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Thursday, November 2, 2017

Vox Popoli: A strange, newfound respect

Rod Dreher is on a roll.

Donald Trump, in his rough way, is right:

President Donald Trump, during a White House Cabinet meeting Wednesday, said he wants to terminate the Diversity Visa Lottery, a program that distributes around 50,000 visas to countries where there is a low rate of immigration to the US.


“I am, today, starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program,” Trump said, seated next to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. “I am going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program, diversity lottery, diversity lottery. Sounds nice, it is not nice, it is not good. It hasn’t been good and we have been against it.”


He added: “We’re going to quickly as possible get rid of chain migration and move to a merit-based system.”


Trump added that based on preliminary information, the attacker in New York “was the point of contact, the primary point of contact for, and this is preliminarily, 23 people, that came in or potentially came in with him and that is not acceptable.”

Of course the God-Emperor is right. The USA has to get rid of a) birthright citizenship, b) chain migration, c) dual nationality, and d) post-1965 immigrants and their descendants if it is going to survive intact.

Which is why it probably won't. But it's not over until it is actually over.

It is amusing how Dreher still has to qualify that he does not approve of the God-Emperor's tone. After all, saving the nation would be so much more palatable if it were done wearing the proper bowtie.


Vox Popoli: Hollywood values at NPR

Another one bites the dust. This time, it's the Senior VP of News at National Public Radio:

NPR's senior vice president for news, Michael Oreskes, has resigned following allegations of sexual harassment from several women.

The accounts of two women, first published by The Washington Post, describe Oreskes unexpectedly kissing them during meetings in the late 1990s, while he was Washington bureau chief for The New York Times. An NPR employee has also come forward publicly about harassment that allegedly occurred during a business meeting-turned-dinner in 2015.

"This morning I asked Mike Oreskes for his resignation because of inappropriate behavior," NPR CEO Jarl Mohn wrote in an email to NPR staff on Wednesday. "I have received his resignation, effective immediately."

One guess as to Mr. Oreskes ethno-religious identity. That's right, another Eskimo. What an utterly astonishing coincidence!

Here is my explanation: the combination of low socio-sexual status and power over women is simply more than most gamma males can stand. Throw in the absence of Christian values putting the brakes on the temptations they face, and you've got the perfect storm for creating a serial sexual harassser, if not a full-blown sexual predator.

And I also suspect that what we're seeing here is a defensive burn. They're cutting loose the lesser villains in what we can hope is a futile attempt to protect the more serious ones.

UPDATE: Crazy Days and Nights discusses the possibility of an actor who may be Kevin Spacey cracking Epstein Island and the Lolita Express wide open:

Apparently with all types of local governments looking into sexual assaults and rapes committed by Hollywood people coming into the light, the situation on the island they all thought they had carefully extricated themselves from is back. Could be barely back or could be back where everyone goes to jail.

Today I am just going to focus on three of the players. They all have been on the island. They all have done some horrible things to tween boys and girls. No one they were with on the island was anywhere close to being the legal age of consent.

So, most likely to flip and throw everyone under the bus is this A list mostly movie actor who is an Academy Award winner. He is the one who almost killed several of the boys to the point where his host no longer invited him. Our actor had a preference for tweens who didn't speak English. He didn't want to hear anything they had to say. Probably one of the cruelest people around. He lied to the feds like crazy the first time around and said he only went to the island to fish and lay out and relax. He also told the feds he never saw anything happen with anyone and that he usually was alone when there. He is by far facing the most time in jail if caught so would first flip our second a-hole.

A few years ago it looked like this A list director was going down. He never even was interviewed by the feds that I can find. Apparently he always went to the island via a boat just because he is smarter than most and didn't want any record. No record means the feds didn't even know he was a guest on the island. Our director would come for 24-48 hours of nonstop sex. Apparently he would take enough drugs to stay awake the entire time. The host flew in guys the director always wanted but was afraid to go near in Hollywood. In Hollywood, he would never go below 16 or 17. On the island, he would go way lower.

One person I think would actually kill himself rather than face any kind of public scrutiny is this permanent A list director. He too was interviewed by the feds but said it was all relaxation. Funny how the relaxation never included his wife. It was just him and a bunch of tween girls he made call him grandpa. Apparently there was not much sex but he assaulted the girls and touched them and made them touch him. He took a lot of photos. I don't know if the photos exist. My guess is the feds thing before probably would have scared him to death. He seems to have recovered though because he is definitely been back to his creepy self the past 18 months or so.


Wednesday, November 1, 2017

How One Little Word Changes Everything in the Book of Revelation. Do You Know What It Is? - The American Vision - by Gary DeMar

Prophetic speculation is rampant. Books dealing with the end times continue to flood the market. Is America part of Bible prophecy? What about Russia? Two recent books. Let’s not forget blood moons . . . earthquakes . . . ellipses  . . . hurricanes . . . wars. Probably the most talked about and written about so-called end-time sign relates to Israel. We’ve been told to keep an eye on Israel. The book of Revelation is “all about Israel.” The thing of it is, Revelation is all about Israel. But you’ll be surprised to learn that the modern state of Israel is not the Israel Revelation is discussing.
Brian Godawa has been studying and writing and speaking on the topic of Bible prophecy for many years. The following article is his latest attempt to put the book of Revelation in historical perspective. — Gary DeMar
_________________________
One Little Word Changes Everything
Brian Godawa
Revelation is surely one of the most controversial and debated books of the Bible. It is visionary, it is fantastic, it is earth-shattering in its significance. And I had always assumed it was about the end of the world in our future. But I would eventually discover that it was not about the end of the world, but about the end of the old covenant and its earthly elements of holy city and temple in the past. It is earth-shattering in heavenly significance, but not in earthly geographic scope.
And I can prove that with one little word: earth.
You see, the word “earth” shows up a lot in English translations of Revelation, and it is that word that makes it so apparently obvious to modern readers that it’s about the end of the world, the earth.
Here are some examples of “earth” used in Revelation:
·         The horsemen of the apocalypse “take peace from the earth” (Rev 6:4) and kill “a fourth of the earth” (Rev 6:8).
·         The seven trumpets of woe are blown over “those who dwell on the earth” (Rev 8:13).
·         The seven bowls of wrath are “poured out upon the earth” (Rev 16:1).
·         God avenges the blood of his martyrs by judging those “who dwell on the earth” (Rev 6:10).
·         The Two Witnesses call down plagues upon the earth (Rev 11:6).
·         The grape harvest of wrath is judgment “of the earth” (Rev 14:18-19).
·         The Great Harlot, Mystery Babylon, is guilty of the “earth’s abominations” (Rev 17:5) and the blood of “all who have been slain on the earth” (Rev 18:24).
The problem is that the English word conjures in our modern scientific minds a picture of the globe, as seen in NASA pictures. That is not what it meant to the ancient Jews writing and reading Revelation. The Greek word translated “earth” (gē), and its Hebrew equivalent in the old testament (eretz) has several different meanings based on context. One of those meanings may be the earth as God’s creation (Gen 1:1), but more often it means, soil, ground, individual countries or regions, or land.
And that word “land” is the key. Because to the ancient Israelite, the word “land” was an often repeated meme that meant “the land of Israel.” As scholar Kenneth Gentry explains in his forthcoming commentary on Revelation, in the Old Testament, a majority of the contexts that the word for “earth” appears (both Hebrew and Greek) refer to the land of Israel. He writes,
This particularly abundant use of gē is significant in that the land promised to Israel was central to God’s covenant with her (e.g., Ge 12:1–7; Ex 3:7–18; 6:2–8). The Land was one of the three realia [objects] dominating her devotion: the Land, Jerusalem, and the temple. As [the New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis]  (1:522) puts it: “the land on which Israel lived forms one of the primary theological and ethnic foci of the faith of Israel and of the OT scriptures.” When God established Israel as a nation, her founding documents elevated the Land as the first of these great hopes: “In terms of the Hexateuch there is probably no more important idea than that expressed in terms of the land promised and later granted by Yahweh.” In fact, “the motif of the Promised Land is a major pattern in the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua” (DBI 665), which record the historical foundations of Israel as a people, society, and nation. The Land was also “of central importance to all of the writing prophets” (AB 4:149). Indeed, “the prominence of the Land of Israel in the Bible is the result of deep religious conviction, pervading all sacred Jewish literature.”
Here is how I know that “earth” should be better translated as “land” in most of Revelation, and in particular meaning the land of Israel: Take a look at the beginning of the letter where John explains one of the main purposes of the judgment he was predicting: “Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him” (Rev. 1:7).
So, you would assume the “tribes of the earth” is a reference to everyone on the earth. Jesus is coming to judge everyone on the earth. Sounds simple, right? But you would be wrong.
That Old Testament prophecy that John quotes is from the book of Zechariah. The tribes that the prophecy speaks of are not the tribes of the earth, but the tribes of the land, the tribes of Israel:
“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn…. The land shall mourn, each family by itself: the family of the house of David … and all the families that are left… (Zech. 12:10-14).
According to the apostle Peter, the first-century generation of Jews was guilty of piercing or crucifying Jesus the Messiah.
Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God … this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men (Acts 2:22-23).
Yes, the Romans took part in the crucifixion (4:27-28). But from God’s perspective, the Jews who rejected their own Messiah, the Son of David, had the far greater sin. And in fact, that guilt was so great, that Jesus said God would destroy the city of Jerusalem and the temple as judgment for that high-handed crime (Matt. 23:37-24:1; 21:33-46). That first-century generation of Jews would be guilty of “all the righteous blood of the prophets shed on the land” [gē: land of Israel] (23:35-36) because they would kill their own Messiah.
So, a more accurate translation of Revelation 1:7 reads: “Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all tribes of the land [of Israel] will wail on account of Him.”
Once the reader sees that the guiding thematic passage in Revelation is about the land of Israel and not the earth as a globe, we see a more localized judgment upon Israel, not the end of the world:
·         The horsemen of the apocalypse “take peace from the land of Israel” (Rev. 6:4) and kill a fourth of the land of Israel (6:8).
·         The seven trumpets of woe are blown over “those who dwell on the land of Israel” (8:13).
·         The seven bowls of wrath are “poured out upon the land of Israel” (16:1).
·         God avenges the blood of his martyrs by judging those “who dwell on the land of Israel” (6:10).
·         The Two Witnesses call down plagues upon the land of Israel (11:6).
·         The grape harvest of wrath is judgment of the land of Israel (14:18-19)
·         The Great Harlot, Mystery Babylon, is guilty of the “land’s abominations” (7:5) and the blood of “all who have been slain on the land of Israel” (18:24).
Guess what? That recurring phrase in Revelation above, “those who dwell on the land,” is a phrase that is used specifically of Israelites in the land of Israel all throughout the Greek Old Testament (Jer. 1:14; 10:18; Ezek. 7:7; 36:17; Hosea 4:1, 3; Joel 1:2, 14; 2:1; Zeph. 1:8). And the bloodguilt of the great harlot for “all who have been slain on the land” is the same bloodguilt Jesus proclaimed over first-century Jewish leaders who rejected him (Matt. 23:35). Those Jewish religious leaders were a great harlot with their spiritual adultery (Ezek. 6:9; Isa. 1:21; Hosea 2; Jer. 3:3; 4:30). Revelation is about a local judgment on the land of Israel, not the end of the global earth (Matt. 14:15-21).
So, you see, one little word does change everything, doesn’t it?
The reader who is predisposed toward an “end of the world” interpretation of Revelation will no doubt have a difficult time envisioning a scenario that is radically at odds with their global paradigm. And that is one of the reasons why I am writing a series of novels called Chronicles of the Apocalypse, that tell the story of the book of Revelation in the first century through the eyes and experience of first-century Jews, Christians, and Romans. It shows how the imagery and language of Revelation are fulfilled in that first-century judgment upon the land of Israel, with its holy city and temple. But it does so through historical yet entertaining fiction. The first two novels, Tyrant: Rise of the Beast and Remnant: Rescue of the Elect, are available in eBook, paperback, and audiobook format at Amazon.com.
*******
Brian Godawa is an award-winning Hollywood screenwriter (To End All Wars), a controversial movie and culture blogger (www.Godawa.com), an internationally known teacher on faith, worldviews, and storytelling (Hollywood Worldviews), and an Amazon best-selling author of Biblical fiction (Chronicles of the Nephilim).

Vox Popoli: Not so good for the economy

Americans are increasingly wondered where, precisely, are the promised benefits of immigration, in light of wages stagnant for 40 years, declining wealth, increasing debt, and the occasional bloodbath:

Plainly, at least from native-born Americans’ point of view, Mr. Saipov’s immigration did not work out as hoped and will likely punch a multi-billion dollar hole in the U.S. economy. There will be direct losses from deaths and injuries in the attack itself, costs of treating, prosecuting, and imprisoning Mr. Saipov, costs of providing welfare to his wife and two children (Mr., Saipov won’t be earning a lot in prison), etc. There will be indirect losses due to extra security measures that cities will put in place to try to prevent a repeat jihad.

Perhaps it is too soon to look at the dollars and cents, but how was Mr. Saipov’s immigration supposed to benefit native-born Americans in the best case? The CIA says that Uzbekistan has a per-capita GDP of roughly $6,600 per person, #159 out of 230 countries (ranking). Mr. Saipov was 29 years old and worked as a truck/Uber driver, a job that is expected to disappear within his working lifetime. He had two children and a wife with no reported job. The U.S. has an average per-capita GDP of $57,400 per person per year. So Mr. Saipov would have had to earn $229,600 per year in order to make the U.S. wealthier on a per-capita basis. Maybe somehow existing Americans can become better off if the population grows, but the GDP per-person shrinks? A Mr. Saipov will truck their goods around at a low price. But how can that make them better off overall given our traffic gridlock and skyrocketing housing prices? Mr. Saipov, his wife, and their children have to live somewhere and also get around.

As I will be explaining soon in the first Voxiversity video, immigration is war. And it is a war that America has been losing for 52 years.


Indoctrination Has Always Been the Goal of Progressive Education - By Annie Holmquist

In recent years, many Americans have adopted the idea that public education is neutral ground. Such a mentality has undoubtedly sprung from the fact that the public school is the agent of the government, an entity which strives to keep itself clear from sectarian, political, or other ideological viewpoints.
But in recent years, the falsity of this idea has been coming to light. A prime example of this is the Edina public schools, where teachers have been giving lessons driven through the lens of race, class, gender, and other social justice norms.
As reports indicate, such news has not gone over very well with parents, many of whom express shock and disappointment that their children are being indoctrinated rather than educated.
But these parents really shouldn’t be surprised, for such an approach to education has been touted by progressives since at least the 1930s, if not sooner.
A paper written by George Counts in 1932 is a prime example of this fact. Counts, an educator who eventually went on to lead the American Federation of Teachers, was so bold to ask if the education system dared to build a new social order. He wrote:
“If Progressive Education is to be genuinely progressive, it must emancipate itself from the influence of this class, face squarely and courageously every social issue, come to grips with life in all of its stark reality, establish an organic relation with the community, develop a realistic and comprehensive theory of welfare, fashion a compelling and challenging vision of human destiny, and become less frightened than it is today at the bogies of imposition and indoctrination.”
Counts went on to say that education in the 1930s was operating under several fallacies, one of which was the concept of valueless, or non-biased instruction:
“There is the fallacy that the school should be impartial in its emphases, that no bias should be given instruction. … My thesis is that complete impartiality is utterly impossible, that the school must shape attitudes, develop tastes, and even impose ideas.”
In order to accomplish this purpose, Counts recognized how necessary it was to line up biased tools to aid in the indoctrination process:
“This means that some selection must be made of teachers, curricula, architecture, methods of teaching. And in the making of the selection the dice must always be weighted in favor of this or that. Here is a fundamental truth that cannot be brushed aside as irrelevant or unimportant; it constitutes the very essence of the matter under discussion. … I am sure, however, that this means stacking the cards in favor of the particular systems of value which we may happen to possess. … I would merely contend that as educators we must make many choices involving the development of attitudes in boys and girls and that we should not be afraid to acknowledge the faith that is in us or mayhap the forces that compel us.”
In essence, Counts understood that education is primarily values-based. Those values can be traditional, they can be progressive, or they can be something else, but inevitably, they will be whatever those at the head of the class or the administrator’s office or the school board intend them to be.
Given that this principle was recognized almost a century ago, does it not seem a bit naïve on the part of parents and concerned citizens to say that they had no idea that such indoctrination is occurring in the schools?
The larger question, however, concerns what we do with this knowledge. Is it time we allow parents to choose their child’s education based upon the value system that they want instilled in their child?


How It's Being Done . . . And Why - EPautos - Libertarian Car Talk

By making “IC” cars impossible – legislatively – electric cars are to be made inevitable. In this way, the practical and functional deficits of EVs become irrelevances. Just as the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are irrelevant as a practical and functional matter.

The commonalities – the tactics – are interesting.

Naturally, they emanate from the same place.

In the case of the Fourth Amendment, the government simply decreed it had a “compelling interest” to override it at will, whenever it felt like doing so. The amendment’s crystal clear prohibition of any unreasonable search, absent probable cause wasn’t denied. It was simply swept away because it was in the way . . . of exactly the police state tactics those prohibitions were enshrined to forbid.


The EV Fantasy
Similarly, there is now a “compelling interest” to force-feed electric and automated cars to the public, which hasn’t asked for them. The analog of the Fourth Amendment impediment is the free market, which exists to prevent exactly such force-feeding (and profiteering, which always attends the funnel in the mouth, with the gun pointed at the victim’s temple).

Thus, the free market must be suppressed. In its place, a command economy – Mussolini (or Goring) style. The edicts about what shall be manufactured are decreed; price signals become . . . irrelevant. It is probably only a matter of a handful of years before there is an official Five Year Plan – complete with pronouncements about the overfulfillment thereof.

Electric cars have to be force-fed because there are not enough takers on the merits. It’s a simple statement of fact; no elaboration needed. If this were not so, the force-feeding wouldn’t be necessary. No one puts a gun to people’s heads to buy Starbucks coffee or for that matter, Toyota Corollas –  because it’s not necessary. They sell on the merits.

EVs don’t.  


Coming soon. . .
It is a bitter pill for their proselytizers – and profiteers – to swallow. In a moral universe, they’d go back to the drawing board, come up with something that could sell on the merits. But that has proved not possible thus far, which drives the proselytizers batty and fails to line the pockets of the profiteers (which includes but is by no means limited to Our Friend Elon).

Thus, the legislative and regulatory attempts to get rid of IC-engined cars. If you can’t build a better mousetrap, illegalize your competitions’ mousetrap.

They tried using emissions regs – but that failed because IC-engined cars got clean. Nearly “zero emissions” clean. That is, almost electric car clean. Very possibly, cleaner in the aggregate than electric cars – which haven’t got tailpipes but do have smokestacks. The government hasn’t – and never will – tally all the emissions produced by electric cars. Unless, of course, they become functionally and economically viable – at which point it will. But that is another story, saved for later.

And so, the government changed the rules. Better example, pulled away the football, Lucy-style, that Charlie Brown was just on the verge of kicking through the goalposts.

Carbon dioxide became a “pollutant.”

Almost at once – and as one – the media orchestra (which is funded by the same philanthropy) began to play the specified tune. It happened in much the same way that – if you were there and recall – the post-911 tune very suddenly changed from a libretto about Afghanistan to eructations about Iraq. It seemed very odd – to those plagued by a capacity for discernment, who knew that Afghanistan was one country (and home, apparently, to “enemies of freedom” who’d attacked the U.S.) and Iraq another – filled with people who had nothing to do with it.

No matter. Switch gears. Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Eurasia is our ally – and always has been.

Just so, with C02.

It relies on similar stupefaction – and a reflexive capacity to accept the New Story.

LIke the Iraqis, who played no role in the attacks of 911, C02 plays no role in the problems heretofore attributed to internal combustion, such as smog and respiratory problems. But just as there was a predetermined agenda to “regime change” Iraq, which the 911 attacks provided the necessary hysteria to set in motion,  so also the conflation of inert, environmentally inoffensive C02 with things like carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons and so on.

All of which have been dealt with. Are no longer meaningful issues, as regards smog or human health.

Enter C02.

Like the “war on terror,” the war on carbon dioxide is a strategically brilliant tactic because it’s impossible to define and just as impossible to win. Both are forever wars which provide an endless pretext for any affront the government cares to rain down upon us.   

It will not just be cars, either. Your house has a “carbon footprint.” Have you been using too much electricity? Wait and see.

Eyes should be opening now, even if only a few. It was never about “the environment.” If it had been, there would have been a happy press conference about ten years ago at which a beaming EPA administrator would have said, in effect, mission accomplished – and let’s move on to other things.

This might even include electric cars, assuming they can ever be made economically sensible and practically plausible. There is always a market for a better mousetrap. The problem is the EV isn’t it – and may never be.

And if it ever, by some miracle of chemistry or physics, becomes economically sensible and practically plausible, it will at exactly that moment become a problem. The orchestra’s tune will change again. As quickly as the Tele-Promp-Ter switched from Afghanistan to Iraq, we will begin to have stories about all the Bad Things coming out of the smokestacks that power electric cars. The “free” electricity now available at government-sponsored Fast Charger stations won’t be anymore.

Because the point of the exercise isn’t a better mousetrap, or  even “clean air.”

It is shoring up the matrix, maintaining the integrity of the pyramid  . . . with guess who at the apex and the rest of us you know where.

. . .

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Vox Popoli: Abortion and the Alt-Right

Ed Driscoll lies about the Alt-Right on Instapundit:

If this sounds like something the alt-right might tweet, as Elliot Kaufman wrote at NRO in August, “contrary to NARAL’s protestations, the leaders of the alt-right are actually pro-choice. They don’t oppose abortion because it’s good for racial minorities; they support abortion because it kills them. They hate black people and think America would be better if fewer of them were born. Though this is terrifying to contemplate, it should not be unfamiliar. In fact, the alt-right tends to praise abortion for the same reasons that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, praised birth control: They help to rid the country of ‘undesirables.’”

As one Instapundit commenter asked Driscoll, which "leaders of the alt-right". I don't believe there are "leaders" in the first place, because a political philosophy is not a political party - who is the leader of liberalism or conservatism or progressivism? - but abortion is absolutely not something that the Alt-Right broadly supports.

It is absolutely true that Americans would be better off if fewer blacks were born, just as it would be better if blacks had never been enslaved or forcibly brought to the USA. But that doesn't mean that everyone who recognizes historical wrongs or unfortunate consequences hates black people. The fact that Tibet would be better off without the Chinese, Minneapolis would be better off without Somalis, Germany would be better off without Syrians does not require hatred of the Chinese, Somalis, and Syrians to recognize it.

This really isn't that hard. ALL political entities eventually fail. All multi-ethnic states eventually become ethnically homogeneous states, even if that ethnicity is a new one created by the genetic amalgation of the old ones. That is going to happen in the United States, and there are no shortage of signs that peaceful amalgamation through mass cross-breeding is not going to be the method utilized.

Read the link. The commenters there did an ace job of calling out Driscoll for his dishonesty and blowing out his argument. It's just another example of how the media finds the Fake Right to be useful in attempting to discredit the genuine Alternative Right.