The incarnation and the value of the human body

From Christian Post.com (Jan. 13, 2023):

What is the value of the human body? This is the question raised by a movement gaining traction to legalize human composting. On New Year’s Eve, the state of New York joined five other states in legalizing human composting. The process is exactly as it sounds, the body of the deceased is placed with other biodegradable materials and, over the course of a month, turned into soil.

This new manner of burial is being championed by environmental supporters, but it is also symptomatic of a culture that fails to properly value human beings and resists the need to contemplate the nature of mortality. The message of scripture provides a more optimistic view of death than the one perpetuated by practices such as human composting.

That the state of New York chose to sign the bill into law during the Christmas season is deeply ironic. Christmas time is the celebration of the incarnation of Christ. It is the time when Christians remember that God’s Son came into the world and took on human flesh. This not only has profound implications for salvation but also the way human beings should view their bodies. Not only did Christ have a real physical body but He still has a real physical body. It is glorified and perfected, and He will have it permanently. This has been triumphantly proclaimed by Christians throughout the centuries. A notable example is the hymn Crown Him with Many Crowns: “Crown Him the Lord of Love: Behold His hands and side; Rich wounds yet visible above in beauty glorified: No angel in the sky can fully bear that sight, but downward bends his burning eye at mysteries so bright.”

Christ’s willingness to take on and maintain a human body also has implications for how each person should view their body. With the fall, the body is subject to decay but is still part of the creation that God made and called good. That God made and values both the material and spiritual aspects of His creation is important. Both have been harmed by the fall, but both will also see restoration. For this reason, the body is not a disposable component, and it should not be treated cheaply. According to Fox News, Dennis Poust, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference stated, “A process that is perfectly appropriate for returning vegetable trimmings to the earth is not necessarily appropriate for human bodies … Human bodies are not household waste, and we do not believe that the process meets the standard of reverent treatment of our earthly remains.”

The push to treat the remains of the deceased as no more than compostable material is symptomatic of a culture that has gone down the path of completely devaluing the body and divorcing it from the person. If the body has no intrinsic value, its value instead is limited to the way it is molded and shaped to fill the superficial desires of human beings. It also ignores the reality that, while all creation is valuable, there is a hierarchy to the creation order. The idea of human composting flips the creation mandate on its head and treats human beings as though they are subservient to creation rather than persons who care for creation by “ruling” and “subduing” it. Finally, it is the action of a society that desperately wants to avoid the reality that they must contemplate their mortality. By acting as though they will live on as part of a tree or some other vegetation, persons never come to terms with the fact that they will indeed live on eternally, but as full persons, persons who will either enjoy eternity in communion with God or persons that will experience eternity apart from Him, and in either eternal state they will have a body.

As we end the Christmas season, Christians should reflect on the beauty of the incarnation and all its implications. Christ Himself took on flesh, and this once and forever settles that question of its value. God loves the physical world He created, and it will be redeemed. This includes the bodies of those who died trusting in Christ. Their bodies will be raised on the last day, perfected and glorified. In fact, this should be a source of comfort for those with loved ones whose bodies were struck by extreme forms of decay in this life. For those whose bodies have been destroyed or ravaged by disease, this too matters to God. Their bodies are not waste to be forgotten but part of the creation that He will restore. In the words of the great Christmas hymn Hark the Herald Angels Sing, “veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail th’Incarnate Deity, pleased with us in flesh to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel.” [source]

Yea, treating the body as compost doesn’t seem right. It smacks of being anti-human. Would an animal rights person treat an animal or pet this way? I don’t think they would.

Why Are Some US Street Lights Turning Purple?

From Peter Jacobsen on FEE.org (Aug. 2, 2023):

I saw it for the first time in Wichita, Kansas. My coworker was driving a shuttle carrying myself and a few students from a guest speaker event, and I noticed something strange—a purple street light.

I initially brushed this off as some weird mishap, but as we drove on I noticed dozens of purple street lights throughout the city.

We started brainstorming ideas in the car. Maybe purple was the color of one of the local high schools? Maybe there was some sort of disease awareness month we were unfamiliar with? Did it have to do with environmental concerns?

We abandoned most of those ideas for a simple reason—the lights seemed too unsafe to be explained by any of those reasons. It’s possible that the purple lights were just as bright as normal lights, but the problem isn’t the brightness. Drivers aren’t used to a monochromatic purple-hued environment, and it was obviously difficult for the driver to adjust. In some ways it seemed worse than having no street lights at all.

After searching, I found reports from other cities. Lots of local news stations chronicle the mystery of the purple lights. Ultimately, the presence and pervasiveness of the new purple lights is best understood with two explanations: one technological and one political.

One Street Light Company to Rule Them All

After doing some digging, I found the initial explanation. Adam Rogers writing for Business Insider documents how one firm, Acuity, dominates the Solid State Lighting (SSL) market. SSL systems are systems which incorporate LED light in a particular way which is often considered advantageous for things like street lamps. Rogers says, “every city with purple lights that responded to my queries or has public records on the matter bought its LED lights from Acuity.”

So what was the issue? Well, Rogers talked to a representative from the City of Vancouver who says the cause is ultimately an issue with a defect unique to LED lighting. “There’s a laminate on the fixture that gives it its white color. As that laminate began to degrade, it caused the color tint to change toward purple.”

In one sense, this is our answer. A company seems to have had a manufacturing defect which is causing a new technology to glitch leading to purple roadways.

But this explanation falls short of answering an important question: why does one firm have so much effect on the lighting of the US (and Canada)?

Acuity was the largest manufacturer of lighting by market share in 2017 when the bad bulbs began to be created, according to research by Rogers.

It’s unclear how much Acuity dominates access to municipal markets based on the data, but the widespread presence of this defect suggests it has a decent amount of influence as a contractor for government at local and state levels.

Why is this the case? Well, the market for government lighting is a winner-take-all discussion. Street lights tend to not be purchased individually. Rather, governments at various levels accept bids for companies to create products on a large scale.

So say a city government wants to update its old street lights with new LED technology. It’s not as if agents shop at the discount street light store. They solicit companies who will provide the street lights, and the winner gets the whole project.

This sort of environment creates a scenario where a few winners begin to dominate the market, and smaller companies simply can’t compete for these larger projects.

Compare this to your own light bulb selection criteria. Do you select one brand of light bulb to light your entire house? Most people don’t. Instead myself, and many others, buy light bulbs one pack at a time based on who gives us the best deal.

This doesn’t mean a single company will dominate all lighting. Competition is more robust than that. But government contracting does lead to markets which are likely more concentrated than they would be if not for the contracting.

Without contracting, perhaps individuals or neighborhoods would work with private companies to provide lighting they are willing to pay for. It’s difficult to imagine exactly what this would look like, but “less centralized” seems like an intuitive answer.

This issue is only compounded by the fact that new government regulations to ban incandescent bulbs are now in effect. Changes like this further harm competition by preferencing companies more able to adapt to arbitrary energy efficiency criteria.

So if you’re driving along at night and your vision is obscured by a strange, purple hue, remember that, although the light was the result of a manufacturing mistake, the impact of the mistake is predictable when you consider the incentives at play in government contracting. [source]

Crapitalism at its best.

Nebraska Rep. Bacon: Chinese Spies Hacked My Emails

From Newsmax.com (Aug. 15, 2023):

Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon says the FBI had warned him that his emails were hacked by Chinese spies, with both personal and campaign messages compromised.

Bacon was told that the Chinese Communist Party had access to his accounts for about a month ending on June 16, he said late Monday on social media platform X.

The hack was the result of a "vulnerability in Microsoft software," he said, an apparent reference to the hacking campaign that Microsoft disclosed last month, which reportedly resulted in the theft of hundreds of thousands of emails from senior U.S. officials, including U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns.

CNN previously reported that email accounts in the House of Representatives were targeted as part of the same campaign.

"There were other victims in this cyber operation," Bacon said on X. "The Communist government in China are not our friends and are very active in conducting cyber espionage."

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. The FBI and Microsoft did not immediately reply.

Bacon, who was elected to Congress in 2016, is a former Air Force brigadier general who currently serves on the House Armed Services Committee, which helps decide the U.S. military's annual budget and spending plans. [source]

This is what the Chi-Coms do.

148 House Democrats vote against bill to deport migrants who assault police

From Fox News.com (May 15, 2024):

A bill aimed at booting illegal immigrants out of the U.S. if they assault a police officer passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening.

It's one of several pieces of legislation that House Republican leaders are putting up for a vote this week as part of National Police Week.

The bill passed with a 265 to 148 vote, with 54 Democrats voting with the GOP.

The bill is called the Detain and Deport Illegal Aliens Who Assault Cops Act and is led by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J.

He said in February when the bill was being introduced, "There is no reason that an illegal alien who attacks our law enforcement should remain in our country; that shows zero respect for our rule of law or our institutions, and they will not be positive contributors to society."

The bill would require illegal immigrants to be detained by federal authorities until they can be deported. It would also "create a new category for migrant inadmissibility" specifically dealing with illegal immigrants who were accused of assaulting police, Van Drew said.

The No. 3 House Republican, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., told Fox News Digital when the bill passed, "House Democrats just voted to protect violent illegal immigrants over our brave law enforcement officers. Once again, the Democrat Party proves they are the most anti-law enforcement party in history."

It comes after several recent instances of illegal immigrants attacking police have gained national attention as the country continues to grapple with the ongoing illegal immigration crisis at the southern border.

A group of illegal immigrants was seen on video violently attacking two New York City police officers in Times Square in late January.

And in early March, a man who came to the U.S. illegally was accused of killing a Washington State Patrol trooper when he crashed into him on an interstate highway, according to Fox 13. [source]

Shameful. I guess the Left still believes the slogan "all cops are bad." Also, you can't deport people who could possibly keep you in power in the future.

Hopefully, the republicans in the Senate, since they hold the majority, will pass the bill or add it to another bill to be passed.

California's Failed Leadership

From Bill O’Reilly.com (Jan. 16):

Let's delve into a simple man's analysis of the shocking fires in Southern California. In 2018, then-President Trump scotched the fire-plagued state, saying it was a "mess" and the leadership in Sacramento was ignoring giant fire warning signs.

So, how did Governor Newsom and the legislature react? They ignored Trump.

Did the Golden State build water storage plants? No.

Did the Governor lead an effort to clean up forest brush? Nope.

How about expanding firefighting capabilities, especially in Southern California? Did that happen?  No, it did not. In fact, Los Angeles cut its fire budget but expanded payments to the homeless with no drug testing or any oversight whatsoever.

The harsh truth is that California authorities failed to protect residents from an obvious fire danger.  Instead, the state spent billions on wasteful green programs that were largely theoretical.

Yet, if Gavin Newsom were able to run again, which he cannot, there's a good chance leftwing California voters would return him to office.

The question then becomes kind of difficult. Should American taxpayers rebuild California via federal relief funds? The voters obviously elected incompetent people and, it is likely, will continue to do so because millions are blinded by ideological nonsense.  Should the rest of us pay for that?

The logical answer is no. The humanitarian answer is yes. Without federal help, thousands of Californians will never recover.

So, the money will pour in. But don't expect lessons to be learned. [source]

Yea, this catastrophe should never have happened, but if Californians keep electing incompetent leaders this kind of catastrophe will keep happening.

More articles on the fires: 

• Why Los Angeles Is Burning
• Trump Calls Out Democrat Mayor Karen Bass on Live TV Over Disgraceful Delays in Wildfire Recovery
• Trump Order Gives FEMA, Other Agencies Authority Over Calif. Water
  

James Clerk Maxwell: Cultivating the Mind of Christ

From Breakpoint.org (Jan. 4, 2023):

To be Christian, especially in this confusing cultural moment, requires the intentional cultivation of our minds. An exemplary model of someone who took this calling seriously is James Clerk Maxwell.

The only two physicists most people could name, if at all, are Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. However, they should know James Clerk Maxwell, whose work was foundational for many of the most important discoveries of 20th-century physics.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1831, Maxwell entered the University of Edinburgh at age 16. When he didn’t find his studies all that demanding, he dedicated his spare time to self-constructed chemical, electric, and magnetic devices, especially with polarized prisms and gelatins. This work led to two scientific papers which he completed at age 18.

In 1850, Maxwell went to the University of Cambridge. While there, he underwent an evangelical conversion. He remained an evangelical Presbyterian for the rest of his life, eventually becoming an elder in the Church of Scotland.

He graduated from Trinity College in 1854 as one of the top two mathematicians. Although he was made a Fellow of Trinity in 1855, he instead accepted a professorship at Marischal College in Aberdeen. While there, he won the Adams Prize from King’s College Cambridge for demonstrating that Saturn’s rings could be neither solids nor liquids, but rather made of smaller particles that orbited Saturn independently. In the 1980s the spacecraft Voyager confirmed the theory in a flyby of Saturn. At the time he wrote the paper, it was considered the finest example of an application of mathematics to physics in history.

In 1860, Maxwell took a position at King’s College London, before moving on to Cambridge in 1871. Soon, Maxwell’s work changed the field of physics. For example, he showed that light was a form of electromagnetic radiation and worked out key concepts describing electromagnetic behavior. That work was later simplified into four partial differential equations that paved the way for Einstein’s theory of special relativity. He also produced the first light-fast color photograph (in 1861), and he proposed a system for defining physical quantities, which today is known as dimensional analysis.

Maxwell’s faith was very important to his understanding of science and put him at odds with most of his contemporaries. The dominant philosophy of the day among scientists was positivism, which taught that the only foundation for knowledge was empirical observation and logical and mathematical analyses of those observations. This means that intuition, introspection, revelation, and tradition are not valid ways of finding truth. Therefore, the authority of the Bible must be rejected, along with claims to miracles and divine interventions of any sort.

Maxwell, however, rejected positivism as both reductionistic and presumptuous. He believed firmly in the Scriptures and had a decidedly mystical streak to his Christian life that he rarely discussed. To Maxwell, science was a profoundly religious endeavor. Among the daily prayers he repeated was this one:

Teach us to study the work of Thy hands that we may subdue the earth to our uses, and strengthen our reason for Thy service; and so rescue Thy blessed Word, that we may believe on Him whom Thou hast sent to give us the knowledge of salvation and the remission of our sins.

Maxwell understood science as an expression of the cultural mandate from Genesis 1 and its connection to the Gospel. In 1875, he said,

I think that men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think that Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that this view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable of. 

Maxwell died at age 48 of stomach cancer. Despite a short life, physicists classify his work along with Einstein and Newton. In advancing our knowledge about God’s world, Maxwell understood that he was performing the work of the kingdom of Heaven, with an expectation that it would lead people to glorify God and fulfill His purposes for the world. [source]

Rep. Jim Banks Introduces ‘Defund NPR Act’

From The Gateway Pundit.com (Apr. 20, 2024):

NPR has been under fire after hiring a leftist activist, Katherine Maher, as their new CEO.

I do wish Hillary wouldn’t use the language of “boy and girl” – it’s erasing language for non-binary people.

— Katherine Maher (@krmaher) October 10, 2016

Former NPR editor Uri Berliner was also recently suspended (and subsequently resigned) after revealing NPR’s Washington, D.C., news team includes 87 registered Democrats and zero registered Republicans.

The bill states that “no Federal funds may, directly or indirectly,” be “made available to or used to support” NPR, “including through the payment of dues to or the purchase of programming from such organization by a public broadcast station using Federal funds received by such station.”

In a press release, the Anti-Woke Caucus Chairman said, “NPR’s new CEO is a radical, left-wing activist who doesn’t believe in free speech or objective journalism.”

“Hoosiers shouldn’t be writing her paychecks,” the congressman continued. “Katherine Maher isn’t qualified to teach an introductory journalism class, much less capable of responsibly spending millions of American tax dollars. NPR was a liberal looney bin under the last CEO John Lansing, and it’s about to get even nuttier. It’s time to pull the plug on this national embarrassment. Congress must stop spending other people’s hard-earned money on low grade propaganda.”

Banks’ office noted, “Katherine Maher, NPR’s recently appointed CEO, has described the First Amendment as ‘the number one challenge’ to combatting ‘misinformation,’ and has attacked former President Donald Trump on social media on several occasions.” [source]

Good! It's about time. While he’s at it, he can defund PBS too. Let George Soros and other ultra-rich Leftists fund them if they think those media are worth it.

Democrats overwhelmingly vote against Laken Riley Act

From The Blaze.com (Jan. 7):

The House passed the Laken Riley Act on Tuesday, with a majority of Democrats voting against the bill.

The Laken Riley Act is the first bill in the 119th Congress addressing illegal immigration, requiring that aliens charged with theft or burglary be detained. The landmark legislation was named after Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was brutally murdered by an illegal alien while she was jogging at the University of Georgia.

Despite the overwhelming resistance from 159 Democrats, 48 voted with 216 Republicans to pass the legislation.

The bill was also passed in the House during the 118th Congress, with 170 Democrats voting against it. Notably, 37 Democrats joined 214 Republicans to pass the bill.

Speaker Mike Johnson praised the legislation, saying it will "ensure criminals like Laken's murderer are detained & deported before they can commit such evil acts."

"President Biden never apologized to Laken's family for allowing her killer into our country, but he DID apologize for calling that monster an illegal," Johnson added.

Under President Joe Biden's administration, there have been over 8 million encounters with illegal migrants on the southern border alone. As a result, illegal immigration has exacerbated the housing crisis and flooded communities with criminals, all at the cost of the taxpayer.

"This isn’t a partisan issue, but those on the Left will continue to prioritize 'political correctness' over American lives," Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona said.

After enduring four years of the Biden administration's burdensome border crisis, Americans rejected the Democratic Party at the ballot box.

Leading up to the presidential election, immigration had become a top priority for voters. President-elect Donald Trump spent his campaign addressing illegal immigration as a crisis and vowing mass deportations. At the same time, Trump's Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, avoided the topic altogether.

The message on November 5 was loud and clear, and Congress took note. [source]

Voting for this bill is a no-brainer. I guess the 159 Dems who voted against this bill care more for illegal criminals than for the public’s safety. Shameful.

Another article on the act: Senate Passes Amended Version Of The Laken Riley Act

Congress Only Wants To ‘Ban’ TikTok So The Deep State Can Use It To Spy On Americans

From The Federalist.com (Mar. 19, 2024):

Given all we know now about how U.S. intelligence agencies conspire with Big Tech firms and nongovernmental cutouts to spy on and manipulate U.S. citizens, together with what the Twitter Files revealed last year about how the FBI and DHS deputized social media companies to censor Americans and throttle free speech, you’d think lawmakers who ostensibly care about the First Amendment would balk at expanding the online censorship industry’s reach in the United States.

But you’d be wrong. Last week in Washington there was a sudden concentrated push among House Republicans and Democrats alike to pass a so-called “TikTok ban.” The bill, which sailed out of committee and was passed with bipartisan support in the House, now goes to the Senate, where it will likely meet the same bipartisan approval.

It’s not really a ban, though. The bill would give TikTok, which is owned by its Chinese Communist Party-controlled parent company, ByteDance, the option to sell the app’s U.S. operations or be banned. Because the CCP uses TikTok to spy on U.S. users, the bill seems at first glance like a good idea. President Trump tried to ban the app in 2020 via executive order but was blocked by federal courts.

But there’s something else going on here. Namely, the push to “ban” TikTok is a thinly veiled scheme to force ByteDance to sell to a U.S. company. The purpose of forcing a sale should be obvious. If a U.S. firm owns TikTok, the federal censorship industrial complex can use the platform as it has used virtually every other social media company: to spy on and manipulate American citizens.

With more than 170 million users in America, TikTok would be a powerful new tool at the federal government’s disposal heading into the 2024 presidential election. If you think that’s crazy, or some kind of conspiracy theory, recall that just weeks before the 2020 election, dozens of former high-ranking U.S. intelligence officials signed onto a letter denouncing the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian disinformation campaign. That effort was coordinated and led by future Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who at the time was a senior official for the Biden campaign.

The suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was banned from Twitter, Facebook, and most other social media platforms almost as soon as it was reported, was only possible because of the leverage that federal intelligence agencies had over these social media companies.

Over the past year, we’ve learned more and more about the depth and breadth of collusion between Big Tech and the federal government, which views social media companies as proxies that enable it to censor and manipulate American citizens. Anything that cuts against the deep state’s preferred narrative is labeled as “misinformation” that must be suppressed, censored, or banned. Instead of doing this directly, the intelligence community dragoons social media companies into carrying out these tasks, and the effect is the quashing of free speech online.

Make no mistake, this is the goal of the movement to “ban” TikTok. How else to explain the effort to force a TikTok sale? If the goal was really to ban TikTok (because the CCP uses it to collect data on American citizens, or because it’s harmful to its users’ mental health, or both) then Congress would have simply passed a bill that banned the app from stores and web-hosting services in the United States. It could have been a straightforward, one-page bill.

Instead, the bipartisan bill now before the Senate allows for U.S. ownership with virtually no changes in how TikTok functions, as congressional supporters of the bill have freely admitted. If only TikTok is controlled by a U.S. firm, it can continue to operate as it has thus far—with an important difference. Instead of answering to the CCP, it will answer to CISA, or the CIA, or FBI—just as Twitter and Facebook and all the others have for years now.

Indeed, TikTok itself boasted earlier this year about how fastidious it has been in walling off U.S. users’ data from China, even as it has struggled to keep that data private. In January, the Wall Street Journal reported the company had spent $1.5 billion on an operation designed to convince U.S. lawmakers that user data was safe.

But that effort itself reveals how the campaign to keep data safe from China is really a backdoor to allow U.S. intel agencies access to user data. In the report, a TikTok spokeswoman said the app’s U.S. algorithm is stored with Oracle, an American company. “Over the past year, we took the unprecedented step of granting Oracle full access to our source code and algorithm,” she said.

But of course Oracle isn’t just a U.S. data storage and management company. It’s also one of four major defense contractors providing cloud-computing contracts to the U.S. government. It’s not a stretch, much less a conspiracy theory, to see how a U.S.-owned TikTok, whose entire source code and algorithm has been given to Oracle, could be used by the intel and defense bureaucracy to spy on American TikTok users.

Such details aren’t getting in the way of the bipartisan push in Congress to take control of the app. To make the TikTok “ban” seem like a patriotic move, we’re now seeing its proponents talk about how bad it is that we allow a Chinese-controlled social media firm to operate with no oversight. That’s why former Trump administration Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who last week announced he was putting together a group to purchase TikTok, said, “There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a US company own something like this in China.”

It’s also why establishment Republicans like Rep. Dan Crenshaw denigrated opponents of the bill last week, saying a vote against the bill “is a vote for the Chinese Communist Party. The opponents of this bill aren’t defending free speech, they’re defending Chinese access to American data and American minds.”

Whenever anyone pushes back on these claims, the response is often, oh so you’d rather communist China be allowed to spy on us and manipulate U.S. news coverage? The answer to this should be obvious. If the choice is between the CCP spying on and manipulating us or our own government doing it, I’d much rather it be a foreign power.

When it comes to censorship and the muzzling of Americans, the greater enemy by far is the U.S. government. It’s not even close. That there’s even a question about which is the greater threat is a testament to how far we’ve come in our understanding of tyranny and how susceptible we are to it arising domestically, within our own government.

The truth is, our government has embarked on a tyrannical, republic-destroying project of censoring and spying on its citizens. It’s galling that the same people who want to expand the U.S. intelligence community’s power to do that are pretending to have patriotic motives for doing so.

Don’t fall for this lie. They don’t want to protect you from China. They want to do to you what the CCP does to its people: spy, manipulate, censor, and suppress free speech. It’s not more complicated than that. [source]

Hmmm. Well, that’s one way to ponder the ban.

America’s Lab Rats?

From Victor Hanson.com (July 29, 2024):

Half the country thinks something has gone drastically wrong in America, to the point that it is rapidly becoming unrecognizable. Millions feel they are virtual lab rats in some grand research project conducted by entitled elites who could care less when the experiment blows up.

Consider: Our military turns over $60 billion in state-of-the-art weapons to terrorists in Kabul and then flees in disgrace?

Terrorist flags fly in place of incinerated Old Glory at the iconic Union Station in Washington as radical students and green card-holding guests deface statues with threats that “Hamas is coming” while spewing hatred toward Jews—and all with impunity?

A wide-open border with 10 million unaudited illegal immigrants?

Once beautiful downtowns resembling Nairobi or Cairo—as paralyzed mayors spend billions without a clue how to remedy the self-created disaster?

Fast food drive-ins priced as if they were near-gourmet restaurants?

In truth, this apparent rapid cultural, economic, and political upheaval is well into its third decade. The disruptions are the results of the long-term effects of globalization and the high-tech revolution that brought enormous wealth into the hands of a tiny utopian elite. Almost overnight, every American household became a consumer of cellular phones and cameras, laptop computers, social media, and Google searches.

We then entered into a virtual, soulless world of hedonism, narcissism, and the cheap, anonymous cruelty of click-bait, cancel culture, doxing, ghosting, blacklisting, and trolling. The toxic COVID lockdown and the DEI racist fixations that followed the George Floyd death only accelerated what had been an ongoing three-decade devolution.

By 2000, a former market of 300 million American consumers was widening to a globalized 7 billion shoppers—at least for those mostly on the two coasts, whose expertise and merchandising were universalized in megaprofit high-tech, finance, investment, media, law, and entertainment.

Americans of the 20^th century had never quite seen anything like the mega-global celebrities from Michael Jackson to Taylor Swift, or a Bezos fortune of $170 billion, or the sorts who fly in their Gulfstream private jets to Davos, Sun Valley, and Aspen to lament the ignorance of the backward muscular classes and to plot their noblesse oblige salvation for them.

Indeed, for those reliant on muscular jobs and the production of the material essentials of life—agriculture, fuels, construction, assembly, timber, mining, and services—their livelihoods were often xeroxed abroad. Millions of their jobs were offshored or outsourced to third- and second-world countries with cheaper labor, abundant natural resources, and less overhead that made investment “wiser” and more profitable.

Anointed Americans in the “soft” or informational economy achieved levels of wealth never seen before in history. Meanwhile, Americans in the “hard” or concrete sectors saw stagnation in wages, job losses, and the erosion of middle-class life itself.

That the universities, the media, the administrative state, entertainment, high tech, and the federal government were mostly on the coasts became a geographical force multiplier of the growing economic and cultural divide—perhaps in the manner that the Civil War became not just an ideological conflict but one of definable geography as well. [read more]

Can't wait for the Left's warped experiment to be over (at least for four years anyway) when President Trump resumes his term which is today! Yea! Another insightful article by VDH.

7 Financial Tips From the Book of Proverbs

From FEE.org (Dec. 26, 2022):

Ask someone from the millennial or Generation Z crowds about tech-related topics and you’ll likely get an encyclopedia of knowledge pouring forth. Ask those same cohorts about a financial decision or money-related matter and you just might get a deer-in-the-headlights look.

Over two-thirds of people ages 18-41 have “financial topics they want advice on,” a Harris Poll found earlier this year, “but aren’t sure how to get it.” And given that 70 percent of millennials and 65 percent of Generation Z live paycheck to paycheck, it’s not hard to imagine what types of financial advice might be needed.

Unfortunately, that last set of statistics shows that hiring a financial coach at an average of over $250 per hour is out of the question for most of those seeking advice. Lest you despair, I have good news on where to find invaluable, free financial advice, available at your fingertips. It’s liberally dispersed throughout an ancient work called the Book of Proverbs.

Here are just a few of the financial bits of wisdom that Proverbs offers.

1. Choose Diligence Over Laziness

Warnings against sloth and laziness pepper the Proverbs, many of them directly contrasting the sluggard with an ant, whose industrious nature works hard in the summer to store up food for winter. No one wants to be compared to a sloth, and many of us would likely pat ourselves on the back and contend we are not lazy bums. But Proverbs painfully points out some finer, overlooked aspects of slothfulness, such as a tendency to be wasteful, to take it easy and take multiple breaks, and to do a lot of talking rather than taking action and completing a task.

“In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury,” says Proverbs 14:23.

Like those who go into debt, Proverbs tells us that those who chose the way of sloth will be the servants in society, not the rulers, and will be overcome by poverty rather than riches. Those who are diligent in their business, however, will be society’s influencers, “standing before kings” and increasing in profit and material wealth.

“He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich,” says Proverbs 10:4.

2. Pick a Partner with Good Work Ethic

One of the best financial investments a person can make is to choose a financially savvy spouse. Proverbs 31 famously paints a picture of this by describing a woman who does her husband good, not evil, by being an industrious worker who wisely considers a large purchase before investing her money, isn’t wasteful, and even runs and operates her own home business ventures.

A virtuous spouse, Proverbs says, is worth far more than rubies—but industry is part of virtue.

“She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands,” says Proverbs 12-13.

3. Think Long Term

For those who live paycheck to paycheck, thinking long term seems like the last thing to consider on the list of life worries. The good news is that preparing for the future doesn’t have to be difficult. According to Proverbs, it can be as simple as maintaining friendships on which we can fall back upon for help in times of trouble. Keeping our business and financial affairs in good order is another way to prepare for hard times.

Additionally, we should consider that our children and grandchildren are also likely to encounter hard financial times. Preparing a nest egg or inheritance for them ahead of time, Proverbs tells us, is the mark of a good man.

“A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children, but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous,” says Proverbs 13:22.

4. Avoid Get-Rich-Quick Schemes

It may sound exciting and easy to “make $90 an hour working from home,” but Proverbs suggests that being hasty to get rich leads to poverty and want.

“Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty,” says Proverbs 21:5.

Those who faithfully do their work, however, will abound with blessings.

5. Pursue a Lifestyle of Integrity

Young people are often encouraged to sow their wild oats and enjoy life early on, but such riotous living may have negative financial consequences. Love of food, drink, and a free-wheeling lifestyle can lead an individual to spend extravagantly, eventually leading to poverty, Proverbs tells us.

Those who pursue righteous living, however, avoid extravagant lifestyles and practice honesty in their business dealings, not willing to take a bribe or lie in order to increase in wealth. Living a life of integrity promises great rewards, among which are “riches, and honour, and life,” Proverbs tells us.

Furthermore, in times of political turmoil and trouble, it is a righteous, upright life—not riches—that deliver an individual from death.

6. Avoid Loans

Borrowing money for school, cars, and homes has become the American way of life in recent years, even to the point that borrowing is now common even for basic living expenses. In fact, over 50 percent of Americans say they have more than $1,000 in credit card debt.

Proverbs warns against such debt, cautioning that those who borrow become servants to those who lend. This is likely why Proverbs also cautions against taking responsibility for another’s debt. Such an action may seem kind, but chances are that person will never be able to pay, leaving you stuck as the servant of debt in their place.

7. Be Generous

While Proverbs warns against taking responsibility for another’s debt, it does encourage us to be generous givers. Indeed, one might even say that Proverbs advances the idea of a giving principle: those who hoard and try to make sure they have enough to live on themselves will find that they’re grasping to make ends meet. But those who give freely to others, particularly the less fortunate, will find themselves overflowing with great blessings and plenty.

The Bottom Line

These seven financial principles are diverse and broad, but there is one component underlying each of them: wisdom. In the eighth chapter of Proverbs, wisdom is personified as a woman calling to individuals to forsake their foolishness and seek her instead. Those who do so, she promises, will reap not only material rewards, but moral ones as well:

Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold; and my revenue than choice silver. I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment: That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures.

In essence, those of us who want to do well in financial matters will follow this “one simple trick”: seeking wisdom. [source]

Good financial advice from the Good Book.

Hamas Leader Using At Least 15 Hostages As Human Shields: Report

From The Daily Wire.com (May 2, 2024):

Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas terrorist leader who was the mastermind behind the brutal October 7 attack on Israel, is hiding behind at least 15 hostages, according to American and Israeli officials, The New York Times reported.

As the U.S., Israel, and Egypt push Hamas to release the remaining hostages — which include as many as six Americans — Sinwar is negotiating behind a human shield made up of the very people Israeli forces are trying to rescue, officials said. The Times cited “people briefed on the negotiations” between Hamas and Israel who have blamed Sinwar for preventing a deal from being made that would release the hostages.

The outlet added that Sinwar is negotiating “from his hiding space deep in the tunnels below Gaza,” adding that his human shield of hostages “prevent[s] Israel from assassinating him.” Former U.S. Army Vice Chief of Staff General Jack Keane also told Sky News that Sinwar could have as many as 20 hostages surrounding him and his family.

“My sources tell me that Sinwar, who is the number one leader in Gaza of the Hamas organization, has 15-20 hostages protecting him and his family,” Keane said.

U.S. officials made similar comments, in concurrence with Israeli intelligence, about Sinwar using hostages as human shields in February. Hamas terrorists kidnapped hundreds of civilians and soldiers from Israel during its October 7 attack. Israeli and U.S. officials said last month that it’s unclear how many hostages remain alive in Gaza.

Sinwar’s brutality has been evident over the course of Hamas’ war with Israel as he said in November that the October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people “was just a rehearsal.” Hamas terrorists have also said after being captured that the leaders of the terrorist organization, including Sinwar, hide under hospitals in Gaza.

Terrorist leaders have hidden behind non-combatants in the past, with one of the most recent examples dating back to 2011, when Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden attempted to use women as human shields during the U.S. raid on his compound in Pakistan before he was killed by special forces, according to the White House. Officials added that one of the women Bin Laden was hiding behind was also killed. [source]

The Hamas leader is an evil jinn worshipping coward. Hopefully, President Trump can help get the rest of the hostages (especially American hostages) released, because the current president is useless.

FBI Had 26 Confidential Human Sources At Jan. 6 Events In Washington, D.C.

From The Federalist.com (Dec. 12, 2024):

More than two dozen confidential human sources (CHS) were in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, according to a new report the Justice Department inspector general released on Thursday.

Twenty-six CHSs were present in total, and the inspector general said that 11 of these “entered the restricted area around the Capitol.” At least one informant entered the Capitol amid the riot, and the FBI reimbursed that individual’s travel expenses.

While the Justice Department confirmed the FBI’s deployment of confidential sources at events related to Jan. 6, the inspector general denied “any CHS [was] directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.”

The presence of FBI informants at the Capitol had long been dismissed by legacy media as another conspiracy of independent media. In December last year, CNN’s Abby Phillip tried to fact-check then-Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy at a network town hall when the candidate brought up the existence of FBI informants at events related to Jan. 6.

“The reality is we know that there were federal law enforcement agents in that building; we don’t know how many,” Ramaswamy said.

“I’m going to go ahead and interrupt you here,” Phillip interjected, “you’re saying that there were federal agents on January 6th. There is no evidence that there were federal agents in the crowd on January 6th.”

By that point, however, the presence of FBI informants and assets had been reported by The New York Times and Newsweek, the latter of which said the Justice Department deployed special commandos with “shoot-to-kill authority.”

Senior leadership at the FBI meanwhile repeatedly stonewalled House and Senate lawmakers’ questions related to the FBI’s use of informants on Jan. 6.

“How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of Jan. 6?” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, asked Jill Sanborn, the executive assistant director for the FBI’s National Security Branch, a year after the riot.

“I can’t go into the specifics of sources and methods,” she said.

More recently, FBI Director Christopher Wray, who announced on Wednesday that he will step down next month, refused to answer similar questions.

“I’m never going to be getting into when and where we have or have not, or have not used confidential human sources,” Wray said this summer.

In March, former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned after the riot, said he was also left in the dark about the presence of federal informants in the crowd. In an interview with the D.C. radio station WMAL, Sund called the lack of disclosure “concerning.” [source]

Of course they did. Being a setup and all. So, was Ray Epps a confidential human source or not? He says he's not. Still I wonder...

The Government Wants To Track Your Steak

From Reason.com (June 22, 2024):

The government has a long history of using tracking technology to ascertain our whereabouts, our habits, and even our preferences. From cellphones and cars to snow plows and garbage trucks, governments seemingly want to track anything that moves—or moos.

The USDA recently finalized a rule—set to go into effect in a few months—that will require all cattle and bison being moved across state lines to be tagged with radio-frequency identification (RFID) ear tags. RFID technology uses radio frequency waves to transmit and collect data by way of a system of electronic tags and scanners. The technology is best viewed as a type of electronic or remote barcode, in which scanners can read an RFID chip anywhere from a few meters away to around 100 meters away. In some ways analogous to a shorter-range GPS system, RFID can track geographic location and also operate as a system of data collection and storage.

In the context of livestock, a quick scan of an RFID tag can pull up information like a cow's date of birth, weight, vaccine records, ownership history, what farms it has been to, and what movements it has made. The USDA is justifying its RFID mandate on public health grounds, claiming that it can help trace and eradicate potential disease outbreaks among livestock, such as mad cow disease or hoof-and-mouth disease.

While plausible at first blush, it is far from clear that the mandate will accomplish its intended objective, and it is very clear that it will disproportionately hurt small and independent ranchers and cattle farmers.

For one thing, most ranchers already want to be able to identify their cattle and have used physical metal tags for years to do so. Electronic RFID tags are twice as expensive as traditional metal tags and also require an upfront investment in scanners and software, making the switch cost-prohibitive for many small farms. Farmers also complain that electronic tags are harder to identify visually from a distance, which matters during cattle drives and other large and quick-paced movements of livestock. Most farmers that use electronic tags therefore also still tag their animals with traditional physical tags, necessitating a double-investment in two types of tags.

There's also the issue of tag retention. "I've talked to many people who have used these RFID tags and their cows have lost 50 percent after five years," Ken Fox, a South Dakota cow farmer and chair of R-CALF USA's Animal Identification Committee, told Wisconsin State Farmer. "By year nine or ten only 14 percent of the tags were left; and our beef cows can be with us for 15 to 20 years, so that's a serious concern." Fox also notes that the RFID scanners often need to be replaced every four or five years.

Fox points out that not all livestock operations are created equal. For dairy farmers who keep their livestock penned up, frequent replacing of tags is more logistically feasible, if still expensive. But for cattle ranchers, tag replacement can be entirely impracticable. "That just doesn't work when we've got cattle on 10,000 or 30,000 acres of range land and we handle those cattle maybe twice a year," said Fox. "If they lose those tags, how are we going to know who those cattle are?" Amish farmers have also opposed electronic tagging on moral grounds given their opposition to technology.

Large cattle operations can afford to double-tag their livestock with physical and electronic tags, and in fact, many have already done so voluntarily—which means the mandate's burden will fall heaviest on small and medium-sized farms and ranches. The USDA rule also favors large cattle operations more directly, including allowing them to use so-called "group identification" for livestock herds of a certain size and continuity.

"The new rule also provides for large-scale cattle operations to use one ID per group of a certain size, instead of one ID per animal," writes Remington Kesten in a blog post for David's Pasture, a small-scale cattle operation in Missouri. "This means that the smaller farms will actually incur more cost per animal once the mandate takes effect, than the big players will."

Worse yet, this group identification actually undercuts the USDA's entire disease-traceability rationale for mandated electronic tagging. "This intentional loophole also reduces the traceability for large farms and exporters, contradicting the USDA's primary reason for mandating RFID Ear Tags in the first place," notes Kesten.

The rule also fails on its own terms. While supporters point to the 2003 mad cow disease outbreak in Washington state as an example of a situation where electronic tagging could have allowed for quicker identification of where the disease originated, it's worth noting that the government was still able to track the original diseased cow back to its birthplace farm in Canada within 13 days.

It's also worth recognizing that livestock disease outbreaks are exceedingly rare in the United States. An article in Lancaster Farming, which takes a generally favorable bent toward the USDA mandate, notes that hoof-and-mouth disease was last found in America in 1929. Farmers such as Fox have also highlighted the successful combatting of brucellosis in the United States, which was accomplished without electronic tagging.

If anything, it is large-scale commercial farms that are most responsible for disease outbreaks. "There is no data in over a decade showing that food borne illnesses have resulted from disease on small farms," writes Kesten. "All major disease outbreaks in recent years have occurred on large farms." In other words, small and independent ranchers are bearing the brunt of a new rule in the name of fixing a problem that they have nothing to do with.

Finally, the USDA rule creates significant data privacy concerns. RFID tags cannot distinguish between scanners—which are portable and easily carried in hand—so potentially anyone with a scanner could access the data contained in each tag. Ominously, the USDA rule opts to use the term electronic identification tags instead of the RFID acronym, although for now RFID tags are the only technology approved by the USDA for livestock tagging.

This flexible language means that USDA is explicitly leaving the door open to even more comprehensive tracking technology. This could come in the form of "active" RFID tags (instead of "passive" ones as currently contemplated) that have a greater range of readability or even GPS tracking of cows via satellites.

One small beacon of hope for American ranchers is that Congress appears to finally be waking up to the USDA's overreach. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) recently introduced legislation that would prohibit the USDA from implementing any rule that mandates electronic tagging technology for cattle and bison.

The USDA is attempting to find a solution for a problem that has already been largely addressed through current practices.

Fox puts it more colorfully: "Someone told me this story—NASA spent millions trying to develop a pen that could work in sub-zero temperatures and zero gravity. The Russians just used a pencil." [source]

Not sure if tracking cattle is good or not by the USDA. Individual ranchers doing it is one thing. I can understand that. But the federal government? The new USDA admin. might have to re-evaluate this regulation.

Biden Awards Second Highest Civilian Honor to Jan. 6 Panel Leaders

From Newsmax.com (Jan. 2):

President Joe Biden is bestowing the second highest civilian medal on Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson — the lawmakers who led the congressional investigation into the violent Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack — who President-elect Donald Trump has said should be jailed.

Biden will award the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 people in a ceremony Thursday at the White House, including Americans who fought for marriage equality, a pioneer in treating wounded soldiers, and two of the president's longtime friends, former Sens. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.

“President Biden believes these Americans are bonded by their common decency and commitment to serving others,” the White House said in a statement. “The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.”

Biden last year honored people who were involved in defending the Capitol from the rioters, or who helped safeguard the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election, when Trump tried and failed to overturn the results.

Cheney, who was a Republican representative from Wyoming, and Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, led the House committee that probed the insurrection. Cheney later said she would vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race even campaigned with her, raising Trump's ire. Biden has been considering whether to offer preemptive pardons to Cheney and others Trump has targeted.

Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take office Jan. 20, has said he would pardon people involved in the Jan. 6 attack after he takes office.

During an interview with NBC's “Meet the Press,” Trump said, “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps," claiming without evidence they “deleted and destroyed” testimony they collected.

“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he said.

Biden is also giving the award to attorney Mary Bonauto, who fought to legalize same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, a leader of the marriage equality movement.

Other honorees include Frank Butler, who set new standards for using tourniquets on war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse during the Vietnam War who founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation; and Eleanor Smeal, an activist who led women's rights protests in the 1970s and fought for equal pay.

He's also giving the award to photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.

Other former lawmakers being honored include former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.; former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who championed gun safety measures after her son and husband were shot to death.

Biden will honor four people posthumously: Joseph Galloway, a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young"; civil rights advocate and attorney Louis Lorenzo Redding; former Delaware state judge Collins Seitz; and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was held with other Japanese Americans during World War II and challenged the detention.

The Presidential Citizens Medal, created by President Richard Nixon in 1969, is the country’s second highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is awarded to those who “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.” [source]

Of course, he would, the bastard.  He'll probably pardon them too.

Characteristics of American Tinkerpreneurs

1. Mechanical ability from an early age;
2. Stubborn practicality and dedication to making and selling useful things;
3. Willingness to expand their creative orbits as widely as possible to get the job done;
4. Relentless work ethic and insatiable commitment to continual self-improvement;
5. A deep and abiding respect for intellectual property, fair play, and the rule of law;
6. Strong faith and perseverance through failure and adversity; 
7. Reverence for America’s special role as a beacon of freedom and opportunity.

Source: Who Built That. Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs (2015) by Michelle Malkin.

'Eco-friendly' paper straws actually contain toxic 'chemicals'

From Rebel News.com (Aug. 25, 2023):

It wasn't that long ago that plastic straws were replaced by paper ones in major fast-food chains and restaurants. But now paper straws are the ones to be considered 'toxic' according to scientists.

On August 24, 2023, a significant study published under the category of Food Additives & Contaminants, examined 39 brands of straws made from various materials such as paper, bamboo, glass, stainless steel and plastic. Each straw underwent two rounds of PFAS testing.

The term "per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances" (PFAS) refers to a large and complex group of synthetic chemicals that have been used in everyday items.

In this particular study, the straws showed PFAS in 69% of the cases. 18 different PFAS were found during testing.

These compounds were discovered in 90% of paper straws, 80% of bamboo straws, 75% of plastic straws, and 40% of glass straw brands tested positive as well.

No traces of PFAS were found in stainless steel straws.

According to the study:

Most PFAS barely break down and are both accumulative and potentially toxic to humans, animals, and the environment (EEA Citation2022).

Intake through food and drinking water are the main routes of general human exposure to PFAS. In addition, many food packaging materials (Food Contact Materials, FCMs) and reusable plastic bags used in the food industry can contain PFAS (Sznajder-Katarzyńska et al. Citation2019; EEA Citation2022).

Researchers say that the high concentration of PFAS in the straws show that they were used as a waterproof coating.

Science Daily said:

The PFAS concentrations were low and, bearing in mind that most people tend to only use straws occasionally, pose a limited risk to human health. However, PFAS can remain in the body for many years and concentrations can build up over time.

This raises the question if plastic straws will make a comeback in certain food places in the future, because paper straws aren't as 'eco-friendly' as we thought. [source]

The paper straws don’t work as well plastic straws and they are toxic too people. Do the enviro-extremists care? No, as long as the straws aren’t toxic to the environment in general.

Three takeaways on China’s spies in the Navy

From Washington Examiner.com (Aug. 4, 2023):

This week, the FBI arrested two Navy sailors whom the Justice Department accuses of spying for China. Both men were paid by China for their efforts. These arrests are a reminder of the vast ambition, scale, and threat Beijing poses in terms of espionage.

The first case involves Jinchao Wei, a sailor who was assigned to the USS Essex amphibious assault ship. Wei is accused of communicating with a Chinese intelligence officer, who directed him to delete “records of their conversations and using encrypted methods of communication,” starting in February 2022.

Wei is said to have “described defensive weapons of the Essex” and provided his Chinese handler with technical manuals, including on damage control systems, power, steering, and flight deck operations. This information would be of use to the People’s Liberation Army both in terms of boosting its institutional knowledge of how the U.S. Navy operates in combat and advancing the PLA’s tactics for engaging with vessels such as the Essex. Seeing as a war with China is likely before 2030, this is not a small concern.

The second case involves Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao. Zhao is accused of communicating with a Chinese intelligence officer between August 2021 and May 2023. That officer, almost certainly from China’s Ministry of State Security or the People’s Liberation Army, pretended to be a maritime commerce specialist. This cover was likely designed not to convince Zhao that he wasn’t dealing with a Chinese spy, but to afford him a thin psychological pretense to that effect: making it slightly easier for him to betray the Navy and the nation. This is an interesting example of how, when it comes to recruiting an agent, sometimes an intelligence service needs to dangle both a bit of money and a bit of “here’s how you can pretend you can sleep comfortably at night” mythology.

Regardless, Zhao’s spying was deadly serious, as it included his photographs of “electrical diagrams and blueprints for a radar system stationed on a U.S. military base in Okinawa.” It is no secret why China would be interested in U.S. radar facilities on Okinawa. It is because those facilities would be crucial to the island’s defense in the event of PLA missile and air attacks during any future war over Taiwan. The island would also serve as a key forward operating base for U.S. and Japanese air forces engaged in Taiwan’s defense.

Three further points stand out from these arrests.

First, both sailors are ethnic Chinese. As John Schindler notes, Beijing often leverages Chinese heritage to recruit intelligence agents. It does so by leveraging a variety of inducements for and pressures on family members back in China. Beijing also opens its wallet. It is not known how and where these two sailors were recruited, but it would be interesting to know whether either has made visits to China or proximate locales in recent years.

Second, the sailors were engaged in espionage for long periods before they were arrested. While the FBI may have allowed this espionage, believing the damage caused by the sailors was outweighed by the afforded FBI’s insight into Chinese espionage efforts, it’s also possible that this spying was only recently detected. If so, it’s likely the National Security Agency played a role here. The NSA has a number of sensitive efforts designed to identify Chinese signals intelligence operations targeting the U.S. mainland.

That leads to point three. The head of the Justice Department’s national security division, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, is now patting himself on the back. Olsen says these arrests prove that “the Department of Justice will continue to use every tool in our arsenal to counter threats from China and to deter those who aid them in breaking our laws and threatening our national security.”

Unfortunately, and against the FBI’s adamant advice, Olsen helped eliminate a key tool for dealing with China’s threat — namely, the Justice Department’s now-ended “China Initiative” to identify Chinese espionage officers, agents, and efforts at U.S. academic institutions. Supporting the Biden administration’s misguided public relations stunt in ending the China Initiative, Olsen absurdly also suggested that future incidences of deception by academics who lie about taking money from China might be treated as civil rather than criminal matters. That’s hardly a way to “deter those who aid” Chinese spying. Indeed, the Biden administration’s approach is downright dangerous.

The top line, however, is a familiar one. From the Netherlands to Taiwan to the United Kingdom to even China’s “no limits partner,” Russia, Beijing’s intelligence apparatus poses an extraordinary threat — one that is truly unparalleled in terms of its human and cyber intelligence efforts. China has the data and the ambition to detect vulnerable targets and then exploit them ruthlessly. Within 20 years, this unparalleled descriptor may also apply to China’s space-based intelligence capabilities.

Put simply, the arrest of these two sailors is the tip of a very large iceberg. [source]

Daniel Penny: No Regrets Standing Up to Help

From Newsmax.com (Dec. 10):

Marine veteran Daniel Penny, despite being prosecuted by leftist Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, saidTuesday he has no regrets about trying to help others on the subway in May 2023.

Penny was acquitted on Monday of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, who witnesses said was threatening people on the train.

"I'm not a confrontational person. This type of thing is very uncomfortable — all this attention and limelight is very uncomfortable, and I would prefer without it. I don't want any type of attention or praise, and I still don't," Penny told Fox News.

Penny added that he knew he needed to step in to protect people on the subway from Neely.

"The guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he [Neely] did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself. I'll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed," Penny said. [source]

Good for him!  I'm glad he was found not guilty. He should never have been prosecuted. Society needs to encourage good Smartian protectors not to discourage them.

More articles about him:

• The Daniel Penny verdict.
• Glenn: How Alvin Bragg turned hero Daniel Penny into a villain
  
• JD Vance invites Daniel Penny to attend Army-Navy game with him and Trump after Marine vet cleared in subway chokehold death

Are the Years of Madness Ending?

From AM Greatness.com (Dec. 16):

Never in U.S. history has a president-elect been welcomed as the real president before his January 20 inauguration. And never has the incumbent president so willingly surrendered his last two months in office and all but abdicated—to the relief of his nation and the rest of the world.

One reason so many are welcoming Trump’s return is the universally desperate hope that his election spelled an end to a collective madness at home and its ripples abroad during the last four years. And why not?

Nations overseas had never quite witnessed anything like the lethal August 2021 American flight from Afghanistan. That utter humiliation and impotence of the U.S. military likely signaled to Russia there would be no consequences if it invaded Ukraine—and it did; to Iran that it could now unleash Hamas and Hezbollah on Israel—and it did; and to China that it could daily threaten Taiwan and send a spy balloon across the United States with impunity—and it did.

The result was the current global chaos perhaps not seen since the late 1930s when a confused United States was similarly a bystander to the rise of bellicose regimes and wars. The Biden administration shrugged that the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the South China Sea, the Straits of Hormuz, and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea all became dangerous to the U.S. Navy and unsafe to world shipping.

A disparate group of nuclear and near-nuclear powers—Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—are either at war with Western allies or threatening war with them. Their confidence was predicated on the assumption that the U.S. after 2020 was engaged in a Maoist-like cultural revolution that warred on its own security, energy, military, universities, and social unity—and would continue with a second Biden term.

The Biden-era cultural revolution has done great damage to the United States. The U.S. border was systematically and deliberately destroyed to allow some 10-12 million illegal entrants to pour into the U.S. without legality or background checks. Never has an outgoing administration spitefully sold taxpayer-purchased border wall material for pennies on the dollar—rather than see it used for the purposes for which it was purchased.

Never had the U.S. experienced such an immigrant surge. And never had more than 50 million, and over 15 percent of the resident American population been foreign-born.

Why did Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas erase the border? What madness and hate drove them to dismantle federal immigration law? Was it sheer nihilism? Or a desperate but calculated effort to alter American demography for political purposes?

For four years, the public, elected officials, and pundits have all warned that Joe Biden was dangerously cognitively challenged and indeed completely unfit to fulfill the duties of the presidency.

A long-suffering nation winced as Biden slurred his words, spoke in unintelligible sound bites, stood frozen and mute, screamed at and libeled half the country, tripped, fell, wandered aimlessly, became bewildered, and more or less proved a global embarrassment. All knew Biden was not able to run the country; yet none knew exactly who was actually in charge of America in his stead. The Obamas? Leftists like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the Squad, Jill Biden, and the Biden staff?

Our allies worried that the usually resilient American president was now all but demented. Our enemies enjoyed these leaderless years of opportunity. And the left serially misled the public that the decrepit Biden, whom they feared in private was senile, was “dynamic,” “energic,” and “fit as a fiddle.”

Never has a president so deserved to be removed by the 25^th Amendment or through impeachment and conviction. And never has even his inner circle finally but silently agreed as they left office, the very enablers who had done their political best to mask his dementia for four long years.

Rarely have the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, the Department of Justice, and the Pentagon become weaponized and so flagrantly and with impunity broken the law, abandoned their mission statements, and served political agendas rather than the American people. Not since the J. Edgar Hoover era has the FBI hierarchy serially lied under oath, stonewalled Congress, forged a court affidavit, or partnered with the media to suppress the news. Has the FBI ever raided an ex-president’s home, spied on parents at school board meetings, monitored Catholics, or tried to terrify and harass pro-life activists?

Never has the justice system, from local to state to national jurisdictions, so systematically and coordinately, sought to bankrupt, render inert, and jail an ex-president and current presidential candidate.

Never has a presidential family so brazenly profited by selling its influence to foreign interests. Never has it used the powers of the FBI and DOJ to cover up its crimes and to ensure the family filial bagman would be for years exempted by the DOJ and later pardoned by the president himself, the father of the family miscreant and privy to the family syndicate’s illegal activities.

Seldom has a president and his administration sought to fuel a veritable cultural revolution to change the fabric of the nation by institutionalizing a third, transexual gender, violating civil rights law, and systematically admitting, hiring, and promoting Americans on the basis of their race and gender.

Never since the Civil War era had local and state insurrectionist governments established 600 nullification zones, in which they vowed to break federal law and consider it null and void within their jurisdictions. Never have rioters looted, burned, killed, assaulted, and occupied large swaths of cities for over 120 days, and largely with impunity.

Never had the U.S. Treasury borrowed so much money so quickly and owed $37 in national debt—and been so intent on borrowing continuously nearly $2 trillion a year in annual deficits.

Never has a political party sought to systematically violate long-standing traditions, customs, and often the law itself to destroy a political opponent: hiring a foreign national to spread smears among the media and bureaucracies, impeaching a president twice, trying an ex-president in the Senate, seeking to remove a presidential candidate from 16 state ballots, using five different judicial jurisdictions to try an ex-president, and serially so defaming a candidate and ex-president as a dictator, fascist, and Nazi to create a climate that encouraged two near-miss assassination attempts on him.

In sum, for the last four years, the world has watched aghast as the United States lost its collective mind and became a radical Jacobin revolutionary society.

So why is there not a sense of almost ecstatic relief, not just among conservatives but even among Democrats, that the years of darkness and madness are ending?

The global public believes that the United States will again become lawful, have a secure border, return as a beacon of free-market economics, protect its allies, deter its enemies, win over its neutrals, return to the rule of law, restore the professionalism and prestige of its government agencies, check predatory nations abroad with a new deterrent military, and prepare to lead the world in energy production, exploration of space, and scientific and technology development.

Summed up, the welcomed counterrevolution is one of restoration—to dream again that nothing is impossible, and the dreary age of stasis, envy, cynicism, and nihilism is ending, replaced again by a world without limits. No one knows quite what is ahead, but all know that it is at least better already than the current nightmare. [source]

I hope so. The adults are back in power. So, that's good. Now, if the Left can let go of their hatred of President Trump, the country (and them) will be better for it. Another thought-provoking article by Victor Davis Hanson.

Six Ways Socialism is Anti-Social

From Lawrence W. Reed on FEE.org (Dec. 4, 2022):

Here’s a question for a PhD dissertation: How did something so radically anti-social ever get the name, social-ism?

I leave that vexing matter to whoever wants to write it up. Meantime, I can assist the project by offering some of the reasons why socialism is a self-evidently anti-social contrivance.

First, what is socialism? For a definition, socialists themselves offer numerous moving targets. For example:

It’s happy talk and sharing things even though under socialism there’s less to share and be happy about.

It’s free stuff until the bills come due.

It’s the welfare state, where the politicians get well and the rest of us pay the fare. (See “John Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia and Reflections on the Welfare State”).

It’s bread lines that bring us all together, somehow. Remember that Bernie Sanders once proclaimed that people lining up for food in communist countries was a blessing in disguise.

It’s government ownership of the means of production so the economy can hum with the efficiency of the Department of Motor Vehicles.

It’s when workers run the factories that somebody else invested in.

It’s when clueless elites tell the economy what to do.

It’s Scandinavia (which isn’t socialist).

It’s communal utopia where everybody gets an equal portion regardless of effort, until they nearly starve. The Pilgrims tried it until forced to replace it with private property. (See also “The Dark Side of Paradise: A Brief History of America’s Utopian Experiments in Communal Living”).

It’s Venezuela, or it was Venezuela until it didn’t work.

If it seems like socialists don’t really know what it is, that’s only partly true. In most cases, they just don’t want YOU to know what it really is. The best charlatans are always the clever ones.

Socialism is rightly and widely perceived as diametrically opposed to capitalism. So it can’t possibly be acts of caring, sharing, giving and being compassionate toward the needy. There is demonstrably more caring, sharing, giving, and compassion toward the needy under capitalism!

Even when it comes to foreign aid, capitalist countries are the donors and socialist countries are the recipients. You can’t give it away or share it with anybody if you don’t create it in the first place, and socialism offers utterly no theory of wealth creation, only wealth confiscation and consumption.

Another way to think of the distinctions between these two opposing systems is this: Capitalism is what happens when free and peaceful people are left alone. In that sense, it’s natural and spontaneous. Socialism is nothing more than the presumptuous plans of bullies and know-it-alls who impose their plans at gunpoint. In that sense, it’s unnatural, contrived, arbitrary and officious.

Socialists are math-challenged: They’re good at division and subtraction but are unaware of addition or multiplication. If your second grader tells you that 3 + 2 = 1, you know he’s a future socialist. Likewise if he tells you that taxes on cigarettes discourage smoking but taxes on investing, hiring or starting a business have only beneficial effects. The economics knowledge of socialists is even more dismal: They think supply and demand means the people demand and the government supplies.

In my book, Was Jesus a Socialist? I blew away the smoke bombs to reveal what socialism really is:

It is the concentration of power in the hands of the State, which then deploys legal force for one or more of these purposes (and usually all three to one extent or another): the redistribution of income, government ownership of property, and the central planning of economic life.

Note that socialists do not propose to accomplish their objectives by mutual consent. They do not advocate raising the money for their plans by way of bake sales or charitable solicitations. Your participation is not voluntary. From start to finish, socialism’s defining characteristic is not so much the promises meant to beguile but rather, the method by which it implements its agenda—FORCE. If it’s voluntary, it’s not socialism. It’s that simple. [read more]

Socialism is definitely evil. Anti-God.

Here are the reasons socialism is anti-social:

• The Plans of Socialists Are More Important Than Yours
• Socialists Are Know-It-Alls and Know-Nothings, Simultaneously
• Socialism Rejects Biological Science
• Socialists Call the Cops for Everything
• Socialism Is Anti-Capital
• Conflict Is Their God