January 19, 2020

The Impoverishment of Socialism

Timothy Birdnow

An article in the Federalist discusses how an American grocery store helped win the Cold War .

From the article:

On Sept. 16, 1989, Boris Yeltsin was a newly elected member of the Soviet Parliament visiting the United States. Following a scheduled visit to Johnson Space Center, Yeltsin and a small entourage made an unscheduled stop at a Randalls grocery store in Clear Lake, a suburb of Houston. He was amazed by the aisles of food and stocked shelves, a sharp contrast to the breadlines and empty columns he was accustomed to in Russia.

Yeltsin, who had a reputation as a reformer and populist, "roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,” wroteStefanie Asin, a Houston Chronicle reporter. He marveled at free cheese samples, fresh fish and produce, and freezers packed full of pudding pops. Along the way, Yeltsin chatted up customers and store workers: "How much does this cost? Do you need special education to manage a supermarket? Are all American stores like this?”

Yeltsin was a member of the Politburo and Russia’s upper political crust, yet he’d never seen anything like the offerings of this little American grocery store."Even the Politburo doesn’t have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev,” Yeltsin said.

Yeltsin was horrified to realize how poor socialism had made his country.

Poor and inefficient.

When I was in college my Russian teacher - a Soviet defector - spoke of grocery stores. Seems it took the better part of a day to shop.

You had to wait in line to get in. Once inside the stores were divided into multiple departments, and you didn't just go to a shelf and pick something up,but rather you waited in line to ask the department clerk for an item. IF they had anything at all, that is! You bought it regardless of what was available because you could  trade with neighbors for stuff you needed.

At any rate, you stood in line, received a bill from the clerk, then went to the checkout and paid. Your bill was makrkd "paid" and you went back into the department line to actually get your item. You had to do this over and over, for meat, produce, canned goods, dry goods, etc. Of course, usually there was only one selection if that in each department.

I remember reading about some Russian hockey players who had defected. The first day one of these players went into a store he gasped, grabbed a cart and began piling everything into it. He couldn't believe that the stuff would be there the next day!

Yeah; socialism is WONDERFUL!

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Big Sewer

Timothy Birdnow

Vagrants in California have turned beaches on the American and Sacramento rivers into cesspools.

From Canada Free Press:

The American River had been named by John Sutter. The Swiss immigrant went bankrupt when his land was overrun by gold prospectors. The new invaders aren’t trying to get rich. They already are. The benevolence of the state’s government in Sacramento means that they get everything for free.

Sutter’s son had founded Sacramento. And Sacramento’s Democrat majority is ‘unfounding’ California. Now the filth of its social welfare policies is fouling the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers, where explorers once marveled at an expansive landscape, vagrants have set up tent cities.

E. coli levels at beaches are supposed to be at 88 or below, and anything over 1,000 is supposed to lead to a beach closure. At 500, there’s a 10% chance of gastroenteritis and a 4% risk of febrile respiratory disease. But at Discovery Park, the numbers went as high as 2419.6 in December 2019.

The E.coli levels had climbed so high that labs could no longer even properly measure them.

Discovery Park is a convenient getaway for Sacramentans. More recently however, visitors describe mountains of trash, waste, and needles. "Don’t walk, wade or swim without shoes, used needles have been strewn throughout the park,” one Californian wrote. "I found crack heads, hookers, and crazy people screaming obscenities and throwing punches at anyone who came too close,” another described.

California is becoming our first Third World state.

The problem is that the people will get infected and spread this around. It's going to go all over the country. At what point will the federal government step in?  Certainly this has repercussions to interstate commerce.

I've heard of Big Sur, but Big Sewer?

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January 18, 2020

Meanwhile, in other Virginia gun news...

Dana Mathewson

Virginia city official brings AR-15-style rifle to council meeting – triggering some colleagues


A city official in Virginia showed support for the Second Amendment earlier this week by bringing an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle to a city council meeting.

The move by Portsmouth Councilman Nathan Clark came as the council was to consider making the city a "Second Amendment Constitutional City” – placing it in symbolic opposition to gun-control efforts underway in the newly Democrat-controlled state Assembly.

The proposal, debated before a capacity audience in the council chambers, passed 4-3, according to the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk.

Clark’s gesture also came as the state prepares for a controversial gun-rights rally scheduled for Monday in Richmond, the state capital.

Wait for it...
But he apparently angered at least two members of the council in Portsmouth, an Atlantic coast city about 97 miles from Richmond.

The council critics said Clark should have told them in advance that he planned to bring the weapon – and one of them asked Clark to apologize for not doing so.

"It was a disgrace, disheartening and an embarrassment,” Vice Mayor Lisa Lucas-Burke wrote to the council Thursday, according to the newspaper. "Most of us were blindsided by the display.” Lucas-Burke was among three council members who voted against the "Constitutional City” designation. The others were Councilman Shannon Glover and Mayor John Rowe. Glover had complained of being blindsided by Clark's gesture, the report said.

[...]

Clark himself did not respond to the newspaper’s request for a comment. But the paper reported that Clark had issued a press release announcing his plan to bring the weapon to the meeting. [Emphasis added]
So those "blindsided by the display"(a.k.a. triggered) hadn't bothered to read the paper beforehand. Isn't it usually that way with Leftist critics?

I've left out lots of "the good stuff," hoping you'll go here https://www.foxnews.com/politics/virginia-city-official-brings-ar-15-style-rifle-to-council-meeting-triggering-some-colleagues to read the entire article.

I like the idea of people being "triggered" by guns, don't you?

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New Research Proves no Racism in Prosecutions

Timothy Birdnow

New research proves what conservatives have been claiming for a long time, namely, that the disparity in prosecutions and sentencing between whites and blacks in America is not a coefficient of racism but rather a function of the severity and barbarity of the crimes committed aka blacks commit more and worse crimes.

From Physorg:

America's prison populations are disproportionately filled with people of color, but prosecutors' biases toward defendants' race and class may not be the primary cause for those disparities, new research from the University of Arizona suggests.

Well, well, well; we've been told for a long time - and public policy has been moving toward emptying prisons as a result - that it is just racism that causes disparity in prosecutions and sentencing. The article continues:

The new study, led by Christopher Robertson, a professor of law and associate dean for research and innovation at the James E. Rogers College of Law, involved a controlled experiment with prosecutors, asking them to examine the same hypothetical case but changing the race and class of the defendant.

The study, administered online, provided prosecutors with police reports describing a hypothetical crime, which the researchers designed with assistance from experienced prosecutors. All details of the case were the same except for the suspect's race—either black or white—and occupation—fast-food worker or accountant—to indicate the suspect's socioeconomic status. Roughly half of the prosecutors received one version of the case; the other half received the other.

The study allowed researchers to "really isolate the 's decision-making in a way that mere observational research wouldn't allow," said Robertson, whose co-authors are Shima Baradaran Baughman of the University of Utah and Megan Wright of Penn State. The paper was published in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.

The outcomes the study looked for included whether prosecutors charged a felony, whether they chose to fine the defendant or seek a , and the proposed cost of the fine or length of the sentence.

"When we put all those together, we see the same severity of charges, fines and sentences across all the conditions, whether the defendant was black, whether the defendant was white, whether the had a high-class career or a low-class career," Robertson said. "Differences in the actual outcomes—in the actual behavior of the prosecutors—is what we would have expected if they were biased. But since we see no difference in the outcomes, we concluded that they were not substantially biased."

Will this end the drive to reduce sentences and equalize prosecutions? Do black thugs hold their hands in the air and say "Hands up! Don't shoot!" and get shot down anyway because they were walking while black?

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About Gov. Northam's latest anti-gun shenanigans in Virginia

Dana Mathewson

From time to time Tim and I have posted about the extreme anti-gun tricks that Virginia Governor "Coonman" Northam has been threatening to pull, the latest one being to declare a State of Emergency next Monday (Jan. 20) so that no civilian will be legally able to carry a firearm during Virginia's Lobby Day activities.

Apparently he has carried out his threat, and State Senator Amanda Chase (R) has posted a mournful letter on her website about it. In it, she explains "how we were all set up." I urge you to read it and understand that if "Coonman" gets away with this, the whole country is at risk.


Senator Chase is obviously articulate and a keen observer of the scene!

(Note: Dana corrected the Governor's unofficial nickname on 1/19. It's "Coonman," not "Coondog." Sorry for the mistake.)

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Fat Disease

Timothy Birdnow

Interesting; obesity, diabetes, and heart disease may be catching.

From the article:

The authors base their hypothesis on connections between three distinct lines of evidence. First, they demonstrate that people with a wide range of conditions, from obesity and inflammatory bowel disease to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, have altered microbiomes. Next, they show that altered microbiomes, when taken from diseased people and put into animal models, cause disease. Finally, they provide evidence that the microbiome is naturally transmissible, for example: Spouses who share a house have more similar microbiomes than twins who live separately.

So, you might be fat because you have a disease! That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

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Kleptoparasitism and the Cave Man

Timothy Birdnow

Guess it wasn't  all those paleolithic factories and SUV'S after all.

Just goes to show there was no pastoral paradise prior to industrialization.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-human-caused-biodiversity-decline-millions-years.html

"Our analyses show that the best explanation for the of in East Africa is instead that they are caused by direct competition for food with our extinct ancestors," adds Daniele Silvestro, computational biologist and co-author of the study.

[...]

By investigating the African fossils, we can see a drastic reduction in the number of large carnivores, a decrease that started about 4 million years ago. About the same time, our ancestors may have started using a new technology to get food called kleptoparasitism, he explains.

Kleptoparasitism means stealing recently killed animals from other predators. For example, when a lion steals a dead antelope from a cheetah.

The researchers are now proposing, based on fossil evidence, that stole recently killed animals from other predators. This would lead to starvation of the individual animals and over time to extinction of their entire species.

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Kuds Leader Suleimani Amnetized by Obama

Timothy Birdnow

Here's something I didn't know; part of Obama's Iran scam deal included amnesty for Suleimani.

No wonder the Democrats were angry enough to risk being called traitors; Trump is undoing everything the Lightbringer did!

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Berkeley Administrator Investigated for Kiddie Porn

Timothy Birdnow

U.C. Berkeley budget director Jon Bain-Chekal has been put on administrative leave while he is being investigated for Kiddie Porn. The Administrator was arrested recently for possession.

Is this any surprise, given the radical nature of this institution and the fact that perversion is becoming a part of "wokeness'?

This is where the radical Left is leading us. Not content with mainstreaming homosexuality and now cross dressing, they are boldly going into the final frontier, the sexual exploitation of children.

The American Psychiatric Association had removed pedophilia from it's list of mental disorders but did in fact put it back after a public outcry. It should be noted that the APA removed homosexuality from it's list in the '70's, which led to the eventual mainstreaming of the behavior.

The point is, the Left is chipping away at this; they want sex to be as commonplace as scratching an itch. This goes back to the philosophy of the Marquis De Sade, who advocated sex as a commonplace activity and who has had a profound influence on Western sexual mores ever since.

Western culture is degenerating into pre-Christian thinking. In fact, it is gaining perity with Baal worshippers and other ancient abominations.

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Navajo Tribe Loves China Deal

Timothy Birdnow

The new China trade deal will benefit the Navajo Nation, according to Navajo President Jonathan Nez.

From the article:

Navajo President Jonathan Nez said the tribe has more than 8,200 acres of crops designated for export to Asian markets.

When the Navajo Generating Station shut down in November, it left the tribe searching for new ways to boost its economy.

Nez called the tribe a "sleeping giant" when it comes to economic potential because it has the resources, the land, and the workforce.

The China deal also addresses intellectual property. Navajo Vice President Myron Lizer went to the signing in Washington and said he's optimistic it will deter the sale of counterfeit items marketed as authentic Navajo jewelry.

Now liberals say minorities have to be believed, and most especially Native Americans. So are we now to change that view since these Native Americans are clearly happy about something our President has done?

I see at least one tribe that is probably going to vote Republican in the next election.

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Homeless Seniors in ARizona

Timothy Birdnow

There has been a big spike in homeless senior citizens in Arizona, according to a charity that runs a homeless shelter.

From an interview on KJZZ in Phoenix:

So affordable housing is definitely one of the big narratives behind this. I want to talk also about lack of savings, lack of retirement plans. Like I'm reading a little bit about this. It looks like more seniors are renting, more seniors are retiring with less in the bank account than they have in past generations. Are you hearing stories like that?

What does that tell us, class?

Arizona is crawling with illegal aliens. So who is taking up all the "affordable housing"?

If you add a bunch of poor people to your region you have a housing shortage. And nobody is going to build because these are people who won't be able to pay, or who will tear the place up if they can.

And they do; I have worked in property management for a long time and have seen it. Often migrant workers tear up their domiciles. So who is going to build for people who may not be able to pay and may tear the place up?

And as for savings, who is to blame on that score? How much has the government confiscated from these people over the years? 

The interview continues;

So here at our shelter in downtown Phoenix, we have 470 beds. Monthly, we turn away 500 people, approximately, who need shelter. So there are people living on the streets who want to get off the street. So we don't have enough beds, number one. Being able to properly meet the needs of a growing population with even more needs is a second challenge. Some of the solutions we are looking at is building a model program for senior citizens. And secondly — and I think this is the one that's really needed — is building a smaller shelter in another part of the county just for the 55-plus population that is tailored to meet their unique needs. Smaller shelter models are really the trend of the future for specialized populations. And that's exactly what we want to do this legislative session and seek funding, one time capital to get it done.

Again, it's clear the problem is too many illegal immigrants are sucking up the services. And the solution is to double down on some of what is causing the problem (the welfare state).

Liberalism causes the problems then can't understand why they are there.

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Won't Happen Here

Timothy Birdnow

Abortions in Missouri have dwindled away.

Republican control of both Houses of Congress and the Governorship saw to that; there is only one abortion clinic operating now, and it is on it's way out. That put a stop to baby killing here.

But, but, but, aren't these people just going to Illinois to get abortions? Maybe so, but they aren't getting them here. It's like a tough sheriff chasing bad guys out of town. Sure, they may rob elsewhere, but it isn't happening here.

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Trades and the Radical Universities

Timothy Birdnow

In an article in NPR about the benefits of going into the trades rather than wasting time and (LOTS of) money on a four year bachelor's degree from Egghead U., the (no doubt liberal) authors of the piece hit on a point that might be overlooked.

From the article:

Construction, along with health care and personal care, will account for one-third of all new jobs through 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There will also be a need for new plumbers and new electricians. And, as politicians debate a massive overhaul of the nation's roads, bridges and airports, the U.S. Department of Education reportsthat there will be 68 percent more job openings in infrastructure-related fields in the next five years than there are people training to fill them.

"The economy is definitely pushing this issue to the forefront," said Amy Morrison Goings, president of the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, which educates students in these fields. "There isn't a day that goes by that a business doesn't contact the college and ask the faculty who's ready to go to work."

Well, isn't that special!

Just three years ago we were told that stagnant economic growth was the new norm and we should get used to it. But a nation that is building, as America obviously is, is not stagnant or in decline. Rather, it is a growing country! This dearth of trades people shows  that America's capitalist system is vibrant, and can only be killed by some insane governmental policy (like Barack Obama imposed during his tenure of office.)

This article makes other important points:

In a new report, the Washington State Auditor found that good jobs in the skilled trades are going begging because students are being almost universally steered to bachelor's degrees.

Among other things, the Washington auditor recommended that career guidance — including choices that require less than four years in college — start as early as the seventh grade.

"There is an emphasis on the four-year university track" in high schools, said Chris Cortines, who co-authored the report. Yet, nationwide, three out of 10 high school grads who go to four-year public universities haven't earned degrees within six years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. At four-year private colleges, that number is more than 1 in 5.

Now, why is that?

Well, for starters, it illustrates the power of Big Teach. Every teacher in school and every counselor has been educated in a college program and forced to take education courses. They are being taught to believe college is absolutely necessary. Who is teaching them? University professors, who have a vested interest in more college students - and more tuition money.

Colleges have become nothing but a shakedown of parents and a brainwashing exercise. Very little actual education occurs - especially at the pre-grad level. But the universities control the levers of power and they can compel young people to attend with the threat of poverty.  But there is a perfectly viable option, as this article points out.

Another point; if the trades are going unfilled then who is going to do the work?  Answer: aliens.  This is a vehicle for promoting immigration, both legal and illegal. I rather suspect the college stuffed shirts know this, too, and that is why they promote universal college at the expense of the trades. They WANT lots of immigration. They want it to expand their beloved Democratic Party. They want it to "right the wrongs" of America's lilly white founding. They want it to punish those hayseeds in Middle America who dare challenge their divine right to rule.

So how do you do it? Use your influence to cause a massive labor shortage and then bring a new populace into the country.

Eventually they'll make it obligatory to get a bachelor's degree just to do these jobs, to be iron workers or sheet rockers or whatnot. I promise you that is where they will go if more kids start moving into the trades.

I have a friend who has been an RN for thirty years. He got a bachelors in business, decided he didn't want to do that, so went and got an associates degree in nursing. During the Obama years the government mandated that an associates was not acceptable, and he had to go back and get a whole new degree in nursing, despite the fact the man has been a nurse for decades. It was a sop to Big Ed. It was not necessary. At a time when health care costs keep rising the last thing you want to do is make it more expensive to hire people, which is exactly what this did. Someone starting out with an associates degree would work for less and do as good a job. There is nothing more a classroom can teach. But the government decreed it anyway. See, it's not about what is good for the People or the economy. It's what is good for those in power.

Right now a labor dearth is good for those in power.

Eventually that will change. U.N. Agenda 21/30 advocates more "worker drone" education, meaning they want people trained to do manual labor and leave the thinking to the Big Brains. America will indeed comply; we've complied with much of what the U.N. was selling in this anyway. But they can't afford to do this until they pay off the universities, which is the citadel of Satan, the core from which all Progressive ideas generate. Colleges are the key to societal devolution. The left cannot afford to let this wonderful tool fade away. But they need to promote worker drones as well.

Obviously they'll make it necessary to get a degree in tradesmanship.

Doubt that? Again, from the article:

It's not that finding a job in the trades, or even manufacturing, means needing no education after high school. Most regulators and employers require certificates, certifications or associate degrees.

No doubt.

In all fairness, a big part of why American kids aren't going into the trades is that they are lazy. Manual labor doesn't suit them. They would rather be playing on a computer than working outside on a cold day, installing pipe or whatnot.

So college is the solution. It allows them to not make any decisions on their lives and at the same time to loaf about. They hope they will stumble into some very high paying job that requires little of them. It is unrealistic, but it's what they've been taught over the years.

Of course, that plays right into the hands of the immigrationists, who then can point to bad work ethic to demand allowing "hard working immigrants" to take "jobs Americans just won't do". And with the slothful nature of the Millenials, it is not a hard argument to make.

That's why American kids used to get jobs when they were teenagers. Now they don't, because the "living wage" means adults take those jobs and so do illegal aliens. Kids no longer have after school jobs and never learn a good work ethic. The end result is they are woefully unprepared for the labor force, but perfect for colleges, where they will stay for six years or so trying to "find themselves" all the while running up massive debt and owing Uncle Sam. And the builders and maintenance companies STILL need more people than they can find, so they look south of the border.

It's a machine, a self-reinforcing system that generates losers and brings in money to the colleges and aliens to supplant the lazy Americans.

At the heart of all this are the universities, especially the Ivy League. Until we circumvent these radical institutions America will continue to decline.

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January 17, 2020

The Nazi Roots of the Left

Timothy Birdnow

In Nazi Oaks Dr. Mark Musser argues (quite convincingly) that National Socialism was rooted in environmentalism and the Holocaust was an attempt to keep Germany "pure" from an "invasive species". Nazism was rooted in the Romantic movement and has close kinship with so many of the modern Leftist/Progrssive views of today (which is why so many Progressives use abuse and coercion as tactics.) Nazi Germany was the "Greenest" nation up to that point, and perhaps ever.

It has always seemed clear that the modern Left has roots in National Socialism, and especially modern environmentalists. Here is the proof.

After a lengthy discussion about the Romantic roots of so many of the movements of our time - such as veganism, environmentalism, radical activism, etc. these deep leftists admit their movement's ties to National Socialism.

From the book excerpt:

This perennial trend of critique and utopian vision was bolstered by Romanticism, a cultural and artistic movement that began in the latter half of the eighteenth century in Western Europe. It was at least partly a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment, which valued rationality and science. The image of the Enlightenment was the machine, with the living cosmos reduced to clockwork. As the industrial revolution gained strength, rural lifeways were destroyed while urban areas swelled with suffering and squalor. Blake’s dark, Satanic mills destroyed rivers, the commons of wetlands and forests fell to the highest bidder, and coal dust was so thick in London that the era could easily be deemed the Age of Tuberculosis. In Germany, the Rhine and the Elbe were killed by dye works and other industrial processes. And along with natural communities, human communities were devastated as well.

Romanticism revolved around three main themes: longing for the past, upholding nature as pure and authentic, and idealizing the heroic and alienated individual. Germany, where elements of an older pagan folk culture still carried on, was in many ways the center of the Romantic movement.

How much of this Teutonic nature worship was really drawn from surviving pre-Christian elements, and how much was simply a Romantic recreation—the Renaissance Faire of the nineteenth century—is beyond the scope of this book. Suffice it to say, there were enough cultural elements for the Romantics to build on.

[...]

In Germany, the combination of Romanticism and nationalism created an upswell of interest in myths. They spurred a widespread longing for an ancient or even primordial connection with the German landscape. Youth are the perennially disaffected and rebellious, and German youth in the late nineteenth century coalesced into their own counterculture. They were called Wandervogel or wandering spirits. They rejected the rigid moral code and work ethic of their bourgeois parents, romanticized the image of the peasant, and wandered the countryside with guitars and rough-spun tunics. The Wandervogel started with urban teachers taking their students for hikes in the country as part of the Lebensreform (life reform) movement. This social movement emphasized physical fitness and natural health, experimenting with a range of alternative modalities like homeopathy, natural food, herbalism, and meditation. The Lebensreform created its own clinics, schools, and intentional communities, all variations on a theme of reestablishing a connection with nature. The short hikes became weekends; the weekends became a lifestyle. The Wandervogel embraced the natural in opposition to the artificial: rural over urban, emotion over rationality, sunshine and diet over medicine, spontaneity over control. The youth set up "nests” and "antihomes” in their towns and occupied abandoned castles in the forests. The Wandervogel was the origin of the youth hostel movement. They sang folk songs; experimented with fasting, raw foods, and vegetarianism; and embraced ecological ideas—all before the year 1900. They were the anarchist vegan squatters of the age.

Environmental ideas were a fundamental part of these movements. Nature as a spiritual source was fundamental to the Romantics and a guiding principle of Lebensreform. Adolph Just and Benedict Lust were a pair of doctors who wrote a foundational Lebensreform text, Return to Nature, in 1896.

[...]

Landauer spoke to the leftist writers, artists, intellectuals, and youths who felt alienated by modernity and urbanism and expressed a very real need—emotional, political, and spiritual—for community renewal. He had a full program for the revolutionary transformation of society. Rural communes were the first practical step toward the end of capitalism and exploitation. These communities would form federations and work together to create the infrastructure of a new society based on egalitarian principles. It was an A to B plan that never lost sight of the real conditions of oppression under which people were living. After World War I, roughly one hundred communes were formed in Germany, and, of those, thirty were politically leftist, formed by anarchists or communists. There was also a fledgling women’s commune movement whose goal was an autonomous feminist culture, similar to the contemporary lesbian land movement in the US.

Where did this utopian resistance movement go wrong? The problem was that it was, as historian Peter Weindling puts it, "politically ambivalent.”18 Writes Weindling, "The outburst of utopian social protest took contradictory artistic, Germanic volkish, or technocratic directions.”19 Some of these directions, unhitched from a framework of social justice, were harnessed by the right, and ultimately incorporated into Nazi ideology. Lebensreformactivities like hiking and eating whole-grain bread were seen as strengthening the political body and were promoted by the Nazis. "A racial concept of health was central to National Socialism,” writes Weindling. Meanwhile, Jews, gays and lesbians, the mentally ill, and anarchists were seen as "diseases” that weakened the Germanic race as a whole.

Ecological ideas were likewise embraced by the Nazis. The health and fitness of the German people—a primary fixation of Nazi culture—depended on their connection to the health of the land, a connection that was both physical and spiritual. The Nazis were a peculiar combination of the Romantic and the Modern, and the backward-looking traditionalist and the futuristic technotopians were both attracted to their ideology. The Nazi program was as much science as it was emotionality. Writes historian David Blackborn,

National socialism managed to reconcile, at least theoretically, two powerful and conflicting impulses of the later nineteenth century, and to benefit from each. One was the infatuation with the modern and the technocratic, where there is evident continuity from Wilhelmine Germany to Nazi eugenicists and Autobahnbuilders; the other was the "cultural revolt” against modernity and machine-civilization, pressed into use by the Nazis as part of their appeal to educated élites and provincial philistines alike.20



Modern Liberalism is no longer liberal but radical and has at it's roots a hatred of Christianity, of reason and rationality, and of the family. It is Nazism with a friendly face, but the iron boot is still there.

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Florida SCOTUS says Felons Have to Pay Up First

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that felons (at least some) must pay off their fines before getting their vote back.

From Fox:

"The Governor asks whether the phrase 'all terms of sentence'encompasses legal financial obligations (LFOs)—fines, restitution, costs, and fees ordered by the sentencing court," the opinion said.

The court responded: "We answer in the affirmative, concluding that 'all terms of sentence'encompasses not just durational periods but also all LFOs imposed in conjunction with an adjudication of guilt."

DeSantis said Thursday he was "pleased" with the court's decision.

A moment of sanity here. Nothing like giving votes to criminals. Why should we? We already have Congress for that.

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Utah Lawmaker Seeks to Break Seal of Confessional

Timothy Birdnow

What part of  shall make no law concerning the establishment of religion or PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE" doesn't this jackass get?

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/utah-lawmaker-moves-to-break-seal-of-confession-calls-catholic-backlash-soft-threat

Earlier this week, we contacted the Speaker of the House in the Utah legislature, Rep. Brad R. Wilson, expressing our outrage over a bill sponsored by his Democratic colleague, Rep. Angela Romero, that would vitiate the seal of Confession. The pretext of her legislation is knowledge of the sexual abuse of minors learned in the confessional.

We are very pleased with the response by Speaker Wilson: he is opposed to the Romero bill. Rep. Romero is now doubling down, saying she is going forward with her bill, accusing me of making a "soft threat.”

Romero is obviously referring to the following concluding portion of my letter of January 10 to her. "You are treading on dangerous territory. When the government seeks to police the sacraments of the Catholic Church — or encroach on the tenets and practices of any world religion — it is gearing up for a court fight. The First Amendment secures religious liberty, and that entails separation of church and state.”


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I will Spew You from My Mouth

Timothy Birdnow

The House of Representatives passed a radical pro-homosexual bill that supports abortion and transgenderism. A number of Catholics voted for it - and not just Democrats, but REPUBLICAN Catholics.

From Lifesitenews:

On October 30, 2008, Barack Obama said, "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." The legal policy changes wrought under the Obama Administration paved the way for the so-called Equality Act, HR 5, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives on May 17, 2019 by a vote of 236 to 173. The Equality Act would fundamentally and radically alter Civil Rights Law to prohibit "discrimination" on the basis of "sexual orientation" and "gender identity," in the same way racial discrimination is prohibited. Analysis by pro-life and pro-family organizations, as well as the U.S. Catholic Bishops, have warned that the Equality Act would:

  • Require faith-based hospitals, doctors and nurses to participate in and/or to perform or assist with abortions or lose their medical licenses;
  • Require tax funding of all abortions without restrictions;
  • Mandate that any entity that provides health care for pregnancy and childbirth be required to provide abortion as a "related medical condition";
  • Force women to share private, intimate spaces with men who "identify" as female including in bathrooms, lockers, schools, hospitals, prisons, gyms, military barracks and homeless shelters;
  • Disallow Catholic and private school single sex sports teams from competing against public school sports teams, which will no longer be permitted to have "discriminatory" single sex teams;
  • Decertify Catholic and Christian schools from satisfying state compulsory attendance laws if they refuse to adopt LGBTQ policies, treating religious schools as "hate groups" comparable to the Ku Klux Klan;
  • Forbid groups like the Knights of Columbus, Catholic Charities and Christian non-profits from receiving community block grants from local governments for housing for the disabled or seniors unless they accommodate the LGBTQ agenda including hiring those who identify as homosexual or transgender;
  • Prohibit Catholic schools and parishes from obtaining construction loans from federally chartered banks or savings institutions unless the schools and churches implement the LGBTQ agenda including hiring active homosexual and transgender teachers in same sex "marriages";
  • Remove children from the legal custody of their parents if they try to prevent their minor children from taking cancer-causing, puberty-blocking drugs or cross-sex hormones recommended by school counselors or provided by social welfare agencies;
  • End women-only or men-only shelters serving drug addicts, the battered, and the homeless;
  • Decertify foster care and adoption agencies which do not place children with homosexual partners;
  • Require small businesses owned by Catholics to promote and affirm LGBTQ sexual behavior or face fines and/or loss of their business licenses;
  • Remove the tax-exempt status of Catholic churches and agencies if they fail to "celebrate" same-sex "weddings." The Equality Act would classify churches as "public accommodations" (like hotels and restaurants), prohibited from denying services on account of sexual orientation, in the same manner services cannot now be denied on account of race.

The article tells us that no fewer than six Catholic Republicans joined the 74 Catholic Democrats in support of this bill, which is anathema to core Catholic teaching.

The article goes on to discuss the desperate need to excommunicate these people, and the Church's pucillanimous fear of rocking the boat - and capsizing the treasure boat.

The article continues:

Are our bishops, when confronted with obviously anti-Catholic legislation, required to correct politicians, especially Catholic politicians, who support such policies, or is private criticism enough? In October, 2004, Pope St. John Paul II met in Rome with representatives of the U.S. Catholic bishops where he spelled out the bishops' duties: "remember that your sacred responsibility to teach, sanctify and govern cannot be surrendered to anyone else: it is your personal vocation."

Regarding life, marriage and God's creation of "male and female," much more could be taught through pastoral letters, Prayers of the Faithful offered during Mass, notices in Church bulletins, letters read at Mass, articles in Catholic newspapers and social media as well as messages publicizing the Sacrament of Reconciliation and retreats to offer hope and forgiveness to reach those who have undergone abortion. Some of the most powerful witnesses in defense of human life have been open about their past abortion wounds.

If there is reluctance to speak about the sacredness of human life and the evil of abortion from the pulpit, I offer the experience of one Christian pastor who feared that if he mentioned abortion in a sermon, it could hurt the post-abortive women in his congregation. It wasn't until after he counseled numerous distraught women from his church, that he realized he could have spared these women deep suffering if he had spoken the truth earlier. He subsequently changed his thinking and his sermons.

Jesus told his apostles that when a town does not receive them to "shake the dust off your feet and move on". You are not supposed to coax, cajole, and beg. You are to present your case and if it is not accepted so be it.

But the modern Catholic Church is more interested in getting people to show up and contribute than in actually standing firm. They think the way to get a full collection plate is by conforming to the vanities of the modern world. But who goes to church to be entertained? And if not, what is the Catholic faith offering these days? Certainly not certainty, or moral fiber.

We are in a spiritual war. We always have been, but in the last fifty or so years it has become a kill-or-be-killed battle for the soul of Mankind. The other side has all of the weaponry, the media, the political class, the corporations. They control all of the high ground. Our side has only the Truth (and the Great Almighty God). We MUST speak the Truth, always, and keep speaking it. That is the only way we can save Mankind, save souls, save lives.

The Enemy is in the gates right now. They have penetrated the Catholic Church, and many other churches as well. If we don't want to be routed we have got to come out fighting. Too few on our side want that. So many fear the world. Like high school girls afraid of the mean popular ones, our side cowers or flatters, but fears taking a stand.

Well, it's about our last stand at this point, and we had better be taking it soon.

In the Book of Revelation Jesus condemns the Church of Laodecia for cowardice and indifference "You are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were hot or cold, but as you are not I will spew you out of my mouth."  The modern Church is neither hot nor cold, just indifferent. Money and influence appear all concerns itself with these days, and so Jesus will spew it from his mouth.

Just as Yahweh kicked the Canaanites out of the Holy Land, and even sent His people into exile, so too He will not shrink from exiling His Church if the need arises. And it has arisen. It no longer has any worth or dignity.

It will be most unpleasant being spewn from the Lord's mouth.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:00 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Ashes to Ashes

Timothy Birdnow

A very sad and poignant observation from the Philippines:

The beautiful scenery here in Tagaytay are now covered with ashes and all fine trees and beautiful flowers are destroyed by volcanic eruption
and the sad thing is that even their livestock and their livelihood are also covered with ashes and died😥
Let us all pray🙏for the safety of our brother's and sister's who live near in Taal volcano in nearby areas and ours as well.

Fair Ylen

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:25 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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82nd Airborn Replaces marines at iraqi Embassy

Timothy Birdnow

An interesting development in Iraq. The Marines guarding the U.S. embassy are being replaced by the 82nd Airborn.

What is interesting is that Marines normally guard embassies. Bringing in the 82nd suggests they expect to do some serious fighting in the near future. Now, the Marines are entirely capable of doing serious fighting, but the 82nd is an Army unit and as such is designed for long term fighting - and can be reinforced from the air. 

According to the article:

Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team will replace about 100 Marineswho were previously sent to bolster security forces at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, a U.S. Central Command spokesperson told Army Times.

Citing operational security, the official said they would not discuss the size of the force sent to the embassy or the timeline for their arrival.

The Marines, who came from the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response unit, will transition security duties at the embassy to an element of the 82nd’s Immediate Response Force brigade, the CENTCOM spokesperson said.

A majority of the paratroopers from that unit, totalling about 3,500 soldiers, are remaining in Kuwait. Stars and Stripes first reported the latest movement Wednesday

Looks like somebody is expecting heightened security for a long time.

Anyone with more experience with the military have any theories?

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:17 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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"Provoked the Anger of Hell" New Book by Pope Benedict

Timothy Birdnow

Pope Benedict XVI co-authored a book on celibacy and the priesthood, and it has generated a firestorm in the Vatican and Catholic world. David Martin gives us the story at Camada Free Press:

It was reported Tuesday that Benedict XVI has requested of Ignatius Press, the English publisher of the book, that he be removed as co-author. In commentsto the Italian news agency ANSA, Benedict XVI’s confidant and personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, said he has "acted on instructions from the pope emeritus and asked Cardinal Robert Sarah to contact the book’s publisher and request that they remove Benedict XVI’s name as co-author of the book, and remove his signature from the introduction and conclusion.”

Whether this request comes from Benedict XVI or Ganswein was pressured into saying this remains to be seen, but there is no question that the liberal Vatican bureaucracy is behind this move to remove Benedict as co-author. According to Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Cardinal Sarah’s intervention in getting this book published "has provoked, so to speak, the anger of hell.”

Critics of the book say it "opposes” Pope Francis by raising the "specter of a parallel magisterium” when in fact the book upholds the true Magisterium against Francis’ counter-magisterium.

According to an inside Vatican report from Antonio Socci, it was an enraged Pope Francis who "personally summoned Monsignor Ganswein, Benedict’s secretary, but also Prefect of Bergoglio’s Papal Household and, furious, ordered him to have Benedict XVI’s name removed from the cover of the book.” (Rorate-Caeli )

What is certain is that Benedict XVI previously approved the book. Cardinal Sarah, who heads the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship, issued a statement Tuesday confirming Benedict’s foreknowledge and approval of the book. Therein he states: "After various exchanges in view of the development of the book, on November 19, I finally sent a manuscript, the cover, a common introduction and conclusion, the text of Benedict XVI and my own text.”

This stinks to high Heaven. The Progressives in the Vatican forced the then-elderly Benedict out as Pontiff, and now a sick, aged man is being bullied into denying his authorship on something that disagrees with the dreams of a Progressive Utopian Church.

And it appears Pope Francis, the Apostate, is behind all of this.

Just what is happening inside the walls of the Vatican?

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:52 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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