Thursday, June 30, 2016

Government Retirees in Fat, Fat City - This will amaze you. (3:44) It amazed me, and I have watched this kind of thing for 40 years. - by Gary North

This will amaze you. It amazed me, and I have watched this kind of thing for 40 years.
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The gravy train is thick for some of the participants.
All good things must come to an end. The Great Default will end it. But in the meantime. . .


Shocker: Gun used in Paris terrorist attack part of Fast and Furious gun walking op - By Rick Moran

One of the guns used by terrorists to shoot up Paris on November 13 of last year originated in Phoenix,, AZ and was sold illegally as part of the Fast and Furious gun walking operation.
And ATF agents did their best to cover up that information.

A Report of Investigation (ROI) filed by a case agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tracked the gun used in the Paris attacks to a Phoenix gun owner who sold it illegally, “off book,” Judicial Watch’s law enforcement sources confirm. Federal agents tracing the firearm also found the Phoenix gun owner to be in possession of an unregistered fully automatic weapon, according to law enforcement officials with firsthand knowledge of the investigation.
The investigative follow up of the Paris weapon consisted of tracking a paper trail using a 4473 form, which documents a gun’s ownership history by, among other things, using serial numbers. The Phoenix gun owner that the weapon was traced back to was found to have at least two federal firearms violations—for selling one weapon illegally and possessing an unregistered automatic—but no enforcement or prosecutorial action was taken against the individual. Instead, ATF leaders went out of their way to keep the information under the radar and ensure that the gun owner’s identity was “kept quiet,” according to law enforcement sources involved with the case. “Agents were told, in the process of taking the fully auto, not to anger the seller to prevent him from going public,” a veteran law enforcement official told Judicial Watch.
It’s not clear if the agency, which is responsible for cracking down on the illegal use and trafficking of firearms, did this because the individual was involved in the Fast and Furious gun-running scheme. An ATF spokesman, Corey Ray, at the agency’s Washington D.C. headquarters told Judicial Watch that “no firearms used in the Paris attacks have been traced” by the agency. When asked about the ROI report linking the weapon used in Paris to Phoenix, Ray said “I’m not familiar with the report you’re referencing.” Judicial Watch also tried contacting the Phoenix ATF office, but multiple calls were not returned.

The only language these people understand is the language of lawsuits. You have to pry information from them using the federal courts, who have been more than cooperative in getting government to open up and disclose their wrongdoing. In this case, leaks from within the law enforcement community aided Judicial Watch in their investigation. If the documents still exist that confirm this info, they were likely destroyed long ago with other Fast and Furious docs.
I'm sure the French government would be very interested in following up on this investigation. But if the denial by ATF is any indication, the stonewall will continue and French intelligence will be denied access to any helpful information.

Is a Freedom Revolution Possible? - By Robert Ringer

As the clock winds down on what is supposed to be the end of Barack Obama’s valiant attempt to transform America from the world’s only superpower into a banana republic dictatorship, a couple of unforeseen events have occurred.
The first is the totally unexpected appearance of a brash, anti-establishment billionaire who pays homage to no living person or political party and appears to be totally devoid of fear. Contrasted to the bootlicking cowardice of the vast majority of politicians, particularly in the Republican Party, his lack of fear is both astonishing and refreshing.
The other unexpected event is the appearance of a strange new hybrid word spelled B-r-e-x-i-t — the referendum on whether Great Britain should or should not break away from the European Union. Of course, it was supposed to be a mere formality for Britons to vote against exiting, but, as with the Donald Trump phenomenon, the experts completely misjudged the anger and nationalistic fervor of voters. Thus, the polls were once again exposed as little more than propaganda devices.
The bottom line is that after centuries of bondage, everyday people are suddenly revolting against the political criminals who have controlled their lives. Why do so many politicians, including the most power hungry among them, still not understand the phenomenon that is unfolding before their very eyes? Perhaps the prison warden in the film Cool Hand Luke bestsummed up the disconnect between the corrupt establishment and the general populace when he drawled, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

While I wouldn’t want to get my hopes too high, I admit that for the first time in my life I see a freedom revolution as a real possibility. Not a probability, but a possibility.
Most of us, when we talk about revolution, think of an uprising from the left. Revolution tends to bring visions of the good old-fashioned kind of uprising that Marx and Engels wrote about in the nineteenth century and Lenin and Trotsky put into action early in the next century.
Since those heady days of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, left-wing revolutions have occurred with regularity throughout the world, with the people in whose name such revolutions have been fought always ending up much worse off than prior to the overthrow of their rulers. To their dismay, the low-information masses have repeatedly found that left-wing revolutions result in poverty, oppression, and a loss of freedom — not to mention torture and death.
Enter communications technology, which has not been kind to the power structure that has been so successful for so long in keeping the average citizen in check. Plain and simple, the Internet has made it possible for too many everyday folks to learn far too much truth in a relatively short period of time and, just as important, given them the ability to spread that truth worldwide virtually instantaneously.
Democratic slaveholders knew how important it was to keep slaves uneducated and uninformed. But today, in rapidly increasing numbers, the sharecroppers on Uncle Sam’s Plantation are becoming educated and more informed. Thus, it is possible that history may someday record that Barack Obama came along fifteen to twenty years too late to accomplish his goal of taking down America. But don’t count him out just yet. The man is superb at his craft.
In other words, let’s not get carried away with current events and prematurely celebrate the overthrow of our masters. Even if the masses succeed in kicking out of office the ruling establishment, it will all be in vain if they are not willing to go all the way. And by all the way,I mean that they must be willing to utter two words that are considered taboo by the media, politicians, and both low- and high-information votersimpeachment and treason.
In the U.S., my concern is that even if Trump becomes president, he will end up yielding toestablishment pressure and let Hillary, Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al escape punishment. In defending their crimes, one of the left’s favorite arguments is, “Oh, c’mon. That’s all in the past, so what difference does it make now? People want us to move on with fixing today’s problems.” It’s a very old trick, but a very cute one.
I’ve heard this kind of clever refrain from both Democrats and Republicans all my life, which is why politicians like Chris Dodd, Tom Daschle, and Barney Frank — to name just a few scoundrels who engaged in massive criminal activity during their stay in office — get off scot-free, then peacefully live off their ill-gotten gains for the remainder of their lives.
If there is to be real change, people like this must be punished to the full extent of the law. Taking the trouble to prosecute lawbreakers and mete out meaningful punishment is animportant deterrent to criminal activity. If there are no consequences to criminal behaviour, what motivation do criminals have to change their ways?
But there’s another component to the hint of freedom revolution in the air: Trump and Brexit have reaffirmed something else that most of us already knew — that people are fed up with multiculturalism and want their countries back. They’re not impressed by the Con-Artist-in-Chief making self-serving pronouncements like “This is not who we are.” The arrogance of using the word “we” to speak on behalf of millions of Americans who totally disagree with him is beyond arrogance and narcissism; it’s downright nauseating.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, one of the biggest lies politicians and their media water-carriers have tried to stuff down our throats for decades is that “diversity is America’s greatest strength.” Specifically, they tell us that we must support so-called multiculturalism or we are racists.
Really? Well, I have news for you: Human beings are tribal by nature. They don’t want to live side by side with people who do not share their culture — which includes, above all, their values.
Note that I used the word culture rather than race. Personally, I don’t know anyone who evaluates people on superficial differences such as the amount of pigmentation in their skin. What the hell does the color of a person’s skin have to do with his worth as a human being? Absolutely nothing.
But a person’s cultural beliefs are an entirely different matter. America used to be a melting pot where people came here and willingly adopted American culture and values. That’s what made America a melting pot.
Today, however, thanks to the nefarious actions of globalists in both major parties, America has been intentionally Balkanized. Which is great for politicians, because when the populace is divided, it’s much easier to conquer.
The one little reality of life that true-believing globalists can’t seem to grasp is that every nation and every culture, like every individual, will always act in its own self-interest whendifferences arise. “We are the world” is a nice thought and all that, but neither ISIS nor economic reality are swayed by such radical-left gibberish.
Which is why, if there is to be a true freedom revolution, an important step would be for the United States to not only drop out of the world’s most corrupt political organization (repeat,political), the United Nations but kick the entire den of thieves out of the country. Let the globalist criminals set up shop elsewhere to do their dirty work.
So, is it possible that we really are in the early stages of a freedom revolution? Again, yes, I think it’s possible … but doubtful.
I say doubtful because, notwithstanding the existence of the Internet, probably at least half the public is either too stupid (i.e., lacking in intelligence), too ignorant (i.e., lacking in knowledge), too prone to envy and avariciousness, too immoral, and/or too irrational to embrace the notion of living in a totally voluntary society in which the supreme law of the land makes it clear that force or violence, or the threat of force or violence, is illegal and is to be dealt with swiftly and harshly — especially in the case of politicians.
Having said all this, Americans should focus on first things first. And the first order of business is to stick a large finger in the tyranny dyke by making sure that no more anti-constitutionalist radicals will be appointed the Supreme Court because a couple more of those would make everything else moot.
Something to think about long and hard between now and November 8.


The End Game Of Bubble Finance——Political Revolt - By David Stockman

During Friday’s bloodbath, I heard a CNBC anchor lady assuring her (scant) remaining audience that Brexit wasn’t a big sweat. That’s because it is purportedly a politicalcrisis, not a financial one.
Presumably in the rarified canyons of Wall Street, politics doesn’t matter much. After all, when things get desperate enough, Washington caves and does “whatever it takes” to get the stock averages moving upward again.
Here’s a news flash. That’s all about to change.
The era of Bubble Finance was enabled by a political abdication nearly 50 years ago. But as Donald Trump rightly observed in the wake of Brexit, the voters are about to take back their governments, meaning that the financial elites of the world are in for a rude awakening.
To be sure, the apparent lesson of the first TARP vote when the bailout was rejected by the House in September 2008 was that politics didn’t matter so much.
Wall Street’s 800 point hissy fit was all it took to prostrate the politicians. Indeed, the presumptive free market party then domiciled in the White House quickly shed its Adam Smith neckties and forced the congressional rubes from the red states to walk the plank a second time in order to reverse the decision.
There was a crucial predicate for this classic crony capitalist capture of the authority and purse of the state, however, that should not be overlooked. Namely, that in the mid-cycle period of the world’s 20-year experiment in central bank driven Bubble Finance the rubes had not yet come to fully appreciate that they were getting the short end of the stick.
Indeed, the earlier phases of the bubble era witnessed an enormous inflation of residential housing prices. For instance, between Greenspan’s arrival at the Fed in August 1987 and the housing bubble peak in 2007, the value of residential housing rose from $5.5 trillion to $22.5 trillion or by 4X. 
The greatest extent of the housing bubble occurred in the bicoastal precincts, of course. But it did lift handsomely the value of 50 million owner-occupied homes in the flyover zone, as well.
Accordingly, the latter did not yet see that the new regime was stacked in favor of the top 10% of the economic and wealth ladder, which owns 85% of the non-housing financial assets. And that the speculative casinos of Bubble Finance would be an especially verdant source of windfalls for the top 0.1%.
Indeed, the entire 13 percentage points of the wealth pie lost by the bottom 90% of households (105 million households) during the past 30 years have been captured by the 120,000 households at the tippy-top (0.1%).
Nor was it yet evident as to the degree to which massive money printing under conditions of Peak Debt almost exclusively stimulates Wall Street speculation, not main street production, jobs, incomes and spending.
In any event, by the eve of the great financial crisis, the GOP was actually controlled by the racketeers of the Beltway and the Wall Street gamblers, not the red state voters who had elected it.
In fact, Goldman’s Sach’s plenipotentiary to Washington, Hank Paulson, was in complete command of the elected side of government. At the same time, the Bush White House had populated the central banking branch of the state with proponents of monetary activism, who were more than ready to authorize “heroic” measures to reflate the bubble.
Needless to say, the leader of the pack, Ben Bernanke, had been groomed for the role of chief bailster by none other than Milton Freidman. The latter, in turn, had led Nixon astray at Camp David 37 year earlier when he persuaded Tricky Dick to default on the dollar’s link to gold, thereby opening the door to fiat money, massive credit expansion and the modern era of Bubble Finance.
There is a straight line of linkage from that great historical inflection point to Friday’s Brexit uprising. Namely, Nixon’s abandonment of the Bretton Woods gold-exchange standard, as deficient as it had been, was also a profoundly political act.
It resulted in the abdication of economic and financial policy to an unelected elite and their eventual capture by Wall Street and the forces of speculation and financialization unleashed by unanchored central bank money and credit.
Nixon’s destruction of Bretton Woods was the enabling event. It turned central bankers and financial officialdom loose to operate a dictatorship of bailouts, bubbles, and financialization of economic life. And to spread this baleful regime to Europe, Japan and the rest of the world, too.
To be sure, it took more than two decades to fully materialize. There were deeply embedded institutional cultures and ideologies among policy-makers that restrained opened-ended resort to the printing press and financial bailouts.
The Paul Volcker interlude in the US and the determined sound money regime of the Bundesbank are cases in point.
But eventually, the old regime gave way. There emerged Greenspan’s dot-com and housing bubbles, the rise of the ECB and the financial rulers of Brussels, the massive bailouts triggered by the global crisis of 2008-2009, the hideous expansion of central bank balance sheets during the era of QE and ZIRP, the emergence of the destructive “whatever it takes” regime of Draghi and the current financial lunacy of subzero interest rates across much of the planet.
But here’s the thing. The rubes are on to the rig.
Twenty-years of Bubble Finance have made the City of London an oasis of splendor and prosperity, for example, but it has left the hinterlands of Britain hollowed-out industrially, resentful of the unearned prosperity of the elites and fearful of the open-ended flow if immigrants and imports enabled by the superstate in Brussels. As on observer put it, the geography of the vote said it all:
“If you’ve got money, you vote in,” she said, with a bracing certainty. “If you haven’t got money, you vote out.” We were in Collyhurst, the hard-pressed neighbourhood on the northern edge of Manchester city centre last Wednesday, and I had yet to find a remain voter.
Look at the map of those results, and that huge island of “in” voting in London and the south-east; or those jaw-dropping vote-shares for remain in the centre of the capital: 69% in Tory Kensington and Chelsea; 75% in Camden; 78% in Hackney, contrasted with comparable shares for leave in such places as Great Yarmouth (71%), Castle Point in Essex (73%), and Redcar and Cleveland (66%). Here is a country so imbalanced it has effectively fallen over.”
The rise of Trumpism in the US reflects the same social and economic fracture. To wit, Bubble Finance has also drastically unbalanced the US as between the bicoastal zones of prosperity it has enabled and the fly-over zones its has effectively left behind.
It goes without saying that massive debt monetization and 90 months of zero interest rates has been a boon for the Imperial City. With almost, no restraints on its ability to borrow and spend, the military/industry/security/surveillance complex have prospered like never before, as has the medical care cartel, the education syndicate and the lesser beltway rackets such as green energy and the farm subsidy/food stamp/ethanol alliance.
Likewise, asset gatherers, financial intermediaries, brokers, punters, financial engineers and corporate strip-miners have prospered enormously because the market has been rigged every since Black Monday in October 1987. That is, the cost of debt and carry trades have been falsified, downside hedging insurance in the casino has become dirt cheap and time after time the Fed’s put has bailed-out speculations gone bust.
Even what passes for entrepreneurial breakouts in the world of social media and new tech isn’t really. It’s just another variant of the dot-com bubble in which a few good innovations are being drastically over-valued (e.g. Uber) while a tsunami of worthless and pointless start-ups have become giant cash burning machines (e.g. Tesla).
Taken all together, they are funding an ephemeral complex of pseudo businesses, pseudo jobs and pseudo start-up networks that are attracting tens of billions in venture capital. But that amounts to a simulacrum of prosperity today and the substance of tomorrow’s malinvestment waste and losses.
Meanwhile, the main street economy has atrophied. The first round of Bubble Finance buried the middle class in debt, while the post-crisis intensification has turned the C-suites of America into a giant stock trading room and financial engineering arena.
Contrary to the bubble vision pattern, in fact, there has been no business deleveraging at all. On the eve of the crisis in Q4 2007, total non-financial business debt outstanding was $11 trillion, and it is now $13.5 trillion.
But on the margin, every dime of that massive swelling of the business debt burden represents real economic resources cycled out of the flyover zones and pumped back into the financial casinos and the bicoastal elites which fatten on them.
The recent studies of the Census Bureau data which show that just 20 counties have generated half of all start-ups since the financial crisis provides another take on the underlying fissure. What the study describes but doesn’t explicitly articulate is that the massive flow of venture capital to the 20 mainly bicoastal counties and outposts of the military/industrial/security/surveillance state is itself a product of Bubble Finance:
Americans in small towns and rural communities are dramatically less likely to start new businesses than they have been in the past, an unprecedented trend that jeopardizes the economic future of vast swaths of the country.
The recovery from the Great Recession has seen a nationwide slowdown in the creation of new businesses, or start-ups. What growth has occurred has been largely confined to a handful of large and innovative areas, including Silicon Valley in California, New York City and parts of Texas, according to a new analysis of Census Bureau data by the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan research and advocacy organization that was founded by the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sean Parker and small group of investors.
That concentration of start-up activity is unusual, economists say. In the early 1990s recovery, 125 counties combined to generate half the total new business establishments in the country. In this recovery, just 20 counties have generated half the growth.
The data suggest highly populated areas are not adding start-ups faster now than they did in the past; they appear simply to be treading water. But rural areas have seen their business formation fall off a cliff.
Economists say the divergence appears to reflect a combination of trends, all of which have harmed small businesses in rural America. Those include the rise of big-box retailers such as Walmart, the loss of millions of manufacturing and construction jobs across the country and a pullback in business lending that appears to have stung small-town and rural borrowers particularly hard.
The changes also reflect a fundamental shift over the past two decades in which workers and industries power the country’s economic growth. That shift advantages highly educated urbanites at the expense of everyone else. Polling suggests it is one of the driving forces in the political unrest among working-class Americans — particularly rural white men — who have flocked to Republican Donald Trump’s presidential campaign this year.
In short, Bubble Finance is a giant engine of reverse Robin Hood redistribution. It embodies a sweeping fiscal intervention in the natural flows of the free market that punishes savers, laborers, self-funded main street entrepreneurs and the retired populations in favor of speculators, the holders of existing financial assets and the dealers in money.
Bubble Finance is an affront to both democratic governance and true capitalist prosperity. The Trump voters, the Brexit voters, the masses rallying to the populist banners throughout Europe above all else represent a reactivation of the political machinery in a last-ditch campaign to stop the financial elites and their regime of Bubble Finance.
Yes, this time is different, and this time, there will be no reflation of the financial bubble like there was after Black Monday, the S&L bust, the dot-com crash and the great financial crisis of 2008-2009.
Needless to say, the Wall Street dip-buyers and perma-bulls who take their cues from the modern day financial ruling class are in for a shock. And today’s statement by Martin Schulz, the President of the EU parliament could not more aptly explain why.
Said Schulz,
The British have violated the rules. It is not the EU philosophy that the crowd can decide its fate“.
We think Schulz is dead wrong.


The EU mask comes off - Vox Day

Remember, the EU proponents always swore up and down that it was not a political project. Of course, as some of us always knew, they lied. Now they're not even bothering to pretend otherwise anymore, as in reaction to Brexit, two foreign ministers propose eliminating all the other national member-states before any other nations are able to escape globalist rule.
The foreign ministers of France and Germany are due to reveal a blueprint to effectively do away with individual member states in what is being described as an “ultimatum”. Under the radical proposals EU countries will lose the right to have their own army, criminal law, taxation system or central bank, with all those powers being transferred to Brussels.

Controversially member states would also lose what few controls they have left over their own borders, including the procedure for admitting and relocating refugees.  The plot has sparked fury and panic in Poland - a traditional ally of Britain in the fight against federalism - after being leaked to Polish news channel TVP Info.

The public broadcaster reported the bombshell proposal would be presented to a meeting of the Visegrad group of countries - made up of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia - by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

In the preamble to the text the two ministers write: "Our countries share a common destiny and a common set of values that give rise to an even closer union between our citizens. We will therefore strive for a political union in Europe and invite the next Europeans to participate in this venture."

The revelations come just days after Britain shook the Brussels establishment by voting to leave the European Union in a move some have predicted could leave to the break-up of the EU.

A number of member states are deeply unhappy about the creeping federalism of the European project with anti-EU sentiments running high in eastern Europe, Scandinavia and France.
I can't think of anything that will bring about Fixit and Frexit and Nexit, and any number of additional exits faster, than the EU doubling down on political integration. It's prodigiously stupid in any event; it could not be more obvious that economic integration has completely failed. But, as we know, SJWs always double down, and apparently there is no amount of failure and democratic rejection that will even slow down the globalists in their mad grasp for international power.

I have never been more certain that the EU will collapse, hopefully sooner rather than later. Socionomics always predicted the EU's failure to be inevitable, but now we're actually beginning to see it happen.


Wednesday, June 29, 2016

How The PCA GA Action On The Role Of Women In The Church Appears To One Woman - The Heidelblog

Editor’s note: The following is written by a PCA pastor’s wife, who is herself a seminary graduate. In the interests of focusing on issues and not personalities, the writer shall remain anonymous.
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As a woman in the PCA, I am concerned about what I witnessed at the PCA’s General Assembly last week, not just because I strongly disagree with some of the overtures that were passed, but because of the presence of a cultural morality guiding the arguments and votes of commissioners.

We live in an age of moral evolution. Gone are the days of a powerful state church dictating the action of a king with the threat of excommunication or withdrawal of funds. In this new age, characterized by a generally valuable separation of church and state, the weight of moral responsibility has fallen into the hands of our lawmakers and politicians and, for the most part, whoever makes the loudest noise and garners the largest following.

Faced with moral ambiguity, our nation, among so many others, has turned to a morality of the majority. (I’m pulling this straight from Francis Schaeffer) Whichever law, movement, or organization can get the will of at least 51% of the population shapes the morality of the day. Morality evolves as the bloggers and Facebook posters make their views heard.

This moral evolution reflects a sort of humanism that ever seeks out the next “problem” to root out or allows the next minority to hurl itself into the face of the public. Americans see this evolution as bringing progress. Change is good. Seek what is next. Yes we can. Americans worship anything perceived as progress.

It is not so with God, however. Christian morality is based in God’s word, which endures forever. God’s word is unmovable because God is immutable and unchangeable. The nature of His Word reflects who He is and as followers of Christ, we ought to feel a rub between the moral evolution of our culture and the changeless of our faith.

When I showed up to GA last week, I expected to, in the best possible way, run into a bunch of sticks-in-the-mud. I expected to feel like I had traveled to a new land where everyone and everything would feel a bit alien from the bombardment of American culture I experience every time I log onto Facebook. I expected to feel at home in the midst of men and women who are just a bit “other” than the world.

My experience could not have been more different. Instead, all I could see and hear as I bumped into yellow-lanyard-wearing, hipster, bearded PCA men in the conference center and crowding the restaurants surrounding it was this cultural morality. This glorification of progress through change littered their conversations as well as their arguments on the floor. My jaw fell to the floor when I overheard one commissioner comment to another, “These other denominations have done it; isn’t it time we caught up?” Isn’t it time we caught up?!? Does not the Scripture make it clear to us that when other churches are changing with the times, we ought to hold strong? Should we not see these shifts and hold tighter to our doctrine? Are not these changes a red flag? Have we learned nothing from church history?

When it comes to the issue of women in the church, my earlier questions still remain. Given that we have no new revelation from God and there has been no breakthrough theological paper on the issue, why is this coming up at GA? My answer: because of American cultural morality. Moral progress in the United State right now is currently focused upon equality and I believe our commissioners, for the most part, fell prey to this cultural pressure.

As an American citizen, I want women to have all the same rights as a man from suffrage to pay rate to holding political office. As a Christian, I believe that men and women are equally sinners, equally saved, and equally valued as the creation of God Almighty.
In another sense, however, I am not equal to men. In God’s kingdom, there are certain responsibilities given to my husband not given to me. There is authority given to my husband not given to me. I like it that way.

God did not make men and women the exact same; it is not that they are identical except that one group is a little prettier than the other. God made man and woman with unique roles such that, together, they bring Him glory. I enjoy being a woman according to the example outlined in Scripture, in part, just so that I can see my husband being a man as defined by Scripture. I am fulfilled as a woman with my beautiful submissive, nurturing role that provides opportunities to bring out the leadership role of my husband. I do not want to change this to either lose my own role, which I love, or to deprive him of his, which I love to see him do to God’s glory.

Nevertheless, my culture tells me otherwise. It tells me I ought to grasp for rights that will make me indistinguishable from men. But I like being a woman and I want to stay that way.

I am grateful to have attended General Assembly this year. It made me thankful for my role as a woman in the church. I got to participate in the worship services, sit in during the proceedings, attend conferences for men and women alike, and support my husband as a commissioner. I had the chance to sit amongst pastors, listening to them work through the issues while questioning and being questioned by them on various topics. I had a role at General Assembly and I did not even have a title. This week, as I return to my home church, I return to my various roles: women’s ministries, greeting, hospitality, music, and mercy ministries. I have plenty of roles and I do not need to be ordained or certified to do them. I have value in the church superficially because my husband, the elders, and the congregation respect me for how I am serving them, but ultimately because I am serving my Lord and Savior.

There is nothing terribly wrong with setting up a study committee on the roles of women. It is never a bad idea to dive into Scripture, study an issue at length, and faithfully check ourselves against God’s word. The problem is the reason why it was brought up.

Why do we need to consider the history of ordination? Why do we need to reassess women on the diaconate? Why does a letter need to be written to churches to help them promote women in the church? Since we have no new revelation from God on these issues and the overture is not in response to a sin or failing the PCA is specifically aware of, the only answer can be that this is a culturally pressured decision. That is dangerous. It is dangerous because this desire for moral evolution will cloud the interpretation of Scripture such that, regardless of the truth, evidence will be found for the ordination of women. The wording of the AC’s recommendation clearly suggests that there will be a search for women’s roles in Scripture; it is as if the study committee has been commissioned to just look harder for evidence that has heretofore never been found. This is a biased study that will get the results it wants.

Even more, however, it is dangerous because the decision is not being made as a result of a direct attack upon Christian values (such as gay marriage), but, rather, a cultural encouragement to just “catch up” with the times. If we are willing to reconsider our theology regarding women now, what will we be willing to reconsider in 5 years?

As a Christian woman, I do not want to catch up. I want to watch the world change like the stormy seas while I hold fast to my anchor, my God, my Reformed theology. I do not want to budge; I do not want the study committee to think about budging. And I want my commissioners who vote and make decisions for me at GA to not consider budging either.

Destroying Ukraine to save it - by Saker and comment from Vox Day

The Saker is concerned that Ukraine is the next Syria to be "saved" by the USA: 
The initial plan was to make the Ukraine a sort of “black hole” which would suck in all the economic, political, and military resources of Russia, ideally by having Russia occupying the Donbass. But now that the Russians have declined to get sucked in, it is Europe which is now threatened with the Ukrainian black hole.

The Americans probably realize by now that it is too late to put Humpty Dumpty together again and they are right. While, in theory, a join effort of the USA, EU and Russia could, at a huge cost, try to rebuild the Ukraine, political realities make such a joint action impossible, at least for the foreseeable future. They also realize that, courtesy of Mrs Nuland’s candid words, the blame for the disastrous outcome in the Ukraine will be put on the USA (which is not quite fair, the Europeans are also guilty as hell, but such is life). And if “losing Syria” was bad enough, then “losing the Ukraine” will do irreparable damage to the USA simply by debunking the myth of the USA’s omnipotence. This is very serious, especially for an Empire which has basically given up on negotiations or diplomacy and which now only delivers ultimatums.

So what are the US options here?

It is hard to predict at this time what the US might try to do. The normal US practice in such a situation is to simply declare victory and leave. That would work in Africa or Asia, but smack in the middle of the European continent that is hardly an option as it would result in a PR disaster.

The second option could be to basically blame the Ukrainians themselves for everything and try to protect Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova from the inevitable consequences of the spreading chaos. The risk here, at least from the US point of view, is that Russia and her Novorussian allies would be more or less free to move in the created vacuum and that is something the USA absolutely cannot accept. The Americans would have visions of Zakharchenko in Kiev or pro-Russian riots in Odessa and that is simply beyond unacceptable.

Which leaves option three: to deliberately blow up the Ukraine.
It's going to be fascinating to see what happens once President Trump is able to put the leash on the foreign policy lunatics who still think they can control the world through their ever-judicious interventions. Did no one ever explain to them that breaking things is a) is not controlling them, and b) is a lot easier than controlling them?





BREXIT & THE FOURTH TURNING - The Burning Platform

I took a long walk on the boardwalk with my wife and mother last night, after a long day of packing, doctor appointments, travel, unpacking, food shopping and buying enough liquor to get me through the next week. I was confident the oligarchs had the Brexit vote rigged in their favor. I went to bed exhausted at 10:00.
I wake up this morning to global pandemonium. I just wanted to ride my bike on the boardwalk in peace, but Noooo. First it was raining, so I have to wait for the showers to end. Then I flip on the radio and hear about stock markets around the world crashing because the British people grew some balls and told their keepers to fuck off.
My first thought upon hearing the news was “Fourth Turning”. It’s all about the mood of the people in these countries. The establishment is constantly baffled during Fourth Turnings because they think their old methods of propaganda, fear and control will continue to work. They don’t realize the cyclical nature of history and how the current generational configuration will lead to earth shattering change and a complete destruction of the existing social order. Brexit is just another brick in the wall.
I also find it interesting that over the last month or so some of the most renowned investing billionaires in the world have announced their bearishness and had placed large bets on such an outcome. George Soros is the perfect example. He switched his position to shorting the market recently. Then he constantly blathered in the press about what a disaster Brexit would be for global markets. Then the captured legacy media convinced the world Brexit would never happen. When it “shockingly” happened last night, stock markets around the world crashed. Soros and his billionaire cronies made hundreds of millions in profits. Meanwhile, the poor schmuck with his 401k gets clobbered again.
Since I was 100% wrong in my prediction regarding Brexit, you can take my following observations with a grain of salt. But this is what I see:
·         This further cements the coming showdown between the people and the establishment (politicians, bankers, mainstream media).
·         The EU is dead. France, Italy and other EU countries will push for the same referendum and the people will vote out.
·         The insolvent banks across Europe were never fixed. The central bankers just extended, pretended, and printed more debt. Bank failures will trigger further economic strife.
·         The credibility of central bankers around the globe will completely disintegrate as their one trick pony method of easy money has proven to be an immense failure for the people.
·         With the disintegration of the EU, the possibility of civil chaos and war with Russia goes up dramatically.
·         It will be interesting to see if the Fed and their Wall Street banker puppeteers can stop the stock market from dropping by its destined 30% to 50%. The overvaluation is drastic and this could be the Lehman moment, or at least the Bear Stearns moment.
·         The credibility of the corporate mainstream media has further disintegrated as they again have been revealed as nothing but propaganda mouthpieces for the establishment. Their anti-Brexit poll numbers were fake. They are not journalists, but cheerleaders for their corporate sponsors.
·         The constant media bashing of Trump and cheerleading for Clinton will be disregarded by the silent majority in the U.S. Their polls and opinions can be completely ignored and dismissed. The people of this country who don’t live in NYC, DC, LA, or SF are pissed off. Their mood is dark. They want change. The only person who will give them change is Trump.
·         I’m more convinced than ever that Trump will win the presidency in November. This is a Fourth Turning. The status quo never wins during a Fourth Turning.

Fourth Turnings never peter out. They intensify to a crescendo of turmoil, chaos, violence, war, and bloodshed. This Fourth Turning intensification just got turned up dramatically. It will eventually be turned up to 11.


Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Fun with atheists - Vox Day

It's really remarkable to see how many atheists fail to understand what their "assume the other person is lying if he does not immediately present documentary evidence upon demand, which will of course be immediately dismissed for failing to meet the unexpressed demand for peer-reviewed and published scientific evidence" says about their personal integrity, or as is more precisely the case, their lack of it:
Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
The reason most atheists trust fellow atheists less than anyone else is because they recognize their own lack of integrity and morality.

Paul D
@Lost_in_Formosa
Any evidence for that?

Supreme Dark Lord
@voxday
Yes. Look it up.

Paul D
@Lost_in_Formosa
in other words, you just made it up, right?

Supreme Dark Lord
@voxday
No. You guys are so predictable. You assume lies. Why? Because you are an atheist and you readily lie.

Paul D
@Lost_in_Formosa
Why are you slandering a huge group of your fellow human beings?

Supreme Dark Lord
@voxday
You are lying. Truth cannot be slander by definition. You're really not helping the case for atheist integrity here.

Supreme Dark Lord
@voxday
Vox: Atheists don't trust other atheists because projection.

Atheist: Show me the evidence!

Vox: No.

Atheist: You lie!

Vox: Voila....
The amusing thing is that they still absolutely believe that they are the smart ones, the "bright" ones, because godless. It's now gotten to the point that when I hear someone is an atheist, rather than an agnostic, I now assume aggressive midwittery.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And a refusal to provide freely available, readily accessible evidence on demand is not a reliable indication that the other party is lying. It could mean that, or it could simply indicate that the other party is aware that you are an intellectually overmatched and lazy little bastard who is going to quibble in a dishonest and self-serving manner about any evidence that is provided to you, no matter how reliable the sources.


The problem of peer review - with comments by Vox Day

Peer review simply isn't what it is advertised to be; it is not only little more than editing, most of the time it is not even competent editing:
As a scientist with a 15 year career behind me so far, I am afraid that my experiences reflect this. Peer review is excellent in theory but not in practice. Much of the time, the only vetting the papers get are two relatively junior people in a field (often grad students or postdocs) giving it a thumbs up or thumbs down. That is absolutely it. In theory, the editors should make the decisions with the recommendations of the reviewers, but the editors rarely have the time or the expertise to judge the papers and often automatically defer to reviewers. Also, the papers should be reviewed by luminaries of the field, but these folks rarely have the time, and either decline invitations or bounce the work to a student or another trainee. It's not just bad papers that get through, but also good, rigorous, papers that are bounced by this system.

Many if not most of the people in academic science today, at least in biology (my field), are overwhelmed with the need to publish in such high volumes, few people with the needed expertise can afford the time to go over the results in detail. All this while, at the same time and for the same reason, the volume of papers that needs to be reviewed goes up. I've heard of (and had myself) papers havve lingered for 4+ months before they even went out for review.

And, in our rush to publish, we often don't read this literature carefully ourselves but start citing papers anyway, which weaves these potentially weak or erroneous papers even more tightly into the fabric of their field.

It's difficult to care a lot about the quality of your work when you know the extra effort often doesn't help something go through this fickle review process, and when you know people will cite it without really reading it closely. There is little incentive to spend longer on a paper to make sure everything is right and the results are reproducible because there is very little accountability for errors and huge rewards for being prolific.
The ironic thing is that True Believers and the I Fucking Love Science crowd genuinely believe that "peer reviewed science" is the gold standard for evidence. But there is a reason scientific evidence is not automatically allowed in a court of law, let alone considered conclusive, and the more we learn about the defects of peer review, the better we understand that science's credibility is limited.

We have a word for science that is trustworthy, and that word is engineering. Until science can be applied, it cannot be fully trusted to be correct.

All peer review is really designed to do is to reassure the reader that the information presented fits safely within the confines of the consensus status quo.