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Welcome to Conservative commentary and Christian prayers from Mount Vernon, Ohio.
Welcome to Conservative commentary and Christian prayers from Mount Vernon, Ohio.
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WHENEVER ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT BECOMES DESTRUCTIVE OF THESE ENDS (LIFE,LIBERTY,AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS) IT IS THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO ALTER OR ABOLISH IT, AND TO INSTITUTE A NEW GOVERNMENT― Thomas Jefferson
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Citizen Tom 
I thought the debate went well, and was basically a tie.
My mother went to vote yesterday (in south Florida), she said there was a line all the way out to the parking lot…she’s never seen anything like it.
Which makes me wonder. Are people that motivated over Biden, who can barely get anyone to attend his “rallies”? I think Kamala had six people at her last rally. Maybe they all just hate Trump so much they’re waiting in long lines two weeks before November 3rd to vote him out of office, but I’m skeptical.
At any rate, time will tell.
I posted a link to a site intended to encourage people to hunt down Trump supporters yesterday.
Maybe people aren’t answering these polls honestly? What do they have to gain and what do they have to lose? Liberals are running around screaming that everyone who supports Trump is a white supremacist Hitler lover.
Chris Pratt was recently vilified as a “white supremacist” for being a Trump supporter.
Robert Downy Junior defended him, as well as the actor who plays the Hulk (name escapes me).
Chris Pratt is a generous person and true success story. He was homeless. The guy who put up my Hughesnet satellite had his autistic son’s therapy fees paid for by Chris Pratt (he slept on his couch in Hawaii during the lean years, and they both had sons with profound health issues born around the same time). This generous good person is a de facto “white supremacist” eh? Good on RDJ for standing up for him. The liberal rhetoric must be tiresome and boring, even to themselves by now.
Liz,
We can all come up with the odd anecdote, but you know, don’t you, that most of the far Right White Supremacists really are Trump supporters. (If not, go to their websites). By the same token, on the far Left, there are some Biden supporting Cancel Culture idiots. Between the two, I’d prefer the Cancel Culture crackpot menace “not” coming to Biden rallies over the KKK and QAnon mentally diseased types wo are modern day Brown Shirted in MAGA garb at the COVID super spreader events that Trump holds. Most of us live on the spectrum of being basically decent people, who are decent to each other, although I would argue that the Trumpublican bends much, much more to the White Supremacist than the faithful Biden Democrat does.
Off topic, how are the airlines doing and how is this effecting your family lately? Are you all coping ok? Are you over the Chicken Pocks?
Talking to my friends back at my old airline, they seem to be working this downturn out for now. I pray that you are doing the same.
Off topic, how are the airlines doing and how is this effecting your family lately? Are you all coping ok? Are you over the Chicken Pocks?
Heh, I am doing a lot better, thank you. 🙂
It has been up and down…thought I was recovering and then yesterday morning it felt like the pox had invaded my ears (like hearing through a tunnel, plus a headache). Then this morning I felt great. Best day yet.
My spouse went hunting last week with a guy who had the chickenpox as an adult too. Now I feel less alone. 🙂
Talking to my friends back at my old airline, they seem to be working this downturn out for now. I pray that you are doing the same.
I think SWA will be doing ten percent paycuts. That’s not bad, if it works. The big problem they have is too many pilots. Prior to covid, they were expanding fast and had to hire to cover the expected future shortage. Now they have far too many.
They’re trying to expand also (and they are fortunate to have a lot of cash), to more hubs. The grounding of the MAX has hurt them, hopefully the FAA will approve it soon (Europe has). A LOT of our friends have been furloughed (with other majors, I think American, United, Delta have all furloughed). I feel terribly for them. It’s almost impossible to get orders now as a military reservist, so most of them have little to fall back on.
We are very fortunate our timing was good. My spouse started flying for SWA as a reservist, took time off to go back to active duty for two years, and accrued senority all that time. He’s pretty high up as FOs go.
I do not think the post covid future will be as good for the airlines though. It’s a hard industry anyway, even in the best of times. Thanks for asking. 🙂
Liz,
Glad you are feeling better. My wife had shingles a couple of years ago, and it was awfully uncomfortable for her for a while, but she recovered from that without lasting effects. Sounds like a similar ordeal.
Old age I suppose, but my wife and I both have our own health issues these days. My wife has a degenerative disease that has a likely, although indefinitely slow, terminal prognosis. However, we are learning to cope very well with it. I still run 6 – 8 miles most days so if I complain about a few spine issues, I just sound ridiculous. Like you, we feel very blessed over all. We have had an amazing life together and have been very fortunate to be situated so comfortably in retirement.
We have both become vegans (with smaller wild caught cold water fish like salmon occasionally thrown in) in an effort to slow my wife’s illness. We became mostly plant eaters for very good health reasons which are strong enough to be convincing alone for anyone concerned about preventable morbidities, but we recently watched David Attenborough’s “A Life on Our Planet” which gives ample other reasons, as a matter of human survival, for limiting beef, pig and chicken protein intake. I am recommending this film, which Attenborough calls his witness statement, to everyone that I know, but especially to young people. It is on Netflix and I really think you and your family might want to watch it, even if for no other reason than to understand the convincing arguments that gifted film makers like Attenborough are making in favor of reigning in human population growth, carbon emissions and the loss of wild habitat that is currently causing another great worldwide mass extinction.
As far as the airlines go, in that regard as well, we feel lucky for both the airline that I worked for and the timing of our retirement. I have mixed feelings about an airline bailout, mainly because the Pandemic was more akin to an enemy attack or a massive unexpected natural disaster than anything that was caused by bad business decisions. That said, as you say, the airlines were not equally conservative in preparing for any predictable downturn and do we want to reward those who rashly overextended themselves just to monopolize the market? With friends at all the airlines, and as a former loyal union volunteer, like I said, I’m conflicted. Glad your family is doing well though.
I am very sorry about your wife’s illness, TSalmon. 😦
We became mostly plant eaters for very good health reasons which are strong enough to be convincing alone for anyone concerned about preventable morbidities, but we recently watched David Attenborough’s “A Life on Our Planet” which gives ample other reasons, as a matter of human survival, for limiting beef, pig and chicken protein intake. I am recommending this film, which Attenborough calls his witness statement, to everyone that I know, but especially to young people. It is on Netflix and I really think you and your family might want to watch it, even if for no other reason than to understand the convincing arguments that gifted film makers like Attenborough are making in favor of reigning in human population growth, carbon emissions and the loss of wild habitat that is currently causing another great worldwide mass extinction.”
I will keep the movie on a list to watch, but it doesn’t sound like a happy movie so it will be after the lockdown is over. Only comedies allowed.
I agree the industrialised, inhumane farming and slaughtering practices that have to be there to enable meat consumption on the level we practice it (as a country) are terrible. Livestock production in general is extremely inefficient food for exchange of resources. I was a vegan for ten years (long ago, ages 16-26).
There are sustainable methods for beef production, but the cost of meat is far higher. We actually considered starting a small farm when my spouse retired, and we might someday. We can’t grow much on our current property (lots of wild animals, rocky soil, too short a grow season). We would use organic, sustainable methods. My husband has read up a lot on it.
In case you or your wife ever yearn for beef:
Polyface Farm in Swope VA is a good example of how to do it.
This was the method my spouse studied when we were considering the farm.
Joel Salatin raises cattle all on grass without using chemicals. His “mimic nature” approach means he’ll move the herd from one grassy paddock to another every day. He’ll then brings his chickens in to “clean-up” after the cows — just like in nature where birds follow bovines. He brings this sanitation crew in three days after the cows have been in a paddock. This allows flies to plant their larvae in the pies. The chickens scratch through all the cow pies to eat the now fattened larvae left behind, thus he doesn’t have a fly problem. The grass-fed beef has more Omega-3 fatty acids than wild salmon, as well as an appropriate Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio of 3:1.
As you’ve mentioned, grain fed beef not only flips that ratio upside down but Omega-6’s can be grotesquely higher; one study (conducted in Korea) recorded a 1:90 ratio which can lead to inflammation and related pathologies. Grains are bad for bovine animals, as they cannot digest them.
There are other farms that use Joel Salatin’s methods too. You just have to find them, but the internet makes it a lot easier.
Hope you and yours have a great day.
“I am very sorry about your wife’s illness, TSalmon.“
That is very kind of you. Thank you.
We had been trying to eat more healthy for years. (Less red meat). Don’t get me started on how unhealthy most staple wheat, rice and corn has Been engineered. However, it was my wife’s illness that made us real believers in a plant based diet.
Thank you for the information. I didn’t know any of that. I always found it hard to eat healthy while I was working. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for a family with both spouses working and just trying to make ends meet. Unhealthy processed food and industrial meat is as ubiquitous, cheap, convenient and delicious as it is deadly. It seems that most of the enormous health costs that we are fighting over who will pay for right now could be eliminated if we just figured out how to quit slowly poisoning ourselves into immobility and death. And that does not even deal with the fact, as Attenborough points out in his film, that this is simply unsustainable.
I would love to go join an organic cooperative farm where you invest in the farmers crop and then reap a share of his/her harvest. My understanding is that you can also work the farm as much as you want to. They had many of these in the Seattle area, but unfortunately, not so much here in Mississippi. There is also the work of canning, drying and otherwise storing what is in season. With my wife’s illness, we just don’t have the time or ability to do too much of that, but I am looking into it anyway. Maybe it is something you are already doing in your area.
BTW, although by the middle of Attenborough’s documentary, you are about ready to just shoot yourself and take another parasite off the planet, it has a very hopeful and uplifting last part. So maybe it’s not bad Pandemic viewing after all.
I’ve spent most of my life, as your husband has, burning vast quantities of dead dinosaurs. I believe therefore that we may always need some carbon products. But we can make some pretty drastic changes that both make us more healthy, more sustainable and that actually saves us money over all. Since the threat is existential in so many ways, I’m not sure that we really have a choice as our fate will find us regardless of whether we make it easy and full of wonder and appreciation for what is really important or selfish and hard to the very bitter end.
@tsalmon
Not liking the last paragraph.
@tsalmon
Blaming every bad thing that happens on global warming is stupid.
The primary problem for wildlife these days is habitat loss.
Do we pollute a lot? Yep! That is especially true in places like China where the government regulates itself and in poor countries that still engage in slash and burn agriculture.
“Blaming every bad thing that happens on global warming is stupid.
The primary problem for wildlife these days is habitat loss.“
I wouldn’t say that Attenborough is blaming everything on one thing. His film tracks the loss of wild habitat, but he does try to show how everything is also connected. Our tiny blue marvel is one tiny finite ecosystem.
Wild places, like our shrinking tropical rain forests, are not only carbon sinks for the planet, their diversity balances a myriad of other aspects of, not just their own ecosystem, but the whole planet.
What Liz said about cattle farming that mimics nature demonstrates this balance. On the Africa savanna, vast herds of wildebeests, zebras and antelope migrate even more vast grasslands dropping nutrients as they go, attracting bugs that are eaten by birds, all of which are followed by predators. There is a interconnected ecosystem there. It takes about 100 grazers to sustain one of those predators, for example, one cheetah.
Obviously, if 4.5 billion people must all be mostly predators, the planet ecosystems cannot sustain that in a healthy way. If it takes about five pounds of grain to make one pound of bovine flesh, then we must devastate what is left of all our wild places for a lopsided nutritional trade off. And it isn’t even good for us – as Liz points out, industrialized meat is particularly unhealthy, but also we just were not designed to eat as much meat as we do regardless.
And then even setting aside the unnatural, unhealthy aspects of industrial meat production, the cruelty of it also has other costs. In order to pack together in tiny cages natural herding range animals, normally wandering porcine animals, and normally farm yard free chickens, we not only have to destroy increasing wild places to feed them and pollute our own water supplies with their waste, but we have to shoot them full of antibiotics and steroids to keep them alive and fatten them in an environment that would stress them to disease and death otherwise. Forget that COVID-19 may have been a result of increasing destruction of wild species and their habitats, we were already generating super resistant superbug pandemics in our stock yards, industrial pig farms and chicken farms.
We are all, every species and every human very connected Tom. If that was not clear to you before, then the fact that a single rich person half a world away in a Wuhan wet market who bought bush meat taken from a jungle started a chain of events that is killing and sickening hundreds of thousands of us and has brought the world economy to its knees. But it all could just as well have come from one of our own pig farms. It is coming from them already (swine flu? bird flu?) and it’s just a matter of time before we create something worse than COVID-19.
It doesn’t have to be this way. That is the hopeful part of Attenborough’s film. But it does mean we have to be less selfish and we have to work together. Perhaps that is too much to ask if our species. It’s not like we have a choice either way though. Our grandkids will pay the price of our selfishness and bad stewardship in destroying God’s wonderland that we dominate even if you and I don’t.
It’s funny, all these problems are multifaceted, but they are also intertwined, and they relate to an argument you and I have been having for years.
You think every blessing that God has given us as individuals is an entitlement, that an individual somehow deserves or can earn these gifts. I think that, whether they are rights to breath, think, live or use His abundance, they are transient gifts that the Master has lent us for a while to see what we do with them, to see if we will act selfishly and wastefully or wisely share them with each other.
God’s gifts, God’s blessings, can not really be owned. They are all temporary, fleeting and fragile things. Suffering, however, suffering, entropy and death are ubiquitous. They inexorably come to us all. How we appreciate most God’s blessings is when we share and sacrifice them with each other for each other. It’s the reason why they are here, why we are here.
God is so extravagant and the world is so beautiful in His wonder and glory. It is even more beautiful in its suffering and death. As Wallace Steven wrote so well in Sunday Mourning:
“Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.”
We are perhaps most beautiful in our suffering, but especially in our sacrifices. Jesus taught us that. He shares our suffering with us to teach us the only lesson that matters – love. The incarnate Christ in the universe suffers compassionately with every sparrow, with even the tiniest creature. How much more do you thing He shares our suffering?
@tsalmon
That is a lot of pretty words and feelings. Nothing to do with Global Warming.
You don’t want to eat meat? Don’t.
There are about 7.8 billion people. Too many? Some argue otherwise, and I just roll my eyes. I have no idea what the limit is. Depends on lots of different factors, especially upon what we are willing to tolerate.
Do we have an easy way to control our population? Prosperity seems to help, but that leads to poor people having a disproportionate number, especially with welfare.
Do I have a solution? Not really. China’s one child policy sure ain’t going to work. Raising a large population of men without women is asking for trouble. War is messy.
I will just observe make several observations.
1. Politicians make lots of promises, but few are wise. Giving the unwise power complicates problems.
2. If we don’t want something, we should tax it, not subsidize it.
Justice requires the people who use any product or service to pay the full cost. When someone uses a product or service that uses lots of natural resources, they should pay the full cost. Our tax dollars should not cover those costs, and neither should the use of public land. Tax pollution, not productivity.
Generally, raising children has become expensive. There is no economic incentive to have kids, unless you are on welfare. So, stop giving people welfare.
“That is a lot of pretty words and feelings.”
Thanks, that is nice of you, but they are not my words or thoughts. They come from Jesus, from His life and His words. We would all do well to learn from them. ☺️
@tsalmon
You quoted the Bible? No. Not even a loose translation. You spoke of your personal feelings. That is not the same.
Tom,
You don’t think that sacrificial love is at the heart of what Jesus said and modeled?
@tsalmon
Jesus CHOSE to sacrifice himself. Ironically, He did so in opposition to those who attempted to sacrifice Him to serve their own ends.
When we try to use love as an excuse to sacrifice others, God may turn our evil ends to good, but we still have sinned.
“Jesus CHOSE to sacrifice himself.”
Of course. Just as I said.
“When we try to use love as an excuse to sacrifice others, God may turn our evil ends to good, but we still have sinned.“
What an odd thing to tell me. What do you think sin is? Breaking some rule? Don’t you realize that the source of all sin comes from selfishness?
You seem so aggrieved brother. People are always taking earthly things from you. Has your life really been so hard? Is your life so hard now?
Your leader, Donald Trump, is like an open wound of constant want and grievance – is that where it comes from or is he just a symptom of a bigger Pandemic of this sense of material loss of stuff and privileges. Do you feel persecuted by well intended lovers? For a real Christian, is that even possible? You say that you should not be forced to give up things for the common good involuntarily, but we expect that of each other all the time. We are just disagreeing at the margins, sometimes on the facts and other times on the emphasis, but the principle of social responsibility is a given for all but Kooks and misanthropes.
Perhaps you can explain to me what you have that is of eternal importance that can actually be taken from you involuntarily? Your material stuff? Your liberty? Your life? That will be gone in the blink of an eye whether you hold on to it with all your might or not. Jesus said to store treasures in eternity where they can never be lost. All else is fleeting. What do you think that He meant by that?
We voluntarily afford each other justice out of love. We practice unselfish virtue out of love. It’s easy to understand; but impossible to do perfectly in this world, unless your name is Jesus and you are the Son of God.
I don’t have a bright line for you on how we, all of us as Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve, members of a common species who have common responsibilities to God and each other, or as inique individuals making voluntary choices, can be always perfectly just, but we can definitely be either more selfish or more sacrificial. God didn’t put us in a black and white world, much as we make crave that illusion. God put us in a finite and fallen world. Ballance and compromises, grey dilemmas, all reign here more abundant than clear choices.
It’s become clear to me, however, that in a world full of suffering and death, that the eternal has no meaning or possibility if we waste our lives affronted and countIng our grievances, rather than sharing our blessings.
Have you ever thought about the fact that both Capitalism and Socialism in their better angels try to be moral philosophies for distribution of scarce resources, but that neither really can perfectly be so because they both find their moral foundation in rational materialism? A philosophy of material distribution, no matter whether it presents in Utilitarianism or the “enlightened” self interest of the capitalist, or some hybrid mix of the two (as most advanced economies find themselves today) to actually be moral it must find some spiritual basis, and that spiritual foundation is always love. Period. Full stop.
@tsalmon
Actually, sin is primarily driven by pride. Pride can drive selfishness, and it can also drive forcing others to adopt our values. What you call selfish, others may not. We don’t all share the same agendas.
You are voting for Socialism. You are voting for people who are determined to recreate the world into their vision of Utopia. Your talk does not match the walk.
@Liz
Glad to hear you are feeling better.
Don’t even have a guess as to how the airlines will fare. My guess is that a Harris/Biden administration, however, would happily chop them to pieces.
Tom,
I think you obviously have it backwards. Pride is a form of selfishness, as are all the other vices forms of selfishness. By the same reasoning, all the virtues, in their purest examples, are forms of selflessness. But you’d rather quibble over weak semantic categories than face some fundamental truths.
I’m voting for Socialism? What do you think this is, the late 19th Century? Do you even know the history of the labor and capital struggles in this country at the end of that century and the beginning of the next? The Hay Market Bombing? The Molly Maguires? The Knights of Labor strikes? The general Railroad Strikes? The Kansa based farmer’s Alliance? The labor riots in Chicago? New York? Seattle? Did you know about the thousands of men, women and children dead in the streets killed by police, militias and our own Army simply because they wanted the legal right to collectively bargain for a safe working environment and enough cash to feed themselves and their families? Anything ringing a bell?
No, of course not. You think that you worked an 8 hour day, not in a sweat shop, with humane work rules, a retirement, health care, a public school education, and access to public scholarships, because you yourself individually bargained for all of that? Nope. You are not alone though brother. I only know about labor law history because I joined a union and made it my business to know. To read history books, the law and the history. However, very few pilots and far too many other labor groups actually know the history and the sacrifices.
In the end, the Bolsheviks lost, but so did the Robber Barons. Rather than rebellion, Americans do what we do best – we compromised and made incremental changes. Unions were allowed to organize and workers were legally allowed to collectively bargain. Laws changed and the wealth are distribution toward a vibrant middle class and away from monopolization and concentration went with it. Those compromises created the largest middle class and the greatest increase In middle class wealth in this country in the history of human civilization, and the rich, the entrepreneurs, the capitalists and the talented were still rewarded with a meritocracy beyond what they could have (or at least should have) dreamed in their wildest dreams . . . until the 1970’s and it has been declining ever since. The reasons for this are complex, and it can’t be blamed on poor immigrants or loss of WASP male cultural dominance or identity politics or the welfare state. No, we can’t live in grievance and blame the world. We have no one to blame but ourselves and our own “me, me, me” selfishness. There are solutions but all those solutions still demand working together, unselfishly, and making compromises that don’t make some supposedly perfect determinist ideology or ism the enemy of what actually works better for everyone. We literally grew up swimming in clean clear fecund waters purified from the sacrificed blood of others, and we think it was always that way. Nonsense! Ignorance! Selfishness! And yes, overweening pride!
Pure socialism is indeed a Utopian mirage that has become a favorite jingoistic shibboleth and boogeyman of Republicans but pure Socialism was buried somewhere with Trotsky long ago. However, it is no less a Utopian mirage than the ridiculously naive, uncommonly selfish Randian impossibility that you keep spouting that somehow, weirdly has anything to do with Christ.
Reality is much more complex than either such Utopia. We have been most successful when we figured out a way to work together. We really have no choice you know. God hasn’t really given us anything more meaningful, more eternal than love. Your materialist alternatives just melt like dust. And therefore I’d love doesn’t matter as you say, then nothing really does brother.
@tsalmon
No matter how hard either of us tries to make it otherwise, Creation is the work of God. What does the Bible indicate primarily drives sin, our disobedience to God? We want to be God.
Do a few word searches in the Bible, one on “selfish” and another on “pride”. What will you find? Is the word “selfish” or some variation even in the Bible? Well, it is scarce in the more literal translations, but it is there. The word “pride”, however, is much more easily found. What does the Bible call the cure for selfishness? Humility.
So, why would you think selfishness is the primary source of pride and therefore sin? What would those who worship the almighty state think of those who refuse to “share” their wealth? Why those greedy people are selfish, of course.
Anyway, I can see you have the usual tirade that glorifies unions down pat. You like unions. Shrug!
Look around. The Democratic Party is the party of the rich. People like Joe Biden have no problem abusing illegal immigrants or making wage slaves or literal slaves out of laborers in China or any country. Their strategy differs little from Julius Caesar’s. To achieve power, buy the votes of the Roman Plebs.
I am not selling the fat cats in the Democratic Party my vote.
Well, in a way you are right Tom. All sin comes from disobeying God’s law:
“Jesus said unto him, ,Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets’.”
Matthew 22:36-40, KJV
All sin comes from a selfish failure to love as Jesus taught us, including selfish pride. Just as Jesus taught us, we can’t find a single Commandment whose breaking that does not inherently “hang” on the selfishness of a failure to love. If it does not “hang” on our responsibility to love unselfishly, even sacrificially, as Jesus taught and modeled to us with His words and His life, we have not broken a Commandment. This message of God’s love and sharing God’s love IS the primary message of Jesus’s life and His Word, and therefore the message that all of the rest of the Bible, interpreted properly as Jesus told us, drives us toward. More importantly, I have come to believe with all my “heart, and with all my soul, and with all my mind“ that this love from God in all its appropriate manifestations (compassion, empathy, selfless, sacrifice) is not only the source of all virtue, it is the the force that moves the universe and every particle in it, at every moment in every time. Without God’s love with us always to sustain existence, including each our own existence, we do not exist, we never would exist.
Saying that I believe in love as God demands does not mean I am perfect (very, very. far from it), but it does mean that God has given me and all of us His Son, Jesus, to show us the sacrificial path of love that we can travel on our rocky journey toward perfection, toward God, and the eternal in His love calling, calling always calling us home.
But God never left us alone on our journey. The resurrected Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, incarnate in the universe always, travels with us and suffers with us on our path of love, with every stumble, with every setback, even with every sin.
And the Holy Spirit is always with us as well, when we ask in faith, the Spirit guides us with the just the grace we need to give us strength and show us the way in love. But we have to ask in faith and in love.
However, right now at almost November, God is sending toward us again in my home town another of so many hurricanes that I’ve lost count to teach us something we need to know about suffering and love, about living and working together in selfless love, rather than the selfishness that is death, and is also becoming the slow death of so many on our planet. So I must go for awhile and prepare for Him, if you know what I mean. God is coming.
@tsalmon
Another hurricane! Louisiana is having a bad year. Looks like your area may get hurricane force winds too. Keep safe!
There is a subtlety here I had not thought of before until you made this argument. Why was God’s love necessary? Why could not one of us love another and spread his love. Why wouldn’t a mother’s love be sufficient?
Consider the significance of God’s love for us. He is our Creator. He is infinite. We are finite. By comparison nothing. Yet He takes notice of us. He sacrificed Himself for us. Therefore, in God’s love we have both an example of sacrifice and humility.
Instead of being full of prideful arrogance, Lording over His creatures, God glorifies Himself by loving and caring for those He created. Under His love and care we grow more like Him, holy — full of grace and truth. That includes modeling His love by loving Him and each other. That includes setting aside our pride so that we can take our eyes off ourselves so that we can love God and each other.
Until we are humbled by the love of God, we cannot love either Him or each other.
@tsalmon
Trump runs on the issues. Biden runs on accusations.
Republicans run on producing prosperity for all. Democrats run on identity politics.
Are those two claims perfect? No. People are not perfect. Nevertheless, all I have to do is point to your own words. You spend far more ink attacking Trump than you do advocating anything positive.
“Trump runs on the issues. Biden runs on accusations.“
That is perhaps one of the more hilarious things you’ve ever written. Trumps response to every question on issues these days is a noun, a verb and Hunter Biden. Trump runs out of the interview in abject panic if he is asked about an issue.
“Republicans run on producing prosperity for all. Democrats run on identity politics.“
There are no Republicans any more, only Trumpublicans, and they are pretty much running on White Identity politics in the form of white grievance and conspiracy theories.
If you truly want to make the point that democrats don’t run on accusation, it would help your cause not to end your post with a big, long winded and baseless accusation.
@tsalmon
OUCH!
@tsalmon
What Trump did is point to his accomplishments and Biden’s hot air. Biden has apparently sold us out.
Meanwhile, Biden does what you do, trash Trump.
See https://citizentom.com/2020/09/08/trumps-accomplishments-versus-bidens-accomplishments/.
My dear Liz. That Trump is the worst, most corrupt, most lying President in the history of this great republic isn’t an accusation, it’s a fact. However, I never said Democrats were not making accusations; I scoffed at the assertion the Republicans were not running substantially on anything but baseless lies and conspiracy theories. Remember when Biden was so suffering from mental incapacity that he would not be able to show up at the debates? Hell, Trump’s whole schtick is conspiracy and accusations. He started his political run on Birtherism. Ouch indeed. 😂
@tsalmon
@Liz
And how do we know that Trump is the worst, most corrupt, most lying President in the history of this great republic? Because unnamed sources everywhere say so.
“And how do we know that Trump is the worst, most corrupt, most lying President in the history of this great republic? “
250,000 dead and counting. Trump has failed on an unimaginable scale at the most important job a President has, and all he does is whine and blame, deflect and project.
@tsalmon
Somebody dies. So, it the president’s fault? That’s dumb! Many more died from the Spanish flu, and nobody thought of blaming Woodrow Wilson, and he did NOTHING. Trump has done much.
Correction, 225,000 dead and counting. Trump won’t have 250,000 on his record for a few more weeks.
@tsalmon
Here is an example of a story you won’t see much of in what you read and watch, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/22/tony-bobulinski-hunter-biden-ex-business-partner-i/
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/10/27/tucker_carlson_interviews_hunter_biden_business_partner_tony_bobulinski_about_joe_biden_involvement.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8886515/Releases-clip-Bidens-imploring-not-public.html
To review:
There are no Republicans any more, only Trumpublicans, and they are pretty much running on White Identity politics in the form of white grievance and conspiracy theories.
The above is a false accusation.
On many levels.
Just yesterday a parade of thousands of “Jews for Trump” was attacked by leftists.
They are exactly what they accuse others of.
Trump’s support from the hispanic and black communities is rising fast.
He has much more support from those communities this time around than last.
On the flip side, he is losing ground on the white suburban women vote.
If your claim is to be believed, the black and hispanic communities have a favorable view of white identity politics (as compared to the Karens).
@tsalmon
@Liz
Why would white suburbanites vote for Democrats? There was a time that astounded me. There is something odd about well educated people voting Democrat. Then it hit me. In our society the best educated would also be the most indoctrinated. These would be the ones who would find it most difficult to examine their assumptions.
Why would white suburbanites have the most to lose if they challenged their assumptions? It is not a financial issue. White, Democrat suburbanites are actually voting against their own financial interests. The issue one of pride. We each have this image of ourselves, an image in which we take pride. It is the white man’s pride, to some, to sacrifice themselves for those ignorant colored people.
I think the Karens are also fearful. Friend of ours was on a trip in Chicago. He stepped into an elevator with a mother and two children. She scurried to the corner with her kids and gave him the stink-eye. You would’ve thought he was a child molester or killer. Yes, he had a mask on.
Correction, 225,000 dead and counting. Trump won’t have 250,000 on his record for a few more weeks.
In March, Fauci and Dr Birx expected about 200,000 deaths “if everything was done as perfectly as possible”. About 2 million and a half if not.
@Liz
@tsalmon
Tony thinks it is the president’s job to prevent the spread of the common cold. How? Because the president is in charge of everything.
We’d better make people wear bubble wrap to travel for extra safety. How about a seat belt in every chair? Babies have them, let’s be extra safe. Some folks have seizures and you never know when someone might fall. Let’s force everyone over 80 into a wheel chair. They might fall too. No more saturated fat. Everyone should get government mandated meals only.
Per conspiracy theories, There was a time not long ago when everything I have seen happen I would have thought a conspiracy theory.
Remember when Trump said he was being wiretapped and everyone laughed?
Over 300 people were under illegal surveillance.
Rather than attempt to help the newly elected president the FBI and CIA actively worked to remove him. It is very clear now why.
Also clear why they needed to remove Flynn (who had a great deal of experience in the intelligence field) first.
@Liz
I have been working early voting. Prince William County is now part of Northern Virginia (which is now ruled by Democrats).
Will Trump win Virginia? Don’t know, but there are plenty of Republican Party volunteers passing out sample ballots and issues lit. There is a willingness to try, and that is crucial.
Biden won because he did not hurt his lead and probably helped it. It’s only a question of how many of the few undecided registered voters that have not already voted that Biden convinced to come over to his side:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-biden-debate-poll/
At this point, if the polling is to be believed (and am cautiously optimistic on that), it’s only a matter of how big Biden will win at this point. Trump’s hapless grievance and smear based reelection plan in the midst of increasing red state pandemic infections, hospitalizations and deaths, as well as increasing economic hardship, also seems to put vulnerable down ballot Republicans in complete despair.
Sorry, wrong link. The 538 link above was to the last debate. Here is the one that I meant to give:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/23/opinions/who-won-the-debate-opinion/index.html
I will be curious what 538 says when it soon comes out, but I imagine little has changed from predebate polling. Probably even Biden got a slight bump.
I get the feeling that Trump’s most adamant cult followers (people who spend all their time believing various conspiracies large and small, on a spectrum of crazy to QAnon crazier) are setting themselves up for a devastating actual “great awakening” on the morning of Nov 4. You may want to get outside the far right bubble a little so that you are not too surprised by reality when it hits. Personally, I’m very worried about a Trump win, and I won’t be surprised, just terrified, of the damage that he will continue to do to our democracy and it’s institutions. In this case, some skeptical pessimism may be a healthy mindset no matter what side you are on. If you expect and prepare for the worst, then you can only be pleasantly surprised.
If you expect and prepare for the worst, then you can only be pleasantly surprised.
That’s good advice.
Just looking at the CNN article for moment the first thing said was Trump “failed the covid test”. I do not think the media understands exactly how covid-fatigued the population is at this point. Biden holding up a mask and kissing his wife wearing a mask and demanding masks for everyone (most of whom are already forced to wear masks) just isn’t going to help get him votes.
Interesting there were no foreign policy questions. I think that is a first for presidential debates. Last year Syria, Libya, the DPRK, ISIS, et al made up about 70 percent of the debate (gee wouldn’t it be great if we had an endless no fly zone over Syria right now, as Hillary wanted?).
At a time when arab nations are establishing the type of relations with Israel that have never been seen since Israel came into existence, there are no foreign policy questions.
Just reading further, from Roxanne:
The mute button worked — and Americans won.
Truther.
Kudos for that one. She won the internetz there. 😆
Truth, not truther.
What does it say about me that truth autocorrects to truther. Ouch. 😆
Going to go sit back by the fire now.
@tsalmon
@Liz
At this point I think most people wear masks because of government pressure and because they don’t want to be guilty of spreading the virus to the few people who are actually vulnerable.
I am at the polls all day almost every day. The vast majority people wear their masks, but lots of them wear them improperly. How that is suppose to stop the spread of disease is beyond me. Because there is no way to avoid touching them, the masks probably get dirty. Real smart to have that thing on your face. Anyone who wears glasses almost has to hate wear a mask.
The mask policy is ridiculous and I’m beginning to hate it. I’ve read that in Los Angeles they are required to wear a mask while dining outside, in between bites of food. The most “dangerous” thing about mask wearing is taking the mask off. That’s the most likely time one will get contamination if they don’t do it right. Now they’re mandating masks on and off between bites. And the consequences for violation are high (think they turn off the electricity and water to your home or somesuch).
There’s nothing scientific about this, and these are the same people yelling about science. This is the problem with making everything political.
@Liz
That sounds nuts! You got a link for that?
@tsalmon
Cult? After Russia, Russia, Russia and and the unsubstantiated accusations, you are still at it. 😣
You do realize I did not even know what QAnon was until you brought it up. Trump’s supporters are hardly sinless, but the idiot news media you read invents lies about Trump supporters, and you spread those lies.
Well, if Trump wins, could you do us all a favor. Don’t riot, and please don’t encourage others to riot.
I detested Hillary (and her husband), but never in my worst mood and wildest inebriated imagination did I consider supporting targeting Hillary supporters with violence. I disliked her a lot more than Biden so it is equally unimaginable now. Yet I look at the media and even ostensibly “mainstream” media heads, politicians, heck even some of the folks who post on nextdoor are calling for violence against anyone who supports Trump. This should’ve been easy to forsee, it’s a foregone conclusion when you call someone a Nazi, Nazi supporters are also to blame. So you get folks like Doug saying he had it coming.
The media salivates every time there is some violence, trying to find someone they can claim is a Trump supporter or “white supremacist” (the bar is now so low just about anyone who isn’t black qualifies). Yet the vast majority of the violence is being conducted by the extreme left.
I read an article the other day I’ll post here. It begins with the looting of a Korean shop owner in Chicago.
https://news.yahoo.com/black-products-black-shoppers-black-152854537.html
The crowd was growing impatient as Crystal Holmes fumbled with the keys to the store. Dozens of people were swarming the street around Western Beauty Supply, the Chicago shop where Holmes works. She had persuaded some of them to let her open the store so they could rob it without breaking the windows.
“She’s taking too long,” someone yelled. “Let’s go in and get it.”
(snip)
When a few young men appeared outside the store earlier that evening in May, Na went out to speak with them. He offered some of them cash, and they walked away. At that point, Na told Holmes that he felt confident his business was safe. “They are not going to break into the store,” he told her.
A few minutes later, though, a larger group showed up. A woman snatched Na’s keys, but Holmes persuaded her to give them back. Then she ordered Na, her boss, to leave. “You don’t know what could happen,” she told him.
The article spends some time blaming Koreans for being “insular”.
The guy came to the country in his late 20’s with no money and not speaking the language was able to become a successful shop owner who put his kids through college. Imagine switching the races here with a black business owner and an Asian community tearing down his shop.
@tsalmon
Don’t worry about the polls.
How well did Trump do? I thought he did well.
Citizen Tom, did you see the latest Rasmussen poll? Black American approval was up to 46 percent. Even I think that is kinda extreme….but even if it is 25 percent, that by far surpasses the approval of any Republican presidential candidate in many decades. Where he is flailing is the “Karens”. White suburban moms don’t like him.
Linky
@Liz
There ladies working as election officers here in NoVA who will happily jump all over you if you say anything complimentary about Trump. There is also a large number passing out Trump campaign lit. Have no idea if the polls are right.
My guess is that Trump is doing well among blacks. He is doing something most Republicans have not bothered to do. He has worked for their vote.
Most Republicans just concede the minority vote to Democrats. But Trump is the racist? And Democrats think you ain’t black if you ain’t Democrat. Weird!
There are several black conservative people running for Congress, which is great. I am excited about this development: Burgess Owens, Wesley Hunt, Joe Collins. All exceptional candidates. The chief at our last base retired from the military and is working for a Republican Congressman also. I think things are turning.