Tuesday evening reading - October 1, 2024
More goodies from the stack of stuff I read on a daily basis here on Substack.
The success of this concept last time stoked my sharing flame because I subscribe to a lot of good reading, and come across even more from my following. So when I get to between six and eight posts (or so) I think are worth sharing, you’ll get Tuesday evening reading. It won’t be every week, but likely about once or twice a month. There’s nothing wrong with link love!
So here goes. Read them first then come back and see what I have to say with it.
A couple weeks ago I went to a Catholic Mass. Now I’m not Catholic, but a neighbor of my late mother-in-law arranged for his church to dedicate their Mass to her, and a year later her turn finally arrived.
There were two big differences in the service to what I’m used to, one having to do with Communion and the other the lengthy call-and-response. Since I never took the classes on how to be Catholic, it was Greek to me. (The part about the preacher being the guest bartender at an upcoming fundraiser sort of put me off, too.)
But the objection I really had was with their hierarchy, particularly their Pope, of whom Judd Garrett writes in his piece. As I was taught:
In contrast, Jesus clearly stated, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6.)
It just made me think about Martin Luther, and how we got Protestant churches in the first place. Is there going to be another breakup? There was a lot of pomp, and the message wasn’t bad, but I think I’ll stick with my church.
Why would the Pope make a statement promoting polytheism which clearly goes against the teaching of Jesus, the doctrines of the Catholic Church and is grounded in no biblical theology? He is a well-documented Communist, and Communists are intent on destroying Western Civilization because the Western ideas of democracy and individual sovereignty which are rooted in Judeo-Christianity are diametrically opposed to Communist authoritarianism.
There is a turning away in general from God and religion, and I think this Pope is leading the charge.
All I have to say is that Rufo, with little or no journalism training as far as I can tell, put a lot of these network “reporters” to shame.
What did CBS not do? Journalism. The network, which has massive resources, did not send a reporter to the scene, interview the eyewitness, interview the neighbors, investigate the visual evidence, conduct background research, or provide a detailed analysis. They simply adopted “don’t believe your lying eyes” as their standard and repeated an empty, evidence-free statement from a partisan political figure.
Seems like Rufo practiced Journalism 101, doesn’t it?
But we’re used to this, as all newscasts have an agenda. (I do too, but I don’t try and hide my bias of being “barely left of militia.”) On a story like this, it was easy to be lazy and try to discredit the conservative candidate who made the claim. On the other hand, we’re just supposed to accept at face value any negative news about a Republican.
All this argument about cats for dinner misses the forest for the trees: plopping 15,000 immigrants into one town is going to cause problems.
Speaking of causing problems…
I’m an Erick Erickson paid subscriber, so if you don’t get the whole thing the gist is that we got Donald Trump because of Barack Obama. (You can skip the part about the guy from North Carolina.)
In office, Barack Obama told his supporters to take guns to knife fights. He told Hispanic voters that Republicans were their enemies. He told his supporters to get in their neighbors faces and argue.
Obama’s re-election campaign pioneered the tactic of mailing people campaign literature that identified their neighbors’ partisan affiliations and whether or not they had voted — making neighborhoods explicitly partisan battlegrounds.
Obama set up an office in the White House that encouraged Americans to rat out their neighbors if their neighbors might be lying about Obamacare.
Obama sued nuns to try to force them to pay for abortions.
Obama used reporters and pundits to lie about his Iran deal, blatantly misrepresenting it to the public with the help of willing reporters. He also spied on Israel, its Prime Minister, and members of the United States Congress who were rallying to oppose his Iran deal. Yes, Obama deployed the resources of the government to spy on his public policy opponents.
The man is no saint. He was the Democrats’ Nixon and they loved him for it. They vilify Trump for all his bellicose rhetoric and they excuse Obama telling people to get in their neighbors’ faces and argue.
This is strictly anecdotal, but one thing I noticed in the post-election days of 2016 was an optimism that better days were ahead. If you recall, we spent about a half-decade in the “jobless recovery” from the Great Recession, and the thinking was that 2.5% GDP growth was about the best we could do. But Trump got things going, and thanks to that national sense of optimism I got the job back from which I’d been furloughed for eight years, for which I’m eternally grateful.
So here we are back again in 2024, and the question is whether we all will have a good Christmas or not. Choose wisely.
If you want every reason you should be mad about how we were played during the scamdemic, this is the article for you. And it’s only Part 1!
I’m looking forward to reading Part 2. And again: So here we are back again in 2024, and the question is whether we all will have a good Christmas or not. Choose wisely.
If you don’t get the jargon, I’ll simplify it for you: the people who run most of our nation’s electrical grid are suing the EPA for trying to get away from reliable energy and adopting capricious sources like wind and solar.
In their brief, the RTOs explicitly argued that the rules would jeopardize Americans’ ability to reliably secure sufficient amounts of power if they are enforced as is, despite claims by the Biden-Harris administration that the regulations would “improve public health without disrupting the delivery of reliable electricity.”
Anyone with half a brain can see the EPA is lying through their teeth. As Orr and Rolling conclude, “these ill-written rules pose a clear and present danger to the reliability of the American electric grid.”
I like my electricity reliable and cheap, thanks. We had that before the EPA began swallowing the manmade climate change lie. Speaking of which…
I jumped the line with this one, Alexander’s a fairly recent subscription of mine. But this post references a WaPo chart that’s rather interesting and perhaps answers a question I’ve had for a long time: what is a “normal” climate? This says we could use some global warming to get back to where we usually are.
So. If you’re up for ice skating on the Thames, snow-covered agricultural fields starving the global population, ice-enclosed ports terminating intercontinental supply chains… then you should be all-in on “alternative” energy sources and cutting CO2.
If, however, you’re an educated adult and don’t want to spend your golden years freezing to death in Miami as you starve, you might want to re-think the policies and policy-makers for which and whom you vote.
Sounds to me like the Earth should be warming by itself, and we’re not going to be much of an influence. But some would destroy our economy anyway just to create a new class of serfs.
Finally, this isn’t as much reading as it might be useful information for some of my readers. I’m hanging on to it because I have both a nurse and a first responder in my family. (I had a veteran, but my dad has passed away.)
This is another writer who I’ve recently subscribed to. You know, if I get more paying subscriptions I can start supporting them, too. Just a thought.
All that should keep a good reader going and thinking for awhile. Now I’ll keep collecting for next time.
In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.