The Sun Causes Earth Temperatures to Rise and Fall

 We are a little over a month away from the UN's big confab on climate change known as COP 30, or the 30th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Brevity is not the UN's strong suit. Prior to that event, you will hear all sorts of drivel claiming that the "world will end in 10 years unless we do something now!"  Naturally, that something is always to stop using fossil fuels.

The use of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas necessarily produces carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4).  Thus, burning fossil fuels is a very grave sin according to the climate alarmists.  But, "very important people" such as Leonardo DiCaprio and John Kerry will fly to Brazil in their private jets to lend a hand to the COP 30 proceedings, thus adding yet more CO2 and CH4 to the atmosphere.  While there, they will dine on sumptuous meals while back home, we can barely afford hamburger.

Note, that I do not begrudge these people their private planes.  I would own one of I had a need for it.  The problem is not that these people fly all over in private jets, but that they do so while lecturing the rest of us who use automobiles to get to work every day that we should give up our cars and drive horses and buggies or just walk.

Anticipating the onslaught of climate alarmism, Douglas J. Cotton has a post at the American Thinker entitled Why climate models fail. They fail, in that they cannot replicate past climates, because their premises are flawed. Cotton is not, as you may have guessed, a climate "scientist" but instead views the climate problem through a physicist lens understands a field called thermodynamics.

Mainstream climatology models are fundamentally flawed because they ignore a now established physical reality: gravity — not radiative forcing — governs the temperature gradient in the troposphere. This gradient arises from gravity’s direct influence on individual air molecules, slowing those with upward velocity components and accelerating those moving downward. The result is a vertical stratification of molecular kinetic energy — what we measure as temperature.

To visualize this, consider a sealed vertical cylinder, initially devoid of air. Introduce air molecules through a central aperture. Those that ascend lose kinetic energy (cool), while those that descend gain it (warm). This produces a stable temperature gradient — an equilibrium state of maximum entropy — where the sum of kinetic and gravitational potential energy remains constant with altitude. There are no unbalanced energy potentials; the system is in what we physicists call thermodynamic equilibrium (not to be confused with thermal equilibrium).

Thus, what drives the surface temperature of the earth is not a gas that represents 0,04% of the atmosphere, but the Sun itself. Try as we might, there is nothing we can do to change the Sun.

The Government Cannot Always Protect You, But It Shouldn't Keep You From Protecting Yourself

 Over at Ammoland today, Sean Malony has an article entitled The Second Amendment: America's Timeless Equalizer for the Weak and Vulnerable, that makes the point that the Second Amendment to our Constitution is as relevant today as it has ever been:

The Second Amendment matters today for the same reason it mattered in 1791: government cannot always protect you, but it should never prevent you from protecting yourself.

Gentle readers should go and read the article in full. Yes, it is preaching to the choir, but the choir needs preaching to in order to keep the faith in the face of constant propaganda opposing the faith. But I am done debating these issues. I doubt I have changed a single mind other than my own. But the choir still needs to be preached to.

Trump Hates Both Sin and Sinner, as God Directs

 I know, I know...I have been harping on the threat of Islam for the last week or so, and you come here for gun news.  I'm sorry, but there appears to be a reason for it.  Douglas Schwartz today at the American Thinker has an article explaining Why Trump Hates His Enemies. Now, I don't know if Trump is that familiar with the Bible or not, but in the Psalms we learn, as we do elsewhere as well, that God hates His enemies, and expects us to hate them as well. The fact that God forgives men who are repentant and loves them does not cancel out the hatred felt for both the sin and the sinner.

Who preaches hatred while eulogizing “a missionary”?

Trump spoke deliberately.

He’s preparing America for war while placing enemies on notice. He doesn’t support understanding the sinner and seeking to reform him. He hates the sinner and the sin.

So, President Trump hates the people who support the murder of Charlie Kirk. Good for him. But his hatred goes further. It extends as well to the Islamist who are planning war against the United States. Of course, they frame it as vengeance for things done to them. But, just like a bully, they started it and then look at defensive reactions as somehow out of bounds.

Schwartz presents an abundance of evidence that Islam is planning an attack on America comparable in scope to that of October 7, 2023 on Israel, but scaled up to America's giant size. In many ways, it sounds much like Kurt Schlichter's imagined story line in his book The Attack. But this assault will feature the Bin Laden sons for Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah and who knows what other Islamic terrorist groups. They have been training, sneaking into America, strategizing how to turn our system against itself. They will use our technology against us. Note that they never build or use their own stuff, because they never build anything. Instead, they tear down. Even the great wealth of the Saudi's is only because the West needed oil, and Western corporations went and drilled for it, transported it, refined it and distributed its products, while paying the Saudi's for the privilege.  We're funding the attack on ourselves.

Tomorrow Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth is scheduled to meet with flag officers (those with the rank of general or admiral.) Some commenters have supposed that he should have a zoom call instead. But Hegseth is correct here. He doesn't want anyone hacking into his call, and he has learned that electronic communications are not secure. Schwartz points out that if Trump attends, that will also be a signal that war is imminent.

Sarah Adams, Jane Doe, etc. aren’t wild conspiracy theorists. Shawn Ryan (a former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor) hosted her multiple times on his podcast, as well as interviewing Trump, Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Tom Homan, etc. He isn’t Tucker Carlson promoting crackpot agendas advancing our enemies’ objectives. Lara Trump has also interviewed Adams. Congressional representatives Tim Burchett, Elise Stefanik, and Eli Crane are among those warning about upcoming terrorist attacks. Al-Qaida training camps are flourishing under the Taliban, reconstituted under Hamza bin Laden’s leadership, Osama's eldest son. Individuals such as Sarah Adams or Laura Loomer promulgate information gleaned from open sources or intelligence community leaks. Trump possesses the highest quality intelligence. When he restores the War Department’s name and convenes his military leadership, this means, unlike Pearl Harbor, 9/11, or Abbey Gate, intelligence isn’t ignored, resulting in reactive responses. This time it will be proactive.

Note any threats Trump issues against Middle Eastern officials while attempting to preempt or respond to attacks. Iran, the Taliban, al-Qaida, and Qatar’s leaders may soon experience turbulence.

Gentle readers should get a cup of coffee and read the entire article, as well as check into the hyperlinks. Some of them are quite long, so break it up if necessary. But prepare, as much as you can. If you have a permit, or live in a Constitutional Carry state, carry always. Keep your head on a swivel and stay safe. Remember too, that God put us here for such times as these. We don't want to disappoint him, but remember too that He is always in control, and He will win our battles. We must trust in Him.

Update:  Gentle readers are reminded that the Left is working with the Islamists to bring down America.  Afterwards, they will no doubt fight among themselves, but for now, the enemy of my enemy is my frenemy.

What's To Be Done About Islam

 Vince Conyer has an article today at the American Thinker entitled Nineteenth Century Utah Provides a Template for Dealing With the Threat of Islam. I don't agree with his entire program, but I think he has presented a good start. We, the citizens of the United States need to devise some program to stop Islam in its tracks. Otherwise, Islam will overwhelm us.  It is what Islam has done for 1400 years.  It builds nothing; indeed, it is a religion of hatred and death.

You don't think that will happen. Well, here is some history. The Middle East was majority Christian from around the 3rd Century until the 7th Century. Then Islam came storming out of Arabia and now there are little pockets of Christians left. Those who remain are tortured and persecuted and murdered. While Sub-Saharan Africa was never majority Christian, the Christians living there regularly face death and persecution at the hands of Muslims.

Muslims regularly kill unbelievers, homosexuals, trans-sexual, and other deviants.  That would include "furries."  Say you are a principled atheist. You would be among the first to go. But say you convert to save your life. It is the ideal "religion" for the unbeliever. You don't need actual faith. The devil cannot read your inward thoughts, so as long as you do the outward minimum, you are good to go.  Unlike Christianity, where faith and loyalty are the coin of the realm, in Islam, it is performing your Islamic duties.  But since nobody can do everything perfectly, there are no 72 virgins awaiting Muslim martyrs.  Sorry about that.

Conyer frames the problem of Islam as a danger to the republic by comparing it to Communism, a very appropriate analogy. This is because while Islam and Communism appear as polar opposites, they have much in common in practice.

Islam is not Communism, but it has at its core the goal of eliminating all other religions, quashing free speech, relegating women to 2nd class status, and replacing secular government with Sharia law. Those goals are equally as dangerous to the Republic as anything communism ever dreamt of doing. The difference is that, while the former was shunned or even denounced in the media, in academia, and among most of the citizenry, the latter is celebrated by the media and the intelligentsia while being supported by NGOs and leftist government bodies across the country.

Of course, we have a First Amendment that promises freedom of religion. That’s true, we do, but it’s not an absolute. The latter half of the 19th century saw the United States government essentially wage a 50-year war against the Mormon Church over polygamy, a core tenet of the faith. The United States did everything within its power to eradicate the practice, including outlawing the practice via law and arresting violators while Utah was just a Territory, to refusing to allow it to become a state until the practice was officially expunged. The Church finally relented and, in 1890, banned the practice, thus clearing the way for Utah to be admitted as an ultimately hugely successful state in 1896.

Polygamy—a practice that is explicitly part of Islam—is indeed problematic, but certainly far less dangerous to the nation than the threats that Islam writ large poses for America.

So, what is his proposal?

1. Explicitly outlaw Sharia law nationally and in every state.

2. Monitor and close any mosque that hosts a speaker or features an imam who calls for Sharia law.

3. Ban all funds to organizations in the US coming from nations that have Sharia law.

4. Close any school that teaches or encourages Sharia law.

5. Demand that every mosque and Muslim affiliated organization affirm that the supreme law of the United States is the Constitution and that they will not seek to undermine it, replace it with Sharia, or ngage in or support terrorism in any way.

6. After designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, do the same for organizations in the United States and beyond that support it or any other terrorist organizations.

As I have said, these are a good start. We should outlaw Sharia law as incompatible with a Constitutional republic, and we should enforce it by closing down any mosque that hosts a speaker or features an imam who calls for Sharia. You can do numbers 3 and 4 as well, though it may be tougher to enforce those. Number 5 seems almost pointless. Organizations such as CAIR might publicly say that they don't support terrorist organizations, but they would be lying under Taqiyya, the Islamic doctrine meaning to lie for the cause of Islam.

Right now, a person like Mamdani can claim to be both a Communist and an Islamist. But after these two "religions" have destroyed the United States as a world power, they will war on each other. Frankly, I will not be around for that day, thank God. But my money is on Islam.

Without the Law of Apostasy, Islam Wouldn't Have Survived

 Raymond Ibrahim is a Christian scholar of Islam.  One of his books which is written with the average person in mind is The Sword and the Scimitar, which tells the true history of Islam from original sources. Some have theorized that Islam arose because of the divide between those who believed that Christ was divine, and those who thought he was just a great man. But understand that those who thought he was a great man only are doing the work of the devil. Orthodox Christianity believes that he was true man AND true God. This belief is supported in the Bible, but it is not the topic today.

Instead, I want to write about a YouTube video of Raymond Ibrahim talking with Winston Marshall. The YouTube video is part of a longer interview that you can find on YouTube as well. But it takes over an hour to watch the whole thing. Twenty seconds into this 13 minute segment, Ibrahim discusses the death of Muhammed and the second generation of Islamic leaders. The important thing to note is that war was waged against breakaway groups of Arabs for apostasy. Note what Ibrahim says: "Muslim clerics will tell you that without the law of apostasy, which is that you kill anyone who tries to leave Islam, Islam would have died out." Let that sink in. The only way Islam can survive is by intimidating and killing anyone who tries to leave. It reminds of the Left, where countries ruled by the Communists kill anyone who tries to leave. Hmmm. I wonder if there is a common thread there.

Gentle readers will want to watch the whole video because what you hear is typically the opposite of what really happened. In light of this history, the crusades make perfect sense, at least from the perspective of secular rulers whose land is being overrun by Muslims. But of course God does not need defending. In any case, He doesn't live in church buildings, nor is He tied to any one land. Rather, He is present wherever one or two are gathered in His name.

Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son who asks for his inheritance now. In the story, the prodigal son is the apostate and the father is God. The father gives it to his son, who goes off and wastes it on wine, women and song. Eventually, in a lucid moment, as he has become a swine herder, he realizes that his father's servants have it better off than he does. He thinks to himself that he will throw himself on his father's mercy and appeal to his father to become his servant. To make a long story shorter, the father had a great party to celebrate his son, who was lost and now is found. This is how the Christian God treats the apostate person. Islam's "god" kills them. I would rather throw myself on the mercy of Christ than to be at the mercy of Islam's "god."

The Left Is Doing the Work of the Devil

 Ted Noel has an article today at the American Thinker that is quite explicit in telling the truth about the unseen realm and its influence on the material world around us, entitled Evil Is Real And Has Embedded Itself In the American Left. I was especially happy to note that Noel cites Michael Heiser's Supernatural. One can read the Bible from cover to cover, as I do each year, but without some guidance, such as Michael Heiser, there are parts you will not understand. The people for whom the Bible was originally written knew this background material and had this worldview. We do not and need additional help. But once it is explained, you can read it with more understanding, and it really does make sense. Of course, to truly makes sense, one needs to read it with the eyes of faith.

Noel begins by noting that a number of people seem to be throwing around the term "evil" with reference to Charlie Kirk's murder without understanding what evil really is. Many may be, for all I know. I have not tossed it out lightly, but I haven't defined it either. It seemed obvious, but maybe not be so.

With the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the word “evil” is being tossed around. It seems to be little more than a verbal equivalent to “fascist,” “racist,” and a handful of other words that are used without a second thought for what they actually mean. We are appropriately repulsed by the act, so we call it evil. But few of us truly understand that these “horrific” acts have a fundamental connection to the realm we cannot see. Yes, I’m going to discuss theology, because there is no other proper explanation for the acts of the assassin and any co-conspirators. Argue all you want, but it is the truth, and the truth remains the truth, whether you agree or not.

...snip...

If you steal my stuff, I’ll get upset. But it’s the state statute that makes it criminal, and that law was created by a legislative body that has the right to make laws governing our behavior. It has the higher authority required for law-making. The law against theft echoes “Thou shalt not steal” from the Ten Commandments for a good reason. Good laws follow God’s moral commandments.

Good and evil are actually descriptions of loyalty to God or rebellion against God. It’s just that simple, and evil’s as old as creation. We all know the story of the snake in the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The “shining one” (literal Hebrew) tempted Adam and Eve, and the rest is history. But this doesn’t tell us the back story. (Bible geeks can read Ezekiel 28:1-19 and Isaiah 14:1-20. Just don’t let theologians tell you those are just metaphorical. They’re real.)

Noel, better than I have, makes the point that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, YHWH is real, the Devil is real, the unseen realm is real. The war that goes on in the unseen realm has become obvious to us in the material world.

“Evil,” in the simplest public sense, is service to fallen elohim. They operate to destroy, while YHWH creates and enhances. Every left-wing politician, commentator, and useful idiot is in open rebellion against YHWH, and thus in league with the fallen elohim. They ridicule the two divinely created genders. Christian values are belittled as repressive. Simply failing to bow to the evil ones is an “aggression.” Free speech that disagrees is “violence.”

Many are coming to realize that the Left has fully sold out to evil. The sequence is simple. Some of God’s celestial created beings rebelled. They were given a chance to straighten up and fly right, but instead subverted the humans they were tasked with protecting. YHWH declared their death sentence if they did not repent, but they doubled down. Huge numbers of gullible people have followed their lead, not recognizing that that choice is the source of their troubles.

Peace and fulfillment are good and come from serving YHWH, not the fallen gods. The war has now broken out into the open. The only real question is in the details, but the outcome is certain. As my wife’s license plate frame says, “I know the future. God wins.” Our allegiance will determine our ultimate fate.

Please read Ted Noel's article. The late Michael Heiser can be found at a number of places on Youtube. Additionally you can read an excellent book by Heiser called The Unseen Realm which explains much of what Noel writes. Even if you don't believe, it is good to know this understanding of Christianity.

The Left Will Not Stop, You Must Understand

Mike McDaniel has an important reminder for normal Americans in a post at the American Thinker today entitled After Charlie Kirk's murder, what now?. That reminder we'll get to in a moment, but I wanted to bring you along, as McDaniel does, rather than just blurt it out.

Who could have imagined one day we’d be saying: “I think murder is a bad thing. What’s your opinion?”

The Ten Commandments tell us we shall not kill, but the correct translation is “murder.” It’s a distinction the Bible makes abundantly clear. Killing is sometimes justified; murder is not. The Left rejects God and God’s Word, and every bit of necessary behavior, every bit of morality that flows from it, while simultaneously thinking themselves morally and intellectually superior.

When vile, drugged felons are killed in self-defense, or commit suicide by cop, they become instant unholy social justice martyrs—so long as there is political advantage in their faux canonization. The ascension of such demons as Michael Brown and George Floyd is celebrated by rioting looting, arson, assault and murder, which fuels the further degradation of civilized society.

When a Godly man like Charlie Kirk is assassinated, no one elevates him to sainthood. They mourn a life well lived, a man worthy of emulation, a man who accomplished much in a short life. The mourning is brief because people of faith know there is more than this life, and they celebrate that such a man lived. There is no rioting, no looting, no one is harmed. There are prayers. memorials and candlelight vigils, which leftists mock and try to disrupt.

Normal Americans and radical Leftists are not the same. Not even remotely. Oh, the left often imitates normal behavior, but they are not normal. In the strictest sense, they are not possessed by demons, but they are often in thrall to demons because they get what they most desire by being willing to do the demon's work. And what is the demon's work? Undoing the good that God has created.

There is embedded in McDaniel's piece a X post by one Kevin Bass that explains what McDaniel is saying very succinctly. I don't know Kevin Bass, but what he says rings true based on what others who were leftists and have left that world behind have also said: the Left will never stop until it achieves victory. The only two options are to be crushed or to crush them. Got that? To live in peace we must defeat them. But since someone will always find the devil's ways advantageous, we must always be vigilant and ready to crush them.

Make no mistake, this is a war of good versus evil on this plane of existence. But there is another plane, a spiritual one which once you get a glimpse of it, you can't unsee it. I think this is what St. Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 13:12 "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." The battle rages there as well.  As soldiers in God's army, we cannot fight as they fight, but must fight as He would have us fight:

Some argue now that Republicans are—barely—in power, it’s necessary to weaponize the DOJ against Leftists, to abuse power and treat them like they treated us. To so crush them they’ll beg for mercy and promise never to misbehave again if we’ll only stop doing to them what they did to us.

They’re not like us; they glory in that.

What we must do is fully restore the rule of law, which eschews tribalism, which demands individual responsibility, which treats everyone as equal under the law and guarantees individual liberties, the liberties the Left gleeful revoked under Biden’s Handlers.

Letitia James isn’t being prosecuted because she badly abused the law to get Donald Trump, but because there is compelling evidence she broke the law, and that’s something a state Attorney General can’t do. The same is true of Lisa Cook and Adam Schiff, because members of the Federal Reserve and Senate can’t break the law either. They’re our hired hands, not our rulers. It’s not political retribution, but the equal application of justice from which leftists thought they were immune.

Normal Americans need only keep their hard-earned understanding in mind as they keep a much closer eye on America’s domestic enemies, because they know Bass is right. When Leftists demand Normal Americans refrain from doing to them what they did to Normal Americans they’re admitting their sins and their never-ending intentions.

Again, I urge gentle readers to go read McDaniel's post.

The Truth About Guns

 Michael C. Hurley has an article at the American Thinker today, entitled The Gun Control Canard. Hurley is an attorney, and in some ways his writing reminds me of another attorney and writer on the Second Amendment named Jeff Snyder, who wrote A Nation of Cowards. That book is long out of print, and I have lost my copy of it. But I remember reading it and thinking that Snyder made the best case for the Second Amendment that I could remember.

I often present arguments from a Christian and religious worldview because...well...I am a Christian. (Not a very good Christian, mind you.  None of us are.  I like to think of Church as being a sinners' anonymous club.)  But Hurley presents the same arguments from a rational and a more neutral perspective, and it is equally compelling:

Facebook can be a place where silly people say silly things, and I have at times been one of them. But after the recent “transgender” shooting at Annunciation School in Minneapolis, in a moment of gravity I decided to post something obvious to me that seemed less obvious to others: that a boy who thinks he is a girl—or a horse or a dog or a cat or anything else that he is not—is unwell. It may be just a phase that, with time and maturity, he will outgrow. But this delusion, if it persists, does not cease to be a delusion. It becomes something evil and malign, which, if fostered and encouraged, will grow to greater evil and malignancy. For this reason, I contended, we should no more “affirm” or celebrate mental illness in the form of gender dysphoria than we would tell a young girl suffering from anorexia, “yes, you really are fat and need to lose more weight.”

You see what I mean. You wouldn't advice a girl with anorexia to lose more weight. So why do we think we should tell the delusional person that thinks they were "born in the wrong body" that they in fact were? The Left is clearly playing us, and we should acknowledge the Left's deceit and seek help for a loved one who is delusional. Going along with the gag is proving that you don't really care about that person.

Voices on the left are wont to show that America has the highest rate of gun-ownership and one of the highest rates of gun-related homicides of any country in the world. Their notion is that one is the cause of the other, which is rather much in doubt.

First, some perspective: If you have traveled anywhere overseas, you know that America has more of everything, and not just guns. We have more varieties of peanut butter than anyone, more supermarkets than anyone, and more cars full of more people at the supermarkets buying more peanut butter than anyone. That’s just unbridled capitalism, and America does capitalism better than anybody. If you’re an American company selling fishing rods, fly swatters, window treatments, or shotguns, your mission is to make more of them, and sell more of them, and do it faster and better than anybody. That’s what Henry Ford taught us. That’s the American Way. It’s why we’re (still) the biggest economy on the planet, and it’s also why we have the most TVs and the most guns. But it’s not the reason why we have more gun crime.

Just as Charlie Kirk was shot, he was answering a question about what percentage of mass shootings have involved transgender shooters, the questioner’s intended point presumably being that the percentage is rather low. To this question, Charlie was heard to ask, “counting or not counting gang violence?” Charlie’s life ended with those words, and that is the very place where we should begin the present debate about gun control.

America’s gun crime is not a problem of Cousin Jerry taking his deer rifle down to shoot up the local Piggly Wiggly. Our high rate of gun violence is greatly skewed by the rate of inner-city gang violence. These casualties arise mostly from turf-wars among gangs selling narcotics and using unregistered or stolen guns, which is to say they would be completely unaffected by any law or “good citizen” program to register or confiscate firearms. Anyone convinced of the power of gun-control laws to stop gun crime should ask whether laws against possession of narcotics have stopped the influx of illegal drugs over the last sixty years.

The best way to reduce gang-related gun crime is to imprison the gangbangers, which big-city Democrat mayors have long refused to do because of the racial optics involved, and which President Trump is now attempting to do over the howling objections of many on the left because of the racial optics involved. But as Charlie Kirk surely knew, once the rate of gun crime in America is corrected for gang-related violence, the overall incidence of mass shootings becomes less remarkable and the relative number of transgender shooters somewhat more remarkable in turn.

Putting gangbangers in prison, for the most part black and Hispanic gang members, may seem to be racially motivated, but of course it isn't. They cause most of the crime. The defense of doing so is that the gangbangers largely prey on hard working black and Hispanic communities. These people are often silent, but they deserve to live free of crime. But so long as big city mayors tolerate gangbangers in their city, the citizens who are preyed upon must be allowed to defend themselves.

We might once have thought that the need to arm oneself against the government was a relic of colonial history, but consider how different the history of the 20th century would have been had the Nazis encountered a cocked and loaded gun behind the door of every Jewish home. And no less needed today are weapons to defend ourselves when the government refuses to act, as we saw during the “Summer of Love” following the death of George Floyd, when police departments across the country were inexplicably defunded and ordered to stand down in the false name of “racial equity.”

Gentle readers are urged to go read Hurley's article. We need more writers like him on our side.

Losing Our Humanity and Soul

 Yesterday evening, Susan Quinn had a post at the American Thinker, with which I mostly agree. The title of the post is Let's not lose our humanity. In other words, while we may decry the murder of Charlie Kirk, we should not devolve into demonizing our enemies (for so they have declared themselves) nor return evil for evil.

I agree with Quinn right up to the point where she says we should hate the sin, not the sinner. This is nowhere in the Bible, though it is one interpretation of Jesus' preaching in the Gospels. There is such a thing as righteous hatred, and in Psalms 5, David captures it:

4 For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness,

Nor shall evil dwell with You.

5 The boastful shall not stand in Your sight;

You hate all workers of iniquity.

6 You shall destroy those who speak falsehood;

The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.

As faithful Christians, we should hate what our God hates. And because we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we should hate ourselves as well. But through Christ's death and resurrection, we can confess our sins and God will forgive us. Next, what should we do about Charlie Kirk's murder and the rest of the fetid pile of deceit and unreality the Left has rammed down our throats? First, of course, we should pray for our enemies.  Not of course that good things should come to them.  They have put themselves in the outer reaches of hell.  No, but we should ask the Lord to turn their hearts away from harming us. Christ instructed us to bring our concerns before Him. We should do so and not worry about how we sound. Theologians can make up pretty sounding prayers.  We should say what is on our minds.  This is private, between us and Him. We must recognize though that He may have a purpose we don't understand yet, so we just keep praying. Prayer is powerful, and it is a privilege we get to do because we are children of God.

We should use the law where applicable to restrain our enemies (for so they have declared themselves). This is beginning to happen, as those who knew about it, or those who helped the assassin carry it out are being investigated. We can hope that some of them will be charged with being complicit in Kirk's murder. And those who celebrated his murder are being fired or otherwise dealt with as well. NGOs and foundations who are funders of violence and mayhem should as well be charged as accomplices in the crimes of the left. We should keep it up. After all, murder, assassination, violence and intimidation are never right. Persuasion is the only way.

Finally, we need to recognize that our enemies (for so they have declared themselves) are at least delusional, and at worst violent and insane. We need to protect ourselves and our loved ones from attack.  That means carrying the means of protecting ourselves wherever we go, for one never knows where it may happen.  We should train or selves and teach our children situational awareness. We should also pray that we never have to use our weapons while being prepared to use them for self-defense at a moment's notice. Our God is not a pacifist and doesn't expect us to be either.

I liken our righteous anger and hatred not to passionate raging fire, but to ice cold fury. We demand that our government wield the sword of justice fairly and righteously. While cosmic justice awaits the return of Christ, we can and should approximate it as much as possible. Please read Susan Quinn's essay and of course the comments as well.

Righteous Hatred

 Following up on the Charlie Kirk assassination, J. R. Dunn has a post at the American Thinker entitled In praise of divisiveness in which he figuratively slaps the faces of those conservatives who say we need to reach out. Dunn says we should do no such thing, and he is correct.

The left-wing response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk is appalling, but it’s only to be expected, coming from a network of thugs, psychopaths, and their enablers.

But even more infuriating is the knee-jerk response of many in the conservative community. I’m talking about all the rhetoric concerning “divisiveness,” and “we have to reach out,” and “we need to put our differences aside and work together,” and so forth.

I won’t name names here. That’s beside the point. And in any case, the answer is as simple as it gets: No.

We do not need to “get together.” We do not need to “reach out.” We do not need “unity,” or any of the other marshmallow-soft euphemism for surrender and cowardice.

We reject all that for the simple reason that to accept it would be moral suicide.

In Psalm 5 we learn that God hates those who commit iniquity. We should also hate those who commit iniquity. Does that mean conservatives should deliver tit for tat? No, of course not. We can not become them. We can not harden our hearts. Instead, we must use the law to ruthlessly prosecute these thugs, psychopaths and their enablers. At the same time, we cannot cede any ground to them. For what have we to do with them? Does God cede any part of His kingdom to the Devil? We should imitate our LORD and savior who hates unrepentant sinners.

By their fruits ye shall know them. Among those fruits is what they do to kids:

They murder them while they’re still in the womb – and, in point of fact, after they’ve left the womb, if the abortionist messes up, after which they’re taken to an isolated room and left to die alone. They allow them to brought into the country by criminal gangs and then trafficked as peon labor, welfare profit points, and sex toys. Some of them are killed in the process, but we’re not supposed to discuss that. They drug and mutilate thousands of children after convincing them that they’re the wrong sex, all in hopes of validating a severe neurosis as a “sexual preference.”

That’s just the children. Add in how they victimize adults, and it becomes too much to bear. And yet we’re supposed to bond with, connect to, associate with this human garbage, in order to do what?

To make things better? How is that possible? How can anything good come out of collaboration with evil of this magnitude? You cannot associate with evil without being corrupted yourself. And anyone who advises this as the proper course of action has already been corrupted.

But, you say, you don't want to see people in prison for ideology. But focus here. They have not just expressed ideology, as repulsive as that is. They have taken it to the extreme of murder. But, you say, doesn't God forgive? Well, yes, if a person confesses his sins and truly repents. It has happened. For example, Bella Dodd repented of the Communist Party and her participation in it and became a Roman Catholic. Whittacker Chambers at least repented of Communism and testified before Congress.  I do not know about his religious beliefs, though. And in more recent times, David Horowitz renounced his upbringing as a Red Diaper Baby to found Frontpage Magazine.

So, yes, God forgives people who repent and have a contrite heart. And we should too. But the left has no intentions of repenting. When they commit violence, vandalize, burn, loot and other forms of uncivil behavior, they need to be punished. These are not legitimate forms of protest, they are violent acts intended to intimidate us.  Be strong in the face of intimidation and deliver righteous hatred to them.

Where were you on 9/11

 I have been following news of the Charlie Kirk assassination and the hunt for his killer, but I have not forgotten that this is the anniversary of September 11, 2001.  Sultan Knish, AKA Daniel Greenfield a great piece entitled It's Not Over in which he advises that the war on America and the West, which the Muslims have thrust on us, is not over. Indeed, while Greenfield doesn't say so, it will not be over so long as people are on this earth. For the battle is not just here, on the earthly plain, but it is also on the heavenly plain.

Greenfield asks where were you? For myself, I was at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. I was in my cubicle at the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, when an analyst went by saying the Twin Towers had been hit by a plane. I rushed down the hall to watch it on the television in the Milcon office. The second plane hit, and I knew this was not an accident; that someone had planned it.

I remember when the plane came crashing into the Pentagon, and I went up on the top floor of the parking structure to see the smoke rising across the river. It was a terrible day. The loss of life was tremendous.  I don't think I had ever thought about the need for a carry permit before, but I certainly began thinking about it then. Later that month, Mrs. PolyKahr and I were on a field trip and discussed getting our permits, which we subsequently did.

Frankly, the world has not gotten any more peaceful in the last 24 years. Carrying is a burden, both physical and mental, but it seems worth it to me to be prepared. A gun is just a tool, like your keys, your phone, your wallet and credit cards and cash.  Learn it, carry it, and pray you never have to use it.  

Charlie Kirk, RIP

By now, I suspect all of you gentle readers are aware of the fact that Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA has been assassinated.  I say "assassinated" because his murder was quite political.  So far, we still do not know who perpetrated this horrible crime.  I have my suspicions but will withhold discussion of them until more is known.

I did not know Kirk personally.  Therefore, I will defer to others who did know him.  First up is Kurt Schlichter, at Townhall.com in They Murdered Charlie Kirk and They Must Pay. Schlichter tells us that lashing out is not the answer. What we need to do is cultivate a cold fury, and bring the perpetrators to justice legally. We don't need to make stuff up either, since murder is already against the law.

We will be tempted to hit back to hurt people who’ve hurt us. That’s not the way. As much as we want to take out our anger on the left, as much as we want to strike out and lash out, that’s not what our Constitution demands. That’s not what Charlie Kirk would want. We’re not terrorists and we’re not murderers. We’ve got the Constitution. Our Constitution addresses how to deal with this situation. We have laws, and we control the federal law enforcement apparatus. We will turn its full weight against not only the perpetrators of this crime, but the people behind the web of subversion from the left. Think of a J6 prosecution-level effort, except it will not be an attempt to frame people by contorting the law and perverting the justice system.

...snip...

Individually, what do we do? Well, we don’t shut up. We don’t submit. We don’t cower in silence because we’re afraid some freak will try to hurt us if we dare stand up and speak out like citizens. That’s where being armed comes in. It’s not about being macho. It’s about being free, free from intimidation, free from threats, free from domination by the same bastards who are on BlueSky chuckling over the murder of Charlie Kirk.

As Americans, we will rally and move forward to protect our country. But, at the same time, there’s a family out there that’s devastated. Charlie had a beautiful wife and two lovely little kids. Those lovely little kids are never going to see their daddy again because somebody shot him to death for daring to speak words that offended the killer. Those kids are going to spend the rest of their lives without a father. But, at least, they can know that their father was no coward. He went, unarmed and unarmored, in front of a couple of thousand people who hated him. He undoubtedly had death threats. He knew what the left is capable of because he talked about it. And yet he walked out there and did his duty as an American, to speak freely about what he believed. The man was a hero, and we can only hope that that knowledge will give his orphaned children some iota of solace.

This is a gut punch. This is real. It’s not social media imagery. It’s not a meme. It’s a bullet, striking bone, spurting blood, and killing a precious human being. We are not only justified in being angry; we are also obligated to be angry. But we must be righteously angry. I want retribution, but righteous retribution. We’re not going to frame anybody. We’re not going to trash our Constitution. We’re not going to besmirch what Charlie Kirk stood for, even as we try to validate it.

As the subhead of my blog has spoken since I started writing it, "The truth has no agenda" Yes, I stole that from Glenn Beck, but it is nonetheless true. We all must proclaim the truth loudly, whenever and wherever a lie is spoken. Not in anger, or by calling the other person names, but politely. Just as Charlie Kirk did. That is how best to remember him.

Next up is Laura Hollis, again at Townhall.com. Her piece is Why Is America So Polarized? I Can Tell You.

I'm sickened by this. Charlie was just 31 years old. A devout Christian. A husband and father of two little children. We had mutual friends. A founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie made a name for himself traveling to college campuses, engaging with young people, debunking falsehoods and presenting evidence for the positions he took, challenging his audience to think.

And for that, he was murdered. Killed in cold blood at an event where the shooter knew there would be phones and videos, so Charlie's family, friends, loved ones, colleagues and followers could watch him die not just once but over and over and over again.

All because Charlie had the courage to tell the truth.

Did you catch that? Because he told the truth. Are you sensing a theme here? And why is America so polarized? Because our institutions have lied to us, to our faces, knowing that they are telling lies, knowing that we know they are telling lies, yet expecting us to accept these lies even though we know they are lies. I no longer watch the news expecting to be told the truth or even a vague simulacrum of it. Indeed, the only reason I watch it now is for the weather forecast. Even that is clouded by the climate change alarmism narrative.

America is polarized because Americans have been betrayed and manipulated and exploited and lied to by the most important cultural institutions we have -- government, the medical profession, the justice system, the educational system, the media, the entertainment industry.

I could write a book with examples, but here are just a few:

We were lied to about the origins of COVID-19. We were lied to about our government's role in funding the gain-of-function research that made a virus like COVID-19 possible. We were lied to about the safety of the mRNA shots, which were never vaccines. We were lied to about who was at greatest risk from contracting COVID-19. We were lied to about the actual immunity that came with contracting the virus versus taking shot after shot after shot.

We were manipulated and forced by the government, employers and educational institutions into taking those injections, shutting down our businesses, closing our schools and masking our children. We were lied to about the real dangers that the mRNA shots posed to young people and pregnant women. We are still trying to discover the health risks of those shots and to calculate the economic and educational losses caused by those decisions.

In fact, it now appears that we've not been told the truth about the safety of the childhood vaccines generally -- at least with the current scheduled amount of them.

During the 2016 presidential election, our government was actively using social media corporations to censor us, and only Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter (now X) exposed that vile conspiracy.

We were lied to about Joe Biden's mental capacity and actual engagement not only while he was running for reelection in 2024 but throughout his entire term as president of the United States.

We continue to be told by medical professionals, school administrators, teachers and others that men can become women, and vice versa, by force of will. We are told that toddlers can change their "gender" and that biological males have no physical advantage over females in sports. Families with children suffering with mental or emotional illness are manipulated and exploited, told that their children will commit suicide if not allowed to "transition," assisted by drugs that will destroy their future fertility, prevent adult sexual maturity and possibly exacerbate mental illness, and with surgeries that will mutilate or remove otherwise healthy body parts.

We have been told that retail theft on a widespread scale is "reparations," that rioting and burning are "mostly peaceful protests," that keeping criminals incarcerated is "racist," that allowing the homeless, the mentally ill and those with addictions to live out their horrors on public streets is "compassionate," and that opposing illegal immigration is selfish and xenophobic.

We have watched as the death of a drug addict is celebrated with thousands of news articles, elaborate funerals, a gold casket and weeping politicians, but an innocent young Ukrainian woman stabbed to death by a repeat felon on public transit doesn't even warrant a single story. (And when she does get news coverage, her death is downplayed by the legacy media as just clickbait for conservatives.)

America is polarized because the people and institutions we should be able to trust lie to us as a matter of course for their own benefit, and because anyone who tries to get to the truth and bring it to the attention of the public -- in fact, anyone with an opinion that runs counter to that of the elites is this country -- is denounced as a conspiracy theorist, a kook, a threat to "our democracy," to "public health" and to some people's very existence.

Please go read both articles and pray for Charlie Kirk's family and friends as they grieve. All death is tragic. But a murder is especially so.

Our Government Is Conducting a PsyOp...And We Are the Targets

 This is a particularly long one, so get a cup of coffee and have some time without any distractions.  You've been warned.

At Hot Air David Strom has an article entitled Is It Accurate To Say PsyOp? Naturally, Strom then goes on to prove by a preponderance of evidence all pointing in that direction, that indeed we have been lied to, gas lighted, frightened, indeed scared and sometimes terrified by design. So yes, PsyOp is an accurate description.

The fact is that governments both here and, in the UK, used official means and people whose job is to flood the zone with misinformation to lie to us about subjects such as COVID and climate change to get us to comply with policies that were not in our best interest. He also writes about the use of fear to stampede us into behavior that we would not normally have chosen.

Being an elderly individual, I have heard other people speak of being terrified about COVID.  "People are dying."  I have heard young people absolutely sure the world would end in 12 years.  The fact that they have been predicting the world would end in 12 years for the last 30 years made no difference.  Clearly people being this terrified are not thinking rationally.

It is not conspiracy theorizing to call it a PsyOp, because it is a PsyOp. They are even deploying psychological warfare officers in many cases, when they can justify it as they did during COVID.

There is a playbook. They employ that playbook. And you are the target. We can argue about whether they are doing it to benefit themselves or in a misguided attempt to help everybody, but there is no question that they are doing it.

Please, when you have the time, read the article by Strom and realize that fear is definitely NOT the best response. Instead, look to the people who benefit from scaring you, and respond by denying them the response they are nudging you toward.

The Province of Man and the Judgement of God

I listen to the Glenn Beck Show whenever I can, which is not a lot lately. But when I have heard him, he lately expressing doom for humanity because of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Others too have expressed alarm, including Elon Musk. Such people are far smarter than I am, so I take their warnings seriously.

And yet, I am not afraid of AI. Why? Because I have been granted something that others have not yet grasped, and which I will explain in a moment. Yesterday, at the American Thinker Robert Arvay had an interesting article explaining Why computers can never become conscious. I will let Arvay speak for himself here, because I am just a dumb old engineer, and metaphysics is not my specialty.

Consciousness is the only known phenomenon in the universe that observes itself.

It does so from within itself.

This fact is the one that the experts cannot explain in physical terms, and will never do so, because consciousness cannot be merely physical. It requires something more, something that no computer can ever have.

It is important to recognize that, whereas the outward form of consciousness can be measured by medical science, the inward experience of consciousness cannot.

Indeed, there is no completely satisfactory definition of inward consciousness.

As is consciousness itself, all definitions of consciousness are recursive. They use various synonyms of consciousness to define it. It is the property of being aware of one's own awareness. It is useless to define a word by using the word itself.

You see the problem, don't you? All attempts to define being consciousness defy our ability to define it. We know it when we see it or rather feel it.

Attempting to find consciousness in the brain is like trying to find music in a violin. Music requires a composer to write it, a musician to play it, and a listener to appreciate it.

The brain is the instrument of thought, not its source. Damaging the brain can damage consciousness, just like damaging the violin can decrease its usefulness as a musical instrument, but the violin is not the music itself.

Physical science is a wonderful tool for understanding the physical world, but the adage is apt: When one’s only tool is a hammer, every problem is seen as a nail. Physical science is not the problem, physicalism is. Scientists sometimes are. Physicalism involves the circular reasoning which says that everything in physics can be explained by physics.

The fact of consciousness breaks that circular trap. While physicalists might say that consciousness is an illusion, they cannot define what it is that is having that illusion. Can an illusion have an illusion?

Here Arvay introduces another term, physicalism, where one already exists, materialism. Science is the process by which we observe, hypothesize, and measure the physical universe. In other words, science is a process not a static thing. Engineers use the discoveries of science to manufacture things useful to mankind. Today this engineering is called technology, but from the first invention, perhaps it was a spear thrower, engineering and technology have been the same. Science can only measure the material world, but as noted, consciousness is an experience. How do you objectively measure an experience?

Consciousness requires us, unlike the rest of the animal world, to evaluate our behavior, our emotions, and to understand that there is good in the world, and there is bad, even evil. Our dogs have the ability to sense smells to which the human nose is completely insensitive. Yet dogs do not distinguish between good smells and bad ones. They are all alike to them signals to various behaviors that again are all alike, neither good nor bad.

In the same way, we have music, though there is no evolutionary reason to make music. We can distinguish between "good" music and "bad" music both on technical grounds and by the messages the lyrics carry. You may not have thought of it, so universal is our ability to make and appreciate music. Indeed, music is like another language we all know to one degree or another. Dennis Prager has said that music is evidence of our creator and I have to agree. And it is here then that I give my reason for hope: man is greater than the things made by man, just as God is greater than his creation.

Man has always had a certain tendency to idolatry, to chasing after the next shiny thing. But our Creator, God, is greater and more powerful than anything on this earth. To worship, on the one hand, or to fear the things that man has made is idolotry. Computers are tools, nothing more. Yes, they may do things that humans do such as make art, but it is human directed and strictly derivative. They can write music, but as with art, strictly derivative. They can even play music perfectly with perfect timing, which no human has ever done, but it is not their own.

Please read Arvay's article and realize that AI is just another tool. It portends great things for society and great evil as well. But it doesn't know either one. That is the province of man and the judgement of God.

Update:  Here is another take on AI from Arthur Schaper at the American Thinker entitled AI Gloom Is Still Unfounded.

The Arrogance of Bill Gates

At Townhall.com today, Alan Joseph Bauer has an article, which title has a double meaning: Gates of Hell.

Jesus, the only one who has been there and thus would know, tells us that Hell is like a lake of fire. It seems that the Most Holy God sends bad people there. That is the Sunday School version. Actually, each of us decides, by our behavior in this life, whether we want to be close to God or not. Those who do obey his commands. For those who do not, God in his mercy, sends them farther away from him. The gates of hell have been described as being locked from the inside. The inhabitants could get out any time they wanted, but they don't want to get out.

Bauer, however, is writing not about the afterlife, but the here and now. He is writing about the hell on earth Bill Gates, through is foundation, wants to bring to people in this life. Bauer doesn't have anything against Gates for his money, nor for how he earned it. Rather, it is how Gates is using his vast wealth to force onto people things they did not, and in many cases would not ask for. Unlike his Microsoft products, he couldn't get people to buy into much of what he wants to force on us. But it is for our own good, you see. We, like little children, just don't know what is good for us.

There are certain individuals in our generation who wish to remake the world order built up over 80 years since World War II.

I attended Harvard a decade after Bill Gates studied there and then left to set up Microsoft. One advantage of religion is that a religious person generally sees himself as small and imperfect, with an omnipotent God over him and running the world. Such a view is completely independent of how smart and/or accomplished the person may be. There are those who are not religious but who believe that they display such brains and insights that they should be the ones running the show. Bill Gates is one such person.

...snip...

Bill Gates has assumed that his brains and wealth allow him to change the world in which we live. He invested heavily via his foundation in healthcare—vaccines—where he described his returns as 20:1 ($10 billion to $200 billion). He funds the WHO and his foundation funded “Event 201” which simulated a Covid pandemic—in October of 2019, around the time of virus release in China. He is the largest owner of farmland in the U.S. and it is not to grow cattle. He wishes to get rid of cows on the flimsy claim that their flatulence and burping are a direct threat to the future well-being of mankind. He wishes to replace beef-based proteins with cricket-based alternatives. He is associated with plans for cloud engineering to reduce solar impact on Earth.

Did you ask for any of this? Neither did I. Bauer brings up George Soros as another who thinks that because he is wealthy, no matter how he got it, he should therefore be able to rule the rest of us. But ultimately, there is only One who has the "right" to rule anybody. He has that right because He created us.  That one is the Most High God. All others have only such right as we, after prayerful consideration, give them. Moreover, it is not an unlimited right but only includes such powers as we give them for such terms as we say. This is why I say that our Constitutional limited government was inspired by God.

In Romans chapter 13, St. Paul tells us to obey authorities because they are appointed by God. St. Paul doesn't say so, but I think he is talking about those authorities who perform their duties within the bounds of God's commands. Why? Because when the kings of Israel and Judah go off the rails, God becomes so upset with them that he sends Assyria and Babylon to destroy them. Meanwhile, Gates and Soros have not been appointed by God or anyone else. They have just only appointed themselves. How arrogant.

Nationwide Constitutional Carry?

 By sending the National Guard troops into Washington D.C, Trump has already proven that the high crime rates of Democrat cities is a choice made by Democrats.  It doesn't have to be that way.  At the American Thinker today, Mike McDaniel discusses the idea of nationwide concealed carry reciprocity, which would greatly help in lowering the crime rate in various blue cities. His article can be found at Concealed carry reciprocity: a conscious choice?

Concealed carry reciprocity (CCR) is a simple concept. Anyone with a concealed carry permit issued by any American state can carry concealed in every state, subject to the specific laws of each state. It’s rather like a driver’s license with one major difference: the right to keep and bear arms—the Second Amendment—is an express, unalienable, natural right. The Second Amendment doesn’t invent or grant it. It merely recognizes it. That right existed long before America and the Constitution existed and will exist as long as human beings exist. Government cannot legitimately take it away or infringe on it.

I know, I know. There are infringements on the Second Amendment. They don’t invalidate our God-given right but do somewhat restrict it, though arguably less now than even eight months ago. I don’t argue the point, but I have only about 800 words with which to work and must keep my theme narrowly focused.

CCR ought to be a universal no-brainer, but it’s not. At the moment, because there is no constitutional, national standard, individual states must write compacts with other states to establish limited CCR. The majority of states do; others—mostly blue--refuse. The District of Columbia does its worst to keep honest residents from so much as owning guns. It’s certainly not going to go for CCR, and I doubt anyone is certain exactly how that process under home rule would differ from state-to-state CCR.

If driver’s licenses are universally honored and so are marriage licenses, as are a great many other licenses and legal documents, why shouldn’t a document upholding an express, unalienable, constitutional right be so honored? To normal, sane Americans it’s a rhetorical question; the answer is obvious. To Democrats, the answer is also obvious, though opposite that of the sane. It’s also usually expressed in spittle-slinging screams and obscenities.

Apparently, Trump has ordered that the processing of concealed carry permits should be faster. Indeed, he has ordered that they should only take 5 days! That exceeds North Carolina's and Virginia's times which are 90 days. Still, I can't see why, in this day and age with computerized crime records, that it should take 90 days to confirm if a person has a criminal record. Indeed, if the National Instance Criminal Background System (NICS) can spit out a request within minutes, why does it take so long for states to issue a permit? And if a person clears this hurdle, the state should issue him a licence on the spot.

McDaniel gets a bit ahead of himself speculating on permit less carry, or Constitutional carry. The idea is that if one can otherwise possess a weapon, in other words if one is not prohibited from owning or possessing a weapon, one can carry it with some exceptions pretty much anywhere. He points out that North Carolina is poised to become the 30th state to "allow" permit less carry. I say "allow" because everyone knows that criminals already carry without a permit. They are seldom prosecuted for it. Still, I am not holding my breath, as our "Republican" legislators have failed us many times before. They could have passed it with a veto proof majority last year but failed to do so. I am not convinced this time it is not to sucker gun owners again, sort of like Lucy pulling the football just as Charly Brown is set to connect.

While I would like to see nationwide concealed carry reciprocity, there are problems with it. It is not the be all and end all. The problem, of course, is that the government would have a record of every concealed permit holder in every state. Could that be used as a form of registration? You bet it could. But it is a good first step on the way back to nationwide Constitutional carry.

Hands Off Our Dogs

Today, at Townhall.com Guy Benson has an article entitled Stay the Hell Away From Our Dogs, Radical Environmentalists. It seems that dogs eat meat (clutching pearls and heading to fainting couch.) Radical environmentalists believe, contrary to science, that the production of animals for meat creates greenhouse gas. What the environmentalists apparently don't know is that rather than creating new carbon dioxide, ruminant animals like cows and sheep are merely recycling existing CO2. In fact, ruminant animals actually protect and improve the land if managed correctly.

Meanwhile dogs are indeed man's best friend. I have three of them.

Film critic Sonny Bunch observed years ago that radical environmentalists make excellent movie villains. They are fanatically ideological, they prize notions of green "justice" over the wellbeing, comfort, happiness, and even lives of human beings. And they are gallingly and insufferably self-righteous in their extremism. What's not to loathe? Beyond the fictions of the silver screen, it really does seem as though this category of real world ghouls and grinches go out of their way to alienate normal people as aggressively and obnoxiously as possible. Think about their pointless and performative "protests" that hurl food products at priceless pieces of art, or interrupt theater performances, or block traffic. The latter tactic is particularly grating and dangerous because it can keep people away from their jobs, their children, and even from needed medical attention. But the true-life villains don't care. They have tunnel vision, and they cannot be budged. They actively undermine their own cause in the process, but they also don't seem to care about that. It's a nihilistic movement, much like the "pro-Palestine" cause (there is, of course, large overlap within that dirtbag coalition).

Of all the off-putting stunts they pull, and lectures they deliver, I'm not sure any could match the self-destructiveness of telling human beings that they shouldn't have dogs as pets -- "for the planet," of course. I cannot imagine a faster way to get a wider array of people to extend double middle fingers than to come after Man's Best Friend, but that's what they're doing. Never change, enviros. You're doing great, sweeties. Also, stay the hell away from our dogs, you monsters:

"It turns out many Americans aren't great at identifying which personal decisions contribute most to climate change. A study recently published by the National Academy of Sciences found that when asked to rank actions, such as swapping a car that uses gasoline for an electric one, carpooling or reducing food waste, participants weren’t very accurate when assessing how much those actions contributed to climate change, which is caused mostly by the release of greenhouse gases that happen when fuels like gasoline, oil and coal are burned. The top three individual actions that help the climate, including avoiding plane flights, choosing not to get a dog and using renewable electricity, were also the three that participants underestimated the most. Meanwhile, the lowest-impact actions were changing to more efficient appliances and swapping out light bulbs, recycling, and using less energy on washing clothes.

Like Benson, I will not be complying with this nonsense. Probably, at least half of gentle readers have dogs, and know what I am saying here. Dogs are excellent companions.  When you come home, the dogs are already at the door, glad to greet you.  They, unlike your best friend, love you unconditionally.  They are around you and guard you when you are sleeping.  Of course, they alert you to the approach of strangers, which is very valuable out here in the country.  As Benson says at the conclusion, "keep your grubby, ideological hands of our dogs."

Choose Wisely

At the American Thinker Mike McDaniel reminisces about his career teaching English to high school and college students. He points to the obvious, that man can not prevent God from entering anyplace He likes, including schools in God has never left American schools. He calls out an aphorism that is both funny and true: "so long as there is algebra, there will always be prayer in schools."  His point though, and it is a good one, is that understanding religion is a part of a complete education.  You don't have to push any belief on students to give them such an understanding, but it is important to at least acknowledge the impact it has had on their lives.

Conservatives often complain that God has been removed from schools and demand He be reinstalled. Amusing that anyone might imagine the Almighty must allow leftists to do anything or that He can’t defend Himself. God is omnipresent; He’s everywhere always.

It is amusing. But as people, often caught up in the events of the day, it may seem that God has abandoned us. God, after all, doesn't need man, but man needs God. Don't believe me? Look to the Old Testament, particularly the books of 1 & 2 Samuel, the books of 1 & 2 Kings, and 1 & 2 Chronicles. For that matter, how many times did God get the Israelites out of scrapes in Exodus?

But McDaniel is correct that many school districts take these things too far, believing they will somehow avoid lawsuits by parents and crazy atheists.  For more on that, read below.  They can't, so stop trying and just obey the law.  McDaniel gives us a brief on just what can be taught in public schools and what cannot:

There’s no doubt most American educators tend to the left. Even some that don’t aren’t fully aware of the law and the Constitution, and out of an overabundance of caution are sometimes overly restrictive of student’s First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. Here’s what is lawfully proscribed in schools:

*Teachers can’t proselytize. They can’t advocate for religion or try to convert their students.

*Students can’t worship in disruptive ways. They can’t roll out their prayer rugs and begin to pray in math class, nor can they jump up in the middle of a class to call down the wrath of God on their evil English teacher.

*Teachers cannot mandate prayer or lead students in prayer. If they think that’s their job, they’re in the wrong profession.

Students can do pretty much everything else. They can certainly read the Bible or any other religious book as long as they’re not doing that instead of classwork. I maintained a small library in my classroom, which included at least four different versions of the Bible and multiple books on theology.

Schools can teach the Bible as literature, even history, but not as the one, true way. My Texas high school English Department offered an elective on the literature of the Bible. It never lacked for kids. In the mythology classes I taught, comparative theology was always a part. Teaching literature in general and American literature in particular, it’s essential to speak of the role of Christianity in the founding of Western Civilization and America. How can one understand the people of the past without knowing the beliefs that shaped them—and us? That’s true of any competent English or World History class, and it’s entirely lawful and appropriate, again so long as teachers don’t take the opportunity of a captive student audience to proselytize.

The Bible tells a story and you should understand that story in order to understand our founding. You don't have to believe it, though. The Koran also tells a story, and it is a different story than the Bible tells.  You don't have to believe that story either, but it explains events in our history.  I would point out as well that the God of the Bible, and the "god" of the Koran are two very different persons. Like voting, there is no middle ground. To choose not to decide is to decide. Everyone must choose. Choose wisely.

The Chicken or the Egg

Today, at the American Thinker Noel S. Williams has a post entitled Newsflash: Crazy people are drawn to leftism. This post answers the chicken and the egg question. I had always wondered whether leftism made people crazy or if crazy people were drawn to leftism. Now I have the answer.

Confounded leftism should not be elevated to the level of legitimate political philosophies ending with the “ism” suffix. The perennial political paradoxes from time immemorial have been addressed by great thinkers whose insights are often pigeonholed by some “ism”: liberalism, conservatism, capitalism, socialism, Marxism, etc. No matter where one falls on the spectrum, the ideas underpinning them were formulated by mostly rational minds -- even if their prescriptions don’t comport with human nature.

Leftism doesn’t come close to that. Other than being consistently anti-American, it is not a coherent or cogent ideology, although its inherent demagoguery is reminiscent of some aspects of fascism. Leftism isn’t intellectually potent enough to “make people crazy.” Instead, it is a loony mish-mash of anti-tradition and anti-Trump messages just for the sake of it. It rejects commonsense conventions born of experience that have often served humanity well in our inexorable pursuit of enlightenment (with notable exceptions).

In a sense, leftism is really “wrong-ism” insofar as it reflexively rejects what’s proven to be right on the right. Why, for example, would anybody want to radically transform our society (the last great hope of Earth) after attaining comfort in our Shining City on a Hill? Why not stay whence you came if we’re so bad (e.g. Soros, Ilhan, and others…) and transform your own dysfunctional societies (Somalia is a mess, for example, and Hungary has plenty of its own problems)? Leftism didn’t make them crazy; rather, they are crazy people who contribute to an ill-conceived and disjointed patchwork of leftist poppycock.

When I was in high school, I discovered that there were people here in my country who didn't want to be here, who would prefer to be in, say, the Soviet Union, or Cuba, anyplace but here. I wondered then why they didn't go and live in one of those other places. It seemed then, and even now, that the United States was unique.  There were plenty of places to go that would satisfy these people.  The United States seemed somehow to be blessed to be a "Shining City on a Hill" as Mr. Reagan put it.

Now, at 73, I have traveled the world, having lived in Panama, and been to Europe and Central America. I still wonder. Why does, for example, an Ilhan Omar come to this country where she is apparently unhappy, get herself elected to Congress, where she uses her position there to complain about how horrible America is? Why not return to Somalia? Williams answers that question. She is crazy.

Note that there are many leftist billionaires, who made the money here, using capitalist methods, but who decry the capitalist country.  Why is that?  They are crazy, that's why.  George Soros has been crazy since his youth, having helped the Nazis to bring genocide on the Jews.  Why do the Democrats cater to a small minority of obviously disturbed people, the LGBTQ, rather than the majority?  You guessed it.

Now I am not saying that people like Omar should be institutionalized, though Williams hints at it. But at the same time, these people should be in some form of treatment. But what that form would be I have no idea. Psychiatry has not proved to be helpful, since so many leftists seem to already be seeing therapist regularly and are not cured. My solution would be to pray for anyone suffering from leftism, knowing that God alone can help these individuals, but remembering that His will be done. If God doesn't want these people in His Kingdom, why should we?

The Leftist End Game?

 Today, at Townhall.com Kurt Schlichter has an article entitled What Is the Democrats' End Game? It is filled with Schlichter's signature snark, but it also includes a very large portion of human nature and of history. I am utterly astonished by the young peoples' tolerance of Communism and socialism. Perhaps it is because they have been taught that socialism is a good thing and not taught all the evil that has been done under Communist rule. But every time Marxism has been tried, over and over and over again it has murdered millions of people and left societies in abject misery.

During COVID I was commenting on the scarcity of products and the emptiness of store shelves to a lady, and I said, "It's beginning to look like Venezuela or Cuba here." To which she replied, "What do you mean?" And these people vote. So let me at least pass on a bit of history.

When I was young, the Soviet Union put on a show of dominating the entire world.  Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev even said so by claiming that capitalists would sell him the rope to hang us with. During this time, the occasional piece would come out showing the misery of the Soviet people whenever a 5 year plan failed, and they all seemed to fail. The Russians would have to import grain from, horror of horrors, the United States. Then the Soviet Union collapsed. But China began to rise, again spurred on by the greed of international corporations (not to be confused with actual capitalists). China is looking like it too will collapse. Pol Pot has come and gone. Cuba remains a Communist hell hole, and it has been joined by Venezuela and to a lesser extent Brazil. Wherever Communism, socialism, Fascism, or Marxism goes, envy, murder, misery, and scarcity follow in its train. The Left always believes it can change man for the better and create a Utopia on earth. They only prove the Bible correct.

Schlichter writes:

Americans are more divided than we have been since the first time the Democrats started and lost a civil war, with every norm being tossed out and every legitimate exercise of lawfully attained power by us normals being shamelessly obstructed. The left rejects the idea that patriotic Americans have any moral right to participate in theirown governance, to pursue their own interests, or to assert their own rights. To them,we are nothing but thralls, tax-generating slaves who must feed them, fuel them, fight for them, and obey their commands while meekly accepting their calumny.

They are delusional. Things aren’t going to work out that way.

But things are going to work out some way, and you have to wonder what their endgame is. After all, the Democratic Party, which is entirely indistinguishable from the left, refuses to accept the legitimacy of Donald Trump or any of us and is doing everything it can to prevent us from exercising any self-governance. That specifically and notably includes enforcing laws that were passed through the proverbial Schoolhouse Rock “I’m Just a Bill” process. It’s not much of a democracy if democratically enacted laws are not enforced. We have very clear laws on illegal immigration, yet they’re doing everything they can, formally and informally, to prevent us from enforcing them to get rid of the millions of invaders they allowed into the country without our permission. We have very clear laws on racial discrimination, yet they’re doing everything they can, formally and informally, to prevent us from enforcing them, particularly when they might benefit people of pallor. We have very clear laws on crime, yet they’re doing everything they can, formally and informally, to prevent us from enforcing them to make our cities safe, like in Washington DC, where they’re perfectly happy to sacrifice hundreds of black lives, and a few white ones, to make sure Trump doesn’t score a victory by making that urban cesspool habitable again.

One of the things that is most apparent is that Trump is not doing anything that is against the law. Schlichter mentions here a few examples, but every executive order and every executive action is within the law. The Left participated in making these laws, but now that Trump is enforcing them, they screech "he can't do that."  There is no law allowing boys to play in girls' sports either, but they seem determined to make it so. As Schlichter notes, what can't go on will not go on.

What can’t go on won’t go on, and this can’t go on. You can’t have half of America denying that the other half of America has any kind of moral right to participate in Our Democracy, and believing that the other side is so morally flawed, so obviously literally fascist in its love of attractive women, blue jeans, law and order, and not being discriminated against because its ancestors came from Europe, that to even consider their interests or rights is to embrace Hitler.

...snip...

Will we just give up, shrug our shoulders, and decide to allow them to do whatever the hell they want? OK, here you go, here’s our hard-earned money to give to your deadbeat constituents and to launder to communist NGOs and your billionaire donors. Here you go, here are all our guns. We know how much you hate us having those. We’re not worried about what inevitably happens to people who disarm themselves. And we’ll just shut up now and not exercise free speech by pointing out how corrupt, stupid, venal, and ridiculous you and your ilk are. England can show us the way – if somebody hops on X (assuming it still operates after Elon Musk gets arrested for whatever made-up crime they make up) and points out that a dude with a penis can never be a woman, here comes the SWAT team! And we’ll just let you guys gerrymander your hearts out in the blue states, but we will make sure that every Jasmine Crockett-like borderline clinical moron in some bluish part of a red state gets a safe district. And we will stop expecting to have a say in everything, because of course, we’re not qualified to have a say in anything. We’re not qualified to raise our own kids. We’re not qualified to decide what injections we get. We’re not qualified to opine on weather policy, so take out cars, trucks and steaks. We’re certainly not qualified to decide whether or not we want tens of millions of Third World peasants invading our country and turning it into the kind of hellhole they fled from. So, yeah, you’re good. You pinkos take over and handle things. We’ll be here, ready to take your abuse, take the blame for anything that ever goes wrong, and obey all your commands.

But if you believe that, you’re gobbling more of your SSRIs and washing them down with more oaky Chardonnay than usual.

As Schlichter points out, we are not going to give up our right to worship our God, or our guns, or our rights to speak freely. Even if the Left stacks the Supreme Court with fellow travelers, they cannot legitimately take our rights because these were granted not by government of men but by our Creator. We will defend these and other rights because in the end it is better to be dead than to live on our knees to some tyrant.

Please read all of Kurt Schlichter's article, and of course, by guns and ammo. We all pray we will never need them, but you never know.

Remembering the Oath of Office

 Yesterday, John Petrolino had an excellent article at Bearing Arms entitled Virginia Sheriff: If Bad Guys Are Carrying Guns for Free, Why Should Good Guys Have to Pay? It is a good question. Most of us have come to accept that government at all levels acts much as the mafia. They extract taxes from their citizens by threatening them with overwhelming punishments for not paying. Supposedly they provide good roads and police and fire protection and schools. But if they don't, can you protest by deducting the parts they do not provide from your taxes? Well, good luck with that. Supposedly we get to elect our oppressors, though as we have seen lately, even that is called into question. Still, that is the system we have.

So, it is good to see a public servant who actually believes in serving the public and not himself:

How do licensing officials get away with charging for the Second Amendment? Sheriff Cline of Wythe County, Va. asked the same and abolished the Sheriff’s background check fee for CCWs.

Interim Sheriff Anthony Cline of Wythe County, Virginia recently stepped up to serve since the retirement of Sheriff Charles Foster. The first official public act that Sheriff Cline executed since taking office was the declaration that he’d no longer be collecting fees for concealed handgun permit applications. In the August 4, 2025 letter he sent to the county clerk, Cline said, “As Sheriff, I do not believe citizens should be charged to exercise their constitutional rights.”

Sheriff Cline’s move to no longer accept the sheriff’s portion of permitting fees is part of a growing movement. Cline does not attribute his action to what’s been seen in New Jersey with townships nullifying permit to carry fees. However, that does not change that this is starting to become a trend.

...snip...

“When I was sworn in by the Circuit Court Judge, I recited the following oath,” Cline said. “I, Anthony Cline, do solemnly swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties incumbent upon me in the Office of Sheriff, so help me God.”

Cline said that when he reflected upon that oath of office, “especially the part about upholding the Constitution of the United States,” he said he thought about what that truly means. “I consider myself an American patriot. While our country has its challenges, I still believe we live in the greatest nation on Earth,” Cline said.

Well, glory and halleljah. He is correct. When the state insists on a background check to issue a concealed handgun permit, it should fund that background check itself out of taxes already extracted from the people. Extracting yet another fee, which is ultimately just another tax has always felt like adding insult to injury to me. I hope he wins, and when he does, that he retains this attitude. It is refreshing.

Are You Listening, America?

 Andrea Widburg has a post up at the American Thinker today entitled Understanding the plan that Hamas supporters have for America. Widburg notes that rather than a long post, she will just post a video of a rather attractive young woman spouting (in my words) leftist and satanic garbage.

I encourage gentle readers to read Widburg's post and to watch the embedded X video. Perhaps it is God's plan that only a few of us remain when He comes again in glory. I am sure that God wants no one to doubt that He alone is the victor, and that we fallible humans had nothing to do with it and can only watch and praise Him. Still, it may be that we can take some action now to stem the tide, if only we will listen.

Does the Shroud of Turin Capture the Resurrection?

On August 3, 2025, James Zumwalt had an interesting post at the American Thinker entitled What Moment in Time Did the Shroud of Turin Actually Capture? For anyone who has looked into it, the Roman Catholic Church seems especially enamored of relics and objects said to be imbued with spiritual power. Statues of the Virgin Mary, scapulars, crucifixes, icons of the saints, and of course true pieces of the cross. Most of those are don't have any power on their own. They are there as reminders to the Catholic faithful of who they are and how they are to act and behave. For Christians, every moment of every day is to be lived for Christ.  A rosary is a bunch of beads and a crucifix unless it is prayed with faith and purpose. Then it has power.

But the Shroud of Turin is a different matter. As you will find out from reading Zumwalt's article, the Shroud cannot even now be reproduced by modern technology.

The debate about the Shroud’s authenticity has led to extensive scientific scrutiny. Pieces of its cloth were subjected to carbon dating in 1988 suggesting its origin was between 1260 and 1390. However, the carbon dating tests have since been discredited not only because the Shroud’s exposure to the 1532 fire may well have impacted accurate testing, but also because its results conflict with other scientific methods.

Contributing to its authenticity is the fact that the three-dimensional image of Jesus appears to be a photographic negative. While linear perspective—i.e., three dimensional painting—was formalized around 1415, negative photography was not developed until the early 19th century. And, had the image been painted, the paint would have deeply penetrated the fabric, which it did not.

A new theory not only further supports authenticity, it suggests it was not the dead image of Jesus that was captured but rather that of a resurrecting Christ. It surmises the image is not one of a dead Jesus lying prone but one of Him in an upright position. Discrediting the former belief is that—consistent with the law of gravity—His hair falls directly down both sides of His head, covering His ears.

...snip...

In another surprising discovery, it is discernible as well from the Shroud’s image that the subject was not static, revealing some subtle signs of movement, typical of one still breathing.

While the image does not portray a supine Jesus, nor does it show Him standing or resting upon anything but, rather, “floating.” This begs the question why would He appear to be suspended in mid-air—unless it was the moment of the resurrection that was captured on the fabric.

As the image was not painted, the theory has emerged it was created by an intense burst of energy, similar to the vacuum ultraviolet radiation of lasers, that could have discolored the linen fibers, without scorching the cloth. This further supports a conclusion that the Shroud captured the resurrection itself.

Ultimately, everyone must decide for himself or herself whether the Shroud is real or not, and whether it depicts the risen Christ or not. For me, I don't need a Shroud of Turin to believe, but if someone's faith is perhaps wavering, it provides powerful reasons to believe.