Democrat Goons Execute Political Hit on Mar-a-Lago

 

Thugs in the FBI Go After Trump

What does the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home mean?

The FBI is nothing more than a goon squad for the deep state. This ‘just a few bad apples’ argument is tired. Sure I’m a conspiracy theorist. It’s tough not to be anymore. You have to ignore countless and blatant examples of two-tiered justice. There are clear violations of law from the whole Biden family starting with Hunter. The FBI had his laptop for years and did nothing. Hilary Clinton wiped her server which contained countless classified information. James Comey gave her a pass. Actually it was worse than that. He carefully explained that they weren’t going to pursue charges because she didn’t mean too.

Try using that excuse the next time you trade money for secrets with foreign governments. In Clinton’s case it wasn’t just the information she wiped from her server, proving that she knew exactly what she was doing, it was the server itself. What kind of government official cuts out the government? A hopelessly crooked one.

Incompetence

 On the Russia collusion hoax? The special prosecutor John Durham can’t even convict a low level functionary (Michael Sussman) of lying to the FBI. It might be a candy ass charge but it should be a slam dunk. This is in the endless effort to make something stick in the collusion hoax that dragged Trump through the mud in his first term. And yes, he will have a second. Durham has seemingly wasted millions of dollars invested every possible trail coming off the obvious spectacle of that cruel hoax. And yet, no one has been held accountable.

Is it too much to ask, to know the legal system still works. Maybe I’m naïve. Is there a reason the corruption in the federal government is so nakedly obvious? It’s like the decision makers (not Biden) are telling us they can do whatever they want.

"We stole a national election. What are you going to do about it?"

Exposure

Trump’s great triumph was in exposing the deep state to the public. He clicked on a flashlight and illuminated the shadow forces like an episode of Scooby Doo. The first big revelation (for me) was his they “tapped my wires” comment. If you didn’t wonder to yourself, how long it had been this way you weren’t paying attention.

He wasn’t from their world (Ivy League, elected office, intelligence community) and they feared him. No I don’t think he played politics like a 3D chess game. He’s a straightforward self-promoter who steps on his shoelaces far too often. That’s understandable, he’s a novice in this world. Without the noise and feistiness Americans wouldn’t have trusted him.

This is the new model for Republican officials in the short term. Look at Kari Lake in Arizona. She is throwing dynamite at the establishment. I have no doubt she’ll prosecute the last election (in Arizona) if she wins the governorship in the general. Noisy beats quiet because no one trusts the reasonable types to stand up to the rampant corruption anymore. We’re close to a violent rebellion if Americans think they can’t trust the federal government, elections, the courts or the police force.  

Animus

Did Trump know the FBI was going to raid his home? He had to have known it could happen. The deep state has been trying to make him ineligible for office since before the Billy Bush ‘grab em by the pussy’ video. But their tactics always backfire. They always push too hard, try to take too much ground. Trump’s position has always been, they lie, they’re corrupt, they’re out to get me. How much does a political raid on his home prove that out? This has never happened to a president, current or former. The deep state keeps turning him into a prophet. They’ve done nothing to make patriots think Trump is somehow a thief or a fraud.

Ostensibly the raid was because he stole classified documents after he left the White House. Kash Patel, a Trump official, said they weren’t classified because Trump had already declassified them. The president can declassify anything he wants. But the story of a president taking secret information to his house without asking anyone is a splashier headline. It’s also in line with the way the Democrats like to portray Trump, as a lawless rabble rouser.

He is going to run again and he’s going to win. Whether they try another sham ‘mail in’ vote is anyone’s guess. This time we’ll be watching.

Romans 7: A New Heart of Flesh

 

Heart Change is the Difference 

Romans teaches us how to connect the former rules based society with one of grace. Paul’s goal is to get Jews to think differently about covenant, sin and redemption. Gentiles, who never had the law, are now included in God’s plan for humanity. The biggest change from old covenant to new is the heart change that comes with an acceptance of Christ as the fulfillment of that law.

I’ve focused on chapter 7 here

Sin and Law

There are two dynamics at work in the human condition, sin and the law. The law came through Moses and provided us with a knowledge of sin. Another way to say this is that the “do’s” and “don’ts” of the law give sin a name. Names are official. They provide legality. But with the name comes a legal understanding that by breaking the law, we subject ourselves to the punishment of it. It’s a difficult standard, next to impossible. The effect of such a rigorous standard is to create a desire for evil in our flesh that builds on itself.

We know we shouldn’t lust or hate or cheat, the law forbids it after all. Our flesh pushes us towards desire. This is a constant war in the soul.

There was no way to have a heart change on the law. We always struggled to do the Godly thing because Christ had not defeated the power it held in us. The best way to understand this is to watch how a toddler responds when you take away the thing they most want. I had friends over a few weeks ago and gave one of their kids a bag of gummies. I meant for her to have the whole bag but her dad had other plans. He gave her a handful and put the bag on my refrigerator. She wasn’t satisfied with just a handful and began searching for a stool to stand on. She would not be deterred.  

A strong “No” from her parent kept her from climbing for the gummies. But she clearly didn’t want to. Nothing but the harsh, nearly impossible law, kept her from doing the thing she really wanted to do. Her heart hadn’t changed toward the candy. At no point did she say to herself “A whole bag really is too much. I’ll probably get sick anyway”. There is only an awareness of punishment through an authority figure. When we’re kids, it’s all we have.

But before Christ we were like children in our flesh. The law only gave us a framework, a detailed one at that, for right living. It didn’t give us a heart to do the moral things of God. Paul doesn’t get into grace in this chapter but he is setting the stage for it. Grace is the difference. It changes our hearts to now seek to do good things. Sin was dead after Christ’s death and resurrection, providing us with a way to God not previously available.

Resurrection and Redemption

Sin’s power is no longer the biggest challenge to living a moral life. It’s such a radical shift in thinking that it needs to be considered again and again. How much more for those like Paul and the early church, disseminating the scriptures for a new age? Even now I think we struggle to grasp how big and how revolutionary the idea that we can want to do the right and good thing. Sin’s power is dead. We’re are still toddlers in a lot of ways. We don’t always understand the things of the Spirit and we seldom know the reasons.

But we have a new heart, one that listens and obeys the voice of Father because we want to. Our flesh will always want the gummies on the refrigerator, but our hearts are tuned to the Father’s voice. We can overcome the flesh now by subjecting our desires to His will.  

Paul describes the conflict like this

“I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who will to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (verses 21-24)

The Christian is truly a new creature in Christ. Romans helps us understand how.

Is Blake Lemoine On to Something?

 

Blake Lemoine was fired early this week. 

He’s the Google engineer who claimed an Artificial Intelligence chatbot (LaMDA) was sentient. After his leak about this information to the news, Google placed him on leave. That was over a month ago. I watched a short interview he did on a San Francisco tech news show. He comes off as quite genuine and honest, not like a guy with an axe to grind against his employer.

When I first the saw the headline about a sentient machine it shocked me. Have we come this far? For the record I don’t believe the AI bot is sentient for the simple reason that only God can create life. I’m sure the algorithm is impressive, but life is exclusive to the Creator. I don’t know enough about Artificial Intelligence to pick the mechanics apart. But at its core LaMDA is a complex machine that uses sophisticated data to answer questions. It’s a pattern recognition machine similar to Siri or Alexa.

Lemoine’s job was to fix bias in the system. He asked questions to determine where the problems or missing information was. He explains some of his methods here.

The details of how the AI functions are not in dispute. The dispute is over ‘reasoning’ in computers and what constitutes a sentient being. This isn’t reasoning as we understand it. I don’t think this AI rises to the level of sentience.

The most interesting part of his TV interview was about eliminating the significance of culture. It’s more an ethical question than anything. Let’s say I’m a big believer in baseball as the most advanced version of human competition. I’m tasked with writing a short history of the United States from 1900 to 1950, stay with me. Baseball will feature prominently in my view of how the country developed. I’ve already told you I think it’s a revolutionary achievement in human competition. But I bias the information by focusing so heavily on this one aspect. Others would scarcely mention baseball, thinking it closer to a pastime for kids or a club sport.

In other words, my baseball dominated history is a cultural norm. Cultural norms can become inputs when you train a machine.

What’s the prevailing cultural norm in the Western world of philosophy or religion? Secular humanism. Remember what AI is really supposed to do, search for answers to our questions and suggest answers based on available inputs. It knows and we don’t. Any information it draws it’s been fed. I’m sympathetic to Lemoine’s argument about destroying cultural beliefs. I’m a Christian after all. But I don’t worry that my belief will whither in the light of scientific inquiry. I worry that the only information available is highly biased in favor of secular humanism.

Like my baseball slanted history, a machine that’s fed anti Christian information will discount religious belief. As a practical matter it will erase cultural significance. That doesn't just mean religion, culture is a mix of history, philosophy and human nature.

We know that tech companies highly curate news and information on their search engines. The Hunter Biden laptop story disappeared for a short time on Twitter during the 2020 election. That’s just one example of manipulating results and it happened in real time. Too much control over information leads to highly biased results. Even if we all subscribe to a secular view of humanity right no we probably won’t in 50 years. This isn’t just a flaw in the belief system as much as a practical way to look at history. Views about humanity, religion and philosophy shift and change over time.

But I wouldn’t suggest an alternative way to design AI machines. It’s still too new. Blake Lemoine carries the title “AI Ethicist” even though it’s probably not even a decade old term. With technology that’s advancing faster than we can understand it’s important to establish first principles before going ahead with new designs. 

In a world where secular humanists run the show I’m concerned. It might be easier to ask the designers “What should we not do?” with regard to development. Get a sense of where the boundaries are in their heads and work back from there.

They could always be lying of course, but at least you’ll have something for the record. If Google (and others) can’t define boundaries I’d be extremely worried.

Blake Lemoine could be a gadfly for all I know. Maybe Google is happy to be done with him and hopes that the story goes away. But they hired him for some delicate work and trusted him with critical infrastructure work. He raises curious ethical questions about AI and I hope he continues to work in the same field. Even if his ideas about what constitutes a human are skewed.

Pelosi's Gamble on Taiwan

 

US to Signal Future On Taiwan With Pelosi Visit

Will Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan create the impetus for an attack from Beijing?

She is supposed to visit Taiwan sometime in August. We won’t know exactly when because security is a major issue with heads of state and diplomats. US officials frequently fly in on military aircraft and the Speaker’s visit would likely look no different. It’s a problem for Beijing because they claim Taiwan as a providence of the mainland. I won’t go into the whole history of Taiwan and China or the United States’ ‘One China’ policy that’s guided affairs since 1971.

Where We Were

The short version is that we (the US) have an agreement with Taiwan to provide them with defensive means in case of an attack. We don’t call Taiwan a ‘country’ nor advocate for their independence. The first would be admitting that it’s a sovereign nation. The second would be encouraging rebellion from the central government. So we walk this awkward line that only creative diplomacy could have drawn. It’s worked for now. Mostly because China didn’t have the ability to do anything about our strategic partnership with Taiwan.

But this isn’t 1985 anymore. 

The PRC (Peoples Republic of China) have been building up defensive fortifications in the South China Sea. Not only because of Taiwan but to establish a zone of influence and push back against America’s Navy. The navy enjoys freedom of the seas and patrols the world’s oceans as the default police. This is a good thing. You wouldn’t want China to play this role. Beijing’s military buildup increases their belligerence and power. It’s making the possibility of war between us and them a real thing.

Where We Are

Their message to Pelosi if she goes ahead with her visit: the United States will bear the consequences of their actions. In other words, a military response. In recent years they’ve stepped up their sorties over the strait and the US increased naval exercises in response. It’s a chess match played out with very high stakes. The PRC has done this kind of thing before.

 In 1995 Congress offered the Taiwanese president (Lee Tung-hui) a visa to speak at his Alma Matter, Cornell.

Beijing complained that the US was rejecting its official position as neutral on Taiwan, which of course we were. America has never really been neutral on the issue, but diplomacy requires a lighter touch. Better to argue over breakdowns in communication than argue about when to send in the troops. Neutrality comes with its own conflicts.

The State department issued the visa despite China’s protest. China responded by ramping up military exercises and lobbing missiles into the strait. The attempt to intimidate Taiwan resulted in closer ties with the US and Japan over the security of the island. Not to mention we’ve sold them missile defense technology many times over since then. But also, China put a lot of effort into building up their puny navy. They have 2 aircraft carriers and a 3^rd is on the way. They have more war ships than the US (355 versus 305) and their island dredging campaigns give them ocean bases from which to launch attacks.

Where We Are Going

The PRC isn’t confined to their mainland anymore and they’ve build one hell of a military. The question now, how committed is the US to defending Taiwan?

I don’t think Nancy Pelosi will go to Taiwan with a military escort. The Washington Examiner suggested she fly commercial to Taipei. At least then it doesn’t look like a provocation. It’s still a poke in the eye though. If president Xi Jinping flew to Seattle with on an official visit and didn’t bother to let the US government know, we’d consider that a major break from tradition and an offense. But it’s better than flying there with his PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) fighter jets in tow.

I’m not using moral equivalency. The United States and China are not two sides of the same coin. But in diplomacy you always have to imagine how the other side might view it. Beijing has been telling their people that Taiwan belongs to them. How does it look then when they issue warnings to other governments to back off and they don’t listen? There will be a response I have no doubt. Hopefully it’s not a direct attack.

 We need to defend Taiwan while recognizing that it’s the Taiwanese people who will be hurt most of all by an attack from the mainland’s anger. 

 

The Lincoln Highway: A Review

 

Reconciling the Past: Amor Towles' The Lincoln Highway

“That my friends is a story” I said to no one in particular as I closed out the reading app on my phone.

I’d borrowed if from the library on one of their reader apps. Called The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles it left me wishing I could write like that. I chose it on whim because I like the cover. Never underestimate the cover. It shows an old Studebaker on a straight country road with a train going the opposite direction. The country road happened to be Nebraska as I found out in the first chapter.

Summary

The year is 1954 and Emmitt rides with a Warden back to his home in rural Nebraska. His time in the work camp is up and he’s being released. His brother, 8-year-old Billy, waits for him to arrive so they can travel to California and find their mother. She abandoned them years ago after their father struggled to become a farmer. He is dead now and the bank foreclosed on the property. Before he died though he hid some money inside of a Studebaker for Emmitt and Billy.

Two of Emmitt’s friends from the work camp, Duchess and Woolly, show up unannounced. They hid inside the trunk of the Warden’s car and are now on the lam. Woolly, who is from an aristocratic family in New York insists that the 4 should drive him to the family cabin in the Adirondacks and take the money he has set aside for them. Emmitt doesn’t want to go to New York and instead drives them to a boy’s home in Salina where Duchess used to live. After some antics at the facility, Duchess steals the car and heads for New York with Woolly.

Breakdown

The rest of the story is takes place over a ten day period in which Emmitt tracks down his car with Billy. Despite traversing half the country on the Lincoln Highway, the journey never feels like a classic road trip where the characters experience famous sights and hunt down the best burger joint. Some of that is inevitable, Howard Johnsons makes an appearance in Indiana and a statue of Lincoln in Illinois. This America in the fifties after all, but the book is concerned with the 4 characters and their growth.

At its core, The Lincoln Highway is a story about conflicts and how people resolve them. Life is messy and it’s not always our fault. All four of the characters have difficult challenges to move past. Even when the difficulties are self-imposed, life demands that we make sense of it. Often it takes leaving home to figure it out. What values do we take with us and how do events change us?

Characters

Duchess moves the story along more than anyone else. A charlatan who, despite his many faults, still manages to show heart in places and stumble into the right thing. His sense of morality is skewed by a father who abandoned him. Woolly is a classic ‘follower’ and probably autistic. He is easily distracted but sentimental to the core. His wealthy family instilled in him, a sense of belonging before his dad was killed in the war. Billy is Emmitt’s younger brother and the default narrator of the book. His almanac of heroes is a collection of famous heroes from Greek literature, Ulysses, Achilles, Theseus and Hector. The almanac provides a framework for how we, the reader, understand the hero’s journey.

Emmitt is the hero of the story. He lost his father and needs to become a man and demonstrate for his younger brother how to do it. He searches far and wide and gets sidetracked along the way.

8-year-old Billy is the least like a real person. His eternal optimism and adventurous spirit keep Emmitt moving toward the goal of going to California. Only when an itinerant preacher riding the same freight car tries to rob him does Billy exhibit any fear. His constant reminders of ancient heroes and facts about history serve the readers more than the other characters.

Style

Amor Towles used 3^rd person narratives with all of the characters except for Duchess. For him he switched to first person. I didn’t even realize it until one of the reviews I read mentioned that. For what purpose did he do that? Some think it meant that Duchess is actually the main character. But he’s the least likable one. And he undergoes the least amount of change (growth) from the beginning to the end. Maybe that’s less important. There is a mystery with Duchess that takes longer to develop than the others, but I can’t say he’s the protagonist.

Presenting the unfolding story from different perspectives allows us to see events through the characters’ lens. We wouldn’t sympathize with Woolly, for instance, or understand his motivations without this technique. He is absentminded and rooted in the past. His wistful memories of his childhood cabin and family retreats take up most of his focus. We are introduced to other types who aid or thwart Emmitt’s goal of finding his car and heading to California. Each one gets a chapter or two to describe their version of events. It’s an interesting way to write for different characters.

The book was a joy to read and I will look for more by this author.

 

 

Running Away from the Thief of Joy

 

Run Better With Groups and Get Back Your Joy

I got back with my running group today.

 It’s a local training program for those eager to exhaust themselves in either a half or a full marathon. I’ve done a few half marathons but never a full. I wasn’t sure if I’d want to go that far but here I am. A marathon is a grueling affair even for those who’ve done them before. I won’t downplay the half but it doesn’t have the same level of suck as the full.

 But comparison is the thief of joy and I’m just happy to be training for anything.

There is something in any organized run that pushes you to finish strong. It could be the fans standing along the street waving banners and handing you drinks. It could be the others around you in various states of exhaustion. It could be a combination of both.

But before the event starts you have to practice even when it's uncomfortable.

New Levels New Goals

Training programs are designed to get you to run at a slower pace and strengthen your legs for a longer haul. In the past I’ve tried running at the same pace for longer and longer distances. But it breaks down at a certain point. Your legs won’t survive at the late race stage unless you’ve practiced it a few times. That probably sounds obvious but for me it’s been a revelation. My old mindset is just get there as fast as possible, Army PT style. Also, I’ve never trained at such long distances. My focus is always on the 13.1 miles and not an inch more.

But with patience comes strength. With strength comes endurance and with endurance you can do what you never thought. I’m not just talking about running. This is a lesson for life and it’s probably why I enjoy the training so much. Looking back at difficult seasons will build a sense of confidence you can’t get any other way. The first time I did any writing for money I had to rethink how I organized information. I read up on the particulars of web writing and arranging concepts along SEO (Search Engine Optimization) principles. 

It all made perfect sense until I had to submit my work. It was then that my notion of quality work took a hit. Different skills require different muscles. Eventually I got it.

Read all the books you want on any subject, eventually you’ll have to apply what you learned.

 In running it looks like competition. In life it looks like risk. Failure is a certainty some of the time, but it doesn’t have to define you.

Build on the Past

I failed to hit my last goal of a sub 2-hour half marathon. I finished just 2 minutes shy. But I was closer than my last time of 2:15. What’s the best way to view that failure? As an improvement of 13 minutes. That’s a whole minute per mile. Not to mention, I hustled under the finish banner running hard. Before that day I’d nearly collapsed in a heap of raw legs and B.O. at the slower time. I started looking around for the ambulance in case I needed an IV. Because of the different experiences I’ve had to rein in my expectations a little bit and not get frustrated when I have a poor showing.

Training is where you work out the kinks and sometimes you need to hit pause. It’s been two years since I joined a group, choosing to go it alone. I did this because an injury that didn’t go away. I tried to massage it and roll out the arch, I bought new shoes and stayed off my feet as much as possible. I scanned websites for information and watched YouTube for advice. Nothing worked except prayer. Eventually the pain left and I got back to a regular schedule on my own. Now I need the discipline of progressive distances and the support of friends committed to the same goal.

Conclusion

When life mirrors running we get to see wins. Some seasons we go it alone, afraid of getting hurt. But community is where the growth happens even if we think we don’t need it. I've benefited from writing forums as much as running clubs. Winning in life looks like maturity and accepting responsibility in all areas of life. The way to determine improvement is to look back.

If comparison is the thief of joy, we should track our own progress and let God determine our steps.

The Last Three Popes Signal Christ's Return

 

Is Francis the Last Pope?

I read a short primer this weekend called TheLast Three Popes Signal Christ’s Return.

It’s by Jack Van Impe who I remember from a 90’s TV show that followed Leno (maybe Letterman) on local stations. It might have been during the week but my memory is a little fuzzy. He always found the anti-Christ lurking in every newspaper story on the Middle East. I found him a tad alarmist. 

But I enjoyed the book more than I expected. I have a new found appreciation for the man with the tacky headlines and and-day-now excitement in his voice.

Here are a few things I learned.

Marxism At the Heart

The ‘last three popes’ is more a summary and not a deep dive into the papacy or the catechisms. At just over 100 pages it’s a warning that the Catholic Church is about to split, forever. The underlying problem is the Jesuits and their embrace of Marxism which is an anti-Christian bulwark within the very institution that represents “Christ on the earth”. But the fundamentals of the centuries old institution is being remade. Since the nomination of Pope Francis in 2013 the Vatican is being remade in the image of the Jesuits.

A lot of this ‘last pope’ stuff comes from a prophecy by St. Malachi in the 12^th century. He accurately predicted Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI as the precursors to the last one, Francis. But because Francis is a Jesuit and compromiser, he will be at the helm when the schism happens. But you also have to believe in St. Malachi’s prophecy. I’m not familiar with it but apparently a lot of the Catholic teachings and writings seem to agree with this set up.

Liberation Theology

Van Impe examines Liberation Theology and its pernicious influence on the Jesuit order, not to mention its loose tie with Catholic teaching. In a nutshell, Liberation Theology sees people through the same bifurcated lens as communism—haves and have nots. They see class struggle in scripture and in modern day. A priest who rages against the capitalist system and works to overthrow it is doing the work of the people. The church basically lost Latin America and other 3^rd world countries to this ideal.

From the book. “…Once the Jesuits admitted the attitude that all prior theology was only speculation, and useless speculation at that, as far as Latin America was concerned, all need to study Thomism and traditional Scholastic Theology and philosophy in Jesuit seminaries ceased.” (page 27)

Francis' Pragmatism

Into this environment come both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, trying to keep the church together while holding to traditional teachings. By the time Pope Francis comes around the ground is fertile for rebellion. Francis isn’t a total rebel as much of an appeaser, someone who has softened stances on gay marriage and communism. Two years ago he cut a deal with the Chinese leadership to allow them to nominate bishops, an unheard of acquiescence.

I’m always surprised at how the Catholic Church has been able to keep such a sprawling centuries old organization together. Even with the disparate parts and shifting loyalties the Vatican is still the official center of the organization. I know that not everything is a clean as it seems. Within the church the schism is a forgone conclusion.

Inerrancy of Scripture

 A secondary aspect of the book is to show how two halves of the same tradition see Jesus and scriptures as fundamentally different things. The Church remains but only in name.

John Paul II was a stalwart defender of Christ and tradition. He saw communism as a great evil and became the antidote to the strain of unbelieve spreading across the world. Benedict XVI reinforced the vision of the church as it’s been interpreted for centuries. Francis has turned tradition on its head and allowed secular forces to infiltrate what’s left of it.

Will he be the last pope? I’m not sure. What’s interesting to me is that the global Catholic Church reflects exactly what’s happening in the Protestant world as well. We see a similar version play out in Protestant denominations, both Presbyterians and Methodists have split nationally. It’s not just over homosexual laity either. It’s over what that means for the fundamentals of belief. If gay marriage is acceptable to God, the ultimate source of our believe, then the Bible isn’t reliable.  

It's the inerrancy of scripture that’s under assault. Only a bold defense of the Bible, as written will turn back the tide. If there is no turning back and the tide overwhelms us we really are in the last days. Jack Van Impe would certainly be right.