Not Who You Think

 

Today is my birthday.

We went to church. I cried through the entire service.

This past week, we traveled for Thanksgiving where I found myself in the company of too few people; too few in that the impact of the one who harbors unwarranted resentment towards me could not be neutralized by a larger choice of others whom I might have enjoyed conversating with. Last year it was a larger crowd, and I thoroughly enjoyed the others, and myself. I had hoped for a similar experience this year. Foolish me.

Sixty Years Old With Three Little Kids

 

Call this a sequel to She’s “Girl, Just Keep Your Legs Together, And All Will Be Well!” She just turned 70. When I turned 50, I thought nothing of it. I didn’t feel old, and actually, I still don’t. All the years between 50 and 60, I never thought much about retirement, being old, or what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Back in the middle of May, I had a cake with more candles than midnight Mass at St. Paul’s Cathedral. BOOM! It’s time to be responsible and start thinking about retirement. I know. I’m a procrastinator. I’m getting around to fixing that.

I started watching Holy Schmidt on YouTube. He is a financial guy with the perfect amount of dorkiness. Great guy with a lot of good advice. I came up with a financial plan that works for me. I won’t be driving a new Teletubby Jaguar but I’ll be fine. I hear they have TRANSmission problems anyway. I’ll get by but I’m looking for another line of work that has nothing to do with programming or managing people. I’ve had enough of both. Except for people I actually want to talk to, and using my computer to send invoices will be okay, too.

Spurred on by converation with the great Heather MacDonald, Ann takes a look at Trump’s remaining controversial cabinet picks (Hesgeth, Patel and Noem) and asks, “Does character still matter?”

Then she throws down the gauntlet to Vivek Ramaswamy – come on the podcast and tell us what you really think instead of complaining to Ezra Klein.

Hard Hit By Helene, Appalachians Suffer While FEMA Goes Crazy

 

This Thanksgiving, many of my thoughts have been with the Appalachian people who have been hard hit by Hurricane Helene and its aftermaths.

People in the mountainous regions of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee are now braving the heavy rains and high winds of Mother Nature. Due to lack of housing, many people are living in tents. Imagine trying to survive in a tent when it is around 40 degrees out, raining and very windy.

Hunter Biden: Pardon Me

 

Back in September, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked if the President had any plans to pardon his son Hunter. She answered with an emphatic, “No.” Tonight, he did just that.

The younger Biden was scheduled to be sentenced December 12th on a federal gun charge and December 16th on tax evasion charges. The pardon is expected to cover all charges.

Kash Patel for FBI

 

Trump has nominated Kash Patel for FBI director. Wait a sec, isn’t Christopher Wray still FBI director? He hasn’t resigned or been fired yet, but it’s now clear Wray should have his desk packed up by the close of business on January 19. Wray treated Trump, the man who appointed him, with utter contempt; now Trump is paying him back in spades, and I’m loving it. Wray has earned every bit of this treatment.

In positive signs for Patel’s tenure, Morning Joe called him the “personification of MAGA rage.” Even more important, the disgraced Andrew McCabe called him “profoundly unqualified,” and Tom Nichols, a staff writer for the Atlantic magazine, slammed him as “as dangerous as it gets.”

What are Patel’s real qualifications or lack thereof? First, he understands the problem. He has called for the FBI headquarters to be closed and its 7000 staff located there to be sent out to be real cops. He has said that the FBI is too frickin’ big. (Above quotes are from a FoxNews article.)

The Romanovs Resurgent

 

A rescue attempt of the Romanov Imperial family (sponsored by the Germans hoping to stir disorder in Russia) was partially successful. While Tsar Nicholas, his wife, son, and eldest daughter were killed, his three youngest daughters, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia survived.  Tatiana, age 21, declared herself empress and is leading a war to oust the Bolsheviks.

1919: The Romanov Rising, an alternate history novel by Tom Kratman, Kacey Ezell, and Justin Watson, picks up where their earlier work, The Romanov Rescue left off.

Tatiana I, Empress of all the Russias must make that claim a fact. Isolated in Tosbolsk, Siberia with a small faction of loyal supporters, she has to survive the inevitable Bolshevik counterattack when it comes. Then, she has to unite the rest of the anti-Bolshevik factions behind her banner and drive the enemy from Russia.

Pray for Syria

 

The unfolding situation in Syria has the potential to become a major catastrophe in a hurry. Turkish-backed Islamist forces have made serious advances with other attacking Sunni forces in other areas of the country. Simultaneously, US-backed SDF forces (some Arab, some Kurdish) have begun smaller advances against Syrian government forces. There are rumors of a coup with Assad out of the picture.

First: what happened? Basically, the renewed war in Syria is a side effect of the Israeli campaign in Lebanon and the war in Ukraine. The Assad cartel was a major drug dealer; manufacturing and selling approximately $60B a year in Captagon. This is as much as three times what the Mexican cartels sell altogether. The government is also backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. The last of these parties played a major role in Captagon trafficking.

Leftism is based on individualism. Conservatism is not.

 

Kamala at a Pride Festival. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Our esteemed Western Chauvinist recently brought my attention to a brilliant article, which I can’t stop thinking about.  If you haven’t read it, you really should:  “Leftism is a Death Cult” by CA Skeet.  His purpose in writing the article is to explain why Democrats must support abortion, and he succeeds, in my view.  But in so doing, he does a masterful job of explaining what a modern leftist is.  He understands leftists very well, which I appreciate, because I do not.

An Open Letter to Pam Bondi, RFK, Jr., and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya

 

It may be high time to arrest doctors – whether pediatricians, surgeons, plastic surgeons, and other specialists – who have butchered children and confused adolescents, knowingly prescribed hormone blockers that they knew would permanently sterilize their patients and conducted skin grafts from patients’ bodies to fabricate non-functioning genitalia. The medical profession has been corrupted by unfounded, unsubstantiated, and outright fraudulent science that is being used by greedy and ethically vacuous doctors and some hospitals and clinics to justify physically and emotionally scarring young people, many of whom will sadly commit suicide when they realize the mistake they’ve made, or realize that the parents that they trusted allowed them to be used as guinea pigs for medical experimentation based on lies.

Too many of these butchers are still practicing medicine at prestigious hospitals and institutions, causing irreversible harm. When confronted these medical professionals are often evasive or openly dishonest about the effects of hormone blockers, or the gender transition surgeries to remove breasts or genitals or affix fake genitalia. The corruption goes deep and there needs to be constant pressure at every level to purge the medical profession from this evil practice.

Christopher Wray as FBI Director is a Disgrace

 

If you’ve ever seen Christopher Wray giving testimony to Congress, you might think of him as just a nice guy: mostly courteous, deferential and forthcoming. But you would be wrong on all counts. And those are only a few of the reasons that Trump wants to fire him.

At this point, Wray has said he wants to keep his job for which he has two more years on his contract. In spite of Trump’s protests about his performance, Wray has said nothing about retiring.

Wrestling With Jordan Peterson

 

The brilliant strategy of antagonizing your own supporters

 

In an effort to connect with the core demographic that has been supporting their sales for decades, Bud Light launched a national ad campaign led by famous trans-sexual Bud Light aficionado Dylan Somebody or other.  Surprisingly, this ambitious plan was not entirely successful.  As it turns out, there are some Bud Light drinkers out there who are not trans-sexual.  This obviously came as a shock to the Bud Light marketing department, all of whom are apparently narcissistic fools who have been completely sheltered from American society, or recent college graduates.

Budweiser lost over $1.4 billion in sales and half of its market share.  They’re still trying to salvage what’s left of their company.

Inspired by this resounding success, Jaguar has launched an ad campaign in an effort to connect with the core demographic that has been supporting their sales for decades:  trans-sexuals.  Observers are waiting with bated breath to see how this might turn out.  Is it possible that some Jaguar buyers might take the same view that Kid Rock did to the Bud Light trans-sexual beer campaign?  Hard to say, I suppose.

President Adams on Thanksgiving, Humiliation, Prayer, and Fasting

 

I want to offer the full text of the first of two Thanksgiving proclamations issued by our second President, John Adams.  This one is from 1798.  It reflects a very different attitude than the America in which I have lived.

As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him, but a duty whose natural influence is favorable to the promotion of that morality and piety without which social happiness can not exist nor the blessings of a free government be enjoyed; and as this duty, at all times incumbent, is so especially in seasons of difficulty or of danger, when existing or threatening calamities, the just judgments of God against prevalent iniquity, are a loud call to repentance and reformation; and as the United States of America are at present placed in a hazardous and afflictive situation by the unfriendly disposition, conduct, and demands of a foreign power, evinced by repeated refusals to receive our messengers of reconciliation and peace, by depredations on our commerce, and the infliction of injuries on very many of our fellow-citizens while engaged in their lawful business on the seas – under these considerations it has appeared to me that the duty of imploring the mercy and benediction of Heaven on our country demands at this time a special attention from its inhabitants.

AI, The Apocalypse and the Sound of Angels

 

I watched an interview/podcast by Peter Robinson with Peter Thiel titled Apocalypse Now: Peter Thiel on Ancient Prophecies and Modern Tech.

Peter Robinson asked questions from a perspective of a person of faith, posed to one of the founders of Big Tech. Mr. Thiel’s background is co-founder of PayPal, a seed investor of Facebook who launched Palantir, a powerful AI software developer and a man who is obsessed with life extension research.

Gratitude: Essential for a Well-Lived Life

 

To acknowledge life as a gift of God, one’s whole focus and concentration must be shifted from themselves to One outside themselves. Gratitude focuses one’s attention upward. Thankfulness is of preeminent importance. Disciples of Jesus as Lord bow the knee to their Sovereign Savior both in response to Who He is as well as what He has done. Appreciation is born out in worship.

“Worship” is the total response of the total person to our Lord Jesus. “In all things He shall receive the preeminence” (Col 1:18) who has “reconciled all things to Himself” (Col 1:20) that we should do “all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col 3:17). Leaders then bear responsibility for encouraging disciples to focus their love for God through others (Mark 12:30-31) working toward excellence in their God-given lives. Encouraging gratitude encourages excellence.

Distinction in one’s work is a marker of excellence born of gratitude for God’s distinctiveness. The Hebrew word for holy identifies both God’s Person (“Holy One,” Ps. 78.41; 89.13; 99.3, 9; 111.9) and God’s people (Lev 11.44-45; 19.2; 1 Pet 1.14-15) as inherently different in their nature. A historic summary of the distinction between other ancient cultures and Israel becomes apparent: Hebrews were to worship their God based on gratitude; other nations worshipped man-made gods for fear. Gratitude signals acknowledgment that I am responsible to someone else. The Hebraic-Christian practice of thanks is through prayer (Ps 75:1) in all things (Eph 5:20).

The Defenders of Democracy ™ who were Nothing of the Kind

 

Anyone with a good background in junior high civics and a modicum of sense knew that all the slogan-shrieking, table-pounding, stentorian “defenders of democracy,” who so seriously, often times melodramatically decried the horrors awaiting us, should Trump and the Republicans win in November was nonsense. Slogans like: “It will be our last election!,” “Democracy is on the line!,” and similar hysterically hyperbolic fear-mongering were the order of the day for months.

A democracy is supposed to admit, allow, even encourgage the formation of different political parties, though. At least, any democracy worth the name would be required to grant competing parties the chance to acquit themselves or fail in the arena of public opinion. Right?

Something Wicked This way Comes

 

Apologies to Ray Bradbury but I think that phrase may be used a lot in the coming weeks and year. Mrs. Pessimist and I, staunch anti-contrarians as we are, go to the movies more now than we have in many years. So we saw the first preview for Wicked, The Movie, close to a year ago, and I told everyone that that looked like the worst movie ever made. Recently we watched the more recent preview, and although it attempted to provide more backstory, it still looked like the worst movie ever made. At dinner the other night, as I tried to describe how awful it looked, my friend, Ed, who is a retired school teacher, went through the history of updating the original Wizard of Oz into the Broadway play and the back story of the witches which my wife and I enjoyed when we saw it on Broadway. Ed’s analysis of the story was that the wicked witch of the West was actually a transgendered lesbian and we all should relish that reinterpretation. He stated this with a very straight face. He asked me if I had ever had to confront transgender lesbianism when I was a pediatrician and, dumbfounded, I had to admit I had not.

When I was a pediatrician in the 1980s, transgender lesbianism was nowhere to be found in any syllabus.

Helene, Two Months Later

 

Two months later, the town of Aiken and the surrounding area still have a long way to go cleaning up after Helene.  Piles of tree trunks and branches still cover much of the roadside.  For example, this is a picture of my next-door neighbor’s pile:

Join Robert Chernin and Ericka Redic as they welcome Armstrong Williams. Mr. Williams is a pugnacious, provocative and principled voice for conservative and Christian values in America’s public debate.

Armstrong, Robert and Ericka discuss the importance of free press, mainstream vs. alternative media, and the reasons why Kamala Harris lost the presidency.

This week on The Learning Curve, co-hosts Alisha Searcy of DFER and U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng interview Eric Rassbach, Vice President and Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Mr. Rassbach discusses the Loffman v. California Department of Education case, where Becket successfully secured a unanimous Ninth Circuit decision ensuring equal access to special education funding for religious school students. He explores how California’s restrictive interpretation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) denied federal funds to students at private religious schools, in contrast to secular ones. He delves into the broader context of religious liberty in K-12 education, highlighting landmark SCOTUS rulings, including Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson’s impact on the evolving legal battles reshaping states’ Blaine Amendments and school choice policies. Rassbach also examines how religious schooling and school choice initiatives can enhance student achievement. He foresees increased litigation and legislative action bolstering educational freedom nationwide.

“Girl, Just Keep Your Legs Together, And All Will Be Well!”

 

Good advice for any female, at any stage in her life, although the context may change as she ages.

As I recently entered my eighth decade on this earth (for those of you in Rio Linda, that means I just turned 70 a couple of months ago), the context these days relates mostly to my life on the farm, because that’s where I spend the very great majority of my time.

Every evening, I trot (well, maybe I don’t trot anymore; maybe I just “totter,” or  “stagger,” or perhaps I “wander in a desultory fashion”) down to the barn with a small bucket of grain, to call the sheep in for the night.  I didn’t used to do this, but a few years ago I had a couple of ugly coyote incidents which ended badly, and I decided I didn’t want to live through those again, so I try to keep the troops safe by bringing them back to base camp in the evening.  Generally, they’re very up for this, and anxious to get to their nightly feast.

Can we find an honest president, or an honest presidential administration? By what standards do we identify “corruption” when it comes to the White House? Dr. John Robert Greene, author of “Little Helpers: Harry Vaughan, His Cronies, and Corruption in the Truman Administration,” joins Jeff to discuss the long and sordid history of presidential scandals and how Americans’ views on presidential behavior have changed over time.

Find Prof. Greene’s book here: https://a.co/d/j7kG6ao