Since being locked out of the House by Nancy Pelosi, President Trump has searched far and wide for a new venue for this critical speech. Trump spokesman, Sarah Sanders said this is the first time that Trump has been locked out of the House since Melina learned about Stormy Daniels.
Melina Trump
Using his Twitter account, Trump described Nancy Pelosi as a classic three bagger and deeply regrets ever inviting her into the White House. He says this was a moment of weakness on his part.
In response to a reporter question on Twitter, Trump said the Democrats really had to hit below the belt to dredge-up a Speaker that would make him miss John Bonheur.
Donald Trump–the first Twitter President
At the behest of Republican political consultants and select CNN viewers, Trump has chosen a Taos, New Mexico, On The Border Restaurant, as the new site of this important annual address to the American people.
On The Border–Fresh Mex served daily
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-N.Y) is angry that she can’t attend the speech to protest president Trump’s policies. Apparently, due to the government shutdown, she can’t get her passport renewed in time to enter New Mexico.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez–the future of the Democrat Party
MSNBC is threatening not to carry the speech because Trump has arranged private funding to fly to New Mexico. In this case, the issue is not the funding itself but the fact that principle sponsors are Rent-A-Fence and Tostitos.
Appreciating a miracle—large or small—is something that we frequently don’t do. Truthfully, we take many for granted or try to explain them away. Likewise, a professional makes their craft look easy and effortless. Sometimes the line between miracle and marvelous is blurry. In our world of Photoshop, CGI, and visual manipulation, we have become skeptical of what is real. The old advertisement of “Is it live or is it Memorex?” in some ways rings even more true today.
The miracle of restoration. wait until you see the before sample of this segment.
A proper merging of new and old is the wonderful work done by Peter Jackson in restoring over 90 hours of film footage from World War I. Jackson did this for a museum in England and then took selected footage and made a wonderful documentary about soldiers of “The Great War”.
The film has an introduction by Jackson which I missed because I was standing in the popcorn line. When I made it into the theater, England was entering the war and men—actually young boys trying to be men—were going to their local recruiting stations and signing up in droves. The film tells the story of average soldiers from enlistment to the trenches of France to home again and what they experienced. Jackson’s grandfather was one such soldier.
The feature at the end of the film is Jackson explaining the restoration process and the amount of effort that went into the many years needed to restore the raw film. He also discusses choosing the various shots and audio used to create the film which you just viewed. The film’s narration is all done by voiceovers from veterans of the war—mostly recorded later in their lives by the BBC.
The restoration of the film is great in black and white but after a short time, the film morphs into full color.
Sample of colorization in the film
Following the documentary itself, Jackson shows before, during, and after samples; some of which didn’t make it into the film but which are remarkable on their own. He explains that the original film was shot with hand-cranked movie cameras with no sound. He employed not only lip readers to figure out what was being said, but then using the uniforms of the men speaking, hired voice actors from the districts where the men lived to sync the dialogue. What little music is used in the film is authentic to the period.
Peter Jackson at work in film production
After seeing the film and hearing Jackson describe what happened behind the screens makes you want to watch it again.
While you don’t have to see the 3-D version of the film to appreciate it, seeing it in that format lets you enjoy a lifelike quality of the people but see the limitations of the slow framerate of the original film. Jackson modernized the source material but also showed great respect in doing so.
I highly recommend that you see this film. You will get a glimpse of life 100 years ago and get a feel for the futility of trench warfare and magnitude of “The Great War”. Please be warned that there are some graphic scenes (in full color) of wounded, dead, and dismembered men. Knowing that you aren’t seeing special effects can be disturbing to some viewers.
My dream for Martin Luther King Day is simple; namely, that people that follow Dr. King would believe him.
Nobody praises him as a Christian and man of the
Word.
Nobody that claims his legacy talks about the
fact that he was staunch Republican.
Nobody that claims his legacy believes in his Dream.
Yeh, I just said that, “nobody that claims his legacy believes in his dream.”
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Almost all black folks vote for Democrats; a political party that only cares about their skin color and views them as a block of voters, just another interest group among many. These same Democrats created the KKK, Jim Crow, segregated schools, and everything they claim oppressed them in the past, yet despite all that, they cling to the Democrats like a baby to its mother. The black community seems to be suffering mass hypnosis, Stockholm Syndrome, or something even more diabolical.
If insanity is really defined as “doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting a different result”, then these folks are insane.
They faithfully vote Democrat every two years, get nothing for it, and then do
it again.
I would argue that Dr. King was telling his people to wake-up. Nobody is going to help you but yourselves. He also advised the protesters to work with others willing to work with them. He says it will be work but is worth the struggle.
I say to you today, my friends, though, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
King take the promise of John the Baptist and converts it into a metaphor of brotherhood and transformation.
I have a dream today … I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain; shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
In my opinion, King’s dream was highjacked decades ago and replaced with a stay on the plantation mentality (Mason Weaver’s words not mine).
The black community now looks to the government for justice not God. When government is your God, it only leads to slavery and oppression not freedom. Like Esau, they have forfeited their birthright–which Dr. King tried to remind them of–for a bowl of soup.
Its not too late to believe in King’s dream but clearly it requires, work, sacrifice and vigilance; things they will never get from Jackson, Sharpton, and Farrakhan.
Folks the Democrats have been talking about this since November of 2016 and the Atlantic publishes this headline today, January 18, 2019! How many new House members campaigned on this issue? Like most of them!
During the election, Nancy Pelosi had no mandate or issue to unite her Party except their visceral hatred of Donald Trump and their promise to get rid of him. Nancy has an impossible job of keeping her folks in line; especially given that many Democrats promised during the campaign to get rid of her. Yeah she’s Speaker now but who on her side of the aisle will be her Brutus and plunge the political knife in her back with a smile on their face?
The article says that Democrats might not wait for the Mueller Report to Impeach Trump. No surprise. They started saying two weeks ago that Mueller doesn’t have a “smoking gun” and the report will end with a whimper and not a bang. In fact his report may never be made public. If Mueller had the goods on Trump we would have had the Mother of all October Surprises but all we got was crickets.
The comments mark a noticeable shift in what had been the standard party line on the possibility of impeachment—that Democrats should wait to act until after Mueller issues his final report. But Attorney General nominee Bill Barr’s refusal to commit to providing Mueller’s findings to Congress and to the public, combined with BuzzFeed’s implication that the president committed a felony while in office, has given Democrats a new sense of urgency—and they won’t necessarily wait to hold Trump accountable…
“Hell hath no fury like a women scorned” but Michael Cohen seems to be coming really close. Every time he opens his mouth he undercuts his own credibility in an effort to say stuff trying to implicate Trump. The bottom line is Trump trusted him and Cohen was not deserving of that trust. Trump believes in delegation to subordinates and Cohen enriched himself off of Trump like a parasite.
Cohen solved things but he made no effort to stay within the lines. The truth is that someone as slimy as Cohen probably fits in well in New York City but that doesn’t play well in the rest of the country. During the campaign, Cohen experienced something new, scrutiny. He couldn’t operate in the dark as Trump’s lawyer. A high profile national campaign was shining the light on his deeds and once exposed, it was clear he had taken advantage of Trump to enrich himself.
Case in point, this article yesterday in the Firewalled Street Journal. (Subscription required to view this article)
In early 2015, a man who runs a small technology company showed up at Trump Tower to collect $50,000 for having helped Michael Cohen, then Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, try to rig online polls in his boss’s favor before the presidential campaign. In his Trump Organization office, Mr., Cohen surprised the man, John Gauger, by giving him both a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in Cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter, Mr. Gauger said.
John Gauger RedFinch IT
Mr. Gauger said he never got the rest of what he claimed he was owed. But Mr. Cohen in early 2017 still asked for—and received—a $50,000 reimbursement from Mr. Trump and his company for the work by RedFinch, according to a government document and a personal matter. The reimbursement—made on the sole basis of a handwritten note from Mr. Cohen and paid largely out of Mr. Trump’s personal account—demonstrates the level of trust the lawyer once held within the Trump Organization, whose officials arranged the repayment.
…Mr. Cohen said in a tweet that he attempted to have the polls rigged with Mr. Trump’s knowledge.
Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said of Mr. Cohen’s tweet: “My response will be a cleaned-up version of ‘Bullshit.’”
“Why anyone would believe Michael Cohen at this point is an amazement to me,” Mr. Giuliani said in an interview. “This is not true. The president did not know about this if it happened.” He added: “The real takeaway from your story is, didn’t he steal $37,000?”
In January 2014, Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Gauger to help Mr. Trump score well in a CNBC online poll to identify the country’s top business leaders by writing a computer script to repeatedly vote for him. Mr. Gauger was unable to get Trump into the top 100 candidates. In February 2015, Mr. Trump prepared to enter the presidential race, Mr. Cohen asked him to do the same thing for a Drudge Report poll of potential Republican candidates, Mr. Gauger said. Mr. Trump ranked fifth, with 24,000 votes, or 5% of the total.
To quote the beloved Aaron Park, this was an “epic failure.” Frankly, The Justice Brothers would have done a much better job than Cohen/Gauger plus Trump would have received an endorsed on their blog. This also would have prevented the horrible optic of Aaron and George on the front row of Jeb Bush’s 2015 appearance in Reno.
George and Aaron Park with Jeb Bush on 05-13-2015
As you can see, Cohen is a self-admitted thief and ethically challenged. Why Democrats would start putting all their faith in him shows how desperate that they are. I believe that they will likely impeach Trump just for being alive, the truth notwithstanding. If they unleash this circus, it will be the death of them in 2020.
So when I see a headline about Trump Impeachment, I think so what? Republicans had Clinton dead-to-rights and he skated just like he always has. How will this be any different?
Democrats are blowing a golden opportunity by not working with Trump right now. Within reason, they could ask for whatever they want in exchange for letting Trump have the wall and probably get it. If I was them, I would ask for something Trump promised on the campaign—like maybe infrastructure improvement, which would create many union blue-collar jobs—claim it as their issue, and declare victory. The low information voters would swallow the lie as they always do, and Washington could go back to business as usual. But no, it seems more important to takeout Trump than to get anything fixed.
A decade or so ago, it was fashionable to ask, “What would Jesus do?” Many people would walk around with little bracelets with the initials WWJD on their wrist. Today I would like to point out that the Bible talks about walls too. In fact Jesus himself addressed the issue directly:
“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them. Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. John 10:1-11 (emphasis added)
This ladies and gents is Trump’s argument for the wall, enter thru the gate and be welcome, hop the fence and you are lawbreakers come to kill American citizens, steal from American taxpayers, and destroy the American way of life.
Please note that the Pharisees (for our purposes substitute Liberals or Democrats) don’t understand what they were being told.
Case in point, I mentioned the stunt the other day when people hopped the wall at Nancy Pelosi’s house and claimed to seek refuge as they were from Guatemala. I said that I thought it was funny and a clever way to illustrate the hypocrisy that a wall is OK from rich Democrats like her but giving the same protection to the American people is immoral?
My coworker, thought it was wrong for anyone to hop the fence around her house but he saw no connection to the border wall dispute. I explained it to him and he still didn’t understand. Ironically, he said they should enter by the gate if they want in. No wonder Jesus said things like, “for those that have ears let them hear.”
Jesus “I am the gate”
The Bible also has much to say about respecting boundaries and property lines and specifically calls it a sin to tamper with such. Also the Bible is very committed to the principle that the foreigner is expected to follow the religious and civil laws of Israel when they are within its borders including honoring the labor and Sabbath laws. In fact this like treatment of citizen and sojourner is part of the Western (Christian) basis for equal protection under the law, not that anyone in a government school would ever acknowledge this fact.
So if Trump is on Jesus’ side, where does that leave Pelosi, Schumer, et al? Why with the liars, murders, and thieves. If you have any doubt just look at their views on abortion. No wonder the Democrats are screaming like demons; they work with them.
If you thought the only EU news today was that the United Kingdom failed to move forward on their Brexit plan, keep reading. Here’s another reason to get away from the political quagmire overseen by Germany and France known as the European Union.
An EU judge today ruled that McDonald’s can no long call one of their hamburgers a “Big Mac”. Yep, the largest food chain on the planet which has legally owned the trademark in the EU since 1996 lost the case to an Irish fast food place called Supermac.
Big Mac under attack from rogue judges in EU
The lawsuit was a result of building tensions between McDonald’s and Supermac’s, after McDonald’s attempted to stop Supermac’s from expanding their chain throughout the EU. McDonald’s argued that the name Supermac’s would confuse customer’s with McDonald’s iconic Big Mac burger. Supermac’s referred to McDonald’s legal tactics as “trademark bullying; registering brand names which are simply stored away in a war chest to use against future competitors.” The judgment in favor of Supermac’s, which was handed down by the European Union Intellectual Property Office, ruled that McDonald’s was not putting the Big Mac trademark to “genuine use.” To make genuine use of a trademark, a company must utilize it to “guarantee the identity of the origin goods.” Evidently, the EUIPO didn’t feel that naming a burger the Big Mac was sufficient evidence that McDonald’s was making genuine use of their trademark. In an interesting twist, the legal decision also reportedly gives Supermac’s the right to use the Big Mac trademark on any of their own food items.
Supermacs wins exclusive right to call hamburgers “Big Mac”
On my old version of my blog, I used to have the following quotation from Martin Luther:
If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking,I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.
If you want to know why the Church in America is so weak and ineffective, just look at the aftermath of the incident that I blogged about a few days ago.
First To Recap
A rural pastor in California put the following on the sign in front of his church:
Bruce Jenner is still a man Homosexuality is still a sin The culture may change but the Bible does not
Some local people that were not church members or as best as I can tell, not self-identified Christians, protested.
The pastor responded:
The church has lost its saltiness and I fully expect to get as much or more flack from the visible church as I am getting from the world.
If a conservative mountain farming community is no longer a safe place to call sin, sin, then is anywhere in this country still safe for real Christians?
Follow-up
Little did the pastor know that he had preached him last sermon. You see, his congregation abandoned him and cut him loose for “calling a sin, sin.”
Pastor Justin Hoke posted the following on Facebook on Saturday.
As of today, I am no longer the pastor of Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church. After much prayer and counsel, I have decided that it is best to briefly communicate what has taken place. I was informed by our other elder that he felt he could no longer follow my lead as Pastor of TBPC. I was informed that essentially all but one couple in membership would leave the church if I continued as pastor of TBPC. Our other elder and the couple felt that those who left would likely return if I would leave. Our other elder was agreeable to stay and assume the pastoral responsibilities. Therefore it was determined that it would be in the best interest of the local body for us (TBPC and the Hoke family) to part ways. Update 1/14/19 I would like to add this, I did not want to leave, I did not quit, and I was willing to stay.
Justin Hoke Facebook post
Bottom line was the pastor was faithful, but the flock was not. The clergy would not support him, and the congregation abandoned him.
Please note that he was their pastor for seven years and they kicked him to the curb for being right. Let me emphasize that again:
not for cheating on his wife
not for messing with the altar boys
not for skimming money from the collection
not for buying his wife a Lamborghini
but for BEING RIGHT
He called people to repentance and as a result got the boot. This brings me back to the quote from Luther who said in essence, if you are right about everything except where the devil is attacking at that moment and flinch on that point your faith is worthless.
Sadly, pastor Hoke’s congregation is the rule and not the exception in much of the modern western church. So next time you want to vent about the stupid pagans and what they are doing, remember that they are acting according to their nature—dead in their trespasses and sin—while we that are claiming to be alive in Christ are often the ones to blame.
Sadly, too many Christians read II Chronicles 7:14 like this:
“If those other people, would call on my name, humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
Unfortunately for them, this verse in not directed at the pagans in our world and commanding them to repent; instead, it is directed at the Church to repent, humble themselves and pray. Those claiming to be believers have failed in their mission. We need to repent and turn to God and that will heal our nation.
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
Thanks to, Joe Miller, for making me aware of the update on this tragic situation.
We all know that the Trump tax-cut made changes to the Standard Deduction and Payroll Tax Withholding Tables but wait ‘til you sit down and try doing your taxes this year. When you do, forget everything that you thought you knew about filling out the tax forms. The forms that you knew and loved don’t exist!
Form 1040 EZ
Deleted
Form 1040A
Deleted
Form 1040
Nuked
Instead, now there is one form to rule them all and one form to find them, there is only the 1040…and a bucket load of worksheets to bind them.
For Tax Year 2018, you will no longer use Form 1040A or Form 1040EZ, but instead will use the redesigned Form 1040. Many people will only need to file Form 1040 and no schedules.
While its not the mythical postcard form that we were promised decades ago, the form has taxpayer information on the first page and all the math on the second. For the most part, the actual calculations are on the six new worksheets. Page 2 of the 1040 is just filling in totals or leaving nonapplicable boxes blank. The tax tables don’t even go above earnings of $100K. If you and the spouse, make over $100K then you take the earning amount and multiple it by a decimal number and that’s your tax! Easy Peasy.
While my wife and I will probably use the Standard Deduction
and thus not need to itemize for a Federal filing, the question is what in the
heck will California do? We know they don’t like Trump or how the tax cut was
crafted but will I miss deductions on the California return if I do the quick
and dirty math on the federal form and send it in? Usually states try to mirror
what the national government does but, in this instance, I have no confidence that
this is the case.
Presently I have no clue; partially because TurboTax doesn’t work yet. I bought the software on December 31st and got hard stops in the program when I put in my estimates for 2018 taxes. Schedule A –the form where you itemize everything–was broken. Intuit is promising to have the software up and going in mid-January (about now) but I suspect they will be pushing out updates for many more weeks.
W-2s are required to be mailed by the end of January. The government shutdown may affect your ability to get a refund but somehow, I think if you send Uncle Sam a check, he will be happy to cash it anyway.
Based on what I can discern thus far, it appears that our days of getting a big refund are at an end. By lowering the withholding amount from each paycheck and giving me more monthly take home pay, it looks like I may actually stand a chance of writing a check to the government for the first time. If you usually bank on a big refund, I’m warning you that it may not happen. Both my wife and I claim married with zero dependents, this is the largest amount withheld on the tax tables. If we’re sweating about not getting a refund, some on you are probably in big
trouble. Don’t wait until the last minute, especially this year.
If you think you’re going to come up short, file you tax
return anyway. The biggest penalties from the IRS are for not filing. I know
you can arrange payment but do this before April 15th and I think it
will go better for you.
Lake Shastina is a little hole in the wall community northeast of Weed, California and south of the Oregon border. The area is full of old hippies from the 1960’s (and their descendants) and also a mix of farmers and people once associated with the logging industry. It is an eclectic mix of folks.
Lake Shastina
Lake Shastina finds itself in the news because the Truth is offensive to those that choose to embrace lies. In this case, a local church has put up a sign that has got a few pagans and Liberals up in arms. The purpose of such signs is twofold, give information about what the church is doing or what they believe—commonly called outreach. In this instance the Church sign reads:
Bruce Jenner is still a man Homosexuality is still a sin The culture may change but the Bible does not
The church’s pastor, Justin Hoke, said he expected “flack” regarding the sign’s message, but believes it is poignant because it “rebukes sin” and calls people to repentance. “It is not possible to preach the gospel in short pithy statements. I have used this sign for seven years now to provoke reflection or make a strong point about a single truth,” Hoke wrote on Facebook. “Such as this one: ‘The culture does not determine truth, God does.’ … The funny thing is, I could have put those words up and no one would have cared. Why? Because it does not rebuke sin or call anyone to repentance. The church has lost its saltiness and I fully expect to get as much or more flack from the visible church as I am getting from the world.” In that same Facebook thread, Hoke posted, “The response we’re receiving from this sign proves that it was posted way too late. If a conservative mountain farming community is no longer a safe place to call sin, sin, then is anywhere in this country still safe for real Christians?”
One protester, worried about what the church message conveys to youth, described the sign as “an amplified voice telling [those youth], ‘You’re wrong.’”
All three propositions are true so what’s the issue? Oh yeah, this is California so I guess I do have to defend each just because…
Statement One Bruce Jenner is still a man. Here’s the offensive part, God made him a man. No manner how much Jenner has paid to have himself mutilated and pumped full of hormones, biologically and genetically he is still male.
That Jenner has mental and spirit problems is tragic. To be human is to be an image bearer of God. Jenner can’t hurt God so he attacks Him by attacking His image bearer, in this case himself. God is the primary victim of this and every crime, Jenner is a secondary victim to this rebellion.
Statement Two Homosexuality is still a sin. Homosexuality is not only a sin in both the Old and New Testaments, per Romans chapter one, it is a judgement upon men for exchanging the Truth of God for a lie.
Homosexuality was common in the period when the New Testament was written. If you look at Paul’s arguments in Romans, in chapter one he takes the Greco-Roman world to task for rejecting God and then in chapters two and three, he takes on the Jews of his day that think themselves religious and concludes that they too fall short of God’s standard. Toward the end of chapter three he concludes in verse 23:
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God
As you continue reading, Paul lays out the case that we cannot save ourselves and only Jesus can save us. So while chapter one condemns homosexuality, the rest of the book presents the case that all people are sinners and need Jesus.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11, Paul points out “And such were some of you”. His point is God can save and redeem even the worst of us.
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
Statement Three The culture may change but the Bible does not. God doesn’t change. You can look at creation and see that there was a designer (Romans 1) but to have a relationship with Him requires special revelation. God’s special revelation, the Bible, is the standard by which we are measured and as stated above, we all fall short. That doesn’t make His standard wrong, just us.
Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. Hebrews 13:8
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. 2 Timothy 3:16 -17
The point is not to call everybody wrong but to call people to repentance. Repentance means that you are sorry for your sin; turn around, you’re going the wrong way.
Stop running from God but instead embrace Him. Jesus is the only way to the Father.
The church message is not a message of hate, it is a warning that people that are going the wrong way and that they need to repent.
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Proverbs 14:12
Which is more loving, seeing someone heading straight to hell and say nothing or warn them to turn around before it’s too late.
Skynet is tracking you if you are a Netflix subscriber. OK, it’s not really steel robots with automatic weapons kicking in your door for violating their terms of service but it’s close.
Skynet is coming
The way it works, is that streaming service companies hire the UK firm Synamedia that uses AI, behavioral analytics and machine learning to monitor and analyse password sharing activity across user accounts, identify the rule breakers and detect the fine line between finding account sharers and harassing a customer. “For example, the solution can determine whether users are viewing at their main home and a holiday home, or whether they have shared credentials with friends or grown-up children who live away from home.
If you let your kids watch your Netflix account, they may be looking for you.
Research quoted by Synamedia reported that younger generations are used to accessing streaming services for free and rarely become paying customers. The company revealed that 26% of millennials share passwords for video streaming services, while economic predictions indicate that in 2021, $9.9 billion of pay-tv revenues and $1.2 billion of over-the-top media services (OTT) revenues will be lost to credentials sharing. “Casual credentials sharing is becoming too expensive to ignore. Our new solution gives operators the ability to take action. Many casual users will be happy to pay an additional fee for a premium, shared service with a greater number of concurrent users. It’s a great way to keep honest people honest while benefiting from an incremental revenue stream,” said Jean Marc Racine, CPO and GM EMEA of Synamedia.
Netflix and other streaming services know what you are watching and where you watch (via your network I.P. address) so why the third party tracking? Perhaps the A.I. will automatically notify you and send you a bill to upgrade your account to make what you watch legit? It’s not like they don’t use other algorithms and A.I. on your account, how do you think they get the 98 percent match on the suggested show?
Why is this sharing of data OK when Facebook is in deep doo-doo for sharing data with third party folks like Cambridge Analytica? The sharing by both companies was done in exchange for revenue and increased viewers, thus enhancing their stock value. Facebook’s only crime was that they did something that might have benefitted Republicans and for that they must be punished.
Which brings me to the other tech article of the day that is worth a read. It is published by the Hollywood Reporter. The article concerns a unique lawsuit against Facebook for the Cambridge Analytica story.
Cambridge Analytica parlayed its modest access to the lives of ordinary Facebook users and their family and friends into more and more information — enough to begin psychologically profiling American voters and then bombarding them with phony and real news. And Facebook’s role? “This kind of mass data collection was not only allowed but encouraged by Facebook, which sought to keep developers building on its platform and provide companies with all the tools they need to influence and manipulate user behavior,” states the March 23 lawsuit filed by Edelson. “That’s because Facebook is not a social media company; it is the largest data-mining operation in existence.”
What makes the Edelson lawsuit different is a name barely anyone knows: Kimberly Foxx, a state’s attorney, the top prosecutor in Cook County, Illinois. Edelson is ostensibly representing the people of Illinois through Foxx on a claim that Facebook engaged in unfair and deceptive conduct. Or, stated another way, a government official has outsourced law enforcement to a class-action attorney. Edelson, having now been given the role of a Special Assistant State’s Attorney thanks to possessing the “required legal expertise,” as a court order confirming his appointment put it, aims to punish Facebook for violating The Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act. It carries massive repercussions, including $50,000 in civil penalties per violation, injunctive relief and — if egregious circumstances call for it — a lost business license to operate in the state. That’s right. Theoretically, Facebook could pay billions and be prohibited from offering its service in Illinois if it loses this lawsuit.
Edelson’s claim that “Facebook is not a social media company; it is the largest data-mining operation in existence” does make me wonder how he would describe Google or all the apps and devices reporting to your personal data to China or our National Security Agency—after all they are the only part of our government that listens.
Privacy in our society is an illusion; one I may discuss on another occasion.
