What A Great Time To Be Alive!

Previously: What This Country Needs Is A Lot More Liberals

I've been hearing lately from friends who are completely demoralized over the current political climate. They tell me they fear the ruling class will succeed in stealing this election. 

Not me. The way I see it, everything is going to turn out just fine. Seriously. This is not a time to be worried about losing to those who are using deception to rule over us. This is the time to enjoy a hearty laugh at their expense. This is a time to be entertained by their clumsy maneuvers. 

Because despite how things may look right now, those who practice iniquity are definitely losing.  And I see that as a reason to rejoice. Because in the end, God tells us, tyranny will fail.

Lies and Deceptions
When Jesus was among the Nephites, he said that in the last days lying and deception would pretty much become the order of the day.  Why do you suppose that was recorded and emphasized three times in the Book of Mormon and twice more in the Doctrine & Covenants?  I suggest it was so that when we finally began to see deception taking place in earnest, as we certainly have this year, we would not be surprised or caught off guard. Why should we panic when we see prophecy fulfilled before our eyes? What that suggests to me is that we're finally here at the cusp, at the very beginning of the end times.

That might seem scary, and yeah, it kind of is.  But with any luck, the worst to come will come a bit later.  Right now we have the chance not only to postpone the inevitable (more about that later), but to actually enjoy the show as we are allowed to watch with amusement while wicked usurpers trip all over each other in their efforts to deceive.

Here's the good part: Although Jesus warned us that lying and deception would be ubiquitous, He also assured us that acts performed in darkness would soon be brought to light. All the coverups will be uncovered and all the lies will be exposed. (Luke 12:2-3) The dark side may have control of all the major sources of information, but it won't be long before everyone will see this election fraud for what it is. The bad guys obviously thought they could get away with this scam forever, but as it turns out, they couldn't even keep it hidden for a week.

They made a fatal error. They overplayed the fraud.  In the past, electoral fraud was kept at a minimum so as to be barely noticeable, but this time they didn't hold back; they employed every conceivable swindle and they did it on a massive scale. They obviously thought they could keep the dam from bursting as long as their media lackeys kept repeating the mantra that "there is no evidence of fraud."

But Americans are a curious breed. Most folks, when they've gone to the trouble of voting, like to know their vote actually counts. So when they heard their votes might have been stolen, or diluted by an ocean of fake votes suddenly showing up after the election was already over, or worse yet, canceled out by votes cast by people who have been dead since the civil war...well, some of these folks thought it might be a good idea to check and see for themselves if there was any substance to those claims. 

If you were to come home and find shattered glass all over your porch from a front window that had been smashed in,  and you notice the front door has obviously been kicked in and is hanging off its hinges, it's possible your home has not been broken into.  On the other hand, this is often what it looks like when a house has been broken into, so after noticing those first clues, your natural desire would be to investigate further to find out if you had been robbed. 

That is how a sensible person would react.  For anyone who has taken even a cursory look at the recent claims of voter fraud in some of our states, it's obvious that something -shall we say- "untoward" took place on November third of this year. So it's natural to want to look further, and for anyone who has spent even a couple of hours looking at the evidence, there is no longer any doubt that this election was a sham.  And a sham on a massive scale.

The only thing not normal about all this is that some Americans refuse to even look. 

Mankind's Greatest Mystery: What Makes People Stupid?
One of the questions that has always puzzled me is this: why are some people so incurious?  I've been curious about virtually everything ever since I was a child; My mother used to tell me how frustrating it was that I refused to be satisfied with an answer I was given just because it came from a grownup.  Merely telling me wasn't good enough. You had to show me the evidence.

So I have had difficulty understanding why some people lack even a modicum of curiosity about the biggest heist that has ever taken place in our lifetimes, being pulled off right before our eyes. Here we are, supposedly in The Age of Information, and some people aren't curious enough to even investigate when they hear that in some states the recent election was deliberately stolen. The evidence is now out in the open, and there are mountains of it. We are one month out from election day and it is now undeniable that this election was fraudulent on a scale that boggles the mind. Sidney Powell was right when she said there is so much evidence that it's coming in like a firehose. 

Yet some people still believe there is no evidence at all.

Joe Biden actually lost this election by millions of votes. That is what the evidence shows us. That is the provable reality. Yet many Americans live in a separate reality of their own making. In this reality, they don't accept the evidence because in their reality the evidence does not exist. Why does it not exist? Because they have not seen it.  Why have they not seen it? Because they believe it does not exist, so they feel no need to look for it.

What they do instead is point at the people who have looked at the evidence and insist they are the ones not living in reality. Why is that? Why is it some people can see truth while others cannot?  Why is it some people simply can't see the obvious when it's staring them in the face?

For the answer to this question, we do what we should always do: look to the science. 

Psychologist Drew Westen headed a study at Emory University to learn how people think when they have aligned themselves with a particular party or politician. Here is an excerpt from a review in Scientific American of Weston's book, The Political Brain:  

During the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, while undergoing an MRI brain scan, 30 men--half self-described as "strong" Republicans and half as "strong" Democrats--were tasked with assessing statements by both George W. Bush and John Kerry in which the candidates clearly contradicted themselves. Not surprisingly, in their assessments Republican subjects were as critical of Kerry as Democratic subjects were of Bush, yet both let their own candidate off the hook.

The neuroimaging results, however, revealed that the part of the brain most associated with reasoning--the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex--was quiescent. Most active were the orbital frontal cortex, which is involved in the processing of emotions; the anterior cingulate, which is associated with conflict resolution; the posterior cingulate, which is concerned with making judgments about moral accountability; and--once subjects had arrived at a conclusion that made them emotionally comfortable--the ventral striatum, which is related to reward and pleasure.

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," Westen is quoted as saying in an Emory University press release. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts." Interestingly, neural circuits engaged in rewarding selective behaviors were activated. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones," Westen said. (emphasis mine.)

I've written before about the dangers of political partisanship.  When you align yourself with a particular party or candidate, you tend to stop thinking rationally.  You become emotional about your choice and will defend your party even when actions your party takes are morally indefensible.  If your side feels it has to resort to lying and cheating in order to win, you are willing to look the other way because you want your party to win. You feel an emotional need to win, so you set aside morality and decide "whatever means necessary" is justified.  If you took the time to analyze "whatever means necessary" in the cold light of logic, you would conclude that position is neither moral, nor rational, nor justified.  But your emotions are ruling you, so who cares about wrong or right?

When you make a rational decision, i.e., a decision arrived at through careful critical thinking, usually that decision will be logical and unbiased. On the other hand, choices made through emotion are by their nature biased. And bias is what makes you stupid. 

Now, I want to make clear that I'm not just attacking Democrats, though in the current controversy it's clearly Democrats who are proving that bias is making them stupid.  In the very first post I wrote on this blog, I chided members for enthusiastically supporting the Republican Bush/Cheney administration in sending the nation to war against Iraq and Afghanistan.  I pointed out that such actions were not only not constitutional (a document which these same Mormons insisted they fully supported), but also specifically prohibited by the Lord in scripture.  Yet I was viciously attacked by fellow Latter-day Saints who accused me of being unpatriotic.  

These people were not thinking rationally. Their emotions were easily manipulated by politicians because they wanted vengeance on somebody for the attacks that took place on 9/11, and, more importantly, since they thought of themselves as conservatives who aligned themselves with the same party as Bush and Cheney, they believed Bush and Cheney were conservatives as well (they were not). These good members could not imagine a scenario where politicians who wore the Republican label were any different from regular people who wore the Republican label. In their minds, they were all on God's side, even though I pointed out through scripture that they were vigorously supporting actions that were antithetical to God's clear commandments.

As I pointed out in my last post, there are still many decent people who identify as "liberals" and align themselves with the Democratic party even though that party formally rejected actual liberalism more than half a decade ago. These otherwise good rank-and-file members of the party continue to support a party that represents everything they would normally oppose. They retain an emotional bias toward the Democratic party and that bias has made them stupid..

You Can't Fix Stupid, But You Should Still Keep Trying 
If you were to take a peek at my Facebook page, you'd find I spend an awful lot of time making fun of dumb politicians.  At the same time, I am resolved to try to be kinder toward the handful of dumb regular people who comment on my threads now and then, the ones who stop by to remind me that no evidence of election fraud has ever been found.  There are three or four regulars who simply refuse to look at the evidence themselves but that doesn't keep them from insisting I'm the guy who's got it wrong. So although these knuckleheads are easy targets, I'm doing my best to try to persuade rather than insult. 

Still, I can't help being astonished at people whose bias causes them to continue to remain deliberately ignorant in the face of the tidal wave of evidence now before us. I've read hundreds of pages of pleadings and watched countless hours of testimony from the hearings in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan.  I watch hours and hours of commentary from legal professionals who understand what's going on. There was such an abundance of information come to light last week that I couldn't keep up with it all. And it keeps on coming in! The dishes and laundry never get done because I'm spending all my time watching those hearings.

So when some dimwit drops by my Facebook page to tell me he knows there is no evidence of fraud because the TV told him so...well, I just have to smile.

This is the other reason the dishes and laundry never get done.

So I'm trying to restrain myself to only mocking politicians. They're the best targets. Yes, it's fun to mock dumb people, but dumb people who also want to make themselves my rulers? Well, making fun of them is why I was put on this earth. 

You wanna know why it's so enjoyable to make fun of stupid politicians? Because we told them they would get caught if they tried this scam and they went ahead with it anyway.  They were so stupid they all but announced ahead of the election that they were going to steal it. They declared their intention to mail out millions of ballots ahead of time to millions of people who didn't request them, and even people in their own party told them that would be illegal and ultimately cost them the election.  Yet they did it anyway.

Then these boneheads cautioned their followers that on election night it might start to look like Trump was winning by a landslide, but that Americans should just wait until all those [shhh! don't tell anybody -"illegal"-] mail-in ballots came in and those ballots would magically show that the real winner was Joe Biden. "Don't worry, we've got this," they told their minions. "It's in the bag."

What incredible nincompoops! They were warned ahead of time that flooding the country with illegal ballots would only result in such a muddied outcome that the courts would have no choice but to discount those dubious votes. But they didn't care. They still thought they could get away with it.  Soon that issue, along with many others, will be going before the Supreme Court, and yes, all those suspicious, unverified votes will be thrown out so they do not dilute the votes of the actual, living voters who registered properly and had somehow managed to outlive Amy Winehouse.

The reality is there are so many fraudulent votes showing up that all of them have yet to be counted. Listen to a portion of this exchange with attorney Sidney Powell:

Powell: "We've got pictures of the check stubs paid to people to ballot harvest and do fraudulent servings. This they [did using] whatever means and manner of fraud you can possibly imagine, and then many you could never imagine."

Reporter: "So how many fraudulent votes do you think Joe Biden had on his side of the slate?"

Powell: "Probably at least ten million."

Reporter: "Ten million fraudulent votes?"

Powell: "Probably. Maybe more."

Reporter: "And how many dead people? How many votes of dead people were cast, do you think?"

Powell: "We're still tracking down that data to see if what we've been provided is real, but if it's correct, it's several million. 

All You Need To Know About The Supreme Court 
Here's the part of this circus I get the biggest kick out of: The left honestly thought that by having the news media decide the winner before the election was even over, it would convince enough Americans their guy had won that they wouldn't have to worry about proving it. They seemed unaware that this controversy would be decided in the real courts and not in the court of public opinion. Yet that's what these dumbbells' put all their money on: trying to convince the public that their guy had already won. They even propped up a doddering, senile old coot in front of a wall bearing a sign that said "Office of the President-Elect." As if that wacky ploy had any chance of clinching the deal.

I've got a couple of news flashes for these morons: first, there is no such thing as an "office of the president-elect," and second, the federal constitution provides the method for choosing the president, and I've read it. The Associated Press isn't mentioned anywhere in there.

Trump's legal team, as well as Sidney Powell who is suing on behalf of a handful of other plaintiffs, are not concerned about what the media thinks. They are deliberately not laying out their evidence for the reporters to go over. (Not that any reporters have shown any interest in the evidence so far anyway.)

They are laying out their cases where it will matter: before the state legislatures, and before the courts.  In spite of the media giddily trumpeting the news that Trump "lost" when a case is rejected by a lower court, what they don't tell you is that's a fully expected part of the process. You can't simply take your case to the Supreme Court. Cases don't get heard before the Supreme Court until they are first rejected by the lower courts.  Trump's goal has always been to get this evidence before the Supreme Court, so every time there is an alleged "loss" before a lower court that doesn't want to get involved with this controversy, that's a win for Trump because each rejection gets the case that much closer to where it needs to go for the big win.

In the early 1990s I was very much into constitutional law;  I used to read supreme court decisions for pleasure, which is how I learned to form a cogent argument.  This was before the internet, so I often had my nose buried deep inside some large heavy tome at the dinner table. (That's also where I learned wives don't like it when you ignore the family at mealtimes.)

In one of those rulings is a statement by Justice Fields which pretty much sums up everything you'll need to know, not only about how the court decides most issues, but particularly how the court will be deciding the issues soon to come before it regarding voter fraud:

An unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed. -Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425

So TV reporters can pretend all they want that they have the power to pick the next president, and Biden can pretend he holds some non-existent pretend office. But that's all it is: a pretense. 

The "act" of creating an "office of the president-elect" is as unconstitutional as the act of a governor "certifying" an election. The Constitution does not give Governors any such authority.  They're just pretending they're in charge when they really have no say at all. The Constitution is very clear that the authority to certify belongs to the state legislatures. In some states the authority to certify has been delegated to some bureaucrat such as the Secretary of This-Or-That Over Elections,  but the authority still belongs to the House of Representatives of each individual state, and they can un-delegate it whenever they want to. 

That's why it's laughable when I hear media reports asserting the election is over.  The election hasn't even taken place yet.  In fact, the legislatures of most states have yet to choose their electors, so how can an election where no electors have been chosen to do the electing possibly be said to have already happened?

These people who are trying to fool you are doing so because they think you're stupid. They deserve your laughter and your scorn.  And your online "friends" who try to convince you that you're the dumb one deserve your laughter and scorn as well.

Are you beginning to see how amusing all this is? If there's a group of people dumber than the reporters who thought that "calling" an election was all it took to make it so, that would have to be all those poor saps who actually believe Trump lost the election because the TV told them.  When that feckless army of noodle-armed Antifa pipsqueaks find out they've been conned, that's when they're really going to get irritable. 

Hide the women, here comes one now.

The political left is now in full-on panic mode, tripping all over themselves for fear of the exposure they know is coming.  Oh sure, they continue to insist that everything is fine and there's nothing to see here, but the very act of their doubling down demonstrates their desperation in trying to convince those few starry-eyed followers who are still tuned in that everything is just ducky.

The latest deception they've latched onto was the claim that Bill Barr declared there is no evidence of massive fraud.  They've been plastering that one all over the news to convince people that even Trump's BFF has found nothing worth seeing.

Well, they're misrepresenting what Barr actually said.  A CNN headline reads "William Barr Says There Is No Widespread Fraud In Presidential Election" (he did not say that) while a CNN reporter announced "William Barr has just debunked President Trump's claims of widespread fraud." (He did not say that either.)

This is why you have to be careful where you get your news from. In the first place, Bill Barr has not "debunked" any claims because neither he nor his department has even begun an investigation into the election fraud.  You have to actually investigate a claim before you can debunk it.  Secondly, Barr's actual words were, "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election." 

He is technically telling the truth. But who is this "we" he refers to?  That would be whatever team in the Department of Justice or the FBI he has looking into election fraud.  Which is actually a way of saying "nobody who works for me has been looking into election fraud so I can honestly say no evidence of it has been placed on my desk."

In other words, Barr was talking like a lawyer, choosing his words carefully so as to not be misunderstood.  He was misunderstood anyway.

Sometimes even a lawyer should add context so there's no confusion that might lead people to believe that the Justice Department had completed an investigation into election fraud and that investigation has come up empty. Harris Falkner of FOX News reported a Senior Official at the FBI saying the bureau has not even opened an investigation on election fraud.

Do I think the Department of Justice should be looking into these claims of election fraud?  Yes I do. And so do many others.  But we have already learned that the DOJ and the FBI are rife with corruption at the top. Would you really trust the deep state players who spent four years trying to frame Trump over the fraudulent and completely debunked Russiagate hoax to properly investigate these elections?  No, you wouldn't. And neither would Bill Barr.

As we all know, the very day after Barr uttered those words, a video was released showing blatant and undeniable fraud taking place in Georgia, and that same week hearings and/or investigations had been held or were still being held in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona.  The only thing you need to know is that Bill Barr was not involved in any of those investigations or hearings, so he was being truthful in saying he was not personally aware of any evidence. Which is also something you would rightly expect to hear from someone who is unaware of what is going on with all these hearings and lawsuits he is not in any way involved in. 

The Left Keeps Moving The Goalposts
At first the mantra coming from the media was "there is no evidence of fraud." Then when they could deny it no longer, they admitted, "there might have been some anomalies, but not enough to make a difference in the final outcome."  Now that the evidence is pouring in and the left is clearly on the defensive, the talking point has become "if Trump wins this election it will only be because the Supreme Court will have stolen it from Biden." 

Here's a newsflash: the Supreme Court will not decide who will be president. That's the leftist narrative's way of hoping uninformed Americans won't understand how the Supreme Court actually works. 

Here is what the court will do: It will narrow its focus to bear on specific questions, which, if I were to venture a guess, might be something like the following:

1.  Was there an opportunity for fraud?
2.  Was there motive for fraud?
3.  Did the Democratic party create or encourage an environment that could result in fraud taking place?
4.  Did fraud occur?

The court may also examine the evidence where states clearly failed to abide by their own election laws and whether states violated the rules of election laid out in the federal Constitution.  If there is a preponderance of evidence proving the law was consistently violated, those ballots that the evidence shows to be fraudulent will be thrown out. They will not count.  That leaves the actual soon-to-be-selected electors with the job of electing the president based on the number of actual, legitimate votes cast. 

There's a bit more to it than that, because there has never been a fraud like this perpetrated on the American people in our nation's entire history. But that's the gist of it. The Supreme court does not make political decisions. It decides the law, and whether the law was followed by those whose job it was to follow the law. It does not pick who is going to be president. 

The reason we see so many decisions not to certify the counts is because the fraud has been so rampant in some precincts that it is impossible to assert with any certainty that they know which votes are legitimate and which are not. If, due to lack of certification, it comes to a point that there are not enough electors to give at least 270 electoral votes to either candidate, the constitution requires that the election be thrown to the 50 state Houses of Representatives to decide.  Each house gets one vote, so with 50 states total, whichever candidate ends up with 26 votes or more wins the presidency. 

Right now 31 state Houses have a Republican majority while only 19 are controlled by Democrats.  You can start to see why the Dems are getting nervous. All Trump will need to win is 26 state houses voting in his favor, and that looks to be a slam dunk because he could potentially win 31.  

You see what I mean when I say the Lord is watching all this with great interest? He is omniscient and therefore anticipated something like this might happen. It was Jesus himself who told us in a revelation that the Constitution was His idea. Yes, men hammered out the wording and put it to paper, but the whole thing was His idea in the first place. "For this purpose," says the Lord, "have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose."

Almost every possible contingency of government is provided for in our divinely inspired Constitution, including the possibility that men with evil designs would one day conspire to try to alter our form of government, just as the Kingmen had tried to do on this very continent over two thousand years ago.

I find it interesting to note that the word "fraud" appears only four times in the Book of Mormon, and each time it was used to describe the attempts by evil men to try to convince the populace to side with them (see Alma 48:7, et al).  That's how we are told the Kingmen got such a foothold among the  populace. The conspirators knew they couldn't win by openly announcing their intention to rule over the people, so they used fraud and deceit to get the sheep to agree to be sheared.

I Was Wrong About Donald Trump

Four years ago I was skeptical about a Donald Trump presidency. At best I was ambivalent about him and I expressed my not-so-flattering opinion here. I don't regret that skepticism because it's proper to be suspicious of anyone seeking public office. Since then I've come to recognize that Trump was nothing like I had assumed. I now believe he is absolutely the right man for the job at this time, and I even believe (and this is something I would never have considered four years ago) that the Lord is using Donald Trump for his own purposes. 

If that sounds like a stretch to you, recall that virtually every person that God has ever called to fill a role has been seriously flawed. As Darris McNeely asked rhetorically, "can God use anyone, small or great, to do his work at any given time on this planet? Indeed he can." Four years ago I heard other Christians suggest that Trump is a modern-day Cyrus, but I rejected that portrayal. Now I believe it to be quite likely.

It's easy to see why so many members of the ruling class despise Donald Trump. He's raining on their parade. He's pinching off their lucrative side deals; he's exposing their ambitious lust for power. Many Deep Staters are certainly aware that if he shines too much light on their criminal activities, some of them could lose all they've worked for and might very well go to prison.  It's no wonder they've been firing everything they've got at him since even before he took office.  The only thing that's keeping Trump at bay is they are protecting each other; they still control the apparatus of power. 

What is more difficult to understand is why so many rank-and-file Democrats feel such hatred for him, since he is not only not a threat to them, he's actually helped make many poor people's lives better, especially poor minorities.  The answer to this conundrum, of course, is propaganda. Too many otherwise sane Democratic voters have been buying into the propaganda.  So much so, that they refuse to notice their own party is running a game on them.

For example, it wasn't so long ago that the typical democratic voter was properly skeptical of Wall Street and Big Business. Today Joe Biden is selecting what he assumes will be his cabinet from among the wealthiest con men in the country, and almost no one on the Democratic side is objecting.  True liberalism has been abandoned and replaced by literal fascism, which has always been properly defined as the merging of government and corporations. When the government is in partnership with the same billionaires who gained their wealth by making sure our country is always at war, the people are no longer in charge. There is very little difference between neoliberals and neocons; both prefer power and gain rather than justice and peace.  Collusion between government and big business has always been the liberal voter's biggest nightmare, yet today virtually no one on the left is speaking out against it other than leftwing comedian Jimmy Dore. (Warning: Naughty language)

I'm tempted to list the hundreds of examples of election fraud revealed thus far, but if I attempted just to list the irregularities, this post would go on forever.  Since many people are learning about this for the first time, I'll list some of my favorite sources at the end of this blog. Still, for those to whom this is news, the mind-boggling evidence shows that voting machines used in most of the swing states were actually intended to rig elections. But that is exactly what expert testimony is revealing. Those machines were actually created for the express purpose of rigging elections at the request of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, and the evidence shows that is what they were programmed to do here in America just last month.

Here's a short summary of a few of  the findings Sidney Powell is presenting to the courts:

If you'd like to see an outline of the president's case, the 23 minute video below summarizes it quite well. This was presented just before the lawsuits were filed, so much more has come out since then. Still, this is a good way to get a handle on the team's strategy and to understand some of the evidence that will be presented to the Supreme Court. So this is a good place to begin if you find all this stuff overwhelming, which is easy to do since there are so many new revelations coming in daily:

 

It Will Be Fun For Awhile But The laughs Won't last Forever

With the CIA having long ago taken effective control of all major news outlets under the formerly classified Operation Mockingbird, there is very little truth trickling down to the people. Only propaganda.  Or, as Jesus described it, "lies and deceptions." Our media outlets have become propaganda arms of the State, no different than Pravda was for the Soviet Union. 

Never forget that we are in a war. But like the war in heaven, right now it's mostly a war of ideologies, a war where our greatest challenge is to push past the lies so we can help others see the truth. There's not a lot most of us can do other than proclaim the truth at every opportunity, but that's the most important thing we can do: share what we know with everybody we know.   Of course it's also fun to ridicule those who desire to rule over us. Keeping the battle entertaining is what gives us joy, and with any luck (and a lot of repenting), maybe the apocalypse can be postponed a little while longer. I'd love to be here for the second coming. But I'm also not sure I'd be keen on the smell of burnt stubble, so I hope Connie and I get to take the easy way out and die in our sleep before any of that goes down.*
_____________________________________

*Fun Fact: Just prior to the Millennium "Burnt Stubble" will be available in the Crayola 64 Pack.

The time will come when things will get real serious. The political class -both on the left and on the right- had gotten a taste for power before Donald Trump came along and harshed their groove. They don't like it at all that their plans have been postponed. The way they see it, they've suffered some temporary setbacks, but they fully intend to come back on top and take full control of our lives. None of them have any intention of relinquishing power back to the people. So although it's entertaining to watch how frustrated and secretly panicked they are right now, if we fail to fully repent and the prophecies come true, eventually they will get control and bring the world down around us.  Make no mistake: no matter what happens there will be a financial collapse. That part is unavoidable.  The only question right now is "how soon?" 

In the meantime, 

Even The Worst Case Scenario May Be The Best Case Scenario
Let's imagine that right now, in the short term, we experience the worst outcome of this election: Joe Biden (or should I say Kamala Harris) takes the white house. It could happen, because in spite of all the evidence of fraud, and even if the Supreme Court rules on the side of right, the legislatures could still chicken out.  Although there are still some representatives with integrity, I fear there are many more who are only politicians, and politicians are subject to bribes, threats, and intimidation. If you don't think bribes, threats, and intimidation are taking place right now over this, you are naïve indeed. 

So suppose enough of them take the coward's way and fold.  Where is God in this scenario?  Why didn't he prevent the worst from taking place?

He's still there.  Maybe he would have acted more decisively if more of us had repented in time.  OR maybe he can see the big picture and a better outcome is in the offing.

No matter who is in office, this economy is going to crash, and crash big.  The trillions that have been borrowed for the recent stimulus packages, along with the trillions more for the recent wars on top of the trillions already borrowed in recent years will result sooner or later in a massive depression followed by a whipsaw hyperinflation unlike anything we've ever experienced. It can't be avoided. You can only hold the beach ball underwater for so long before it comes shooting to the surface.  Add that debt to the completely reckless plans already put forth by Biden/Harris et al, and you're looking at the perfect storm for an incalculable disaster.  Millions will suffer and millions won't make it.  

History shows us that whenever economic hardship has hit America, whoever is president at the time always gets the blame. Depression/Recession presidents get voted out as fast as the people can recall them. If Trump is president when this next depression hits, he'll get blamed for it, so it might be a blessing if he is not the one in the White House at the time.  If Harris is president (forget about Biden, he won't even be in the picture), it will be the same scenario, only with Harris the people who voted for the Biden/Harris ticket will finally wake up and realize they brought this upon themselves and maybe they'll be brought so low they may actually repent and turn back to God. 

Where that leaves the rest of us -besides doing everything we can to prepare against the coming hardships- is to decide how to vote for the right replacements.  Here is how I suggest that be done any time you vote:  

Whether you're considering voting for president or for any other candidate down-ticket, there are just two questions you'll want to ask yourself when considering who gets your vote.  First: "does this person wish to have control over me?"

If the answer is no, the next question should be "will this person stand between me and those who wish to have control over me?"

Get the proper answers to those two questions and with God's help you just might see this through.     

                                                                   *****


Addendum
I expect there will be some readers who would like to find out where the truth can be found concerning our current political dilemma, but don't know where to look beyond the mainstream outlets. Even doing a google search will rarely get you anything other than what the tech giants want you to see. 

I had intended to add a list of sources here, but I've been writing this thing all Saturday night and for now I'd like to just get this post up and available.  Since the news about this is changing so fast, what I will probably do throughout the next few days is add to this addendum as I go along, so I hope you'll come back and see what has changed. 

For now if I think I'll just direct you to my Facebook page, where I have placed links to the full hearings as well as plenty of commenters. In the meantime I want to mention Dr. Steve Turley, who has become a good source of daily updates. He is particularly optimistic about the future rise of a populist nation, and I like optimism. Another fun Youtuber is a formerly commited leftist who goes by the name "Salty Cracker," but be forewarned: Salty Cracker is a foul-mouthed son of a bitch.  He's a youngish millennial and clearly doesn't know better, but I like him because no one gives the horselaugh to lefty loonies with as much raw enthusiasm and pure unadulterated joy as he does. I should also warn you about Styxhexenhammer, because although he is the most astute political commentator I know of, he uses the F-word as an adjective almost as much as Mr. Salty does. 

Anyway, if you head over to my Facebook page, and if you can stand to wade through all the clowning around I often do there, you might find some valuable information to help clear out the cobwebs put in your head by the mainstream media. Sometime within the past two weeks I have put links there to all the awesome hearings before the state legislatures, so when you find them you can see and hear those witnesses for yourself. If you're still having problems finding what you want, ask me in the comment section and I'll post some additional links.

Oh, I was just about to finish up here when I came across this delightful bit of optimism in my feed. A nice mixture of fun along with a montage of short clips summarizing the recent wins.  This one is from "The Truth."

Also, I think it's worth mentioning that a fellow blogger pointed out recently that Church President Russell Nelson has inadvertently asked God to bring His wrath down upon all Americans, and especially upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.  I don't think Nelson meant to ask for that, but it could explain the added difficulties we've been having lately with some of these power-mad governors.  You'll find that post here.

UPDATE December 6, 2020:

Reader Aurelius reminded me of this excellent source where you can find virtually all the evidence. It is set up to provide resources for journalists, but I don't know how many mainstream journalists are taking advantage:

HereIsTheEvidence.com

One of the blatant lies being spread is that Trump has filed and lost upwards of 39 lawsuits. In reality there have only been three.
Below: Prosecutor Jenna Ellis Slams Cynthia Johnson at the Michigan Hearing:

Michigan Judge Orders Forensic Examination of 22 Voting Machines. Click Here


UPDATES December 7th, 2020:

Highlights From The Michigan Hearing On Election Fraud

"I Witnessed Fraud All Night Long."

From Britain's Spectator: Reasons Why the 2020 Presidential Election is Deeply Puzzling

Where to Watch Mark Levin's Interview With the Author of the Spectator Piece Above


UPDATES December 8, 2020:

Michigan Attorney Gives Behind-the-Scenes Update on Voting Machine Inspections

Third Suspect in Georgia "Suitcase Scandal" Has Been Identified

Sidney Powell Filing for Emergency Hearing in Supreme Court

Supreme Court Activated


UPDATES December 9, 2020:

Reader "Aurelius" provides this informative link: A Running Compendium of All Fraud Charges

What This Country Needs Is A Lot More Liberals

 

Previously: Why The Worldwide Fast Didn't Work

That's right. We need more liberals.

Am I saying we need more Democrats? GOOD HEAVENS, NO! Those people have lost their minds!

A smattering of politicians who once obtained traces of liberal sensibilities might still have been found within the Democratic party fifty years ago, but those folks have pretty much all died off. Today the party led by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer has nary an actual liberal to be found within its leadership ranks; the party today stands completely antithetical to what it means to be liberal.  Their acts and pronouncements are decidedly illiberal; anything but liberal. They may be fascists and authoritarians, but they are certainly not liberals.

Today the term liberal has been so tainted that anyone hoping to advocate for true liberalism has to identify as a Classical Liberal to keep from being confused with those modern totalitarians. Totalitarianism, as you may have guessed, is starkly inimical to true liberalism. The two are polar opposites.

You want to know who was a classical liberal? Joseph Smith, the founder of our faith was a classical liberal. So were the founders of our system of government, as were most civilized Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries. To be "liberal" meant one subscribed to a certain outlook, an expansive and generous creed, a code of behavior that asserted that all should be treated with kindness and compassion, that no one should aspire to force another to act against his will.  Writing about Mark Twain's personal liberalism, author Jeffrey Tucker describes what it meant to be a liberal in a time when the meaning of liberalism was less ambiguous:

To be liberal was to favor free enterprise and property rights, oppose slavery, reject old-world caste systems, loathe war, be generally disposed toward free trade and cosmopolitanism, favor the social advance of women, favor technological progress — and to possess a grave skepticism toward government management of anything. (Jeffrey Tucker, Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Status Quo.)

Doesn't sound at all like any modern liberals you know, does it? 

Here's Where It All Went Wrong
Not long after Mark Twain's death in 1910, liberalism was already on the verge of transforming into something precarious. Various scholars hold differing views as to precisely when that line of demarcation can be pinpointed, but I incline to the view that things really began to go south under president Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson, a Democrat who promoted what he called a "progressive" view of government, saw himself, as president, to be the representative of the American people. This would have horrified the founders, who envisioned the president as not having any direct role whatsoever in governing the country or the people. The role of the president was to preside over one branch of government. If he had any duty toward the people at all, it was to prevent the legislature from passing laws abrogating the people's rights.  He was called the "preside-ant" because his job is to preside over the Executive branch of government.  It actually matters who or what precisely the preside-ant is authorized to preside over, and it isn't the citizens of the states. That's why I always smile when I hear some lefty insist Trump is "not my president."  Of course he isn't.  His authority doesn't extend anywhere near you.

It was Wilson's unsettling expansion of presidential authority that eventually brought us to where we are today, where many Americans operate under the faulty assumption that we elect a president every four years to act as a sort of emperor who rules the nation.  That couldn't be further from the truth, nor further from the classically liberal idea that no one has authority to rule over anyone else. The people rule themselves, not each other, and they have no power to elect politicians to rule over them, either.  

Wilson also violated a major tenet of liberalism by leading America into The Great War, with the promise that our efforts would once and for all "make the world safe for democracy."  We find that idea quaint and naive today, but Americans fully bought into the propaganda that made them think they were powerful enough to change the whole world for the good, and that they could accomplish that good by engaging in massive acts of violence. Mormons who participated in that great sin were as guilty as anyone else -more guilty, I would suggest, because we had scriptural imperatives warning us against going up into battle against any nation unless the Lord himself commanded it, and the Lord had not commanded us to leave the borders of our lands in order to murder foreigners in other lands. (See D&C 98:33, as well as pretty much the whole of the Book of Mormon.)

In the meantime, by 1913 control of the people's own money was stealthily being taken from them through passage of the Federal Reserve Act, so that over time the people would no longer have control over their own destinies. Whatever you wanted to call this new political religion of control by the ruling class, it certainly wasn't liberal.

Regarding the liberal ethos, Jeffrey Tucker writes that a half century after Mark Twain's death,

"liberalism had moved full swing toward the very opposite of its 19th-century meaning, while those who opposed government management and favored free enterprise were called conservatives."

But conservatism was not going to be America's saving grace either.  Americans who continued to consider themselves to be liberals (whatever that had come to mean by mid-century) tended to align themselves with the Democratic party, while conservatives generally joined up with the Republicans. Whatever one's guiding philosophy, this was a big mistake, because both parties, believe it or not, do not have the well-being of the country -or its people- in mind. What political parties have in mind is gaining power for the party -and thus for themselves- and keeping that power by any means necessary.

You can see why both Democrats and a surprising number of office-holding Republicans have vigorously opposed Donald Trump.  Many, many politicians on both sides of the aisle had a good thing going before this bumbling outsider, this impertinent disrupter who didn't understand how things work in Washington, showed up and tipped over the card table. He was seen as a threat to the power base of both establishment parties.

James Madison warned against aligning with what he called "factions" because, even though it was human nature to align oneself with others whose interests were similar to one's own, the result could lead to corruption within those factions and the deprivation of the rights of the minority.  Sadly, Madison was shouting into the wind, because no sooner had the fledgling government been formed than it splintered into competing political factions. 

Well actually, it didn't happen immediately. Americans were unanimous in their belief that George Washington should be the first president of these United States. But while Washington was still in office, Alexander Hamilton headed a party that called itself the Federalists.  On the surface that didn't seem like a bad idea, since the new government was indeed a federation of the several states; or in other words it was a federalist system.  But Madison and Jefferson were concerned over Hamilton's aspirations to accrue too much power in a centralized government, so they founded the Democratic-Republican Party in response.

John Adams was elected on the Federalist ticket as our country's second president, but while Adams was in office, Madison's and Jefferson's fears were realized. Adams felt it was wrong for anyone to speak ill of the president, and he tried to have his critics arrested.  This resulted in Thomas Jefferson running against him in the next election under the newly formed Democratic-Republican party.  Jefferson was the most perfectly liberal president this nation has ever had.  And if it was inevitable that America was going to have political parties electing their officeholders, the Democratic-Republican Party would have been close to ideal. Too bad it didn't last.

Following Jefferson's administration there were a handful of other parties vying for prominence, such as the Whigs, the Anti-Masons, and the Free Soil Party (slogan: "Help yourself to as much dirt as you want!") But eventually the Democratic-Republican party split into the two factions we know today. 

The differences between these early parties were so negligible by today's standards that it seems hard for us to believe they mattered.  Take the contest between the Federalist Party and its challenger, the Democratic-Republican Party. Unlike today, neither party had its eyes set on altering the constitution or making any drastic changes to the law. And even as recently as the mid-twentieth century, the divide was not so stark as it is today.  In the middle of the twentieth century there were liberals and conservatives in both parties.  When John F. Kennedy ran for the senate, he ran as a conservative Democrat. So did his brother Robert. Larry McDonald was the most conservative person in the entire senate from 1975 to 1983, and he too was a Democrat. So party affiliation didn't use to matter anything like it does today. 

I don't align myself with either political party, for the simple reason that I don't wish to be controlled in my thinking. Once you choose a tribe to belong to, you tend to defend that tribe no matter what, and you oppose the other tribe, blocking out any information that might cause you to reconsider your positions. I don't like being controlled, not by politicians, and certainly not by the news media. I'm certainly not going to follow the frequent counsel of Hollywood celebrities, even though I am well aware they are smarter and wiser than me.

I am challenged quite often on Facebook by political partisans who are unable to think critically about the candidates or positions they defend. They just know they are somehow obliged to oppose whatever position I put forward, yet they are consistently incapable of forming a reasoned argument as to why. They almost never put forth an original thought but instead parrot falsehoods they got from watching the legacy media. Yes, it can be amusing to watch those who believe facts are (pick one) racist, misogynist, or should not be permitted, but it can also be quite sad to see this kind of degeneracy take hold in a fellow human being. 

So I know what partisan politics can do to a person's brain.  Defending the indefensible merely because at some point you decided to choose one side over the other and you're going to stick with your candidate for no other reason than you have a deranged hatred for the other guy...well, in the end that is not going to go well with you, or for the country.  At some point you're going to have to introduce yourself to reason, logic, and common sense.

That doesn't mean I don't vote; it just means I vote for candidates who share my principles; I do not vote merely because I belong to a party that claims to align with my principles. For example, I identify as a classical liberal, so my vote generally goes to the candidates who share as much of a classically liberal outlook that can reasonably be expected of someone running for office.  At the moment, some (but not all) of those candidates happen to lean Republican. 

But were I to vote straight Republican just because some candidates for office have an 'R' after their names, I would have fallen into the trap of supporting George Bush and Dick Cheney, who were no more "conservative" than Biden and Harris are "liberal" today.  Many good latter-day Saints were lulled into supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan primarily because Bush and Cheney belonged to the party that was deemed to be conservative. These voters were mistaken in their belief that Republican politicians would not take America down the wrong path.

When our own Mitt Romney ran against Barack Obama I stayed out of that fray, warning that a Romney presidency would look very much like an Obama presidency.  Many of my Mormon friends didn't want to hear it, but now that Romney is a sitting Senator in Utah, many residents of that state are discovering I was right and that Mitt Romney is a wolf in sheep's clothing.  The fact that he looks like a lot of Mormons think a Mormon ought to look like does not make him either a good Mormon or a good conservative.

Today, many people who believe they are aligned with the "liberal" party are about to vote to do similar damage to the country because, among other things, the Democratic Party has become as much a party of warmongers as the Republican party was under Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.  This is just one of the pitfalls that await those who allineate themselves with parties rather than principles.

Are You A Classical Liberal?
If you happen to be an American who possesses a modicum of common sense and true compassion for your fellow man, you're probably a classical liberal yourself and don't even know it. Dave Rubin put together this short three minute animation describing classical liberalism:

Dave Rubin used to be a typical liberal Democrat until he had a guest on his show who pointed out the flawed assumptions that had controlled Rubin's thinking for years. You can watch the exact moment when Dave Rubin transformed from a modern leftist to a classical liberal right before your eyes in the 8 minute video below:

Video: Dave Rubin and Larry Elder

Rubin has since authored a bestseller in which he affirms that "the left is no longer liberal."

"Once on the side of free speech and tolerance, progressives now ban speakers from college campuses, 'cancel' people who aren’t up to date on the latest genders, and force religious people to violate their conscience. They have abandoned the battle of ideas and have begun fighting a battle of feelings. This uncomfortable truth has turned moderates and true liberals into the politically homeless class."

 

How To Get A Liberal Education 
Originally, no one went to college in order to get a degree so they could graduate and get a decent job. That was never the purpose of getting an education.  Those who attended university in medieval times were already quite wealthy -at least their fathers were.

Back in the day, merchants who had acquired great wealth knew their sons would never have to work, but they did not want them to languish in idleness and become ne'er-do-wells.  So they sent their offspring off to the universities so that they could gain knowledge and hopefully help make the world a better place.  The first university was a school of medicine in Italy in the 9th century, but over time other universities sprang up throughout Europe where students received a well-rounded education in grammar, logic, and rhetoric as well as science, music, and math. The language written and spoken at the universities was Latin, so it didn't matter if you came from France, Germany, Spain, or Holland, students and faculty were all able to learn and communicate through use of that one common language that united the intellectuals of all of Europe.

Many of those students came to be Europe's great inventors, doctors, lawyers, artists, and philosophers, and they in turn tended to use their family's wealth to fund more schools so that the common man could learn to read and reason. This led to what we now call the Age of Enlightenment, where even the lower classes were learning to read, make informed decisions, and eventually cast off tyranny.

Because those original privileged few were freed up by circumstances to become better educated, they were able to help other, less privileged persons to also better themselves. Those early universities did not have buildings or classrooms, but over time wealthy merchants funded these schools and the schools grew in size. In those universities one could receive what came to be known as a well-rounded, "liberal" education, so called because a student came out of that experience knowing a lot about a variety of subjects, but most importantly, he learned how to think and how to reason.  

In 1909 the president of Harvard University said that anyone could gain a liberal education simply by spending fifteen minutes a day reading from a collection of books that would fit on a five-foot shelf. A publisher encouraged him to compile that collection and the result came to be known as The Harvard Classics.

Then in 1952, Encyclopedia Britannica did Harvard one better and came out with the 54 volume Great Books of the Western World.  So if you wish to be truly educated, you can sit down a few minutes a day with the Harvard Classics or the Great Books and end up highly educated with a truly liberal education.

Or you can pay a fortune to attend Harvard, receive a parochial education that results in your learning very little, become indoctrinated with ideas that are hostile to liberty, and wind up an arrogant, clueless, moronic Lefty soured on life because nobody likes your disposition. 

I'm writing this at a time when most politicians are exposing their appalling ignorance on some of the simplest topics. It's a sure bet that virtually no one in the political ruling class has ever picked up the Great Books and read Aeschylus or Descartes. Any one of them would greatly benefit at the very least from reading Descartes' Rules for the Direction of the Mind. I noticed that book is available on Kindle (along with Descartes' other major works), in one volume all for only 99 cents.  That's one benefit of reading books by long-dead authors: you don't have to pay them royalties.  

The other benefit is that if you read Descartes' rules you will learn how to think. Not only how to think, but also how to arrive at the truth on virtually any issue.  These rules helped Descartes not only to become one of the Enlightenment's most famous philosophers, but also an accomplished scientist and mathematician. I suggest you spend the 99 cents and buy the book; it's a fairly short read, and it is presented in small chunks with each rule spelled out at the top of the page, followed by a page or so of explication on each rule.  Or you can just click here if you want to just take a look at the twelve rules standing alone.*

__________________________________________________________

*Here's how ignorant I am: I must have been in my fifties before I ever heard Rene Descartes's name spoken aloud. Since I had only read his name in print, I pronounced it in my head as "DESS-Carteezs." Turns out it's actually pronounced "Day CART. I should have known. There are some letters of the alphabet the French just hate to say out loud.  (I still don't know how to pronounce Aeschylus.)  

The Sins At The Top Of The List
I have been struck in recent months by the warnings the Lord gave to the Nephites when he visited with them. Three times he spelled out what we could expect to see in the last days, and each time the sins at the top of the list were lies and deceptions. 

We are seeing lies and deceptions this year like never before in our history. It's as if hell has opened up and coughed up a poison that has caused half the population to believe nothing but falsehoods.  These deceptions are so numerous that it's almost impossible to catalog them all. This election season has been one continuous effort at keeping the populace off-guard and uninformed. But Jesus also tells us that there will be nothing covered that will not be uncovered, and that things that are spoken in darkness will eventually be heard in the light.  

As I write this, the Democratic party is in trouble. Overwhelming evidence has come to light that proves their presidential candidate has long been involved in a criminal enterprise for the purpose of making himself rich. The evidence is overwhelming that Joe Biden consistently sold influence to foreign governments and entities while acting as the sitting Vice President.  He has clearly used his family members as a front to subvert America's foreign policy in exchange for personal gain, and the evidence points to President Obama having been aware of it. Witnesses are coming forward who posses corroboration of Biden's serious perfidy.  Joe Biden looks to be guilty of some very serious crimes. It is all now coming to light. This is all real and it is factual.

Yet Biden's allies in the media -the very people you depend upon to keep you properly informed- have circled the wagons in an attempt to convince you that there's nothing to see here, that it's all "a smear campaign started by the Russians."  Don't you fall for it. If you never have before, this time you will have to look past the usual media gatekeepers to get to and find the truth of this. It's not hard to find.  Things that have been done in darkness are coming to light, but if you fail to look toward the light you will not see them.

You say you don't like Donald Trump's personality? Fine, I get it. So don't vote for him.  But not voting for Trump doesn't mean you should vote instead for one of the most transparently corrupt criminals to hold public office in your lifetime -certainly every bit as corrupt as George W. Bush and his criminal father, Herbert Walker Bush.  So don't vote for president if you don't want to. Stay home, or submit a protest vote for a third party presidential candidate.  The least you can do is show up to the polls so you can vote for good, honest people as your representatives in congress. 

To be a classical liberal you must be honest with yourself. You must have personal integrity. 

Be that person.

One Final Thought
I realize we'll probably be fighting a losing battle on this, but if you consider yourself either a conservative or a classical liberal, may I suggest you stop referring to today's intolerant leftists as "liberals"?  We should not be assisting them in arrogating a label they have stolen from generations past.  Call them what they are: the outraged left, the intolerant left, the bigoted left, or just plain lefties. Or come up with a descriptive label of your own. People who are patently dishonest are not entitled to steal the birthright of true liberalism and use it as their own. 

See Also: Don't Call Me A Right Winger

                                                                         *****

Next Post: What a Great Time to be Alive!

Related Posts:

The Sins at the Top of the List

Politics and Religion

Mormons Should Stop Identifying as Republicans

How Mormons Should Think About the Presidential Election 
(This one, and the continuation of it linked at the bottom of that page, was written prior to the 2016 election so you can see that I have since changed my mind about certain things.)

Why The Worldwide Fast Didn't Work

Previously: I Finally Got That Coveted Slot on Radio Free Mormon


I frequently hear from regular readers who have been asking why I'm often absent from this blog for long periods of time. There are two reasons, actually, one having to do with my health, but the second is that every time I come up with a good idea for a topic, someone else beats me to it and does a better job than I ever could have.  

Such is the case with the current topic, which was covered by a brand new blog called Latter-Day Truths. This blogger turns out to be someone I know quite well, but since his blog is relatively new, I wanted to bring his work to your attention.  He began his blog just four months ago, and all his posts have been remarkable.  No sense my going over the same ground he has already covered, but I couldn't resist cribbing the title of one of his pieces to use as my own, with only a slight variation in wording.  I hope you'll pop over there and give his post a read.  

If you are not aware of what happened -or if, like most Mormons, you conveniently forgot- President Russell Nelson proposed that all members of the Church "join with me in a worldwide fast—for all whose health permits—to pray for relief from the physical, emotional, and economic effects of this global pandemic.”  That was on March 26th of this year. As you may recall, that fast didn't work.

Why not? As the author of Latter-Day Truths points out, Nelson said nothing about the need for repentance. Not one word.  The Saints were expected to pray and fast, but what is praying and fasting without repentance? Nowhere in scripture am I aware of an instance in which God's people asked something from the Lord while failing to repent fervently repent.  So no miracle took place following that National Day of Prayer and Fasting, and it was never spoken of again.

As is usual in these times, Latter-day Saints tend to believe they should be the ones to lead such a process because they are convinced the Lord himself declared this church to be "the only true and living church on the face of the earth." As shown elsewhere, God never said any such thing. Mormons have been misquoting God on that point for nearly two decades.  

As also seems to be the rule in these times, the rest of the Christian world has taken up the call for a National Day of Prayer, but they are specific in the need for this to be a day of prayer and repentance.  This massive event is taking place even as I write these words, and I knew nothing about it. As it turns out, I had already written the first five paragraphs of this blog post when I heard the sound of this event coming from the other room where my wife was tuned in. So I'm cutting this post short and encouraging everyone to tune in, even if you, like me, are late in coming to the table.

In churches all across the nation today and tomorrow, millions of Christians are humbling themselves before God and repenting of the sins that have caused the Lord to turn his back on this nation, and asking for another chance at his redeeming love.  I just learned of this minutes ago from my wife, and many others -many readers of this blog, I assume- will wish, as I did, that they had been able to join in from the beginning.  

But better late than never, and it's never too late to repent.  So I urge you to join me and Connie as we join our voices with Christians and Jews all over the world who have begun to pray and repent, and who will continue to repent all week.  So I won't waste any further words at this time and instead simply invite you to tune in to TheReturn.org and enthusiastically participate in the National and Global Day of Prayer and Repentance.  I can't tell you how heartening it is to see thousands of believers on their knees before God on the national Mall in Washington D.C, and this is just one telecast from one of many locations. Tens of millions of people worldwide have tuned in and are participating in this national and global day of repentance. I hope you'll join in as well.

                                                         *****

Pertinent Links:

National Day of Prayer and Repentance 

Latter DayTruths: Why the LDS Coronavirus Fasts Failed 

Latter Day Truths: The Pestilence/Pandemic Cure Our Church Leaders Have Never Mentioned

To The Remnant: COVID-19 and Repentance

Misquoting God

I Finally Got That Coveted Slot on Radio Free Mormon

Well, it finally happened. Due to the overwhelming demands of one listener, Radio Free Mormon loosened its standards Friday morning and agreed to feature me on the podcast. |

Join us as I repeatedly wander off-topic into such areas as: why Connie no longer allows me to choose which movies we'll watch together, why my father was worried I might be gay, and why Superman should never have given that emergency signal watch to Jimmy Olsen.    

        CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE PODCAST.       And comment down below.


                           

Muh-Muh-Muh My Corona, Part Four: "The Only Thing That Matters Is The Science"

Previously: And Should We Die?

Not long ago I was re-watching the movie Rain Man.  There's a scene in the film where Tom Cruise is driving cross country with his severely autistic brother Raymond, played by Dustin Hoffman. Raymond has spent his entire life in an institution because he is what used to be known as an "idiot savant"- someone who is functionally and socially retarded, yet whose brain displays what Dr. Darold Treffert referred  to as islands of genius. In Raymond's case, Raymond is brilliant at math. Superhumanly brilliant.  But socially and emotionally he's a three-year-old.

Since math is based on logic, you would think that Raymond has a logical mind.  Sometimes, yes, but most of the time no. He may be a super-genius in some respects, but he is more a creature of habit than logic.  At the institution Raymond was raised in, every weekday at four o'clock would find the patients in the common room watching The People's Court.  This is one of the few constants in Raymond's life that absolutely must be met.  If there is even a hint that Raymond will miss his daily fix of Judge Wapner, logic goes right out the window as Raymond's emotions take over and he flies completely out of control.

As the two brothers are driving across the rural midwest, four o'clock nears, and Raymond begins making noises about four o'clock being the time Judge Wapner comes on: "Gotta watch Judge Wapner," he repeats, "Definitely gotta watch Judge Wapner." 

His brother tries using logic on Raymond, pointing out they are in the middle of nowhere, there is no TV in the car, no motels where they can stop to watch TV, and there's just no way it's going to happen. But Raymond is immune to logic. He becomes increasingly agitated, and Charlie has already seen what happens when Raymond loses control. Finally, with a minute to spare, they pull into a farmhouse where Charlie tries to con the woman who answers the door into letting them come in and watch TV:



The question arises: Why would someone so adept at mathematics lose all ability to reason logically in the real world? And the answer is: with Raymond it isn't about logic, Raymond is all about certainty.  Just as mathematics is the science of certainty, Raymond must have some degree of certainty to keep from spiraling out of control. Raymond doesn't do well with surprises; he needs order.  Raymond must be able to depend upon some things in his life that are always constant. Things that do not change. Things like the ability to watch The People's Court every weekday at four, even though it is very doubtful he has any inkling about what those people on the TV screen are even talking about.

As Eugenia Chang, author of The Art of Logic in an Illogical World reminds us, what was true about math two thousand years ago is still true today.  The answers to mathematical questions are always certain, never changing. And this is true, as Dr. Chang points out,  even though math nearly always deals with abstracts, and not with the real world:

"I could consider one apple and another apple, or one bear and another bear, or one opera singer and another opera singer, and all those situations would become '1+1' in the abstract world."

One plus one equals two.  Two plus two equals four.  And four o'clock? In Raymond's world that equals Judge Wapner, which means if there is to be a modicum of certainty in his life, he can't afford to miss The People's Court.

It is that very certainty that we see in mathematics that Raymond requires in order for his life to make sense.  According to Raymond's logic, life must go according to the pattern he is familiar with or everything flies into chaos.

Put that information in your back pocket for a minute, because we will return to it after we talk about science.

Math And Science: Two Different Kinds Of Logic
Math is a set of results that has been proven to be true according to logic. Science is also based on logic, but science relies mostly on evidence. What evidence? The evidence that accumulates as we ask logical questions. As Dr Chang reminds us, although mathematics from 2,000 years ago is still considered true and indeed is still taught, this is different from science, which is continually being refined and updated. There is little in the way of science from 2,000 years ago that is taught as valid today. That's because science, by its very nature, represents the acquisition of additional knowledge. We add more truth while we peel away the falsehoods.  Anyone who tells you that "the science is settled" on any question does not understand what science is.  Science is never settled. There is always more to learn, more changes to observe.

So let's take a moment and recall what we learned back in 9th grade science class about the scientific method. We start with a theory. A "theory" is just a proposed explanation for something.  Emphasis on proposed.  We neither believe nor disbelieve the theory; we don't accept or reject it right off the bat.  We simply start with that hypothesis and then go from there, asking questions in an effort to ascertain whether or not that theory has validity. As we ask questions, we observe, always keeping in mind that for truth to emerge, we must question and observe while being both skeptical and open-minded. While we observe, we peel off that which no longer serves the truth.

We stay skeptical so we don't fall into the trap of coming to false conclusions, and we stay open-minded so we can accept what the evidence is telling us, always keeping in mind that the goal is to get to the truth.

In the example we are currently concerned with, we start with a theory about this new virus that has been given the name COVID-19.  Our theory, based on what we initially observed, is that this virus seems to be highly contagious, and it seems to be deadly.  After stating the hypothesis, we then begin collecting data to find out if the theory holds water.  So is the theory valid?

So far, yes.  It does seem to be highly contagious.  But is it deadly?  Well, kinda-sorta. What we want the data to tell us is precisely how contagious and precisely how deadly this thing is.

Well then. Employing the scientific method of questioning, observing, experimenting, and observing some more, we are finding out that our original expectations regarding the COVID-19 virus were way out of line with reality.

The COVID-19 virus does seem to be highly contagious, and it can turn out to be deadly -but only to a small group of people who fit a certain category, namely the very old and very ill.  For everyone else, it turns out to be far less deadly than originally surmised.  And if this is true (and again the data tells us it is) what does the contagion factor really matter?

Here is how not deadly the COVID-19 virus is: more than 98% of those who contracted this virus simply did not bother to die from it. The overwhelming majority of people who did die turned out to belong to that category of patients who would have died at this stage of their lives anyway, either from old age or from one or more serious illnesses unrelated to the Coronavirus.

Virtually everyone else, with very rare exceptions, recovered -if that's what you want to call it, because it seems a bit odd to list hundreds of thousands of people as having "recovered" from an illness who never knew they were sick in the first place.  Although this particular virus appears to be highly contagious (and that merely means that, like the common cold, it is easy to catch; it doesn't mean it's particularly dangerous), the vast majority of those who caught it never even knew they had it.  And among those who did feel a bit squeamish, a vast majority of those people reported not feeling ill for very long -often for only a day or so with very mild symptoms.   Which tells us that although this virus remains nominally "contagious," that word has little meaning if it means you never really felt sick. And it especially has little meaning if you caught it and you didn't die.

Most significantly, a recent Stanford University Study reveals that between 55 to 85 times more people have been infected with the virus than previously thought, and if you think that's bad news (higher rates of infection must mean a greater catastrophe, right?) you don't understand the math. With hundreds of thousands more people contracting the virus, and the number of deaths remaining the same, what the data is telling us is that this thing is far less deadly than previously assumed. Whole orders of magnitude less.

When assessing the seriousness of any virus, scientists look at the percentage of deaths relative to the number of people who contracted the virus.  When hundreds of thousands more people catch this bug, yet the number of actual dead remains the same, that tells us it is far less dangerous than anyone ever thought.   If the number of dead had increased substantially, then we'd have an epidemic.  But the numbers remained the same, which means the percentages are vastly lower.

What does this mean? Well, looking at New York, believed to be the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, earlier predictions had placed the percentage of dead at 7.4%.  What we are actually seeing is .75%, which is a lot fewer.  So hooray for science.

How do those numbers compare with the flu that just ended this season? Numbers from the CDC indicate possibly 56 million cases of flu in the United States, while COVID-19 accounted for just under 846 thousand confirmed cases.  740,000 people were hospitalized with the flu this year. Want to know how many people were hospitalized with COVID-19? A mere 122,000.  Deaths from the flu this season: 62,000. Deaths from COVID-19: not quite 47,000.

Ignore all those ignorant news comentators who told you "we can't compare the coronavirus with the flu." Of course we can. Researchers do it all the time. It's called science.

Remember those fake stories you heard of hospitals being so overrun with coronavirus patients that bodies were spilling out onto the sidewalks and being stacked in refrigerator trucks?  Makes you wonder how this country's hospitals managed to accommodate  810,000 flu patients that showed up at their doors last year.  That's 688 thousand more people showing up at hospitals because they had the flu last year than showed up this year with the coronavirus, yet we heard nothing in 2018 about hospitals being overrun with flu patients.

How come?

Trust the Science
You'll notice I said trust the science. I didn't say trust the scientists.  Because although most of the time you can heed the words of a scientist, I recommend only doing so when they cite actual science to back up their opinions.

Take Dr. Anthony Fauci, for instance. As I pointed out in part one of this series, when he wrote in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine, Fauci was careful to only cite the science.  In that journal he said COVID-19 was proving to be no more serious than the Asian or Hong Kong influenzas of years past. But earlier (perhaps because he was dazzled by the TV cameras and forgot himself), Fauci had blurted out that COVID-19 would be ten times more deadly than the flu. He cited no science to back that up, and indeed there had been no research to suggest such a wild prediction might come true.  He just pulled it out of his butt, and the media ran with it as though it were really going to happen.

More recently Fauci opined that in the future when the coronavirus is behind us, "I don't think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you."

Okay, fair enough. It's his opinion, but whether its an opinion based on scientific research he didn't say.  But then during an interview with Vanity Fair he was asked about the wisdom of a person having sex with a stranger he or she might meet online.

"If you’re willing to take a risk—and you know, everybody has their own tolerance for risks—you could figure out if you want to meet somebody. And it depends on the level of the interaction that you want to have. If you’re looking for a friend, sit in a room and put a mask on, and you know, chat a bit. If you want to go a little bit more intimate, well, then that’s your choice regarding a risk."

Well, he's right of course. People should assess their own risks and make their own choices. But remember, Fauci is being consulted specifically because he has a reputation as the Top Doctor in the country right now.  People want to know about the medical risks to having sex with a stranger, and the same guy who warned against anybody ever shaking hands with anybody else ever again at any future time -well, he sure seemed pretty cavalier about the intimate exchange of bodily fluids with a complete stranger.

A vulnerable young woman could have asked that question of Ted Bundy and got a similar answer: "Sure, why not?"  But whether the ambivalent counsel came from Fauci or Bundy, being naked and alone and at your most vulnerable with a complete stranger doesn't strike me as a particularly wise thing to be doing, virus or no virus.

So don't be fooled into heeding the advice of "experts." I know I keep harping on this, but you don't need the advice of so-called "experts," you want actual science explained to you by competent virologists, immunologists, epidemiologists, microbiologists, and other scientists who are known to engage in actual scientific research.  There are plenty of journalists and politicians who will be happy to give you their opinions, but if those opinions are not backed up by scientific research, what good are they?

Below is a link showing twelve experts in their respective fields in medicine. They have been trying to get the word out almost from the beginning that this over-reaction to COVID-19 was a very bad idea.  And they had the science to back up those opinions -which is to say they were calm and dispassionate and not inclined to set anyone's hair on fire. These actual scientists are well worth listening to again, now that several weeks have passed and we're beginning to realize we've been had.

 12 Experts Questioning The Coronavirus Panic

And speaking of being had, here's Kevin McCullough with a rundown of the recent science proving that we've been snookered big time:

Antibody Testing Proves It: We've Been Had

The Science Behind The Lockdowns
Believe it or not, there is science behind the lockdowns, but none of it supports the current mania that insists the only remedy is to stay home and stay inside.  The country of Sweden refused to join everyone else in the hysteria over COVID-19, and guess what? They are doing far better than citizens in countries that have the most stringent lockdowns.  In fact, as one Swedish writer put it,

"It's Game Over and the Swedish-Belarusian Herd Immunity Model Has Won. One third of Stockholmers have already had Covid-19, shook it off, and are now immune." 

Here's a photo of people in Sweden gathering together and enjoying being outdoors like normal people:

Looks kind of unnatural to those of us being warned about getting too close to each other, don't it?

And below is a graph showing the faulty model predicting how bad things would get if the Swedes failed to stay locked indoors.  This is an excellent case study of how wrong every one of these computer models turned out to be. The blue represents the expected number of deaths per 100,000 in a worse case scenario, that is, if the people of Sweden did not stay home and isolate themselves. Expected deaths from the virus were predicted to be 18 deaths per 100,000.  The yellow section represented the moderate "median" case scenario, predicted to be 9 deaths per 100,000.  That tiny red area at the bottom represented the smaller number of people expected to die if everyone in Sweden stayed home and self isolated themselves for five full months (!)

Guess what? See that tiny, almost imperceptible section in red?  That's the tiny number of people who died without Sweden ever going into lockdown. And that almost imperceptible number turned out to be people well over age 65.  I highly recommend reading this entire piece.

Writes British author Rob Slane,

"It appears quite clear to me that thus far, the figures represented in yellow, which are roughly what we should be seeing in Sweden, according to the Imperial College model, are proving to be a gross overestimate. 

"Instead, the truth appears to be this: Sweden is achieving the kind of numbers that the Imperial College report claims could only be achieved under conditions of 5 months of full lockdown. Meanwhile Britain, which has been put under full lockdown for one month, is actually doing worse than Sweden (26 deaths per 100,000 population, compared to 18 for Sweden).  

"I have a feeling that many people are one day going to wonder whether destroying the economy and trashing civil liberties was a price worth paying for something that could have been dealt with without doing any of these things, but instead pursuing a more moderate course. Is there still time to reverse that course?"

That's a question a lot more Americans should be asking.

A Nation Of Idiot Savant s
Unfortunately, we now seem to have devolved into a country where an untold number of people either don't follow the science or just don't care. I was in Walmart the other day and noticed more shoppers wearing surgical masks and other face coverings than I had seen previously.

For heaven's sake, people, this is small-town, rural Northern Idaho! If you're sick, stay home. If you aren't sick, stop walking around like a paranoid mental patient.  Would you like to know how many cases of the coronavirus have been identified in my entire county?

 Four.

 Wanna know how many deaths?

 Zero.

If you live in rural America and you go outside wearing a surgical mask, you may as well get out a Sharpie and write the word "GULLIBLE" across the front of it, because that's what you're telegraphing to everyone who sees you.

I got to wondering why it was that after all this time so many people were still falling for the hysteria. One reason, of course, is it's all they hear about on the news.  Naturally the media continues to promote the hoax, because they benefit from scaring people. So do the politicians, because keeping you fearful means keeping you under their control. What neither the media nor the politicians ever consider is how these shutdowns will prove to be infinitely deadlier than the virus.

But why were Joe and Sally Sixpack still worried about something that is not only less harmful than the seasonal flu, but likely to fizzle out with a whimper within a couple of months?

I think I've figured it out.  I think most people haven't been keeping up with the evidence that this is just a whole lotta hot air.  How would they? Those who depend on the legacy media to keep them informed have not been told that the epidemiologist who initially predicted 2.2 million Americans would die from the virus has long since downgraded that prediction, and downgraded it drastically.    The public hasn't been told that these computer models are highly speculative and based on guesstimates fed into a computer.  You know the old adage, "garbage in, garbage out." Few actual scientists would ever bet money on the reliability of a computer model.

Writes author Scott Adams,

"If you have no experience in the field of science, you might think the climate models created by scientists are "science" because scientists make them. But prediction models are not science.  They are an intelligent combination of scientific thinking, math, human judgment, and incomplete data.  That's why there are a lot of different climate models, all different."

Relying on computer models to show you how a particular virus might play out is like using the same method to pick stocks.  You wouldn't want to bet the farm.

The average American simply has not been told that the data reveals that the only category of people who have true reason to be concerned are still the same people who need to be cautious during any flu season, namely the elderly and those suffering from other serious illnesses.  Instead of information they can use, all Joe and Sally Sixpack see day in and day out is some alarmist on their television screen waving his arms and shouting "Boogah Boogah!"

I think what is happening is that these people are still in the "theory" stage of the scientific method, still stuck back there when the coronavirus was widely  presumed to instantly kill anyone who gets near it. These people seem to believe it's going to fly around supermarket corners and sneak into their nostrils. 

That would sure explain why some people become inordinately angry just hearing about those protesters in Michigan who want to know why their governor won't let them plant tomato seeds or buy a car seat for the baby -as if any of that has anything remotely to do with keeping them safe.  I suppose if I lived under the illusion that accidentally breathing the same air as someone who might be carrying the virus -which, in the current mania, would be assumed to be absolutely everybody- I suppose the thought of my being hospitalized with a ventilator down my throat followed by an agonizing death would be enough to get me to cancel my porch tomato plans for the time being, too.

But the science tells us something different. What we are seeing all around us is Rain Man thinking. It isn't logical. Certainly this is not the way of rational, thinking grownups. Like Dustin Hoffman's character Raymond Babbitt, some people just need a sense of certainty in their lives, and if that "certainty" means allowing some tin-pot dictator in the governor's mansion taking over and telling them what they can and cannot do, well by golly I guess that's what they have to have in order to get them through the day.

You may have noticed it's impossible to try and have a rational discussion with someone whose hair is on fire. They simply are not capable of critical thought. Science? Never heard of it. Logic? What's that?  Evidence, reason, and common sense? What are you, some kind of Commie agitator?

Better to be wrapped up safe in their cocoons of certainty like Raymond, where they can be calmed and coddled by the sound of the kindly Judge on the television, secure in the knowledge that Big Brother is on the case and looking out for their well-being.

Don't get me wrong. The virus is real, and if you don't want to get sick from it, you should do what you should be doing at the outset of every flu season: work toward strengthening your immune system so that if you are inadvertently exposed to the virus you will have a better chance of being among that 98 percent whose lives don't become unduly disrupted.

Otherwise, live your life as you always do, taking the usual sensible precautions, because there are always going to be hidden dangers lurking.  That's just the way it is here on planet earth. In case nobody told you, this life ain't no picnic.

But if you want to be alarmed about something, be alarmed at the mass psychosis going on around you. See all those angry, frantic Raymond Babbitts whose emotions keep getting the best of them?  You're going to have to learn to ignore those people. They are not healthy. In fact, they are so unwell that they believe they are the sane ones and you're the one who is crazy for even suggesting we ought to consider a return to normalcy. In their eyes you are not just insane, you're a danger to humanity who should be arrested and possibly shot at dawn for "putting everybody at risk" with your crazy talk about relying on science.

As an example of the kind of people we're dealing with, neighbors pinned this note on a sick, elderly woman’s front door after her daughter dropped off some groceries.

Well, the good news is that a growing number of people are rapidly waking up. Every day more and more of your fellow citizens are stepping outside and testing the waters, putting their toes into the pool and discovering it is not filled with man-eating piranhas after all.  It will be the people who decide when they are finished with the lockdowns, and there is not a damn thing the politicians will be able to do to keep them in check. A return to sanity brings with it a positive side effect: you become immune to propaganda.

A Couple Of Thoughts To Part On
I had intended to close out this piece by including several links to scientific research papers proving the politicians are going about this all wrong. Maybe next time.  There is just so much important stuff appearing all the time that I can't get to most of it.  I already failed in my initial goal to post something on this topic here every couple of days, but happily no one has complained that I haven't assigned them enough to read.

As long as I continue to be obsessed with this topic, I'll probably show up here with another rant every couple of weeks.  I do post a variety of stuff on my Facebook page every day, so if you have only been seeing what the establishment wants you to see about the coronavirus, I urge you to look outside the  mainstream.  There are plenty of reliable sources of information out there. I spend several hours a day keeping up with the medical and legal journals, but there are also sources that translate those findings for the layman, and I try to share them online. Come take a look.

For now, let me finish with two short videos.  The first is related to the information exposed on my last post regarding the way in which the CDC, in collusion with hospitals all over the country, are counting deaths as having been caused by COVID-19 even when it is known COVID-19 had nothing to do with those deaths.  I know it was astonishing enough when Dr Birx admitted it, but here is the Illinois Director of Public Health making no attempt to conceal the perfidy. If you weren't shocked before, you will be now:



Whatever you want to call that folderol, it has nothing to do with science.

And finally, at a time when investigative journalism is almost non-existent within the mainstream media, Tucker Carlson is backed up by a team of the best investigative journalists you could wish for.  I never miss an episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight; I consider it essential viewing. Here is Tucker's report from Wednesday April 22nd, on the grossly mismanaged and unscientific lockdowns:



Okay, I can't resist adding one more report from tucker Carlson, for two reasons:

First, it is titled "Only Science Will Free Us From This Pandemic" and secondly it brilliantly demonstrates how tone-deaf many in the news media are about science and how it is folly to believe anything they tell you that has anything to do with medicine.  You may have heard reports that hydroxychloroquine turned out to be a massive failure for the treatment of patients with COVID-19. The reality is it is anything but a failure. These amateurs just don't know what they're talking about.  (See my previous post in which I explain how the journalism majors I went to school with were among the dumbest people on the planet.)



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