaus Schwab in his 2020 book, Covid-19: The Great Reset.

What the politicians pushing these ideas are really after is power, the more absolute, the better. They want power, and they want to keep power. And they are quite willing to enslave you in the process and turn you into a serf.

'Gun Violence' about the people, not the weapon they use

Dave Workman over at Ammoland has an excellent article explaining that the the real problem with 'gun violence' is media bias. Note that it is the term itself. Is someone who is stabbed any less injured that someone who is shot? Is someone who is beaten to death any less dead that someone who is shot to death? Spoiler alert, the answer to either question is no.

As noted recently at Liberty Park Press, “’Gun violence’ is a term created by the gun prohibition lobby (often incorrectly identified by the establishment media as ‘gun safety’ or ‘gun reform’ groups). The term, say Second Amendment activists, demonizes guns while essentially relegating other types of violence involving other weapons as somehow less significant.”

...snip...

In Everett, Wash., recently, a man and woman were stabbed. The man died and the woman was “fighting for her life.” When KOMO News in Seattle reported the story, the station said the “stabbing suspect” had attacked the pair. The knife wasn’t a suspect; the alleged perpetrator was.

Notice the difference? The knife did not stab two people. A flesh and blood human attacked these people. And if they didn't want to get rid of guns, they would frame the issue the same way. A person attacked and shot someone. The violence is not that of the particular tool, but of the person wielding the tool. 

So, when The Sentinel in Aurora, Colo., headlines an editorial with “Boulder, Like Aurora, Illustrates that Gun Violence is About the Guns, Not the Places,” it overlooks the obvious—violence is about the people responsible, not the weapons they use...

The Electric Vehicle Campaign Pushed By Watermelons

When I worked for the Navy environmental program, one of the dirty little secrets was that many so-called environmentalists were really communists using the environmental laws as a club to bash the nation's military. We called these people "watermelons." They were green on the outside, red on the inside. The watermelons are still out there, and apparently winning the PR wars. This is especially true in the case of electric vehicles, where the Democrats Don't Want You To Know How Much Fossil Fuel It Takes To Power Electric Cars. The Federalist has the story by Alasdaire Fleitas on March 16, 2022.

Now the sad part is that watermelons, like AOC know this. She plays dumb, but I am sure she has people who know what is what. These people also know that the laws of physics can not be broken, much as people may wish it. But many people of the average Joe variety believe the constant PR campaign that electric vehicles are the salvation of the nation.  They believe that somehow a technology will come along that will defy the laws of physics.  

That is why it is important to know that the power charging your electric vehicles batteries comes from fossil fuels. The examples given come from Las Vagas, where 50% of energy comes from the nearby Hoover dam. Not many places in the country have huge dams supplying energy, though. 

 And then there are the batteries themselves. Traditional lead-acid batteries can not power a car for many miles. What is needed is exotic batteries, using exotic rare earth metals mined in, of all places, China. Now China is not on the best terms with the United States, and might well use their exclusive battery technology to extract concessions from the U.S. Additionally, isn't China still a part of the world? Mining these rare earth metals is fraught with environmental hazards. And isn't the whole push for electric vehicles to improve the world's environment?  Or is it to drive us into the Great Reset?

As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice reported in August, Biden’s electric vehicle plan “is a big win for Beijing.” Despite our capability to become independent and profit from American-made energy, Biden has no plans to trump China’s mass energy production, even as China continues to flaunt the rigid “green” standards that hold our own producers back.

As long as the United States continues to outsource production and jobs to China, it will be hardworking Americans who suffer the economic consequences of our energy dependence.

23 States Now Have Constitutional Carry

 According to Dave Workman at Ammoland Anti-Gunners are in Anguish as Ohio and Alabama Go "Constitutional Carry". This is what the Founders intended. The idea that we would have to seek permission to excercise a Constitutional right is appalling. Just think if you had to pass a test and pay a fee to vote. Oh, wait...we used to have to do that, but the Supremes struck down such poll taxes.

Now that Ohio and Alabama have passed “constitutional carry” laws, there are 23 states with such legislation on the books. Georgia might soon join the pack. Gov. Brian Kemp, running for re-election this fall, has indicated he would sign such legislation. He was quoted by the Full Measure segment observing, “In the face of rising violent crime across the country, law-abiding citizens should have their constitutional rights protected, not undermined.”

Those Hollering About "Our Democracy" Don't Understand Democracy

 In his article at today's American Thinker entitled Whose Democracy Is This Anyway?, T. R. Clancy suggests that those hollering about "our democracy" may not understand what "democracy" is.

Reno’s commentary addresses a New York Times column by extremism “expert” Cynthia Miller-Idriss, published to mark the anniversary of January 6. She warns readers that the Capitol riot proves “the most urgent threat to Americans’ safety and security” isn’t coming from foreign terrorists, “but from the country’s own citizens.”

Specifically, she’s alarmed by a study showing “a majority of the arrested Jan. 6 attackers were employed, some of them teachers, chief executives, veterans, doctors and lawyers. They had an average age of around 40.” In other words, largely average to above-average Americans more or less representative of the American middle class. This makes the threat “especially pernicious” because “government’s traditional counterterrorism infrastructure [is] built to focus on fringe extremists,” and thus wholly unequipped to counter a danger that comes “not from the fringe but from the mainstream.”

For Reno, these assertions invite bewilderment: “On its face, this notion of ‘mainstream’ threats to democracy perplexes. One presumes that a democratic system reflects mainstream views. Isn’t the first principle of democracy that the majority rules?”

You’d think, but as Reno points out, “Miller-Idriss is not one to ponder paradoxes.” Whatever democracy means for her (she never says) it’s clearly not the rule (kratos) of the people (demos). It becomes clear her idea of democracy is a compliant demos answerable to a well-funded and dynamic kratos.

Gentle readers will find Clancy's article worth reading. And if they have time, R. R. Reno's article at First Things is interesting as well.

You must not live by lies

 Some time ago I came up with the notion that we shouldn't be tolerant of lies, that tolerating the lie demoralizes ourselves, which is the purpose behind the lies of the Left. Once I had come to this conclusion, I began noticing that a number of other thinkers had realized the same thing, or more likely, had always known what I just discovered.  I am, it must be noted, a slow learner. 

At Crisis Magazine, a Catholic publication, Kennedy Hall has a piece making the point again that we should not tolerate lies entitled The Totalitarian Covid Narrative Was Founded on "Tolerance." Hall makes the case that it is our tolerance, normally a good quality to have in a pluralistic society, which has been exploited to allow so many lies to become the dominant narrative.

When this all started, we were told to “respect everyone’s wishes so they can feel safe.” Okay, fair enough, there is nothing wrong with giving people a little breathing room if they need it.

But, after the initial scare in early 2020, it has been clear for anyone willing to take out a calculator and do some basic arithmetic that this thing never amounted to—and would never amount to—a plague of epic proportions.

Initially, my workplace required us to wear masks, and to wipe down every surface we touched. They even encouraged wearing gloves. The gloves and the wiping down of everything was the first to go, since it was discovered early on that the virus quickly died in the sunlight and didn't transfer on surfaces. But the masks hung in there for a while. One person was especially fanatic about masks, using the fact that his wife had had cancer as an excuse. But even that wore thin for most of us. None of us had any problem with him wearing a mask to protect himself and his wife. But if he wore a mask, why did the rest of us, who would never come anywhere near his wife, need to wear one too? Thinking logically about this began to strain credulity for most people.

But the more I encountered such thinking, or indeed lack thereof, the more I realized that COVID was a training exercise. We were being buffaloed to accept the lies of the Left uncritically. No time to think, just react. Quick now. Everyone is telling us to act a certain way.  The "experts" and the government are telling us to act a certain way.  Tolerance tells us to act that way even if we don't believe it.

No! We must always be ready to bear witness to the truth. 

The current Ukrainian narrative is therefore instructive. The narrative is that Russia is bad and Ukraine is good. We must be on the side of the Ukrainians or else we are carrying Putin's water. But Madison Cawthorne perhaps has it right when he said that both governments are corrupt, and that America's interests suggest staying out of the conflict, while backing up our NATO allies. Getting into the middle of a war only helps Biden and the globalists.

Christ came to tell us He was the Truth. Without the Truth there is no life, certainly no eternal life.

It is not a coincidence that Satan is called the Father of Lies.

Lies are not from God, they are from Hell, or from us; and when they are from us, they are from our hellish self, not our heavenly self.

Every, single, time we acquiesce to lies, we run the risk of living by them. It is a slippery slope that can become a veritable cliff if we are not careful.

Of course, one doesn't need to make a total ass and bore of oneself. But understand who you are. You are the body of Christ. You are in the world, but not OF the world. You must not live by lies!

Our Spiritual Crisis

I have written in recent years about the unseriousness of our politics, and the people pushing these political causes.  Whether it is climate change, or Black Lives Matter, or even more ridiculous, the entire transgender issue, normal Americans are beleaguered on all sides.  If such causes did not have such dire effects on us, we could all laugh at these people, with their silly twits...er tweets and their constant state of outrage and excessive drama. Over at Sultan Knish, Daniel Greenfield exlains why this is in a post entitled The Frictionless Souls Addicted To The Cause. Hint: it is related to our general loss of religion.

Ukrainian flags are flying on buildings across the country and Russian vodka is being poured into drains. Concerts are being canceled and books are flying off shelves over a cause that the vast majority of Americans would not have cared about and did not even know existed last year. In a matter of weeks everyone has come around to having a passionate opinion on the subject.

...snip...

The desperate hunger for new causes is a spiritual vacuum. The Ukranians and the Russians believe in what they’re fighting for. We believe in the need to believe in something. The conflict over Ukraine stretches back centuries while our fervent investment in it goes back a few weeks...People without a purpose to their passions rush from one cause to another in search of a momentary sense of meaning. Conspiracy theories make the world meaningful and nurture their sense of outrage because it distracts them from the aching emptiness within.

What Greenfield means by "frictionless souls" is that there is no resistance to these radical ideas. Once upon a time, people were guided by the reality God's word revealed to them in His word. People understood their place in society and the universe. We understood that God is in heaven, and we are on earth. He created us, we are His creatures. Without the sense of meaning and purpose that religion provides, we find ourselves easily manipulated by the Left.

True religion is an ongoing act of conscience while false religion evades the internal accountability and externalizes it into political causes. The external virtue signaling projects a false righteousness to mask the underlying failure to struggle for internal rightness.

Congratulations, residents of Alabama

This is a gun blog after all, so it's important to bring you news of another state signing Constitutional carry. The Epoch Times has the story.

A return to Constitutional carry has been the ultimate goal to which we all have been trending.  The idea of "shall issue" permits was a necessary step on the road back to Constitutional carry.  Note that I don't endorse carrying without training.  One needs to know the laws concerning the use of lethal force, and the proper handling of a weapon.  Anyone seeking to carry his or her legally owned gun should seek out such training.  You can find such training by inquiring at the dealer where the weapon was purchased.  But no one can decide when, where, or how you may carry.  Since you are responsible for your own security and that of your family, only you can make these decisions.

Congratulations, residents of Alabama. 

Senator Scott Publishes His Agenda. What About the Rest of the Republicans?

 Jim Demint has an excellent question at The Federalist entitled The GOP Establishment Wants To Take Congress Without Telling Voters Why They Should. Yes, why indeed? This is one of the reasons why I have become disgusted with the Republicans. Not that I am ready to switch to the Democrats, who I veiw as the spawn of the Devil. I can not help but thinking that both parties are really just different wings of the same party. "A pox on both their houses," I say.

So, it was good to see that at least one Republican Senator had the courage to put forth his agenda.

His name is Rick Scott, the junior U.S. senator from Florida, and the former governor of that free state. He released an 11-point, 60-page agenda explaining what he thinks are the biggest problems America faces today. Not only that, he offered common-sense policy fixes. This was particularly notable because Scott is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is responsible for electing more Republicans to the Senate.

Scott is a principled conservative, so it came as no surprise that Democrats attacked. But what Scott might not have anticipated was how many in his own party would pile on. First behind closed doors, and then in public, senior Senate Republicans not only disavowed Scott’s policy agenda, but criticized him for even offering it. It is the second part that’s the real problem.

Maybe more will decide that they need to make changes, or we will all go down. Because believe me, the Democrats are nobody's friend.

Carlson's Friday Monologue

 Andrea Widburg, someone I find myself reading every day, indeed looking forward to, has another excellent post today entitled Perhaps Tucker Carlson's most profound monologue ever. Widburg notes that she is a fan of Tucker Carlson, as am I. Like Widburg, I don't always agree with Carlson, but I find him thought provoking and worthwhile.

If you did not watch Tucker Carlson Tonight, you can read the relavant parts at Widburg's post, and there is an embedded video at the end of the post. But here are the important points: 1) The scavenger class has taken advantage of the war in Ukraine to award themselves again "emergency powers." 2) The President and the ruling class are acting illegally, and no one is talking about it. 3) The Biden administration is lying to everyone about the cause of inflation and rising prices.

I understand all of this as leading the United States into the "Great Reset." They want to deliberately impoverish the middle class, and make us all depented on the government, initiate ESG so that we must parrot the regime line or we won't be able to buy or sell (sound familiar?). Oh, and they want to destroy Christianity. They have, according to Archbishop Vigano, infiltrated the Church and elected their own pope, who is changing the ancient teaching of the Church in accord with modernism. How long until if we give a tithe to the Church, we will be unable to transact any business whatsoever.  This is all done to enrich our scavenger class, who do not seem to produce anything, but get richer and richer while everyone else gets poorer and poorer.  Sounds like ancient Israel.

A Wake Up Call

Laura Hollis over at Townhall.com has an excellent article today entitled Wake up, America - They're Trying to Destroy Us. Hollis makes the point that what is happening is no accident. It is all being done deliberately to impoverish you, and transfer your wealth to the globalists scavengers, along with your freedom, your liberty, your religion and to turn you into the equivalent of a medieval serf.

Throughout our nation's relatively short history, powerful people -- kings, communist dictators, tribal tyrants, warmongering corporatists -- have always resented America. The reason is simple and biblical: America's success was proof that free people who exercise self-restraint grounded in Judeo-Christian principles of human dignity and ordered society can govern themselves and flourish, unencumbered by totalitarian control.

But we have grown weak, dependent and easily manipulated. In 2008, when Barack Obama was first running for president, I remarked on the similarities between those proclaiming Obama to be a messiah of sorts and the ancient Israelites' demand for a king. In the Old Testament book of Samuel, God explains that it is He the people are rejecting as their true king and tells Samuel to warn the Israelites that an earthly king will take their sons for his wars and their daughters for his pleasure. Their property and everything they produce will be taken by the king for his own use and dispensed to his friends as political patronage. "You yourselves," the Lord warns through Samuel, "will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you ... "

In the 14 years since I wrote that column, we have continued to abandon the discipline and self-reliance that made us strong. In so doing, we risk relinquishing to a new generation of egotistical despots the freedoms that our Founding Fathers declared to be God-given.

Just so. Hollis has the ring of truth here. Interestingly, it fits in with the book I am currently reading, A Voice In The Wilderness: Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano on the Church, America, and the World. Vigano describes a "Deep Church" consisting of priests, bishops and cardinals that oppose traditional Catholic teaching and have insinuated themselves into positions of power in the Church to destroy the Church of Christ. But these members of the "Deep Church" work closely with the members of the "Deep State" to accomplish their ends.  Whether you believe in the Devil or not, he believes in you, and these people are working for him.  As Jesus noted, these people received their reward on earth.

I have come to believe that our choices come down to just two: either we work for the Lord, or for the Devil.  Either way, the Lord wins, as how could He not?  The real question is how does it all turn out for you?

The Venezuela-ization of America

 Janet Levy has an important article today entitled The Great (Destructive) Reset of Capitalism. It is important for the reason that nobody except Glenn Beck has been talking about it. It is important because the scavengers at the World Economic Forum intend to reduce the American middle class to abject poverty. If they succeed, we will be scrounging in garbage cans for food, and killing zoo animals like the middle class in Venezuela.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is promoting a dystopian vision, and it is closer than you think. By 2030, it says, “You will own nothing and you’ll be happy.” Ownership and control will be vested in a handful of government leaders and a cabal of the wealthiest individuals in the world. You will lose more than just your possessions.

Under the WEF’s “Great Reset,” individual freedom, personal responsibility, and opportunities for growth and self-fulfillment will be eroded away. Democracy, the free market and national sovereignty will be replaced by a new world order, stakeholder capitalism and centralized control by some NGOs, globalist corporations and the elite. Klaus Schwab, the WEF’s founder and executive chairman, gloated over the pandemic: to him, it was a “window of opportunity” for this reset.

Please read Levy's article, and think about what you are going to do about it.

Pray that the Holy Spirit Softens Hearts on Both Sides of the War in the Ukraine

 I am currently reading A Voice In The Wilderness: Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano on the Church, America, and the World. Yes, it deals with the Catholic Church, the pope, Archbishop McCarrick and other high clergy who have either committed crimes against the faithful, or kept quiet about it. It is also about Vatican II and how it changed the Catholic religion after 2000 years. You might be wondering why a Missouri Synod Lutheran would be concerned with the goings on in the Catholic Church? Well, while Lutherans have some differences with the Catholic Church, (think praying to saints and the whole mariology thing.) which caused the separation from that Church in the first place, we are all Christians. We are all one body of Christ, and when one part of the body is hurting, it affects us all.

Thus, when I saw Monica Showalter's post at the American Thinker entitled Leftist Jesuit Publication Dismisses Archbishop Vigano's Latest Warning as 'Conspiracy Theory'. Showalter quite reasonably asks: if Vigano is spouting conspiracy theories, why is his letter getting lots of traffic?

Here's the other thing: Conspiracy theorists are generally marginal unless something is really off kilter with the official reality. They're wackos. People ignore them. They are dismissed. Can America explain why this nastily headlined Religion News Service piece is number one in the the America publication's traffic right now? Check it out here. Correlation is not causation but this is not a typical pattern for an otherwise easily dismissable 'conspiracy theory' promoter.

According to the America article, Vigano wrote:

“The United States of America and the European States must not marginalize Russia but build an alliance with it, not only to restart trade for the prosperity of all, but in lieu of the reconstruction of a Christian Civilization, which will be the only one able to save the world from the transhuman and medical-technical globalist monster,” the archbishop wrote in his nearly 10,000 word letter.

...snip...

The archbishop said in his letter that Putin has been cornered by an aggressive NATO, backed by the United States, which is seeking to escalate the conflict for its own gains. “This is the trap for Russia just as much as Ukraine, using both to allow a globalist elite to bring its criminal plot to fruition,” Viganò wrote.

With the Archbishop, pray for the people of both Russia and Ukraine. The Russian government may not be our friend, but we should pray that the Holy Spirit softens hearts on both sides of this war.

The Creature from Jekyll Island

 If you have been wondering who to blame for your financial misery, please watch Tucker Carlson Today on the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is not actually an agency of the federal government, but a private bank. And they have been printing money and inflating the value of assets like stocks, bonds, commercial real estate, while at the same time lowering the value of your savings and your wages. Now, don't think this lets politicians like Biden off the hook, because he has certainly done his share, as well as the Democrat polititians. But the Fed is what has allowed it. In the process, they have enabled the gap between the rich and the rest of us to widen.

The video takes around 50 minutes to watch the whole thing, so get a cup of coffee, and find a comfy chair and watch it. For more info, you can read the book The Creature From Jekyll Island, which will give you more information about the Fed.

Democrat plans go sideways

 Here is a local issue that may have national implications.  The Democrats have attempted to keep Republican Madison Cawthorn off the ballot for Representative of North Carolina's 11th Congressional district based on a Constitutional Amendment passed after the Civil War that said anyone involved in a rebellion against the United States was disbarred from running for office.  As Andrea Widburg explains in her post at the American Thinker entitled Madison Cawthorn achieved a huge victory in an N.C. federal court, it turns out that Congress repealed that provision in 1872.

The problem for this argument about the Disqualification Clause is that the clause, which applied to past and future insurrections and which was enacted three years after Civil War ended, explicitly allowed Congress to repeal it via “a vote of two-thirds of each House.” That vote came in 1872 when Congress passed the Amnesty Act, described as “An Act to remove political Disabilities imposed by the fourteenth Article of the Amendments of the Constitution of the United States.”

Of course, you realize that the Dems may have had the idea of using this clause to disqualify Republicans when they made the claim that the January 6 protest was in fact an "insurrection." It warms the cockles of my heart when those plans go sideways.

We're Way Ahead of the Ukraine

 Kurt Schlichter has an article at Townhall.com entitled Ukraine Arms Its People; Americans Say 'Way Ahead of You'. The Left has been trying to separate us and our guns for as long as I have been alive. Why? Because they want to cram down our throats the globalist "Great Reset," and they can't do that as long as we have guns.

Imagine you’re a Democrat for a minute – to fully experience the effect, invent some pronouns and forget which bathroom to use – then think of the cognitive dissonance you would experience watching the TV showing your new bestest buddies the Ukrainians handing out AK-47s to regular civilians. Normal people, with guns? And intending to use them to defend their freedom? But but but guns are bad! Your mind would be spinning – it’s got to be a manifestation of white supremacy, right? “Ohhhhhhh,” you moan, swooning and dizzy at the thought of men (and women) standing up to personally undertake the solemn duty of citizenship that is defending your country.

Seeing this, liberal sissies are confused and frightened. Normal Americans are all “One rifle? Well, that’s a start. I guess.”

One must understand that the Bill of Rights does not grant a single right. Not one. What it does is acknowledge the rights that we already have because we are human. These rights are granted us by our Creator. No man (or woman) has the right to deny these rights unless one breaks one of the 10 Commandments. Because only laws that are aligned with the 10 Commandments can be said to be legitimate.

Now, the 6th Commandment forbids murder.  But forbidding the tools used to murder. That is because nearly anything can be used as a weapon to murder another. Yet these tools have other uses that are not against any of the Commandments.  Unless the government is prepared to ban all the rocks in the world, it can not enforce the 6th commandment by eliminating harmful weapons, like guns.  But then, enforcing the 6th Commandment is not why the Left wants to disarm us:

Now, this is the very reason the left is so dead set on disarming us. The fact we have a veto on tyranny makes us uppity, and we maintain an intolerable defiance of our betters because, in our gun safes or hanging above our mantles, are the means of manifesting that defiance. To disarm us is less about eliminating the mercifully remote possibility that we would ever have to use our weapons – as bad as things are now, we are many, many miles from anything that might justify armed revolt – than about depriving us of the knowledge that we could. Australians gave up their weapons and their kangaroo kops were entirely too uncircumspect about the atrocities they inflicted on their own citizenry. Our left wants us to understand that we can’t ever resist, no matter what. That’s why it wants us gun-free – because it wants us to know we are at its mercy.

If Ukraine survives as a nation, the first thing on their to do list would be to pass their own version of the Second Amendment.

How Climate Change is Destroying the West, and Who Is To Blame

 Christopher Monckton of Brenchley has written a long piece at the American Thinker which points to the Communists as originating the global warming scam and fifth columnists in Western countries and for keeping it going and amplifying it. Some of us smelled a rat from the very start, but we were universally shouted down. This turns out to be another communist idea. Since the whole article is a pull quote, I haven't highlighted any part of it. Rather, you should grab a cup of coffee, and sit down for a long, informative, and eye-opening piece by a member of the British nobility at The Strategic Threat from Net-zero Emissions.