The Gnostic Church

Fay Voshell

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The Real Cause of High Fuel Prices

Timothy Birdnow

Yep:

Assemblyman Vince Fong

California policies and taxes add more than one dollar to every gallon of gasoline! This is what is driving up the cost to fuel up in our state. #FongFacts #FlashbackFriday

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The Farce of Neo-Liberalism

Kim Rogalin

"Many people describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, open to some experience of the numinous but reject the demands of religion. This is to reduce God to a source of pleasure, not a personal being. Real relationships make demands.”---Salvatore Cordileone

more...

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The Oscar De La Hoyas

Timothy Birdnow

Maybe they should change the name to the Oscar De La Hoya's?

For those who don't know, Will Smith hit host Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife's lack of hair. (He said she would be playing G.I. Jane in her upcoming film.) Smith's wife has an illness that made her lose her hair.

If I had known I could see one of the glitterati  in fisticuffs I would have watched the stupid show. The can assure a regular audience if they do.

I remember Jerry Springer when he first started his show; he wanted to do substantive talk. But his show was floundering so he came up with the crazy fistfighting and the rest. Maybe that's what the Oscars are doing?

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Wallace Chose to Leave Fox?

Sherrie Mathieson

I seriously doubt--it was Wallace who didn't "renew". Like Shep Smith before him--his ratings were deservedly bad. The 2020 debate sealed his fate.

Chris Wallace Finally Shares Why He Left Fox News, Cites Reasons He was no Longer Comfortable

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Follow-up Article on Corruption-Free Redo Voting

Dana Mathewson

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China Muscles in on the Pacific Rim - and the rest

Timothy Birdnow

This is a very bad thing. It can interrupt shipping routes. Remember, this is where we fought the Japanese at Guadalcanal.

China and Solomon Islands Draft Secret Security Pact

Question; who is this pact aimed at? The U.S. is the obvious answer.

Why would the Solomons do this? They see the U.S. falling and China in ascendancy and want to be on the winning side.

Remember Asia for the Asians? The Chinese plan on making a greater version, including Oceania and Australia.

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Focus Less on Free Speech

David C. Moyer

"Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation," Agrawal said in 2020 during an interview with Technology Review’s Editor-in-Chief

Gideon Lichfield. "The kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed."

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Biden Compares Ukrainian Refugees to Southern Invaders

Steven Schueler

Our president is a piece of shit. This is about as false a comparison as it's possible to make.

Biden Compares Poland Taking in Ukrainian Refugees to Migrants on Southern Border

Biden compares Poland taking in two million Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion to the crisis at America's southern border during meeting with Polish President.

How shameless can that man be?

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Deceived

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

Voltaire.

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They ARE Performing Sex Changes on Minors

Stephen Schueler

I wonder if I'll get banned or wrongthink checked for posting this? Politifact says this isn't happening.

Yes, Gender Clinics are Performing Sex Change Operations on Minor Children; We Have the Receipts

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33449463/ says it IS happening.

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Ex FBI Agent in Greitens Affair Let Off without Punishment

Warner Todd Huston

Ex-FBI Agent Admits to Wildly Crooked Action Against Republican Governor, But Has Punishment Immediately Suspended

Only a day before jury selection was to begin in a case to prosecute him for lying in his investigation into a sexual misconduct charge against then-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, former FBI agent William Tisaby pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of evidence tampering on Wednesday, The Associated Press reported.

Unlike what would happen for anyone else, the court quickly sentenced Tisaby to probation — and then immediately turned around and suspended the sentence and released him.

Tim adds:

Warner, you said Greitens was largely exonerated when the charges were dropped, but it actually went back to the trial when the defense demanded Gardner produce the photos and she had to admit she did not have them. It was the end of the prosecution.

But she vowed to keep bringing charges until she got something, and other Democrat prosecutors around the state agreed to do likewise, so Greitens had to resign.

It was a disgraceful affair, because the GOP refused to lift a finger to defend him. They hated him because he was an outsider and because he was taking the bread from their mouths; he was trying to put a five year wait period on legislators before they could become lobbyists, for example. He was trying to clean up state government.

And they hated him for the same reason the GOP hated Trump. He just walked in and took over the party.

Unfortunately, he presented a rather arrogant face and none of the Republicans could stand him. I didn't vote for him in the primaries and still think he was a bad choice (he had been a Democrat, which is why they were so eager to get him.)

But you NEVER let the enemy take out one of your own. The GOP is full of fools and self-seeking scoundrels. And Missouri Republicans are particularly dim witted.

A lot of conservative Missouri Republicans despise Greitens, say he is corrupt. He may well be. But that is immaterial; you take him out yourself. You never, ever let the Democrats and the media do it. That's the way you wind up losing.

Greitens is running for U.S. Senator and is actually a frontrunner, polling second in the current matchup. I pray he doesn't get the nomination, because the media will tar him and he may well lose in the general. The average voter will not understand the subtleties, just believe Greitens is guilty of something for which he has never been convicted.

Oh, and Kim Gardner, the St. Louis BLM Prosecutor, won her re-election bid handily and is still turning St. Louis into a crime-riddled hellhole reminiscent of Mogadishu. It was Gardner who prosecuted that couple who brandished firearms at the trespassing BLM mob, for instance.

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Sorry, the Risk was too Great

Timothy Birdnow

Putin "You sank my battleship!"

Russian 5 Thousand Ton Battleship Sunk; Why Russia Failed to Intercept an Outdated Ballistic Missile

This will force Putin to act in reprisal.

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Don't Confuse Me with the Facts!

Stephen Heins

As my second ex-wife screamed at me, "Facts, facts, stupid facts, don’t bother me with the stupid facts” in 1988.

N.ew Jersey Governor Wants to Force Use of Electric Boilers - 50% Higher Rates

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Exercising Makes You a Nazi

Warner Todd Huston

Woke MSNBC Now Says You're a 'Neo-Nazi' if You Exercise

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Remember!

Willis Eschenbach

Something to remember when you next go to the polls. Democrats are now seriously advancing and defending the following points:

1. The word "woman" has no definition;

2. Children should be indoctrinated in sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten;

3. Men in dresses have an absolute right to invade any and all womens' spaces, including sports, jails, showers, dressing rooms, bathrooms, and domestic violence shelters;

4. Disparity is prima facie evidence of discrimination;

5. Unless the disparity is men in women's sports, in which case it's prima facie evidence of compassion;

6. Black people are not responsible for what they do today, but white people are responsible for what their great-great-gra ndparents did a century and a half ago.

Vote the Democrats out, root and branch. This insanity is destroying a once-proud country.

Tim adds:

Sadly few Americans will remember any of this when they go to vote (or vote by mail, or carrier pidgeon, or smoke signal, or any other way the Democrats devise to help them find "all the votes".)

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Musk Poll on Twitter

Lance Sjogren

Tim ads:

The problem is too many alternatives and you will not have one move into ascendancy that eclipses Twitter. The competitors will knock each-other out and leave Twitter the last man standing. We've seen that happen repeatedly in industry in the past.

I'd like to see Musk buy up the competing platforms and consolidate them into a real, sound alternative.

I know; usually more is good in business. But in this case I think we need one good, strong one. It is, after all, going against a de-facto monopoly. There is a reason why laws against Trusts were created in the first place; at some point it becomes impossible to challenge such an entitty.

Twitter, Google, and Facebook are the unholy trinity of evil. And how do you challenge their tripartite hegemony?

Now it's like shooting bb guns at an invading army.

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Licenced Gun Owners Pawns In Political Stunt

James Doogue

I decided to join my shooting club's shotgun competition today. It was my first attempt and my score reflected that. But I had a great time and was able to not give much thought to all the ills in the world for almost 4 hours.

I was talking to one of the regulars, a 19 year old female who's been shooting since she was 12 years old. One of the reasons she gave for spending her Saturday shooting is that she is treated better by the club's members than anywhere else in her life. She said everyone is so nice, and she never feels like she is being judged or condescended.

What she says is true. A nicer bunch of people you'd never meet. And it's a family pastime with a lot of parents and children participating.

In fact the reality of licenced gun owners that I meet is the polar opposite to the impression the state governments are giving in their push to make owning guns more difficult.

State Premiers, Ministers of Police and Police Commissioners commenced a concerted propaganda program recently to soften the community up for harsher gun laws. They know it makes them seem tough on crime, and they also know they will get little pushback from voters as less than 3.5% of the Australian population are licenced gun owners. In Western Australia there are just 89,000 licenced gun owners so the Government thinks they will have no discernable voter pushback.

None of the government propaganda I've seen establishes a link between legally licenced gun owners and gun crimes. So any crackdown on legal gun owners will have no impact on gun crimes.

In the press releases in Western Australia our politicians and Police Commissioner have been deliberately misinforming the public to soften them up for whatever new restrictions they plan. Let's have a look at some of their outrageous comments.

Premier Mark McGowan says the laws need to be overhauled to protect the safety of the community.

"We’ll consult broadly across the community,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

"We want to make sure that very responsible and safe gun ownership is not affected but we enhance community safety across the State, prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands and make sure that they are stored in a safe, secure way.”

McGowan presented zero evidence that legally owned firearms are "getting into the wrong hands". He also implies that guns are not currently stored in a safe and secure way. I guess he figures the majority of the public won't know that all gun owners are required to store weapons and ammunition in gun safes which have at least four bolts attaching it to the wall or floor on two sides. Gun owners are required to provide police with pictures of their gun safe installation before a firearms licence will be issued, and police may inspect the safe and firearms at any time.

Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said it was currently easier to get a firearm licence than it was for boat owners to get a skipper’s ticket.

"Many people, I know, have been able to lawfully license a weapon and never had a day or an hour’s training. That I think needs to change,” he said.

I don't know what type of people the commissioner hangs out with, but the licenced firearms owners I know had to pass a multi choice test with 100% accuracy relating to gun laws and safety before they could apply for a firearms licence. Firearms owners in the country usually receive training from parents. In the city it is more typical to be a member of a sports shooting club where all new members are trained and supervised

In the same article we are told, 'Among the guns registered in WA are about a dozen military-grade sniper rifles, with Mr Dawson saying police had been unable to have the licences revoked.'

"I don’t consider that that type of weapon should be available for civilian and community use,” he said.

This is just pure scare mongering. I know an owner of a military grade sniper rifle. It's from World War One, and is simply a 'collectors' item but must still be licenced. My 0.223 calibre centre-fire rifle can shoot further and straighter than that rifle ever could.

But regardless, the fact that these licenced rifles exist and have never been used in a crime in WA should demonstrate that the licencing of these rifles is not a problem.

Meanwhile if Commissioner Dawson wants to ban items which are regularly used in the commission of crime, and have been involved in killing and harming people, then he should be campaigning to take cars, motor bikes, knives, baseball bats, and military grade balaclavas out of the public's possession.

Meanwhile, WA Police Minister Paul Papalia said "the focus will be on enhancing community safety."

"The laws associated with guns should elevate community safety to the first and primary consideration," he said.

Does the same apply to cars, motorbikes, trucks, aircraft? I know people who are driving on the road today who haven't had a driving test for 50 or 60 years. We have a high rate of vehicle accidents and injuries, why isn't he making it harder to own vehicles?

Many vehicles are stolen and used in the commission of crimes. Perhaps he should be proposing vehicles have the same safety storage requirements that firearms have?

Minister Paul Papalia went on, "You've got to think, that with (almost) 350,000 firearms in the community, some of them, many of them probably are lying around just waiting to be stolen by criminals."

This is just a really stupid comment. He can't honestly believe this, and he doesn't provide any data on the incidence of gun theft. It's blatantly untrue. Firearms are required to be stored in specially installed gun safes. If many guns were just lying around waiting to be stolen, then there would also be a high incidence of gun accidents by untrained people getting their hands in these guns left lying around.

McGowan and his minister and commissioner have all claimed that it's the first time gun laws have been rewritten since the 1970's. Again, this is a demonstrably false statement. Australian gun laws have been ammended and rewritten continuosly since the 1970's. When I got my first firearms licence it was a matter of going to your local police station and paying a fee. It wasn't a requirement to licence individual firearms.

Today, it is a very long drawn out process to get a firearms licence, and each firearm must be licenced. But who can forget the 1996 Port Arthur shooting massacre following which automatic rifles were made illegal in Australia, and magazine capacities were reduced?

The Police minister also expressed concern that licenced gun owners have more guns. He stated that WA residents currently own more than 349,000 guns, an increase of 60 per cent since 2009. But the number of gun licenses has remained the same at just over 89,000, meaning licence-holders are owning more guns.

So what? He's making it seem menacing that people who legally own guns, have increased the number of guns they own by an average of 1.5 guns in the last 13 years. He knows that to a none gun owner, that might seem an unnecessary increase. I've heard some none gun owners say why does anyone need a gun let alone more than one gun?

People with that mindset assume people want guns for protection, or they want guns to control feral animals in their country property.

Nobody I know has bought a firearm in Australia for personal protection. It's just not a thing because firearm ownership is very low, and so too is violent crime. Though the latter is sadly rising.

If feral animals are being controlled, most animal loving farmers want them killed in the most humane way. Traps and poisoning are cruel and inhumane. The fastest, most efficient way to kill a feral animal is by shooting. A kill shot means instantaneous death. Which is why many farmers call on gun clubs to provide sharp shooters through the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia 'Farm Assist' program, to help with feral animal problems.

The feral animal to be controlled, will determine the type of firearm needed. Small animals such as rabbits, foxes and cats, can usually be handled with small calibre rifles. Larger animals such as goats, kangaroos, and dogs would usually require medium calibre rifles. Larger feral animals such as pigs, buffalo, camels and horses would require larger calibre rifles.

The distance at which you shoot the animal will also determine the type of firearm. High calibre for long range accuracy, maybe shotguns for short range.

A farmer may also require a hand gun to be used to humanely euthanize suffering animals at close distance. We've seen the need to do this during droughts.

The police minister would know that farmers might easily have the need for 4 or 5 different firearms on their property, but that wouldn't occur to the average none gun owner.

Sporting shooters also use multiple firearms. They may compete in air rifles, hand guns, shotguns, short range, long range, bench rest, practical hunting, or metallic silhouette, and often in different catagories. All requiring different types of firearms.

Shooting is also like any other sport. Golfers, tennis players, cricketers, and hockey players will often collect additional clubs, racquets, bats and sticks during their sporting career. Sometimes they are spares, sometimes they use different ones depending on conditions, and sometimes they just have favourites.

As with farmers, there's nothing unusual or sinister about sporting shooters and hunters owning multiple firearms. The Police Minister would know that, but he doesn't let the truth spoil a good story.

Another quote claimed there were 260,000 illegal firearms in Australia. How do they know that? If they know that why don't the police go and get them? It has nothing to do with legal, licenced firearms owners, so don't claim the licencing rules need to be changed because of it. No change in licencing regulations will reduce illegal firearms.

There's also nothing sinister about wanting to do a sport which requires practice, agility, accuracy, sometimes strength and persistence.

There are plenty of human sports endeavours which involve hitting targets. Darts, archery, javelin, lawn bowls, indoor bowling, hammer throwing, golf, curling, the list goes on. Shooting is no different.

Yes the firearm can be used as a weapon to commit a crime. But so can motor vehicles, or unlicensed items such as knives or baseball bats. Yet the Premier, Police Minister and Police Commissioner are not beating their chest about making it more difficult to own those items.

They figure they can use the relatively small number of licenced firearm owners, to have an appearance of being tough on crime. This needs to be recognised for the political strategy it is, and the general voting public need to give this political stunt short shrift.

Help protect the rights of your very nice neighbours who own firearms.

Tim adds:

James you say

"She said everyone is so nice, and she never feels like she is being judged or condescended. ".

Well, that makes sense; I sure don't want to anger a possibly pms'ing lady with a firearm!

Seriously though, the possession of firearms actually makes people more civil to one another. There is a sense of boundary, that you don't cross a line. As my father used to argue, the very lethality of guns made for a more peaceful society because people realized there were terrible consequences if you escalated a disagreement.

Now, with guns largely banned in much of the world, people actually fight more, and kill more, than they did.

Look at the U.S.; gun crime IS rampant here, but where? In places with the strictest gun control laws. Chicago. New York, Washington, etc. The places where you have an absolute right to carry see fewer crimes, and there is a reason for that.

Also, a gun crime is less atavistic. Killing with, say, a sword gives an electric thrill (I'm guessing, never having killed with a sword) that is missing with the clinical killing of a gun. A gun is too surgical. If you are a thug you would probably prefer to kill with a knife or sword, but use a gun only because it's more convenient.

In the end it's a tool, and one that helped advance civilization. Is there a link between the development of firearms and the rise of the West? Absolutely. But the West is the place where ideas like civil rights developed. Coincidence? I think not.

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Sports as Tool for Training Subservient Citizens

Timothy Birdnow

Bill H. and I were discussing the value of sports and I made the following observation:

I was never a huge sports fan but I liked a few. Football, for example. And I've always been a huge boxing fan (which I pretty much stopped watching when it went to pay per view.) But it's become so political, and on top of that so over-regulated by the officials, that it's not worth watching to me.

Now you can do hardly anything without the officials blowing the whistle. And they blow it in ways that fundamentally affect the game. Sometimes the exact same "foul" will be called differently. It's arbitrary.

I guess I'm paranoid, but sports was and has been used as a tool by the Left to promote societal change, and I sometimes suspect the way penalties are tossed about like confetti is a way of teaching us to obey and accept whatever the "authorities" tell us. And if they pick winners and losers, who are WE to complain?

I suspect most sports are used as a model of societal obedience. They always were in the past. They started as war training, of course.

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Russia's Failure and Putin

Timothy Birdnow

In a discussion about the troubles plaguing Mr. Putin and his army, Dana Mathewson and I had an interesting discussion which I think worth reproducing:

I say:

I'll admit I am surprised the Russians didn't secure the country by now, but then, when you think about it, they weren't invading a much smaller country (like Georgia)but a nation of sizable population. Ukraine has a population of 43,476,153 making it a little under a third of the population of Russia (at 145,830,647). Ukraine is comfortably larger than the population of Canada at 38,311,500.

The Ukraine is also pretty big from a European perspective, being slightly larger than France.

Western Ukraine had been part of the Hapsburg Empire and so is far more Westernized than the other former Soviet Republics.

And it has many resources that most other countries do not. Food is plentiful, for instance, so starving them out is difficult.

AND they have had considerable technical and military support from the West.

So I guess Putin underestimated them. So did I.

The longer this drags out the harder it will be for Russia to continue; it's costing them huge amounts of money.

But, if Putin is facing a disastrous pullout he will have no choice but to take an act of desperation.

I will say this, no matter if Putin remains in power or not, the Russians will not make the mistake of overestimating their own forces again. They will work diligently to improve their military, I see no way around a new cold war.

And they will no doubt try to assert their power again somewhere else. They hold grudges.

Dana replies:

Tim, I think this whole thing is Putin over-estimating his "stuff." It appears that the Russian Army operates differently from others, and it has done them no favors.

I state:

I suspect Putin probably hollowed out the Russian Army of any decent leadership (much as the Democrats have done with our military). The Soviets could have a strong army because they were always ruthless, and "disappeared" anyone who might present a problem. But Putin came into this as a despot-in-the-making and he had to get rid of anyone who might present a challenge to his personal power. As far as I know he didn't use the old Soviet way of sending them to gulags or shooting them, but rather used attrition to retire the more politically unreliable ones. The result would be yes men telling him what he wanted to hear.

Hitler, a johnnie come lately tyrant, had much the same problem. He fired any general in the Wehrmacht who didn't approve of HIS plans and the result was eventually the Allies out-generaled the Germans.

But with Putin it's worse because he has real fears of a coup against him. The Wehrmacht never would have done that, what with the Prussian traditions.

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