I saw the movie on Sunday. It was a real treat to see. The short version, 10/10 Go see it.
Seeing the movie brought to mind the following:
Some of the background was a great touch. Yep, they had Janice Joplin and Timothy Leary at a beach concert and a host of period music in the soundtrack, some of which you will recognize.
The movie was grounded and a blast from the past. Just a few short years after this movie was set was when many people on my mom’s side of the family gave their lives the Christ (1974-1975). I think religious faith was portrayed as a struggle and not an end.
I knew of Chuck Smith and the many music groups that began at his church, but the origin of his youth-oriented church was fun to watch. Talk about the ungrateful death (his congregation) being given life… From what I recall of the 60’s, the counter-culture movement was a bunch of rebels without a clue. After many years of trying stupid stuff (drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll), many finally found what they were looking for, a lively faith to fill the God-shaped vacuum in their soul.
Not everything coming out of the Jesus Revolution was orthodox but some great theologians did come to prominence during this time period. If you can dig up some sermons by David Chilton, on a few recordings, he discusses some of the abuses on the fringes of this movement.
One result of this period is what I call the franchise church: Calvary Chapel, Vineyard, LifePoint, Hillsong, etc.
Another and different version of Christianity coming out of this movement was Jesus People USA. They are still around today. They are a cooperative community—think baptized commune—that specializes in ministering to the poor in urban communities. I don’t know how many locations they are in, but Chicago and Milwaukee were ones that I remember.
Kelsey Grammar was really good as Chuck Smith and Jonathan Roumie did a great job as Lonnie Frisbee. I guess Jonathan plays Jesus in The Chosen; sorry, I’ve never seen the show. There is a line in the movie about him trying really hard to look like Jesus, guess that has more than one meaning.
Final thought, I’d see it again and plan to buy DVD once it goes on sale.
I bought a nice laptop that will end up going to college with my son.
Here are a few of the features of the Alienware m17 R5 AMD:
CPU: AMD Ryzen (TM) 9 6900HX (8-Core /16 Thread, 20MB Cache, up to 4.9 GHz max boost)
RAM: 32 GB (2) 16 GB DIMM, DDR5
Video: AMD Radeon (TM) RX 6850M XT 12 GB GDDR6
Hard Drive: 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
The specifications are good except for the Hard Drive which is puny by today’s standards. I decided to upgrade it. The laptop motherboard supports the 4th generation NVMe type hard drives. These little guys are smaller than a stick of Wrigley’s chewing gum, measuring about three inches long by one inch wide and about as thick as a nickel.
NVME Hard Drive
They are 48 times as fast as a standard mechanical hard drive. What’s the old saying about dynamite and small packages?
Anyway, what I discovered is that the laptop will support two hard drives; however, the documentation says that drive one can be up to 4 TB while the second drive can only be 2 TB. As a result, I opted to get a 4 TB drive by Western Digital. I bought it on Amazon before I got too mad at them for not refunding the money I had spent on my electric razor—which by the way has still not been refunded yet.
WD_BLACK 4TB SN850X NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive – Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280, Up to 7,300 MB/s – WDS400T2X0E
M.2 is the slot size on the motherboard and 2280 is the size of the hard drive circuit board.
These drives cost over $1,200 from Dell but are $399.99 from Amazon and Newegg and similar places.
What I am slowly learning is buy lower specifications from Dell and then upgrade them to your heart’s delight. At least with their Alienware computers, upgrading them yourself does not void the manufacturer warrant.
One purpose of this blog is to document a few things missing in many of the instructions-written or on video—that are necessary to do this upgrade.
One reason to get the Western Digital drive is for the software. Which I will start to explain now.
Before upgrading the drive, it needs to be cloned otherwise you will need to do a full install of Windows and all other software. Alienware software is a royal pain to install.
Western Digital provides a free copy of Acronis software, the caveat of course is that it can detect at least one Western Digital drive in the computer. As a result, you need an enclosure to house your M.2 drive so it can be cloned. The one I bought connects via USB-C. There just so happens to be a USB-C port on the back of the Alienware PC. Once attached, you must partition or initialize the drive and/or format it.
Then install the Acronis software and clone the drive. In my case, this took about 8 minutes to clone the 1 TB drive. (Please note that my drive was not full so your mileage may vary.) Then shut off the computer.
One of the unique things about this laptop is that it never truly shuts off. Furthermore, the battery is not removable.
In the old days, you typically just opened a small cover on the bottom of a laptop to upgrade RAM or hard drives. These designs often had a quick release to remove the battery. Neither is the case with the Alienware laptop. No, you have to remove the entire bottom of the laptop.
Please note when doing this that many of the screws remain attached to the bottom cover and are not fully removed from the cover.
Second, the cover will not willingly come off once screws are removed.
When working on the laptop, I had the vented area at the bottom and the area near the touch pad at the top. There are eight screws that must be loosened. Four across the top, two in the middle, and two on the bottom. Circled in red in my photos.
Screws 1, 4, 5, and 6 will loosen but not be removed from the cover while screws 2, 3, 7, and 8 will come completely out.
At this point the cover will still not come loose. This next step is not shown on videos or in written instructions. You need a small flat head or standard jeweler sized screw driver. You must gently separate the cover from the rest of the laptop.
Be gentle or you will scratch the plastic cover. Start on the sides near the openings for USB or HDMI cables. Once these begin to separate work in both directions until cover is loose. Again, be gentle. You only need the halves to separate slightly. Once you have worked all the way around the outside edges of the cover, pull and it should come apart.
Once cover is off, gentle disconnect the battery from the motherboard. This connector (labelled MB) is circled in green. It slides toward battery to remove. Failure to do this step may result in destroying the hard drive or other components in the computer.
Oh, another undocumented thing is that both M.2 slots come with their own heatsink. So don’t fret about buying one either with the drive (only available for 2 TB model) or from a third party vendor.
The drive slot on the right is the C Drive. Again, the new drive can be up to 4 TB.
Remove the cloned drive from the enclosure and replace the factory drive with your new one.
Due to the heatsink, you must remove two screws instead of the customary one on the NVMe M.2 drive. Seat the drive and replace the screws.
Reconnect the battery and then close the cover.
When booting the new drive, I was taken to the BIOS program and asked to set the time before it would boot. After that it should behave normally.
Lastly, Western Digital also has another program (Western Digital Dashboard) that you can install to help with the drive once it is running. I recommend installing that.
I guess it’s natural that once you get to the top of the heap that you lose your edge. Amazon has really lost their edge in the last year or so. They have more warehouses in more locations but their service is becoming subpar. Often utilizing their competitors, I can match or beat their price, and sometimes their deliver schedule.
Even when they have a good price on something, their delivery is terrible or nonexistent. Here’s some recent examples.
I don’t appreciate buying a $700 lens for my camera and having it sent to me in a plastic bag. Yeah, no packing material or box, just a plastic bag with a note printed on it that they are saving the environment. Sorry guys, first, I don’t give a crap about the environment and second, if I spend that kind of money, I think I deserve the respect of having something I worked hard to purchase packaged well enough to have a reasonable expectation to arrive safely.
I bought an electric razor on Amazon on February 20th. It scanned out of a warehouse in Maryland and then disappeared. OK, first why does it ship from Maryland? Does nobody this side of the Rockies shave? Second, how did they lose it? Third, where’s my refund? My wife is not a fan of facial hair and Amazon is causing me disruptions in my marital bliss with there incompetence.
Some prices of stuff that I buy regularly for my family have literally doubled in the last six months. Sometimes its cheaper in the grocery store than on Amazon but some things that we purchase aren’t carried by the local grocery stores any more. Covid wiped a lot of items from grocery store shelves that we may never see again. Thus, we are often forced to buy grocery items online.
Amazon’s delivery is also taking much longer that it used to. Many types of items that used to be next day are taking up to two weeks between ordering and delivery and as mentioned earlier, they are selling at much higher prices.
The bottom line is that Amazon is forcing me to shop elsewhere to get the price and service that they used to offer. I have a much longer mental list of things I won’t ever buy from them anymore. Amazon is moving to become my last resort to buy something instead of my “go to” retailer.
However, I have found at least one exception to the above complaints and that is a shop vac that I recently bought at Lowe’s. The shop vac needs vacuum bags when fine dust such as that from drywall is cleaned. The manufacturer has a “marketplace” on Amazon and their Amazon prices are less than buying the exact same item on the manufacturer website. I think thy would rather let Amazon take care of all the paperwork than having their own list of customers. My recollection is that the shipping was significantly less from Amazon for the same item.
In conclusion, a decline in Amazon’s service is an opportunity for other enterprising folks to exploit. I’m just surprised that Amazon is making it easy to let others be competitive.
I know that I haven’t written in a while and this brief blog is proof that I do feel some guilt about that.
My wife and I are getting the house ready to move and also overseeing the building of the new place. Our new house is nearing the completion of sheetrocking and will soon be ready for painting. Hopefully the tile guy will be ready to go soon so we can finally bathe in our place instead of trekking to the local church a few times a week for a real shower.
As one would expect, our utilities at the new place are a fraction of the rates in California. Our heater has been on nonstop since October. It was set to about 60 degrees up until January, when we upped it to 70. Even when the temperature outside was negative, the house stayed really warm—insulation is such a blessing. Anyway, it costs us about $65 for natural gas there while in warmer California, our bills from PG&E are running almost $300 per month—they gotta pay for those fires somehow.
During our visits to the new house, we were living off of one electrical outlet but this last trip saw us get five more outlets. What a blessing not to have extension cords running all over the place and having to unplug everything when using the circular saw. Also, I was able the get the Nest thermostat running along with a Nest “drone unit” in the crawl space. The crawl space (more like a basement) is now somewhat insulated and considered part of the inside envelope of the house. I wanted to see how that area is doing. It’s been a steady 58 degrees for most of the winter.
The upstairs is mostly painted and ready for other work but the downstairs will need a coat of sealer and a finish coat of paint. Then we plan to tackle the ceiling which is slated for tongue and groove pine. If I plan the work then this ought to go well in much of the house—the known tricky spots are upstairs.
The wife and I are selling things we once considered treasures on eBay and will soon have the mother of all garage sales. Anything not sold will probably go to a charity not named Goodwill.
Parting with large pieces of furniture is also on the list of things to do. Not having control of when friends and relations will actually take custody of stuff is somewhat frustrating.
I have much that I wish I would blog about but will get to it as time permits and the Spirit moves me.
A portion of our blog staff will remain in Elk Grove, and I can begin covering North Idaho once we get settled. The contrast will be fun to compare.
We here at Really Right are vindicated once again on the issue of Covid and church attendance.
The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. –John 10: 13
A survey released last week found that a third of Americans have stopped attending religious services in the wake of the COVID pandemic.
The survey, “Faith After the Pandemic: How COVID-19 Changed American Religion,” was released Thursday. Conducted by the American Enterprise Institute in conjunction with the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC), the survey examined findings of the 2022 American Religious Benchmark Survey, which asked 9,425 participants about their religious self-identity and attendance from February to April 2022. The participants were selected for having previously taken part in similar surveys in 2018 and March 2020.
According to the results of the survey, 33% of Americans do not attend religious services at all post-COVID, as opposed to 25% before the pandemic. Also down is the number of Americans that attend either regularly (24%) or monthly (8%), as opposed to a pre-COVID cumulative number of 36% (26% and 10%, respectively), Religion News Service reported.
According to the survey, conservatives, adults 50 and older, married adults, and those with a college degree remained likely to attend a religious service. However, while the percentage of Americans who attend in-person religious services has more than doubled since July 2020 (then 13%), standing at 27% in March 2022, this is still below pre-COVID numbers, the survey notes.
Further, the survey also shows that the percentage of conservatives who never attended religious services post-COVID has gone up, from 14% to 20%. Likewise, women, who the survey contends are more likely to attend religious services, also experienced a decline in attendance, with the percentage of women not attending religious services up from 23% to 31% post-COVID. A similar increase happened in men, the survey notes, with 34% of men not attending religious services as opposed to 28% before COVID.
Among Catholics, the percentage of white Catholics who never attend services has gone up from 11% to 18%. Among Hispanic Catholics, the difference was higher, with 10% not attending as opposed to 20% post-COVID.
So, there you have it, proof that scattering God’s sheep has caused many to be lost—probably for good.
The survey also notes that “[C]hanges in worship help us understand how the pandemic has diminished — perhaps permanently — the role of religious participation in the lives of individual Americans and society as a whole.”
Oh, the church I have been attending has been hemorrhaging of members, money, and good will with many people angry with the clergy but not because of Covid.
Frankly, I think closing during Covid has put many congregations into a death spiral from which most will never recover. I look for a gradual death for my current church. Demographically, it’s all but a certainty. The fear of offending people with the Truth causes the clergy to fail in its mission of equipping the saints to deal biblically with life’s challenges.
My pastor hopes we can just hide-out within our church and all the bad stuff will Passover us. He seems to be perfectly fine with our culture and world going to hell as long as they leave us in peace. I seem to recall something about hiding your light under a bushel basket, but my sense was that it wasn’t a good thing for churches to do. Maybe seminary graduates know something we don’t.
By the time I’ve posted this blog, I will have two weeks until I kiss my state job goodbye. I think on my calendar at work, its marked as Bobby’s Johnny Paycheck Day or some such thing. Oh, Johnny Paycheck is best known for a song he did in the 1970’s called, “Take this job and shove it.” I doubt anybody but me knows or cares about this one last slap at my employer, but it’s intended as sarcasm.
Anyway, I’m making a bunch of decisions with little time to think about them. Thankfully my wife is in on my decisions and deliberations. As long as we agree, things should be OK. Oh, one benefit of retiring in January is that I have only one five-day work week during my last month of employment.
Just for entertainment value, I also got a jury duty summons for my last week. Since it’s a four-day work week, and my group number is just over halfway thru the pack, I doubt I have to show up but who knows? Whatever happens, its my last jury duty in California. I can’t wait to get out of this place.
Our new home, in a much more freedom loving place, is slowly coming together. The inside is warm and cozy but in need of drywall and finishes. Also, the wife seems to agree that we each need our own area to work so Really Right looks to be on track for a full-time office. No, I don’t plan on going full blogger 24/7 but I might finally write a book or two like I’ve been wanting to do.
The reduction in income is balanced against the payoff in completing the house. I’m looking forward to having more of a hand in completing our house. When I do work on projects, I harken back to some sage advice offered in one of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies; “A man’s got to know his limitations”. Sometimes I skip doing work due to a lack of knowledge and sometimes due to a lack of insurance. I’d rather let the guy with liability insurance do some types of work rather than do it myself.
They both got on my naughty list this month for the same thing, redefining marriage. Sorry culturally compromising people but marriage is between a man and woman. God didn’t make Adam and Steve, or Ellen and Eve as Ole Dave Waddell used to opine. When people in a homosexual relationship want to stay together it’s not a marriage. Anyone that calls it that demeans the institution and the Biblical view of God. There can be no such thing as marriage in a homosexual union; in fact, rightly viewed there is no such thing, its just a convenient fiction, an imitation, a demonic copy.
First Trump. And folks this is likely just a bridge too far for me to enthusiastically support the Orange Man in 2024.
Thursday’s “Spirit of Lincoln” gala was in honor of the “Log Cabin Republicans” a pro-homosexual activist group formed 45 years ago. The party, held in the ballroom of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago beachfront country club and residence, was a joyous celebration of gay rights and —by coincidence— the historic “Respect for Marriage Act,” obliging the federal government to recognize same-sex marriage, signed into law by President Joe Biden just days earlier, after 12 GOP senators defected and voted with all the Democrat senators (at the urging of the Seventh-day Adventist Public Affairs and Religious Liberty Department).
The long-planned event in honor of the Log Cabin Republicans’ 45th anniversary brought in Republican notables like former Ambassador Ric Grenell, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, who emceed the evening in a feathered turquoise gown, and former GOP gubernatorial candidate from Arizona Kari Lake, who was swarmed by guests eager to meet her and take a photo.
“We are fighting for the gay community, and we are fighting and fighting hard,” Former President Trump said. “With the help of many of the people here tonight in recent years, our movement has taken incredible strides, the strides you’ve made here is incredible.”
Throughout the evening, speakers praised Trump for his embrace of the gay community. They credited him for his initiatives to combat the criminalization of homosexuality, his work pushing for public heath initiatives to combat the HIV epidemic, and for appointing the first openly homosexual Cabinet member, Ric Grenell, as DNI, Director of National Intelligence.
In fairness, Trump didn’t mention Sleepy Joe’s law attempting to enshrine homosexual marriage into federal law, but it was enough of an issue that Politico called the party “a celebration of the same-sex marriage law”.
Next up is Amy Grant.
Seems Amy has thrown in the towel on the Bible being the highest authority in her life. Instead, she has thrown in with the rainbow people and made love—however pervertedly you wish to define it—as the highest value in life. Rev Franklin Graham has taken her to task over this, but shouldn’t her local pastor be leading the charge on the issue? Well local pastors did so well with Covid, by comparison this issue should be a sinch since its specifically condemned in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, but sadly let’s get back to reality. Here’s the meat of the story.
Upon learning that her niece declared her sexuality, Grant openly said her reaction was: “What a gift to our whole family to just widen the experience of our whole family.” “Honestly, from a faith perspective, I do always say, ‘Jesus, you just narrowed it down to two things: love God and love each other,'” Grant said. “I mean, hey — that’s pretty simple.”
In 2013, Grant did her first interview for PrideSource.com, an LGBT news website, where she shared her views on faith and LGBT issues.
“I know that the religious community has not been very welcoming, but I just want to stress that the journey of faith brings us into community, but it’s really about one relationship. The journey of faith is just being willing and open to have a relationship with God. And everybody is welcome. Everybody,” Grant said.
The wife and Christian singer also told “Proud Radio” host Hunter Kelly last year about why it’s important for her to set a “welcome table.” Grant stated that she was invited to a “table where someone said, ‘Don’t be afraid, you’re loved.’ Gay. Straight. It does not matter.”
“[It] doesn’t matter how we behave. It doesn’t matter how we’re wired,” Grant said, according to Church Leaders. “We’re all our best selves when we believe to our core: ‘I’m loved.’ And then our creativity flourishes. We’re like, ‘I’m gonna arrange flowers on your table and my table.’ When we’re loved, we’re brave enough to say yes to every good impulse that comes to us.”
Boy, Amy sure seems to have lost her way. Sadly, she’s not the only one. Enabling people on the way to hell by cheering them on in their spiritual darkness is a much different proposition from warning them of their peril and telling them to turn from the wrath to come.
I have friends that know Amy personally but until I read about Graham taking her to task, I had no idea she was so immersed in heresy and compromise on this clearly stated Scriptural teaching.
Amy once did a song about “love will find a way” but if that Way is not to the Cross then its in vain.
I’ve worked at the agency that is the posterchild of government waste, fraud, and fiduciary abuse for almost two years now. This agency is not only irredeemably broken but it’s so far down the sewer (or rabbit hole) depending on which metaphor you wish to employ that it seems beyond reform.
Here is a partial list of systemic problems that no one seems interesting in fixing.
First and foremost, old claims never die, they simply loose their appeal. What I mean by this is that both the claimant—person that filed the claim—or any random staff person at EDD can revive a claim, no matter how old. Like your stereotypical B Movie, there is really no such thing as a dead claim. There is always room for a sequel. I have seen claims as old as ten years be brought back to life again either at the request of staff or the claimant. Claims that died due to lack of authentic documents or California wages years ago are routinely appealed and benefits rewarded. Often these claims were filed with forged documents and when denied, the fraudster simply submits more and different fraudulent documents to someone different and if persistent enough, they often are rewarded not for honesty but for perseverance.
The bureaucratic vehicle for successful fraud is often via the ALJ-Administrative Law Judge. If a claim is denied for whatever reason, it can be appealed to the Administrative Law Judge where a person can try again to become eligible for benefits. The ALJ will accept new documents not previously submitted to the agency. This in theory is OK because some folks need a second chance to get a claim properly submitted. Think of people in public school that can only eek-out a C minus if the class is graded on a curve. These folks can’t abide by the normal rules and need extra babying or babysitting to get to the correct result. This is likely why they are unemployed in the first place. Following certain societal rules is necessary for getting and maintaining a job and some folks just can’t cut it without extra help.
The problem with that ALJ system is that they never check any documents. They do not verify Social Security Numbers. They do not verify Drivers License Numbers. They do not verify U.S. Passports. They do not verify any documents submitted to them at all. Oh, and everything submitted to them is photocopies or scanned. Furthermore, they do not verify if applicant ever lived or worked in California.
Worse yet, if EDD staff flags something as fraudulent, the ALJ will often ignore their findings.
Doubly worse is that any documents submitted at an ALJ hearing are purposely kept from EDD staff in the Identity Unit. Thus, the people charged with verifying the authenticity of documents have zero input to evaluate the authenticity of new documents presented at an ALJ hearing.
In cases where the fraudulent claim uses the same documents found in the initial application process, ALJ judges have often excoriated EDD staff for not accepting the forged documents as part of their decision to approve claims for people that don’t deserve them. The ALJ judge is often busy grading the quality of art work done on Photoshop and not interested in looking too hard for the veracity of the documents.
The Identity Unit is not formally trained on what to look for when it come to fraud. There are no master or example documents that we know are correct to use to compare with stuff submitted by claimants. The only advice some are given is look up such and such a document on the Internet and compare that to what you were sent. FYI most of what you see on the Internet are forgeries, so this advice is worse that worthless.
For example, try looking up a U.S. Passport on the Internet under images. Most of what you see in this search are fakes, some better than others. If I want to evaluate a passport, I need to get mine out of my fireproof lockbox and compare it to the scanned copy that I’m looking at as part of someone’s application for benefits. Ditto for a California Driver License—except that there are multiple versions, some of which I’ve never seen before.
Different staff are given limited tools to verify certain documents, but these tools are not all equal. Counting me, there are three in my working group and each of us has a different software package for checking the same identity documents. Each software varies in the detail that can be researched.
This is the next issue with EDD and that is that a myriad of different software is used by the department. None of these programs can talk with each other and all serve different functions. As with all California’s government agencies, the backbone of the department’s automation is still the Unix systems that were brought online in the 1980’s. I would guess that about two dozen different programs are used daily by various parts of the agency.
California claims to be the technology capital of the world but has the worst and most archaic computers around. There is talk of wanting to modernize, whatever that may be, but whatever they decide to do, you know it will be fraught with waste, fraud, abuse, and delays. Also, it will cost several times whatever the winning bid will be. Think, costs of hi speed rail over time.
So, if you’re handy with Photoshop, have lots of free time, and don’t mind shopping on the “dark web” for identity information, you too can join the California gold rush. California’s EDD, where you get money for nothin’ and your checks for free. Multiple entries do increase your chances of winning.
Folks, I’m glad I’m leaving there in seven weeks.
PS I think the ALJ (and the Department) are inclined to ignore identity documents in part because Newsom and the boys at the “bill mill” don’t want to be accused of excluding illegal immigrants from cashing in. Today’s recipients are tomorrow’s Democrat voters.
Folks now are accusing Trump of being an Army of One and he is and will continue to be, but let’s suppose that Donald Trump is elected in 2024. What does that Presidency look like?
To win in 2024, Trump will have to cripple or destroy the entire Republican “farm team”. In essence, Trump will destroy all Republican presidential contenders for the next 12 or 16 years to achieve his victory.
Supposing Trump can overcome challenges from his own Party and the Swamp—the Democrats and duplicitous Republicans in the House and Senate—and manages to get in the Oval Office, it’s likely all for naught because from day one he is a lame-duck President. Nobody will care what he wants to accomplish. Washington will be about posturing, backstabbing, and business as usual. Can you imagine Trump finding after clawing his way to the top that he is irrelevant! I think his head will explode.
Ironically, Trump’s biggest obstacle in victory is not Democrats or Republicans, it’s the Constitution.
The 22nd Amendment states: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice …”
If Trump had busted his butt and got those House and Senate candidates elected that stuck their necks out and enthusiastically supported him, I might be singing a different tune but as others on the blog have pointed out, he sat on his thumbs and checkbook doing nothing. If you recall, Trump backed primary opponents of at least six House Republicans that voted to Impeach him. As far as I know, all six challengers won their primaries and zero of them got money or support from Trump in the general election and all lost, WTF Donald.
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy both worked to undercut conservative MAGA candidates to insure they would lose, often just for voicing support for Trump. Oh, both Republican “leaders” were funded in part by FTX Crypto currency.
Sam Bankman-Fried FTX Crypto funded anti-MAGA Republicans
Donald Trump failed us that have stuck with him thru thick and thin because the rich guy that was President didn’t have a good business plan. Part of any good business venture is hiring and keeping good and talented people. Another aspect is succession. Trump failed in both these areas.
In too many instances, Trump hired weak people that he could bully. Those that he could bully, he did not respect and thus would not listen to them. Many others were opportunists that never believed in his vision of America. In many cases, the career politicians that took posts with Trump were bottom feeder, Mitt Romney types, that were there to thwart him.
Trump also never had a plan of building on MAGA – which by the way was a slogan stolen from Ronald Reagan.
Reagan 1980 election poster
Had he spent the last several years promoting likeminded candidates as I had hoped, the Republican Party would have been remade and would own all levers of power in the country. Now however, the Swamp Creatures in both Parties know that Trump is toast no matter what he does. They may not follow the Constitution with how they govern but both Democrats and Republicans know that the 22nd Amendment makes Trump irrelevant and for that they rejoice. They only differ on whether to “move on” or totally destroy him.
Trump should have followed Ronald Reagan and brought people into his administration that knew Madison Avenue and technology. Getting his Twitter account cancelled was a huge blow in his efforts to communicate. I will not debate mean Tweets too much except to say that Trump put all his communication eggs in that basket. To stick to the business analogy, he should have diversified in this area, so Twitter didn’t have him by the short hairs.
Trump also should have groomed a successor and promoted the hell out of them. If not Mike Pence, then someone else like maybe Kari Lake. Oh wait, he never wrote her a check, did he?
The Donald F***ed up this election cycle and will pay a steep price for his hubris; as will we all.
Oh, thanks to Trump’s failure, Democrats are going for the demographic kill shot on the Republican Party. Yep, Democrats don’t want any more squeaky elections so they are prepping for the nuclear option in the lame duck session of Congress in December. They want to baptize many or all the illegal aliens in the United States in hopes of inducting millions into the Democrat fold of government dependence. This will give them an insurmountable majority and make the United States a one-Party nation forever. Think turning the United States into California for the next 200 years.
Sadly, there are enough shortsighted Republicans in office that they may accomplish this in a few short weeks. I once stated on this blog that due to changing demographics there is a real chance that Donald Trump will be the last Republican President this country will ever have, and right on que this is about to happen right before your eyes.
As has been my habit, this week I went to the twice monthly Theology on Tap. It’s a Thursday night men’s gathering at a local watering hole that is sponsored by my church and usually attended by our pastor. The Pastor decided to read a passage in Psalms about trusting in God as opposed to men. I’m not sure of the reference—not that it matters—but it was something like one of these verses.
Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. Psalm 146:3
Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. Psalm 20:7
He used the verse as a springboard to bring up government and politics. As you might expect, things went really sideways from there. Folks, it was the most horrific display of biblical illiteracy that I’ve seen in many years.
Those in attendance maintained that government was an invention of men and God could care less about it or what it does. It was just another societal institution composed of corrupt men. Which by the way is ok, as long as they leave us Christians alone and don’t force us to do stuff we disagree with; not that anyone could cite an example of what that might be. (Apparently closing churches, telling us whether we could sing songs during a worship service, or when and how to have Holy Communion is not crossing that line.) Furthermore, they asserted that the Bible is mute on how we should be governed by the State.
Folks these were not a bunch of pagans in the local biker bar trying to tell me why religion is dumb, these guys are the leaders of the church and regularly attend weekly services, and most have done so for years on end.
Wow. Truthfully, I got so angry that I left before it was over.
I thought every Sunday School kid knew that God created government. Its right there in Genesis 9, if you know what you’re reading. The proposition that man created government is usually credited to Thomas Hobbs or Jean-Jacques Rousseau. That this idea was allowed to stand for the hour and a half of discussion that I endured is shameful.
Most were in agreement that the Bible has nothing to say about “How should we then live?” (title of 1976 book by Frances Schaeffer). To say this group was antinomian and hostile to what the Bible has to say is no exaggeration. Any believers that would look to the Bible—particularly the Old Testament for guidance as to what God expected of government—were denounced as advocates of tyranny, inquisition, theocracy, and Roman Catholicism. Aren’t those the accusations normally leveled against Christians by liberals, pagans, and humanists?
I couldn’t get anyone to agree to the proposition that God is sovereign, ruling the nations now, and that all authority is under Christ. I said that God has appointed all authorities and will judge them and hold them to account. Not one agreement from anyone in the room.
I also stated that we don’t live in normal times. We are under God’s judgement. One person asked if that was the nation as a whole or Christians in particular? I said both.
Oh, the other zinger that was loudly and repeated stated, the United States was not founded as a Christian nation. I guess the first 200 years or so of our history were irrelevant, at least to this know-it-all public school graduate.
Finally, they got around to bashing Donald Trump—who last I checked didn’t claim to be a roll model of virtue or Christian excellence. Trump was bad because he called people names and had been married more than once. Zero complaints about the Party of the KKK, Jim Crow, Trail of Tears, abortion, homosexuality, slavery, etc.
Other than to invoke a Lutheran prayer that the government leave us alone—“That we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity” —and a reading of Romans 13, there was crickets from the pastor.
(I would expect this discussion from a female Methodist priestess and her congregants but a supposedly conservative clergyman and his leadership team, yikes!)
The only thing others said that I agreed with last night was if you don’t like it then move to another state. Thankfully I’m doing just that in a few months, God willing.
Folks, please understand that these guys see themselves as Godfearing Christians, good fathers, and Conservatives. If you want to know why your state is moving liberal and you have California Conservatives in your midst, maybe you can see a pattern here. They would rather be ruled by godless humanists, atheists, and pagans than by anyone using the Bible as their standard of Law and Ethics.
I got to see a microcosm of what’s wrong with the Church in America, or some of it anyway. It was heartbreaking. I’m not sure that I have much interest in going anymore.
