St. Greta of Thunberg: Why Do People Listen To Her

St. Greta of Thunberg was in the news again yesterday.  Why anyone pays attention to this silly young woman is anybody's guess.  She is. like so many so called "activists" today, famous for being famous.  But shouldn't we expect that people who want to influence society have some actual training and experience in the things they speak about?  Would you take her advice on a health issue, for example?  No?  Is that because she is not a doctor and knows next to nothing about your health?  Then why would world "leaders" listen to her on climate issues?

It turns out that...surprise!...St. Greta was wrong about fossile fuels. According to Gabriella Hoffman at the Washington Examiner:

Climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted five years ago that catastrophic climate change will wipe out humanity unless the world forgoes fossil fuel usage and ceases consumption.

But to Thunberg’s dismay, her prediction didn’t exactly pan out. On the contrary, realizing this, she quietly deleted her tweet in March in anticipation of Wednesday’s anniversary. While gone, it forever lives in our hearts as a reminder not to fret over reactionary, alarmist predictions.

As Hoffman points out in her article, modern civilization depends on fossil fuels to survive. Quite frankly, the idea of so called "renewables" like wind and solar filling the place of fossil fuels is a pipe dream. It will never happen. Similarly with electric vehicles. Ain't gonna happen. If we were to end fossil fuels, the world would be plunged back into the 1800s. Basically everyone would have to grow his or her own food, because there would be no way to ship produce and fresh vegetables over long distances. Are you prepared to plow up several acres of land with a mule and hand plow to plant crops to see you through the winter? Oh, that's right, you don't own several acres. Are you prepared to raise and slaughter your own beef and pork, raise your own hens for eggs? My grandparents did this on roughly 100 acres. Do you own one hundred acres of rich farm land? Didn't think so.

Most of the "activists" haven't thought any of this through, haven't done or read any of the research, and are just mouthing the words they have been taught. The sad fact is that they are Vladamire Lennin's useful idiots, and will be disposed of when they are no longer useful. Hoffman continues making the point that if we want to continue of current standard of living, we must continue fossil fuels.

Let’s begin with oil, which is often blamed for our societal woes. Despite being assigned a dirty image by preservationist environmentalists, it’s the lifeblood of civilization and an essential resource here in America. Could you imagine our first-world society without oil? Life would be miserable, uncomfortable, and harder. Petroleum and its byproducts are ubiquitous in our daily lives. We fuel our cars, boats, and homes with it. Our clothes are derived from it, as are our cellphones and computers. It’s inescapable. Why get rid of it?

...snip...

Another unappreciated energy source is natural gas. It’s arguably a clean-burning fuel that produces lower emissions. During the Trump administration, the U.S. became a net exporter of liquefied natural gas (dubbed “molecules of freedom”), propelling our nation into energy independence while continuing to lead the world in overall emissions reductions.

Natural gas stoves, for example, are found in over 40 million homes and are preferred by 90% of chefs. Why? They boast faster conduction rates, make meals tastier, and are more economical to use compared to electric stoves. But these benefits, sadly, haven’t stopped many elected Democrats — along with the Department of Energy and the Consumer Product Safety Commission — from trying to phase them out through unrealistic “electrification” efforts.

Last but not least is coal, a common scapegoat of environmentalists despite it being an abundant domestic energy source.

Coal is undoubtedly reliable for heating and powering homes. Globally, it remains the top source of electricity generation and will remain one for years to come despite nations, including ours, closing down plants and curbing its mining. Additionally, there are myriad nonenergy uses, such as cement production, medicines, and carbon fibers. Metallurgic coal also happens to be a key component to steel, a popular building material.

The inconvenient truth is that coal is and will be essential for alternative power sources to flourish. Like oil and gas, it supplements clean energy sources when they fail to work as promised. And electric vehicles are primarily charged using coal-powered energy.

At the same time that the "activist" say that we must give up fossil fuels, they are absolutely against something that can supply all our electricity for the forseeable future without carbon emissions: nuclear. Once again, their knowledge of nuclear power hasn't advanced since around 1950. They are also under the impression that they can have it all with no risks. But life is all about risks, and everything is a trade off. I don't think what the people who are destroying precious art works and raising a ruckus here at home want is to live like a medieval peasants.

Biden Would Turn the American Military On the Population. Why Would Anyone Vote For This Guy

So, our Strategist-In-Chief is at it again, threatening the population with missiles raining down on us from F-15 jet fighters. If we are thinking we might have to go to war with China, we are indeed doomed. You can find it at Townhall.com by Sarah Arnold in a post entitled Biden Claims Americans Would Need A Lot More Than A Gun To Fight The Government.

President Joe Biden once again threatened the constitutional right to own a gun, mocking Second Amendment supporters while discussing violence in the U.S.

While speaking at a fundraising event in California, Biden suggested that the Second Amendment is useless because the U.S. government could crush Americans, saying they would "need an F-16" to take it down.

It is disturbing that the President of the United States thinks it is acceptable to turn the full might of the U.S. military on the men, women and children of the United States. The moment the government uses F-15s, tanks and other military gear and tactics against patriots, the government will lose the ability to govern. It will absolutely be seen by the whole world as the far left fascist criminals they are. But he also doesn't realize that such a feat requires massive numbers of troops because Americans forced to fight their government would not do so as an army but using small team guerilla tactics that strike and then diappear into the population.

But as they say on TV commercials, there is more! Biden claims that the Second Amendment did not permit citizens to own canons. Absolutely untrue. People could and did own canon and the most technologically advanced weapons available at the time of the founding. While I admit that owning an artillery piece would be for the wealthy only, still the Second Amendment says you can keep and bear any type of weapon that can be aimed. So no bombs or grenades. So contrary to what Biden claims, any of the small arms carried by the soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen of the armed forces can be owned and carried by civilians. Indeed that was the idea, that every man be armed (founder George Mason)  So machine guns, true assault weapons, not merely AR-15s, mortars, artillery, even shoulder fired rockets could all be owned.  But the great majority of people would be satisfied with pistols, revolvers, and standard rifles available today.  

As for the idea of prohibited persons, there were few prohibitions on citizens owning weapons. Of course prisoners were disarmed, but one usually regained the right once one served his time. While I don't think making violent felons prohibited persons, I think that nonviolent offenders should have their right to arms restored.

Again in 2021, Biden claimed that from day one, the Second Amendment "limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn't buy a canon."

However, the president's statements are false.

According to the Second Amendment, Americans are not limited to who can "keep and bear arms" or what kind of firearms people can keep and bear.

Update: I thought I was the only one who got a bit miffed about Biden's threat to sic F-16s on us. But I was wrong. David Harsanyi at The Federalist has an article blasting Biden and his speech entitled Noted Constutional Scholar Joe Biden Explains The Second Amendment.

Moreover, contending, as the president does, that your weapon is basically useless because the state can simply scramble F-16s and murder you and everyone you love doesn’t really convey the message he thinks it does. What it tells me is that Biden might be a sociopath and we all need tanks.

Yes, our President is not merely a demented old fool, he is also crazy.

PETA Beclowns Itself

 I don't usually report on PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals because they are usually silly beyond words.   The latest, reported in the American Thinker by Eric Utter tries to convince us to become vegans. The piece is titled PETA says 'supremacy' is why people think it's 'okay' to eat other animals. Of course, they are wrong on all counts, but let's start with this:

Okay. And why does PETA think it's okay for animals to eat other animals?

The organization was certainly well prepared for that query, and replied via tweet: “Most of the animals who kill for food could not survive if they didn’t. That's not the case for us. We are capable of making ethical decisions.”

Yes, because, as you just admitted, we are superior.

As one who eats a carnivore diet, which is as close to zero carbohydrates as possible, I have studied the proper human diet fairly thoroughly. The proper human diet is one that our ancient prehistoric ancestors  themselves at for hundreds of thousands of years. They were eating basically a carnivore diet before they became Homo Sapiens. If you have ever walked through the woods, did you see any broccolli, brussels sprouts, cabbages? Indeed, besides the occasional fruits in season like raspberries, our ancient ancestors would find little sustenance in plants. And anthropology has shown this to be true. It also has shown that our ancient hunter gatherers were tall, strongly built, and showed little disease and few cavities.

Anthropolgy also shows us that with the advent of agriculture and the eating of a grain based diet around 10,000 years ago, we suddenly were shorter, had caviities, and many of the diseases of civilization including obesity. Men's lives went from an average of 60-70 years down to 30 years.

Many years ago I read a book by Lierre Keith entitled The Vegetarian Myth which includes Keith's 20 years as a vegetarian. She documents the slow degradation of her health due to the fact that vegtables quite rightly don't want to be eaten and fight back with various toxins that upset your gut and antinutrients that disrupt your uptake of vitamins and minerals. Sshe was exhausted all the time.  Eating a grain based diet caused men to become short, stunted, and sick, and it is still doing it to vegetarians. 

In additon, she points out that she was one of the principled vegetariams who did't want to kill anything. But she discovered that by plowing up the soil to plant crops one kills the entire ecosystem that thrived on that piece of land, not to metion the worms and bacteria that undergird the environment.

How does PETA explain their disdain for those animals and for this ecosystem? They may not be eating the animals, but they are certainly killing them. I don't see a difference really, do you?

Besides that, of all the agricultural land in the world, fully two thirds is marginal and not suitable for crops, but we can raise ruminant animals such as sheep, goats, cattle and feed more people a proper human diet. The proper human diet is one of the range of ketogenic diets, of which the carmnivore is the most extreme. You can read about the proper human diet here 

PETA has once again beclowned itself with its half baked ideology.

Seeking the Truth

 Under the title of this blog, Standing By is a tag line, a quote from Glenn Beck, "The truth has no agenda" I try to live up to that quote. The Bible itself is a collection of books outlining God's desire for human beings to live in the Truth, because that is how one lives well and properously. God knows how we should live because He created us. Man falls far short of God's Truth, but God also has a plan to save us ultimately from ourselves, which involved sending His son into the world to live as He instructs, and to die once for all.

At the American Thinker today, John Klar highlights another truth seeker in a piece entitled Naomi Wolf, feminist turncoat. Tucker Carlson had Wolf on an episode of his extended interview show Tucker Carlson Today She is both intelligent, thoughtful and interesting. I doubt I would agree with most of her ideas on feminism, but she also came out against the lies of the COVID 19 lockdowns, masking, and the push for everyone to be vaccinated with what turned out to be totally ineffective mRNA vaccines.

But much like the ire reserved by trans-activists for detransitioners, the mRNA-touting Left pounced viciously on Naomi when she sought to dispel illusions (lies) about the science of COVID vaccines. Consider this effort at character attack by those fearful of Wolf’s truth-seeking:

Many old friends and admirers of Naomi Wolf are horrified. The great figurehead of 1990s "third wave" feminism, who bestrode the highest pinnacles of literature and politics to become an inspiration to a generation of young women, has morphed into something other than the Naomi they thought they knew. ….as Wolf has aligned herself with figures from the political far right and turned on Joe Biden for taking America on a path to totalitarianism with his strategy for fighting Covid-19, her liberal allies have been aghast. ….on Twitter, …she bombards her 142k followers with messages about vaccine side-effects, the profits of big pharma and the negative impact of masks on children.

Oh no, how dare she?! Discussing the ills of corporate profits, the CDC-documented facts of adverse reactions, or the clear insanity of masking and vaccinating children -- that is verboten! Pay no attention to that third-wave feminist behind the curtain, who used her female brain to cast doubt on the COVID mantra --best to attack her personally and discredit her for hanging out with conservatives rather than address her factual allegations.

Wolf even came out and boldly >apologized to conservatives for believing the January 6 insurrection lies. (That must have really burned the gaslighting Left!) What’s next? Will she object to experimental hormone blockers for prepubescent children? Support parents’ rights? This woman is an absolute terror to lie-tellers!

For all that I think some of her feminist ideas are...misguided at best...I think she should be applauded for recognizing the lies that our government has been telling us, and calling them out. And don't forget that Trump was also misinformed by the deep state and their COVID 19 lies. Too bad that he is not able to admit the truth. As for Tucker, he of course is a national treasure, not because he is infallible, but because he also seems committed to seeking the truth. No one can find something if they are not seeking it.

We Don't Need More Gun Laws

 How do felons get guns?  Nobody seems to be asking that question, though if they did, it might change some of the favored policies of the gun control crowd. Tom Knighton discusses a Bangor Daily News article were they decided to actually ask the question, and the results were not what the typical member of the public might believe based on the typical mainstream media fare. Knighton's discussion, at Bearing Arms is How do felons get guns? On publication actually looked.. Of course, those in the gun rights community have known for years. A Department of Justice report spelled it out in excruciating detail

Gentle readers can read what the Bangor Daily News found at the embedded site. Knighton points out that:

However, it should be noted that the “dealers on the street” typically were selling stolen guns. The person arrested didn’t steal them, but that’s not to say they weren’t stolen.

Now, with that said, it’s important to note that on just about everything else, what was presented isn’t unlikely what we already know to be true.

I am glad that someone in the media decided to find out how guns get into the hands of criminals. But it should be obvious that felons can not buy a gun legally from a Federal Firearms Licensed dealer, and they are the only kind.  Even private sellers (people who are selling their own property) are advised to secure a National Instant Background Check System clearance unless they know the buyer.  Instead, straw purchases by people with no criminal record of their own who are vulnerable to the criminal is one way they obtain firearms. Family, some of whom may also be vulnerable is another way. But Knighton wants to discuss something else:

But let’s also address the idea of background checks for private sales. The idea that is seemingly presented here is that felons would be caught up if they were required.

The problem with that is that they already note that a lot of them get them from friends and family. In other words, they’re buying them from people who probably already know they’re prohibited from buying a firearm. That’s already a crime. You don’t need more laws.

Knighton's point is well taken. We don't need any more laws. Indeed, many of these laws are unnecessary and are just used to add charges that are then plead away. The truth is that murder, assault, brandishing and threats with a gun are already illegal. But the possession of an inanimate object should not be a crime, while the misuse of it should be taken seriously by prosecutors.

Stand With God, Or You Are Doomed

Today, at Townhall.com Scott Hogenson tries to explain why church bodies are bending and caving to cultural and political ideologies in an article entitled, appropriately enough, Why Are Churches Caving To Cultural and Political Ideologies? The short answer is that they fear the combined pressure and oppression of the government and media. They fear for their livelyhoods and in some cases for their very lives.  This is understandable, and a very human response.

But Christ tells us in Matthew 10:28 " Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the one who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." We need to stand up to the opperssion now, while it is yet not fully developed, or we will later be in the same situation as in Nazi Germany, in the Soviet Union and in Communist China to name just a few. We need to proclaim Christ, and him crucified, and do as He commanded.  Otherwise, we risk losing the protection of our Lord, as the Israelites did so often in the Old Testament.

Religious persecution in outright tyrannies is terrifying and not likely to reach such extremes in the United States anytime soon. But when the basis of a 2,000 year old faith is denounced as hate and churches are suspect over the language spoken in their liturgy, we all should be very concerned about what happens next.

Mark Twain observed, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” and the lessons of history are clear; bad things can happen to churches that push back against the state. To paraphrase Made Guys in the protection racket, “That’s a nice little church you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.” Small wonder churches are secularizing their doctrine.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote about “building a wall of separation between the church and state,” he was not talking about keeping religion out of the public sphere as leftists and atheists claim. Jefferson was referring to a wall that protects the church - in this case, the Danbury, Connecticut Baptist Association - from persecution by the state.

It is obscene when American churches are pressured into altering doctrine to ingratiate themselves to the state or the culture, or to protect themselves from government abuse. When churches have to ‘go along to get along,’ it’s a corruption of faith. Scripture instructs Christians and Jews to fear God but it’s a travesty when they must also fear government and the culture it promotes.

So, let me just say, right now, that the various homosexual behaviors, including cross dressing, drag queen behavior, so called "transexual" behaviors including both hormone treatments and so called "gender affirming care" all fall under the definition of sexual immorality. Along with these of course are adultery and fornication. All these things are sins against God and our fellow man.

 But Critical Race Theory is also a sin, for God created man in his image. He did not create one race and not another, but all races of men are the same, inheriting the image of God.

Communism is a sin, in that communist seek to force people to give up their property to the state. But God recognizes private property in the Ten Commandments when he issues the admonistion to not covet your neighbors things. God also admonishes us to not kill our chidren even in the womb. This is one of the things that got Israel into trouble, when they fed their children into the fires of Moleck. I could go on, but you get the idea. You can read all about it in the Bible.

Now in saying all this, I must also say that we all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  We have not only sinned by what we have done, but by what we haven't done as well.  But God has a plan of salvation, which you can also read about in the Bible. The plan was fulfilled with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have sinned deeply, and we all deserve God's punishment.. But we can repent, indeed it is what we must do, and be saved. But it means we must abandon what we have been doing, including bowing down to the government and the culture. 

 The fact is that God has already won. We just need to jump on the bandwagon. The fact is that those churches that are standing firm on God's side are continuing to grow. Those that are caving are dying. There is no neutral position. You must pick a side. Either you stand with God, or you are doomed.

As an aside, if you want to find out what is really going on with the LGBTQ+ad nauseum, check out the book by Jonathon Cahn The Return Of The Gods.

Our Criminal Government

 If I were to write our Declaration of Independence today, I would include in the long train of abuses, all that Patricia McCarthy included in her post, plus the many abuses listed in Joy Pullman's piece at The Federalist today entitled Do Any Republicans Think That Ron DeSantis Won't Get Impeached Or Framed By The FBI? It's a serious question. First of all, the FBI along with the DOJ, the various intelligence and law enforcement agencies, have proven to be arms of the Democrat party. Second, by framing, impeaching, and indicting President Trump on phony trumped up charges, they have proven that they will do anything to anyone to ensure a one party state. That one party state will become tyrannous, for it will have no credible opposition. So, does any Republican really think they won't do the same thing to DeSantis? Of course they will.

Anyone who has been watching for seven years — and counting — has seen the nation’s top Republican politician framed, impeached, raided, prosecuted, and now indicted by corrupt spy agencies on behalf of the Democrat Party. Their goal is to send their top political opponent to prison on charges they said were fascist to bring against their own presidential candidates.

After these last seven years, how can anyone not expect that any Republican who questions the unelected, Congress-defying security state won’t get the Trump treatment? If they can and will do it to Trump, they can and will do it to Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Robert Kennedy Jr., and anyone else who threatens their power. (Clueless candidates like Mike Pence and Nikki Haley don’t.)

Remember, even ineffective, regime-pleasing nice guys Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were cast as a dog torturer and grandma murderer. But standard media smear operations pale in comparison to media functioning as a security state propaganda tool to frame dissidents for treason.

Pullman paints a pretty bleak picture for us, but I believe it's a true one. If the far left accuses the Republicans of being fascist, you can be they are the fascist. If the far left claims Republicans are domestic terrorists, they are in fact domestic terrorists. You can take it to the bank that they are doing whatever they accuse the right of doing.

The purpose of the Civil Service Act was, among other things, to stop bureaucrats from engaging in electioneering and politics. One could of course vote, but turning an agency into a political weapon was forbidden. Perhaps one thing we could do is to make the directors of such agencies civil service and subject to years in jail and fines for violations. But defunding the FBI would be a good start.