NPR vs SCOTUS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/npr-stands-by-supreme-court-mask-story-despite-denials/

NPR is standing by reporting from its legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg, alleging that Justice Neil Gorsuch refused a request from Chief Justice John Roberts that he don a mask on the bench — a request that Totenberg implied was made by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is diabetic.

So NPR reports that Neil Gorsuch refused a request from the Chief Justice to wear a mask.

“On Wednesday, Sotomayor and Gorsuch issued a statement saying that she did not ask him to wear a mask. NPR’s report did not say that she did. Then, the chief justice issued a statement saying he ‘did not request Justice Gorsuch or any other justice to wear a mask on the bench.’ The NPR report said the chief justice’s ask to the justices had come ‘in some form.'”

So who are you going to believe, the justices themselves or NPR? 

Hard to understand how their could be division in our country isn't it?

Ideas Have Consequences, Richard Weaver.

 http://www.moosetracksblog.com/2014/11/ideas-have-consequences-by-richard.html

This is one of those books that I have read a few times, and find that I enjoy it and find new insights each time. (I might leave out the cheesy Star Trek video clip if I was to do a "serious review"" again. 

This is just a glorified link to a book that I didn't want readers of this blog to miss. 

I'll only include one quote ... it is worth following the link to the more extensive review, and of course reading the book itself. 

"For four centuries every man has been not only his own priest, but his own professor of ethics, and the consequence is an anarchy which threatens even that minimum consensus of value necessary to the political state."

QAanon

 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-nothing-can-stop-what-is-coming/610567/

The article is maybe a good summary about what the elites think of Q and QAnon. 

I like to think of myself as a skeptic with an open mind. My mind is closed relative to the basic teachings of the Bible and the teachings of the LCMS ... that is my religion, and everyone's mind is closed relative to their word view / faith, and our world view/faith colors everything we see ... is is the "glasses" through which we "see" the world. 

"Moral Believing Animals" is a great way to understand this. 

The elites see Q as a "conspiracy theory", and there are certainly elements of that in it. 

We need to keep in mind that over 50% of Democrats believed that 9/11 was an "inside job" ... on that, they are probably unified with a significant number of Q believers. To oversimplify, Gallup says around half of Americans trust the government, however only 37% trust the legislative branch ... it would be interesting to know how many of them realize that the giant Administrative State which is really the practical "government" is supposed to be under legislative oversight, but largely isn't - it is a law unto itself. It wasted 2 years iinvestigating a sitting president on the basis of fake "evidence" obtained by the opposing candidate in the election (Hillary), which naturally was NOT investigated! 

Things like the constant changes of position on Covid as well as the totalitarian "mandates" are not conducive to trust. Biden declared in September 2020 that if he had been president, nobody would have died of Covid . I agree with him that he shouldn't be president. I think his assertion about "no deaths" was strong evidence either senility, or putting politics FAR over country ... probably both. Oh, he is the "adult unifier",  saying it was a "Time to HEEL" for those not woke to the superiority of the left. 

Conspiracy theories are as old as humanity -- we all want to have "secret knowledge of what is REALLY going on". If you have the Holy Spirit within you, you know Ephesians 6:12 "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."

If we are in Satan's kingdom, we have lost the battle, and Satan is pulling our strings. Since he is the father of lies, he may make us seem hyper reasonable in the modern sense -- "progressive", atheist, materialist, hedonistic, etc

As I read the article I was struck by the similarities with Global Warming, Russian Interference, the Ukraine telephone call, Hunter. Biden, The Great Reset, the world being "out of oil" in the 1970's, Teddy Kennedy and Chappaquiddick, and a host of other things that are part of "the standard narrative" that nobody would call a "conspiracy" because they are often completely out in the open, yet mostly or totally false. If something is part of "The Narrative", can it be a "conspiracy"? 

Certainly not to the folks that believe and drive the narrative.

Like "The Davinci Code", nearly everyone loves a good conspiracy. 

The article is interesting even though totally biased -- "know your enemies". 

The Secular City

 https://thesimplepastor.co.uk/book-review-the-secular-city/

The book was originally published in 1965, and it's predictions have somewhat proven unsound ... even more unsound lately as people flee the city (hopefully they remember they are refugees and not missionaries).

As I've pointed out too many times and the reviewer does as well:

Secularism, on the other hand, is the name for an ideology, a new closed worldview which functions very much like a new religion. (p21)

 To come closer to understanding why this is so critical, "Moral Believing Animals" ought to be required reading. "Everyone has to believe in something, I believe I'll have another beer" may be funny, and is also true ... unless you are an alcoholic, the "another beer" belief is pretty harmless. If you believe that National Socialism is a good idea however, the the belief may be less harmless. 

On page 168, the thing I was wondering about as I moved through the book was confirmed: 

",,,TWO was formed with the assistance of Saul Alinsky", author of "Rules for Radicals" from which I'll give you this quote ...

"One can see children yelling at their parents, "Mommy I've got to go", and desperate mothers surrendering, "All right then, Do it right here". O'Hare would soon become a shambles."

This  wonderful state of affairs would be the result of a "shit in" which Alinsky proudly proclaims as a legitimate idea in the pursuit of "social justice". Alinsky is also "quietly famous" as a major founder of "Community Organizing" and a mentor to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. 

Cox considers the move to the Secular City as inevitable.

Cox outlines three stages in human development, the age of the tribe, the age of the town and the age of the technopolis. We live in the age of the secular city.

In our day the secular metropolis stands as both the pattern of our life together and the symbol of our view of the world. (p1)

The book is quite eschatological (assuming a direction to history toward some "end time")  as are  Christianity and Marxism. Primarily Cox wants to convince us that God wants us to "progress" to a "social gospel" that is very much inline with the "progressive" idea of the utopia proffered in Lennon's "Imagine".

As Lennon, (and Lenin believed), man is good -- to the extent there is "original sin", it is culture, religion, family, and morals that mess up the goodness. Get rid of all that "junk" and return to a state approximating "the noble savage" (albeit with internet and cell phones developed without the evil of corporations and technologists), and we have perpetual nirvana! Heaven on earth! We would all be ultimately "Woke". 

Cox sees the church as the logical avant garde (leading edge) of this inevitable "progress" toward this bright and beautiful future. 

On page 43 he states:

"The thesis of the Secular City is that God is just as present in the secular as in the religious realms of life, and we unduly cramp the divine presence by confining it to some specially delineated spiritual or ecclesiastical realm". 

It is true that God is "present" because he is "omnipresent", however the Holy Spirit is only present in the lives of baptized practicing believers. It is the Holy Spirit that guides Christians that are living in the Kingdom (city) of God as Augustine explained. 

You are going to serve somebody -- it may be the devil or it may be the Lord. Allow the Lord to make that decision for you.

Covid, The Rich Get Richer

 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60015294

As the headline says, the wealth of the ten richest men on the globe doubled in the pandemic .... well, if you use a more reasonable estimate, maybe only 70%.

This is an old story... I wrote on this back in 2017 when the 8 richest had more wealth than the lower 50% of people on the planet and met in Davos every year. to discuss??? 

The cover story has always been that they meet there to discuss climate change, healthcare for all, and better wealth distribution. 

From the headline, one can see that either: 

1. If measured by results, wealth doesn't equal smarts. Things have gone the opposite direction of what these titans of wealth claim to be their objective. 
2. Davos and such things are just cover stories for the elite meeting on ways to amass even more wealth, 

You choose.

Even within the article, it is easy to see the true objectives of organizations like Oxfam: 

That should include more progressive tax regimes, which impose higher levies on capital and wealth, with the revenue spent on "quality universal healthcare and social protection for all" Mr Sriskandarajah said.

Oxfam is also calling for the intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines to be waived to enable wider production and faster distribution.

Earlier this month the president of the World Bank, David Malpass, voiced his concerns over widening global inequality, arguing the impact of inflation and measures to tackle it were likely to cause more damage to poorer countries.

The elite have been pushing for "more progressive" tax regimes and "universal health" forever. 

In the last 30 years we have cut global poverty in half primarily through increased global trade and technical innovation. More of the wealth has been "distributed" (created) by those who DO THINGS ... like invent, increase efficiency, and allocate resources to the most productive uses.

"Universal health care" primarily benefits administrators .... which means more paperwork, less care,  and more wealth for insurance companies, lawyers, and government. 

Why can't you go see some local practitioner like you can a dentist or optometrist. 

Primary medicare and medicaid, along with the constant pressure of insurance companies to raise costs so their "cut" off the top is greater ... 6% of $1K is bigger than 6& of $500. Naturally it is nice of them to send you glossy brochures (that you are paying for) telling how they are fighting to reduce costs (and thus their profits). 

The main effect of "climate science" is to increase the cost of energy, thus hurting the lower income people, and moving more money to guys like Elon Musk who sells expensive cars with batteries that are more destructive to the environment than coal mining, and will wear out in "5 years" or so. 

Why Did They Label Lab Leak Theory A "Dangerous Conspiracy Theory"?

 https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/12/why-did-scientists-suppress-the-lab-leak-theory/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/opinion/media-lab-leak-theory.html

For all of 2020, the idea that Covid could be due to a "lab leak" was "fringe disinformation". As this NY Times article reports: 

The common reaction in elite liberal circles? A Washington Post reporter called it a “fringe theory” that “has been repeatedly disputed by experts.” The Atlantic Council accused Cotton of abetting an “infodemic” by “pushing debunked claim that the novel coronavirus may have been created in a Wuhan lab.” A writer for Vox said it was a “dangerous conspiracy theory” being advanced by conservatives “known to regularly spew nonsense (and bash China).”

But why would our "trusted elites" do such a thing? As the Ridley article points out:

The emails unveiled this week reveal no good scientific reason at all for why these leading virologists changed their minds and became deniers rather than believers in even the remote possibility of a lab leak, all in just a few days in February 2020. No new data, no new arguments. But they do very clearly reveal a blatant political reason for the volte-face. Speculating about a lab leak, said Ron Fouchier, a Dutch researcher, might ‘do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular’. Francis Collins was pithier, worrying about ‘doing great potential harm to science and international harmony’. Contradicting Donald Trump, protecting science’s reputation at all costs and keeping in with those who dole out large grants are pretty strong incentives to change one’s mind.

Naturally it would be certifiable crazy to consider the possibility that the "lab leak" was not an accident, right? 

I know if my IBM taskmasters had me working on a project to enhance computer viruses to make them harder to detect, easier to spread, etc, I would NEVER suspect that they had any ulterior motives. Like maybe they had agreements with a few big anti-virus companies to release anti-virus software that was absolutely required to remove this enhanced virus? Certainly we trust big business,  big pharma, big government to never do such a thing. Right? 

Did we miss National Socialist Germany? The USSR? 9-11? Millions of babies murdered in their mother's womb?  Is it unimaginable in such a world to trade off the deaths of a few million elderly people soon to die anyway for a vast increase in government control and massive profits for the Davos elite? 

We live in an amoral world. Catholic priests abuse boys. Powerful men fly on the "lolita express".  Presidents stain the carpet of the Oval Office with their semen with impunity. What part of "no rules" (for those who control and support "the narrative") is it that you have not taken to heart? 

As Nietzsche said "without God, all is permissible". 

Doctor Robert Malone, Covid

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3SCsueX2bZdbEzRtKOCEyT

The link is to a 3 hour podcast that is worth watching, and may be removed soon to protect us all from "misinformation".

If you want to see the "debunk" -- that basically attacks Malone rather than a lot of his assertions, questions, concerns, etc., here it is.

What I liked most about Malone is that he avoids saying "this is how it is" ... he says more than once that he may be wrong, he says a lot along the lines of "this seems to be what historical experience with AIDs and its various vaccines, as well as our current limited experience with Covid and the vaccines MAY be showing, He points out that a lot of people in the Covid narrative have vested interests -- there is a lot of money to be made by forcing everyone to take a number of "jabs". 

Much like Obamacare, people are forced to "buy/obtain" a product -- and on top of all the mandates there is a ton of free advertising. I find the general Covid message to be "Give fear a chance".  For some segments of the economy (big pharma, big retail (Amazon. WalMart, etc), financial entities that feed off the printing of money, etc) Covid has been a giant moneymaker. 

It has certainly made a generally faceless bureaucrat (Fauci) into a household name -- people have done a lot just to be famous. This would not be the first time. 

What is true? Who do you trust? 

The proper answer is always no one. Humans are inherently flawed, often dishonest, even with themselves -- my position is that the more somebody stands up and says "I'm the expert, trust me!" ... the less I do, especially if their story changes regularly. 

Think about eggs/cholesterol -- they were BAD, and the "Food Pyramid" put carbs as the base -- the good.  It was "expert truth" for 40 years, then it was wrong. 

For "some strange reason", there seems to be an awful lot of sickness going around this year -- the vast majority of it not Covid -- RSV, Flu, pneumonia, and even a concerning set of "weird things. Menstrual cycles becoming irregular or ceasing, a range of heart issues, fatigue, intermittent fevers ... strange stuff. Even some odd and rarely seen cancers. 

Remember, AIDs stands for "Acquired Immune Deficiency".  It killed your immune system and you died of a bunch of weird stuff. Think Kaposi's Sarcoma.

If a significant number of the jabbed start to get sick with a bunch of stuff, do you suppose there will be any resistance from the oligarchy to admit that the jab is causal? 

I've not been 100% since the jab in mid October. RSV ... formerly a disease of babies and elderly. Those with immune system problems. A persistent very bad cough and mucus ... multiple treatments, maybe successful this time ... seems pretty much like somehow I'm allergic, maybe asthmatic, though I never have been before. Seems to be a good number of sick folks filling up hospitals from non-Covid causes. 

Hmmmm 

 

With Covid, But Not Because of Covid

https://coloradosun.com/2022/01/12/colorado-covid-omicron-hospital-patients/ 

The linked gives some hope that the big media, big government, big Democrat, big pharma oligarchy is starting to move to a more reality based narrative. 

From the very start, the vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths were WITH Covid rather than BECAUSE of Covid. The narrative acknowledged that the "vast majority" of those hospitalized with, or dying with Covid did not reach that state because of Covid. They were old and in poor health due to multiple underlying conditions. The narrative required that whenever a younger person that was "apparently" in "perfect health" died with Covid, the word had to get out to maximum effect . 

Given millions of cases there almost had to be some that died OF Covid -- I personally know of a healthy 50ish guy that died of anesthesia. Although most of us hardly think of it when we are put under, it does happen.

I personally don't know anyone that died even WITH Covid, although I accept that there are many. I also don't personally know anyone that was murdered -- though I know there are a lot. I DO unfortunately personally know of 10ish and probably more if I think of it that died in car accidents. 

Even Biden has now declared that there is nothing the federal government can do to stop Covid ... "It's a virus, and we will have to live (and die) WITH it -- though likely not BECAUSE of it very often. "News at 11", those with some level of independent thought knew this from the start. 

It would be great if everyone knew "... during a 2020 campaign debate, Biden proclaimed: “Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America.” At the time Biden proposed this disqualifier from holding the presidency, the U.S. had recorded 220,000 covid deaths, according to the Journal. Since inauguration day, it has recorded 350,000. And counting."

The narrative at that time required that anyone that died WITH Covid died BECAUSE of Covid ... because as Biden said, the critical thing was that Trump lost the election. The vaccine was made available on December 11 2020 .... there are some memos that indicate it would have been "disruptive" to release it as early as mid September 2020. Well. yes, it may have been "disruptive" to Biden being installed as cadaver in chief.  Who cares about the loss of a few tens of thousands of old people if we can get rid of Trump? The "greater good" and all that.

We will never have any clue how many people were hospitalized and died because of Covid, because the narrative and the control of the oligarchy is what counts. A nation that has murdered over 60 million babies in the mother's womb makes National Socialist Germany appear to be a highly moral nation by comparison. 

What are the long term effects of the vaccine? Nobody has a clue. Approving this sort of new technology vaccine typically takes something like a decade. Do you want to trust the oligarchy to report massive negative effects of the vaccination if they are to occur? One thing is certain, if people do have negative effects from the vaccine, the companies creating it are immune from being sued. 

You may not get any immunity from being jabbed and boosted, and you may even have long term side effects. however the vaccine companies have TOTAL immunity! Isn't that cozy?

The article claims that "Omicron is different"! Well, maybe ... the coding of the reasons for admission are different, but the incentives are different as well. In 2020, MN docs got a 6 page memo on "how to report cause of death". One might have thought that docs had been reporting cause of death before 2020? Well, for anyone that has ever worked in a bureaucracy, the memo. written in obscure bureaucratese pretty much said "if there is ANY way you can call it Covid, CALL IT COVID!". 

Lots of Covid death in 2020 was good! Trump! 

January. 6, 2021, A Day That Will Die In Obscurity

 https://www.nationalreview.com/news/remembering-the-lies-and-half-truths-spread-in-the-wake-of-january-6/

I've pointed out the insanity of calling Jan 6, 2021 anything beyond a "Mostly Peaceful Demonstration" -- the only person killed was an unarmed white female veteran, nothing was burned, and nobody got a free TV. A moments comparison of the reaction to Jan 6 and the BLM riots of the summer is instructive.

The immediate recognition of Trump being elected was shown when women  marched on Washington in the 100's of thousands wearing "Pussy Hats", an obvious symbol of their sincerity and good sense.

Such intellectual giants and students of history as Kamala Harris found January 6 2021 to be comparable to Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

Many people ask "why are we so divided?" 

A very easy answer is because current leadership and meda (but I repeat myself) tend to maximize the severity of events that they believe will benefit their cause, while ignoring or completely suppressing items that would tend to give a sense of balance to thinking about events, and maybe even result in there being some level of equity in how those expressing their views on policy, elections, and actions by authorities are treated. 

Currently, something like 70 people involved in the January 6 demonstrations are incarcerated without being charged, and not being allowed bail. 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration pushes for no bail being required at all to release defendants with long criminal records.

If say "20%" as much attention was paid to citizens being incarcerated for long periods with no charges, no legal representation, concern about "threats to democracy" may at least be seen as a problem for "both sides" to be concerned about.

Biden Unifies With "Lets Go Brandon"!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxvnhIF18w0

A good one from AwakenWithJP.

A caller to the NORAD Santa Tracker ended with "Let's go Brandon" and Biden agreed. 

There are two choices here:

1. Biden actually is aware of reality, has a sense of humor, and showed it by being agreeable to the callers closing. 
2. Biden has no sense of reality, and is just mindlessly playing along with whatever his handlers tell him to do .... and if something unexpected shows up, he does the only thing he can do ... mindlessly follow along. 

It would be nice to kinda believe #1, and hope that if #2 is reality,  he doesn't prove Obama right again. 

Yet searing, anonymously sourced quotes from Obama kept appearing through the race. One Democrat who spoke to Obama recalled the former president warning, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” Speaking of his own waning understanding of today’s Democratic electorate, especially in Iowa, Obama told one 2020 candidate: “And you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden.”

Unfortunately, there were no cameras rolling when Obama made the "don't underestimate" statement  ... however it does have the ring of truth and Politico published it. It certainly looks like Obama was right about Joe, as were many American voters -- though to be fair, one can't really blame the dead or manufactured "voters".