Timothy Birdnow

I watched the high mass on EWTN yesterday, broadcast from the National Shrine. I had to; they didn't have mass in the chapel at the hospital and I didn't want to miss now, more than ever. So I put on the television and watched the mass.

it was very llong and while beautiful the homily enraged me. The priest was essentially attacking Trump (while not mentioning him by name) over the shutdown and how terrible it was to not give out SNAP benefits. He complained "I don't know why we have 40 million people on SNAP to begin with but that's another matter" and spoke about how as Christians we had a duty to feed the hungry and so we had a duty to make government pay these people.

I wanted to shake the Bishop; we have 40 million people on SNAP precisely because IT'S FREE and everyone knows it. Why not take a freebie? I guarantee you many on the program hide assets or income to get it too.

I used to date a woman (before meeting my wife, of course) who worked for the Missouri welfare bureau and she told me all the tricks the clients used to get on the dole. One woman was denied because she was covered with expensive jewelry, about ten grand worth, according to my old girlfriend. She was denied and so left for two days, came back without the bling and said "that was my boyfriends and we broke up and he took it back" and by the rules they had to follow they had to give it her the relief.

When I worked in real estate I often encountered this too; Section 8 people with brand new SUV's, new computers, cable t.v. etc. living better than I could.

Groups like the Urban League run programs to teach people how to game the system.

So the fact remains there are forty million on the program because it's there, not because they need it. And by the very fact those not in need take the money we have the truly needy unable to access it. They get pushed out by the goats, by the many snouts in the trough.

The fact is we have plenty of private charity and those do far better at serving the poor than do government programs. Oh, and people give to charity voluntarily whereas government steals money from taxpayers to fund the lifestyles of those who may not be in need at all.

I once wrote an essay at American Thinker about this fact. As I pointed out Jesus did not tell Caesar to give to the poor, he told YOU to do so. God as I pointed out, was the creator of poverty as a curse on Mankind for disobedience, and God can end poverty any time He likes. Povery serves a number of purposes in the Divine plan, and one of those is to give His People the opportunity to be charitable and to render aid and assistance to those less fortunate. This is half of the equation. The Bishop celebrating mass seems completely oblivious to any of this.To him it was just a straight line "they don't have and so society must give" with no considerations to any practicality or human nature. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions; this guy was nothing but good intentions, and in fact was judgmental towards those who considered the practicality.

These are the kinds of people who now run the Church; ivory tower academicians or simple-minded do-gooders who wind up making most situations they involve themselves in worse. The fact is Jesus said to be wise and "cunning as serpents" in our practice of faith, not just soft hearted and softer-headed.

Mos of the Catholic heirarchy is just that; soft of heart and softer of head and what they promote has been horribly destructive to those whom they are intending to help.

It is not love to give people whatever they want. We do that all the time with children, deny them things they want for their ultimate benefit. If we were to give children teh food they want they would eat nothing but ice cream and soda and candy.

There was a wonderful episode of the Andy Griffith show where a hobo who made friends with Opie asked Andy "why not let him choose for himself" and Andy gave a very wise answer "because you can't do that. Because they will grab the first shiny thing that comes along and when they realize there's a hook in it it's too late." In the case of the American poor (who ae wildly wealthy by international standards, I might add) that hook was set purposely by the Democratic Party to make these people dependent on them and on government and thus voting for Democrats forever. Of course the GOP isn't innocent on this either and never tried to rein in the massive spending on welfare programs and other assistance. They just promised to spend the money more wisely. But both offered poisoned fruit to the poor, and to the middle class as well. Now we are tasting the bitterness of that.

I know it's tough to lose a stream of income, especially all at once as is the case with this government shutdown, but unfortunately growth always involves pain. And there is nothing loving about keeping people stuck in permanent adolescence, forever forced to take what you give them and pretend to like it. Government "charity" always provides just a meager life, one outside of your control. Serfs and slaves had the same conditions imposed on them. Granted the poor can choose to work and get off the dole and a slave or serf could not, but how does one get off in the first place? The allure of free money is just too great.

If the Church truly wants to love people and obey the precepts of Jesus they would reject govenment aid and do the job themselves. The Catholic Church is fabulously wealthy; spend more of that money on helping the poor instead of helping promote caravans of illegals to invade America, or for building big Cathedrals, or for so many other things they do with the money that could be used to feed people. If they had to actually do it themselves they would be much wiser stewards of the wealth they are proposing to redistribute.

Aid is not charity. The Catholic Bishops need to grow up and understand that simple fact.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:47 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Timothy Birdnow

Oh my! The Gang Green just lost Bill Gates!

I guess separating from Melinda brought back some common sense to Mr. Gates.

Gates wrote this ahead of COP 30, the planning conference where Agenda 21 and 30 had been hatched at previous incarnations of the climate change auto-da-fe. While he clearly hasn't become one of us "deniers" he's clearly starting to wake up to the anti-humanism of the radical green agenda and fear of carbon emissions.

He joins Bjorn Lombarg, the environmentalist scientists and one of the founders of Greenpeace who has been cast out by the enviro movement for daring to say "well, there might be some warming but we need to look to help humans first".

He joins the 30,000 scientists who signed the Oregon Petition. He joins such big names as Dr. Roy Spencer, John Christy, William Happer, the late S. Fred Singer and Frederick Seitz, Roger Pielke Sr. and Jr., Judith Curry, etc. He is in an august body despite the media claims no credible scientists disagree with the radical agenda of the IPCC and the many COP capers.

After warning that climate change charity is money largely being ill-spent he made the following points:

# Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization.”
# "Temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate.”
# "Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.”

He's especially right about that last (the Third World pollutes far more than do developed nations) and while the U.s. may put out the lion's share of co2, it's generally much cleaner co2 than that put out by the likes of China or India, which mix in unhealthy doses of sulphur and other actual pollutants.

When people are poor they don't worry about cleanliness as much. Making people rich and well-fed makes them cleaner.

Gates urges philanthropists to "to make a strategic pivot: prioritize the things that have the greatest impact on human welfare.”. That is exactly what they should have done all along.

In point of fact we actually ran an accidental experiment a few years ago that had some eye-opening results. During the pandemic economic activity dropped considerably and so did carbon emissions and yet atmospheric carbon dioxide continued to rise and we have seen no minor pause in that even now, despite the fact htat we are five years past the end of the pandemic. Poverty and starvation rose during the pandemic and yet with a reduction in economic activity we saw no reduction in the rate of growth of atmospheric co2.

This suggests that all the economic-busting regulations and restrictions sought by the Gang Green over the years probably has little to no impact on atmospheric co2, nor will they. But they have penty of impact on the poor.

If we care about the poor at all we will turn away from this green madness. Bill Gates may have learned that in his dotage but he seems to have finally figured it out. Now if he will stop his insane campaign to depopulate the planet...

At any rate where Mr. Gates leads others will surely follow. Defund the Gang Green and you defang them. This is a hopeful sign.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:03 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Dear readers and friends,

I am sorry for the hiatus; it is going to be very spotty for a while into the forseeable future I fear.

As Dana Mathewson informed everyone my wife has suffered a return of her cancer and has only been given a weeks to months to live.

I lived at tha hospital all week, eating cafeteria food and sleeping in a not-so-easy chair which gave me a compression sore on my posterior. But I have no grounds to complain; I would live in a blast furnace if it meant being with her now.

She is a warm, wonderful person, sweet and kind and, frankly, saintly. I know people always say that but in her case it's true. Even now she's worried about me more than about herself. I have no doubt she's going straight to Heaven when the end comes - especially after the suffering she's endured over the last decade or so. Her health has been bad for years, with numerous issues which made her disabled and pretty much a shut-in.

But my heart is totally broken. We were married 32 years this October and had been together several years before that. She is my whole life. How do I go on without her? I know I will somehow but right now I can't imagine it; like losing half of myself.

She told me about a dream she had the other day that I thought I should share with everyone. In her dream she was at my mother's house (my mother passed about seven years ago) and wanted to come inside. My mother was at the door and told her she couldn't come in "you don't have your certificate yet". Cathy asked what that meant and Mom replied "you haven't learned enough yet".Inside Cathy saw my brother's deceased mother and father in law and asked why THEY got to come in "because they have their certificates". Cathy asked if she couldn't just ask me and have me tell her what she needed to know and my Mom shook her head "you have to learn it yourself."

What lesson did she need? I don't know, but I suspect it means she needs a little more time on this Earth. Maybe she needs the lesson most of us need before we go, which is to let go and let others carry your burdens. It's very hard; I often wonder if ghosts aren't people who never learnecd THAT particular lesson and so never left this Earth. Who knows? Assuming there are such things as ghosts, of course.

At any rate that was a beautiful and heart breaking story but I thought it worth sharing as it might help others who are going through something similary. And this comports with near death experiences where there is a border one must cross, and often a loved one greets them at the border and tells them it's not yet time. I can understand why it was my Mom too and not her own parents; it's not quite time for her to see them yet and she wouldn't want to leave if she had. And I'm sure my Mom was also looking out for me in this instance and this dream was as much for my benefit as Cathy's.

Anyway that's where we are at. I'm going to try to maintain this blog but it won't be a daily anymore in all probability; time is precious now.

Thank you all for your care and support.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:24 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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