Do We Need a Law to Force Grocery Stores to Stop Throwing Away Food

In America, you have no excuse for being hungry.

Short Answer:  Nope!

Ever once in a while, some dear lefty buddy of mine will throw a post up on Facebook about a clever way that France (why is it always France) has passed a law making it illegal for grocery stores to throw away food. It feeds the hungry and stops global warming they say, thus killing two virtual birds with one stone. It seems that decomposing food releases carbon into the air much to the dismay of environmentalists and the joy of plants everywhere who need carbon to breathe.

Well, it's true that France passed such a law back in 2016. The law made it illegal for any grocery store larger than 4000 square feet to throw away food that is getting close to its sell-by date. On the surface, it all sounds like a nifty idea and even punishes those greedy corporate grocery chains.

The law requires stores to stop tossing useful nutritious, if slightly aged food. Instead, they would have to donate it to some charitable nonprofit that would hand the food out to the deserving poor and hungry while making sure only the people getting it actually need it.

And like any good law, the mechanics of it is fraught with unintended consequences. It makes the supermarket responsible for sorting and shipping out the food which adds to the cost. There is some concern that if the poor don't buy food, the grocery store will lose money from even that small amount of lost business. Remember that of all retail, grocers operate on a very narrow margin, earning, after expenses from 1 to 3 cents on every dollar they spend.

Don't get me started on the economics of making this idea a government program. My friend Mark Milliorn has done an excellent explanation of the economic chaos caused by getting government involved in this scheme. There's one reason not to do this that Mark missed. 

AMERICANS ALREADY DO EXACTLY THIS SAME THING WITHOUT A LAW FORCING THEM TO DO IT. And we do it efficiently without wrecking the economy and we insure that no one goes hungry. The surest way to mess it all up is to make it a government program. 

I worked in East Texas for close to 4 decades, helped start 5 nonprofit organizations to fill community needs that weren't being met by government programs. One in 5 East Texans didn't have ready access to transportation. One in four were seniors or disabled adults. I helped write community collaborative grants for homeless programs and agencies. And I helped raise funds for food bank programs.

The East Texas Food Bank was a huge project. ETFB operated a large warehouse as a distribution point for the East Texas Food Bank programs in the region. Several grocery stores and chains donated food being rotated off the shelves to the food bank. It was carried to the ETFB warehouse in the store's trucks and by the food banks vehicles. Volunteers from all over come in and donate their time to sort the food onto pallets, where it is labeled and stored. 

A local church school's kids
volunteer time at the Food Bank

Across the region community organizations, nonprofits and churches set up food banks in their facilities. Sometimes several churches cooperate to set up a food bank location. They buy shelves and coolers and freezers from a company that resells and recycles store appliances.  The individual location sets up a room like a store. When someone comes in needing groceries, church secretaries or volunteers give them a basket and lets them shop for what they need. The bank staff know what's available and help to distribute it fairly.

The program was particularly successful during economic hard times. People would need food to time them over till they started work. So instead of going through the Food Stamp Offices' proctological exam, they pick up a couple of bags of groceries at the church food bank. Other ways food is distributed is through outdoor distributions in parks and public facilities, through soup kitchens, nonprofit residential facilities, and Meals on Wheels.

The upshot was that one day panicked Food Stamp officials summoned us all to a meeting where they announced that the feds were cutting $800,000 from their budget.  AND IT WAS OUR FAULT THEY CLAIMED. Apparently, we did so well with the food banks that their applications dropped significantly and DC cut their budget. They were planning to spend $150,000 on a marketing campaign, the theme of which was "Food Stamps are not part of welfare reform."

It was then that I discovered where they got the "One in five children go to bed hungry" slogan. The spokesman for the Food Stamp office let it slip out that their applications were way down. I asked if they were going to make the application process easier and was told "NO!" It was then that the I found that the 1-in-5 hunger statistic was based on the number of applications, not the number of food stamp awards. What they really wanted was more applications. 

Our little church/nonprofit-based food banks would pick up truckloads of food at the central bank. We would pay 1 cent per pound to help cover the food bank's operating costs. The system runs entirely without state or federal government assistance. The grocery stores donate to the central food bank without being coerced by government. Other independent nonprofit volunteers from organizations like Gleaners whose volunteers harvest fields gleaning potatoes, yams, carrots and other crops after the farmers do the first pass, also donate harvested produce and overflow stuff from festivals and fairs. 

The system works smoothly and doesn't get mucked up by government bureaucrats. And nobody knows who needs food like church secretaries and the field staffs of community organizations. 

So if the government can keep its grubby hands off of us, we can make sure the greatest health threat to Americans in poverty is obesity and we can do it efficiently and economically.

Americans are good people by nature; Christians are under orders to be good people. We give more money to charity, to third world countries and the poor than the US government does.

© 2023 by Tom King                                                 

 

 

Is God a Torturer?

You would think that the son of God would
have his Father's temper, but........not so much.

Do atheists realize the fact that we Christians will go to heaven while non-Christians and atheists will going to hell where God will torture you for eternity and we will mock you all day long?

This bait question was recently posted on Quora. It was posted I suspect in order to generate a debate between atheists and Christians, in part to reveal Christian hypocrisy. I don't think the doofus who posted it is, in fact, a Christian or has ever met Christ in his spiritual life. The premise behind the question is a false premise - an argument based on a fallacy. The false premise here is that the human soul is and always will be immortal without any interference from God to keep our souls going.

Ecclesiastes 9:5 says, "The living know that they shall die but the dead know nothing neither have they a part in anything done under the sun." The righteous dead, we are told in Scripture, will be raised from sleep at the second coming. Jesus describes death as sleep. He says (Matthew 10:28) "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Apparently the soul does not survive hell according to Jesus.

The wicked dead, on the other hand, will be raised at the second resurrection to face judgment and will then die again one last time. There is no eternal ever-burning hell. It isn't in Scripture. It’s a doctrine borrowed by the Roman church from Greek and Roman mythology to frighten people into obedience. 

God is love and merciful. The idea that He, who died a horrific death that all of us who believe in Him might not perish but have eternal life, will “torture and mock” people for eternity is a damnable though quite effective lie designed by Satan and borrowed from paganism by the Roman church that actually drives people away from God by making Him look more evil than Hitler. 

Man’s soul is not immortal. Only God grants eternal life (see John 3:16). Nowhere does the Bible say God grants eternal life to the lost. The only place where anyone says “Thou shalt not surely die” is in the Garden of Eden and it’s the first lie told to Eve by a snake. 

Sadly, the “You’ll be tormented in hell” malarkey is just too good a story that pastors cling to in order to scare people into the pews and loosen their purse strings. Turns out that idea keeps more people out of the church than it keeps in. It’s a lie about God’s character and a violation of the 3rd commandment, even more so than using swear words like GD. It’s claiming to speak for and about God without his direction. It defames God’s character and THAT is the bit God won’t hold you blameless for as it drives away people from Him. 

Every time God gets mad at an individual or a group, it’s because they are harming the innocent. He got mad at Israel because they were sacrificing 26,000 babies a year to the god Moloch. If I were God, I’d get mad at that too, but even I wouldn’t chicken fry someone forever and not allow him to die.  And I certainly wouldn't mock him. That’s just horrible and nothing like the God of love and mercy that I know.

Jonathan Edwards lied, whether he believed what he was saying or not. The not-so-Reverend Edwards upset a lot of good Christian people with his horrific sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." It upset me centuries later when I had to read that monstrous thing for literature class in high school. Edwards took massive liberties with the Scripture in that sermon. It drove thousands of the timid into the pews and loosened their purse strings as it was intended to do. You have to wonder how many good-hearted people fled westward, appalled that New England's god was a monster.

Here is the absolutely terrifying picture of God that Edwards paints. 

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment"

 No!

• 1 John 1:5 - This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
• 2 Peter 3:9 - The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
• John 17:3 - “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
• Romans 5:8 - But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God doesn't give Himself a pass on the eternal hatred and vengeance option. How can we say God is good all the time, and tell people he sets fire to immortal people and enjoys the ensuing fiery sports - people flopping around and screaming.

I don't think so!

© 2023 by Tom King

We Bards Have Our Work Cut Out for Us!

Time for the Bards to rise up and save football!

Having unsheathed my word processor of late in the great cause of shining light on hypocrisy, oppression and outright stupidity, I find myself being called "mean-spirited" for characterizing yesterday's Thanksgiving football game here on the left coast as the San Francisco Homeless vs the Seattle Porch Pirates. I'm sure some snowflake out there must be offended by the names of those two teams. The 49'ers for whom the San Francisco Football team were, after all, money grubbing gold-diggers who certainly didn't pay their taxes. And a Seahawk is a predatory bird who kills for food - hardly an example of proper Veganinity for the youth of California and Washington. So I said we should, in the spirit of the Washington "Commanders", change the team names to something more in keeping with the image of the two great cities they represent.  

And at least such a name change wouldn't ruin the whole point of the matchup like they did by changing Texas' Thanksgiving day classic between the Cowboys and the Redskins into something that makes no sense. Everybody knows Cowboys don't pay any attention to commanders. At least the Cowboys did respect the Native Americans with whom they shared the Great Plains, mutual respect, buffalo meat and the occasional burst of gunfire. Actually, most Native Americans, at least the ones with functioning hormones appropriate to their sex, didn't seem to have a problem with the name of the Washington DC football team. 

 I'm just waiting for an expansion team to show up. I think it should be named "The Whiteskins." Every snowflake in America could root against that team and feel much superior to the redneck rubes that merely come to watch a good football game without any need to have their culture insulted. 

In ancient times, my Celtic ancestors had a tradition. Wandering and not so wandering troubadours and comedians known as bards attended the courts of the ruling class, visited the village squares and the homes of the wealthy (sort of like early social media) and they sang scurrilous songs, told scandalous jokes and because the culture protected such rogues, they poked fun at the wealthy and powerful - kind of a pressure valve that kept the peasants from rising up in the middle of the night and murdering the upper classes in their beds. 

Today, folks like me, the guys at the Babylon Bee, the late great Rush Limbaugh, Ray Stevens, South Park, Saturday Night Live (which has, of late, taken some pretty hard swipes at the omnipotent moral busibodies of the regressive left), Internet sensation Oliver Anthony and others are driven to create satire, to spoof egregious behavior by the rich and oppressive and to make fun of their foolishness. We are the bards of the 21st century. The current wave of so-called wokeness that has overwhelmed our traditional and much-loved cultural icons like Disney, the six o'clock news, and, God help us, the halls of Congress threatens us regular folks out in the heartland. Sadly, the perpetrators of wokeness have lost their sense of humor almost entirely. 

Our betters, back in the olden days tolerated the teasing of the bards and jesters for if they were too thin-skinned about being teased, people figured they were weak and someone with a big sword would come along and relieve them of their heads on behalf of "the people" that Karl Marx claimed to be fighting for. Back when Karl was unemployed, living in his mother's basement, and trying hard to come up with something that would catch on with the hoity toity set, he created socialism, which the British upper class immediately recognized as an ideal mechanism by which to re-institute the old divine right of kings nobility and hierarchy of the leader class. And that is all Marxism/communism is after all and it's why the elitist upper classes love socialism so much. They figure they will be the big dogs after the revolution comes. 

The dismal history of socialism is also why I believe it to be my duty and the duty of every brave soul with a rapier wit and an Internet website to poke fun at and let a little air out of today's over-inflated self-important unearned but self-proclaimed morally superior gasbags. It's part of our heritage. Let's face it Americans were kicked out of every decent country in the world mostly because we just couldn't keep our mouths shut. We come from long lines of sarcastic, loud-mouthed troublemakers. I consider myself a bard, the descendant of generations of bards (and like bard's of yore, I have a sword nearby just in case some over-entitled busybody takes umbrage.)

© 2023 by Tom King

Churches Are the Conscience of the Nation

Churches have long been a vital part of the conscience of this nation. The Revolutionary War was fomented in the pulpits of the American colonies. Churches complained loudly about the mistreatment of the Indians and Presidents like Lincoln and Grant pressed the disloyal opposition to keep the treaties we agreed to, and to stop slaughtering whole native American villages. Churches drove the abolition movement and church people held together the underground railroad. Churches pressed the WWII government to accept Jewish refugees (which good Democrat FDR resisted). Wilson segregated the military during WWI and it took church-going Harry Truman to desegregate the military in 1946 after black soldiers, sailors and airmen served honorably on the front lines. White and black churches lined up behind Martin Luther King, himself a minister and outspoken political activist, to march for Civil Rights in the 60s against powerful resistance by the Democrat party. 

Today churches are still a powerful voice for the right to life of unborn children which many organizations, politicians and the IRS violently oppose. Such leftist organizations are free shout to the skies about the right of women to kill their unborn children in the womb. In this day and age Christian church organizations (the church triumphant which spans all Christendom) is just about the only unified voice rising in protest. The churches of America provide equal time voices to such tax exempt organizations and yet find their tax exempt status constantly threatened if their moral exhortations conflict with the dominant political narrative.

The Sierra Club, 501(c)5 and partly 501(c)3, and Black Lives Matter a 501(c)3 (same as churches) are both clearly political. Sierra Club does offer tax deductible donation options, but cash donations are fungible and all of its political activities do come under the Sierra Club banner, political or not. Black Lives Matter's website still claims 501(c)3 status despite sponsoring violent political protests and led by avowed communists who use the money to buy themselves mansions.

Pressure on churches to sit down and shut up is growing. A Houston Mayor, a few years ago, demanded that church pastors submit their sermon notes or tapes of the sermon to the mayor's office for review. In Texas that didn't go over so well, but she certainly tried to force churches to testify against themselves in that manner. She threatened area churches with the IRS investigations.

I worked with nonprofits for 40 years and hardly a one did not skirt the no politics rule in one way or another. I know. I taught them how to get their messages to legislatures by being careful how they did it. I worked with coalitions to address a wide variety of community issues - bipartisan coalitions for the most part. I had to teach my progressive brethren to speak Republican and talk them into not chaining themselves to things at the capital. We were practically the only initiative to get what we asked for from the new Republican majority. They were so glad we weren't picketing outside their offices or chaining ourselves to statues of Stephen F. Austin that we found them to be grateful allies.

A pastor here in Washington is in trouble for providing a list of people to vote for to his congregation. It's not the least of his problems. Questions about money and treatment of women makes it look like there are lots of other things for authorities to worry about other than his politics. That's NOT his biggest problem here it appears. So to frame this situation as another example. Concern that the church is meddling in things political seems disingenuous. Liberal churches aren't drawing the same sort of heat these days. Seems if you have a coven meeting in the all purpose room on Thursday nights and an abortion rights group having potlucks in the kitchen, nobody is worried about that.

Had the church folks of my generation remained silent and uninvolved, how far would the Civil Rights Bill got? Southern Democrats took a lot of heat from church folk over how they were treating our black brothers and sisters back then. That heat is why LBJ managed to get enough of them to sign on to the Civil Rights Bill to pass it and he only did that because, as he told fellow Democrats, he thought the party could position itself as the savior and author of Civil Rights in America and "...have those n!@@#%$ voting Democrat for the next 200 years."  He actually said that. Somehow nobody noticed that Johnson didn't have to persuade the Republicans to vote for it.

There's no question that there is a strong conservative lean to Christian churches. Gagging them would be a really effective way to silence the influence of Christianity in the nation's halls of power. That would be a shame. You may not agree that we are a Christian nation, but there's no denying that religious freedom is in the bones of our system of government. We should be careful before we excise that bone in order to get a little peace and quiet while some of us work out our political agendas.  On a Nextdoor discussion thread, someone who was restricted for his political comment said, "I'm a conservative sure, but I don't call people names, lie about them or engage in personal attacks. The people who reported my post cannot say the same. I just present facts and reason."

This may not stay up on Facebook, but I've got several more social media accounts among the dwindling number of conservative friendly social media. Parlor and Realtalk are gone and others are looking feeble. Twitter did come over from the dark side, but even they are facing organized attacks.

If I didn't sufficiently skirt the line of what is now deemed acceptable speech, simply ignore this post and go your merry way. I assure you that I meant no harm to anyone's delicate sensibilities, which I seem to do without intending to. I suspect it will get worse for people like me as the generation whose parents did little to correct them as children and gave them whatever they squealed for rises in influence.

Thank God Jesus is coming. I expect it will happen before the Almighty has to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Just Sayin'

© 2023 by Tom King

Google Has Discovered My Subversive Blogs Are Making Money!

 

I have now joined the august assemblage of conservative bloggers who have been threatened with demonetization by Google Adsense. Allegedly I have been laying out the ads in my blogs so that they trick readers into “accidentally” clicking on ads. 

First off I wouldn't even know how to do such a thing. 

Second, I've made enough lately that they owe me money.

And, finally, the biggest problem is that since I’ve got the blogs set up on auto-ads with Adsense. I did this recently and suddenly I get an email threatening to demonitized my 9 weblogs for deceptive advertising. The trick is that, if such a thing is happening, it’s Google doing it. On their advice I set Adsense up to automatically set up ads on my blogs to maximize the visibility of my ads and increase reader clicks. So if I'm all of a sudden in violation of some sort of ethical advertising  standard, it's Google that set up the ads on my blog to do that automatically. 

My suspicion here is that the evil Google algorithm we've all heard about has been up to no good. I think it has ferreted out my subversive conservative sympathies and decided it doesn’t like my politics, my religion or my bad jokes. It doesn't make sense that I would get trouble when I turned over the arrangement of ads to Google auto-ads that I'd get in trouble for it..

Pray for me y'all. I am going to beard the Google lion in its den next week. I mean I don’t make much on my blogs, but sometimes it helps pay the grocery bill in a pinch.  I've been growing my audience lately and my ad revenue has increased. If I can't work it out with Google, I may have to go through Patreon to fund my madness or take up stand up comedy or become a Youtube chef or something.

Thanks for listening to me whine!

© 2023 by Tom King

Slouching Toward the Apocalypse - Are Republicans Losing Their Way?

It looks to me like the GOP may be irredeemably divided. The liberal Republicans won't vote for a serious conservative like Jim Jordan and the conservatives won't vote for a RINO like Tom Emmer. The party seems stuck between 25 "radical" Republicans and 25 RINOs. At least that's how they think of each other. There are some 60 or 70 Republicans in the middle that seem eager to vote for anybody, just so they're a Republican. The divisions in the party threatens to push entire nation over the tipping point. 

 

Meanwhile, the Democrats are firmly aligned behind Hakeem Jeffries (and with a foreign sounding name like Hakeem who can blame them). The party of Jackson, Wilson, FDR, Johnson (and other assorted racists) has successfully raised virtue signaling to a fine art and a House Speaker with an Arabic name (though he's a Northern Baptist by religion), like a President named Barak, helps establish Democrat street cred as the anti-racists they aren't.    

 

The level of confusion on the Christian right may be another sign of the end. I am excluding the radical lunatic right, of course as they every bit the gadflies that the radical left are, but far less useful. They don't march on command after all.

The pope (Frances the Jesuit) is, I'm sure, still praying for the global government with teeth. Pope Benedict (a more direct sort of pontiff being German and all) called for in in his third papal encyclical and which has been firmly seconded by Frances. 

 

I'm not sure, though, who took charge of answering that particular prayer. After the chaos that will result from trying to corral free people into socialist collectives, I have my suspicions.

At any rate, the Congress is limited, for the time being, in its power to meddle in our lives. I count that as a positive in all of this. As Mark Twain said, probably borrowing the idea from some other pundit - he did that a lot:

 

© 2023 by Tom King

 

Just How Compassionate is the Progressive Left?

The Progressive Fantasy

America is fast approaching a tipping point.  The Left has captured most of the media, one entire political party, most universities, colleges, high schools, junior highs, middle schools and elementary schools. The film industry still makes conservative sorts of films when they want to make money, but mostly they make money-losing seriously "woke" and progressive post-modernist stories of misery and debauchery - at least the ones that want to win Oscars. 

So let me list some things, besides my 40 years having to deal with entrenched leftist government programs, that have led me to my current conservative philosophical position.

Hatred:

Democrat rally in Michigan

• Progressives hate Nazis
  
• Nazis hate the Jews
• Communists hate Nazis and vice versa in the same way the Crips hate the Bloods.
  
• In WWII Muslim leaders of some Muslim nations like Iraq and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem actually supported Hitler in their shared hatred of Jews.
• Many Muslim political factions, including Palestinian terrorist groups, hate the Jews and vow to "drive the Israelis into the sea.
• Most Progressives unequivocally support Palestinian groups who share hatred of the Jews with the Nazi Party. 

Socialism:

• Progressives are pro-socialist and originate from Marxist philosophy.
  
• Nazis were national socialists, not capitalists, but socialists all the same.
• Communists consider themselves the logical end state of socialism.
• Socialism in the 20th century has a dismal record of creating for people under socialist governments, what Churchill called "shared misery". The proletariat who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of socialist systems of government experienced deprivation, hunger, and oppression, surviving through black markets, theft and smuggling.
  

Socialist Mass Murder:

• Communist and Marxist socialists in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and other communist states murdered hundreds of millions of "enemies of the state" and killed other millions in waging war on their neighbors in just the 20th century.

• Nazis killed more than 14 million Jews, Germans and Gypsies they considered enemies of the state and genetically defective Germans in the name of producing a pure Aryan race.
• Progressive polices promoting abortion killed tens of millions of largely minority unborn children. 

Serving the Collective:

• Communists believed that citizens should serve the state/collective not the other way round.
• Nazis believe that citizens should serve the state/collective not the other way round.
• Progressives believe citizens should serve some vague sort of collective to be determined when the movement finds its superior leaders and create the Progressive Utopia which other socialist nations failed to do correctly.

Marxist Socialism:

• Soviet Communists were Marxists Leninists.
• Chinese Communists were Marxist/Maoists.
  
• Nazis were Marxists. Hitler claimed Nazism was simply a better sort of Marxism.
  
• Progressivism is a direct descendant of 19th century Marxism and draws the roots of its political model from Karl Marx.

 

Socialism's Eugenics Roots:

• Communists practiced eugenics.
• Nazis were enthusiastic eugenicists.
• Progressivism throughout its history has believed in and practiced eugenics in the form of laws that resulted in forced sterilization of what they termed genetically inferior people (mostly the developmentally and mentally retarded), mass abortions of minorities that Progressive heroine Margaret Sanger called "human weeds," and policies of separation of people by race via Jim Crow laws, terrorism (the KKK), and segregation practices. 
• Progressive icon, George Bernard Shaw, insisted that "the only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man", even suggesting, that defectives be dealt with by means of a "lethal chamber".
• Liberal titan and mastermind of the welfare state, William Beveridge argued that those with "general defects" should be denied not only the vote, but "civil freedom and fatherhood".
• Charles Darwin had a profound effect on politics and the ideas of Karl Marx. Early progressive socialists embraced the eugenics movement's definition of "unfit." The target of the left's efforts to improve humanity through science was not limited to the physically or mentally impaired. It held "that most of the behavioral traits that lead to poverty are inherited. Progressive luminaries like Shaw, HG Wells, progressive economist John Maynard Keynes, Harold Laski and JBS Haldane believed that the poor and certain races were genetically inferior to the educated middle class." It was not poverty that had to be reduced or even eliminated: it was the poor. 
• Darwin, himself, wrote, "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world."  
• John Maynard Keynes, darling economist of the progressive left, was vice president of the British Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944. His belief in Malthusian and Eugenics pseudo-science influenced British leftists from 1907 till his death in 1946 when he endorsed eugenics as a legitimate science. 

Progressivism's Confused Roots:

• Darwin introduced the idea of evolution by survival of the fittest, which led to his belief that natural selective breeding would separate the intelligent upper class from the lower cast who would die out naturally from their own stupidity or be exterminated by the smart people.
• Friedrich Nietzsche predicted the rise of progressive neoliberalism and attacked what he contemptuously characterized as the “Christian-moral view of the world.” He famously said "God is dead," and blamed Christianity for a rise to a general European culture of “decadence” that he claimed was careening on its way to catastrophe.
• Karl Marx's philosophy that sketched the outline of the socialist worker's collective was seized upon by the upper classes who still held to the old idea of a superior noble class as a way to restore the privileged class to leadership that had been brutally undercut by the example of American constitutional democracy which had infected the Western world.
• Francis Galton's theories about how to use a mish mash of Darwin, biology and genetic theory to improve the human race thoroughly infiltrated early progressive politics, capturing Theodore Roosevelt's, Woodrow Wilson's, HG Wells', George Bernard Shaw's and the Democrat Party's attention. 
• Eugenics was a good fit for the Democrat Party with their traditional belief that certain races were genetically inferior. Eugenics explained for progressive Democrats why Republicans didn't understand about race - even the white ones.

Every one of the political versions that came from progressive origins has committed more than its share of atrocities. The Soviet Union had it's gulags and mass starvation of the Kulaks. China's Great Leap Forward killed and/or starved millions of Chinese, especially poor ones. North Korea shoots any who disagrees with the Kim family, often with anti-aircraft guns at point blank range. North Vietnam murdered 2 million of its people after they overran the abandoned South. Cambodia killed a couple of millions in the infamous killing fields. And the list goes on and on. Che Guevara, the Cuban enforcer and darling of the American left, murdered people in the most brutal ways imaginable, a fact the progressives prefer to "forget".

And the American Progressive Left, really does think it can do progressive socialism better than anyone had done it before. This ignores the fact that even if you find a perfect leader, when he dies or is assassinated, the next guy is liable to be a sadistic monster like Josef Stalin and the whole thing goes to hell. 

People don't want to believe in the idea of Original Sin - basically that left to themselves, people are no damned good. Progressives socialists philosophy is based on the idea that was later theorized by Abraham Maslow that people, if a heirarchy of needs is addressed, people will become progressively.......better. I've worked half a century with people and that dog won't hunt. Good people tend to be the ones who choose to follow the Christian morality that Nietzsche complained loudly about.

Turns out a godless Utopia just doesn't work out. Still Progressivism is rapidly approaching a tipping point, beyond which, our only hope is if Jesus gets the bus loaded and comes to get us. Dear God, make it so.

© 2023 by Tom King

 

Disney Goes Woker!

Retitled Snow White and the 7 Magical Creatures.
Wonder what would happen if a white guy played
Shaka Zulu in a movie? Almost as ludicrous as German
Max Von Sydow playing Jesus - a Jew if you remember.
Jesus with a  German accent! What happened to the
uproar about cultural appropriation?

 

Well, Disney goes even more woke with a version of Snow White that should be retitled Snow "Brown" and the 7 "Magical Creatures". So long Caucasian German princess. Goodbye 6 of the 7 dwarfs. That's put 6 diminutive actors out of a job. Kind of sucks, but then it was Peter Dinklage's idea. Sucks for him, though. No work for Dinklage either. And he'd have made a lovely Grumpy.

Seems there's only one race going to be canceled in the New Disneyworld Order. Seems a little lop-sided to take one culture's children's stories and "appropriate" them wholesale. There are plenty of stories in every culture that could benefit from the Disney touch. They've already demonstrated that they don't have to depend entirely on the Brother's Grimm. They did Jungle Book, Mulan, Lion King, Kung Fu Panda, Coco and others. Plenty of great stories there. 

It seems a shame that a message is being sent to the kids of one culture that their traditional stories aren't good enough unless they are adjusted to a different, less objectionable ethnicity than their own. Seems, if not racist, at least...........well no. It's definitely racist. But then what do you expect from the staunch allies of the party that fully embraced progressivism in the first place? The party of Jim Crow, the KKK, the Civil War, slavery, lynchings, segregation and separate but unequal. Seems they need at least one race to discriminate against. But like their white supremacist political roots, they have to divide the dominant new "minority" into liberal whites and conservative whites.

And apparently it's us conservative honkies that are the source of everyone's problems.

© 2023 by Tom King

How Do You Solve a Problem like a Brandon?

Just watched a kid go through our
neighbor's car. I let them know...

 

I posted the following on our neighborhood website. I received an immediate community standards warning. The site's omnipotent moral busybodies that monitor the site will likely take it down, so I've posted my comment here. The kid in the photo to the left had just looted someone's car and got caught on camera. His picture was posted on the Nextdoor app which triggered a lot of angry talk and apparently the name of the kid AND his parents. There was a lot of frustrated talk on the thread with the picture, but not a lot of helpful advice. Gossiping about it isn't terribly helpful either. Here's what I suggested that apparently is anti-woke and must, therefore, be censored.

If this kid has stolen from you or broken into your car, visit the parents in person. Often these folk will nit pick and argue about proof and try to tell you it couldn't be their child. Of course, they know better, but that doesn't mean they'll admit it. Do not attack the parents. They're probably out of their depth. Just state your case, be kind and talk about consequences.

I had to do that once with a kid who beat up my son and left him with a bloody eyeball and me with a $200 doctor bill. His parents spoke no English so I had the bully translate for me. I am certain he did not do so accurately, but they got enough of what I was saying and he heard me promise to carry his fuzzy behind to the police station. He said I couldn't do that and I would be arrested if I did. I told him he'd best hope we didn't wind up in the same jail.  He did not touch my son again which kept my son safe and I didn't have to wrestle with authorities unwilling to act.

You won't leave that house feeling like the parents got the point, but they will. This sort of parent does not want to see you at their front door again, nor do they want to see more pictures of their delinquent son on the Internet. The kid will get over it and perhaps he will learn that his folks may let him get away with it, but the community will not. It may be one of those key points in a young life where they turn back onto the path toward becoming a good person. I've seen it happen. Don't underestimate the power of communicating honestly and remembering to treat all as you would like to be treated.  That's the power of sites like this. We used to sit on porches and talk to the neighbors. Builders stopped putting porches on our houses so the Internet and sites like this have to take on that role.

Remember these steps:
1. Visit the parents
2. Offer to help
3. Outline the consequences of his continued behavior
4. Remind them that not everyone would bother to talk to his parents about his dangerous behavior.

Not sure if this will be kept up here on Nextdoor. I've been warned that it's against community standards. I don't know how, for it is an effective method for dealing with the problem without:

    (a) ruining the kid's life
    (b) trying to go through overworked under-motivated authorities
    (c) convincing the kid that no one is going to stop him.
    (d) Shooting his butt with a load of rock salt when you catch him
            (my great grandfather's solution)

Do not underestimate the power of community for good or evil. Bring problems out into the open. Do not just gossip. People including kids are reluctant to misbehave if everyone is watching and expressing their disapproval with patience and kindness. It's possible to set points beyond which bad behaviors will not be tolerated with kindness. Watch your language and name-calling. Assume the best of others and often they will rise to the occasion.

Just sayin'
Tom King
Alderwood Estates

The Constitution's Governmental Cage Match Works

 

Leave the cage alone!

The US Constitution brilliantly created a style of government that resembles, if nothing else in modern culture - the inimitable wrestling cage match. The recent kerfuffle over the Supreme Court has pundits coming out of the woodwork with suggestions ranging from a constitutional convention of states (there's a scary idea) to packing the court, a practice that could go on until there are 40 or 50 judges on the court and nothing would ever get done. The biggest complaint from my side of the political aisle is that allowing the packing of the court would make the court an arm of whatever party that packed the court more effectively.

This would be a very bad idea I believe. The Supreme Court is not, nor should not be an arm of the administration or of the congress. It serves as the arbiter between those two branches and the Constitution. While there is this idealism around how law and judicial justice should be free of contamination by religious tenets and beliefs, that's just not possible, especially since people who consider themselves non-religious bring their own ideology/religion to bear in how they view laws and justice. Marxism, socialism, atheism and other anti-Christian ideologies are as much religion as Christianity, Islam or Buddhism. 

The Western legal tradition draws most of its view of what is legal and what should not be from the stone tablets Moses dragged down from Mt. Sinai (and promptly broke). It says something that despite Israel's apostasy and Moses' temper tantrum, God made him climb back up the mountain and this time to carve a copy of the commandments out of rock. Western law is built on the code inscribed on those tablets.

There is a place in Revelation full of symbolism which seems to say that His people would, near the end of time, flee to a wilderness place of safety from rising persecution. I think He was talking about the United States, which in its time became a refuge from religious persecution for all sorts of Protestants fleeing Catholic persecution and more than a few Catholics who were on the receiving end of persecution by both church and state. 

One of the symbols for this refuge to which the "woman" (God's church invisible) flees is symbolized by another beast that was like a lamb but spoke like a dragon. Having confronted a bull buffalo once, I suspect that was what John saw. Don't mess with those guys. The buffalo would be an excellent symbol for a place of refuge. The American bison is pretty peaceful mostly, but threaten the herd or more foolishly, their calves, and they'll flip your car upside down and tramp on it. Later the lamblike beast

The point is that the Constitution was brilliantly designed to limit governmental power. It basically created a cage match arena that pits 3 coequal powers against each other if they disagree yet gives them the ability to cooperate when it makes overwhelming sense to do so. The Constitution surrounds the arena, limiting the fight to the inside of the arena and regulating what comes out of the arena to the rest of us.

As a conservative, I prefer to keep the power of the arena limited. Fight it out all y'all wish, but only let out of the arena what everybody is, if not happy with, at least able to accept with some grace. I admit I prefer my judicial system to lean to the right (Ecclesiastes 10:2), but that there should be some debate, I find healthy. The Supreme Court has made some bad decisions in the past, Dred Scott, Buck v. Bell, Plessy v Ferguson, Roe v. Wade (I know some will disagree violently with me on that last one, but I rather think that a decision that led to the death of more than 52 million unborn infants is one of the more horrible ones since Herod, Pharoah, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and others who took on themselves power to murder millions by government decree.

For closing in on 2 1/2 centuries, the system has worked to stem the tide of evil caused by greed, self-centeredness, lust for power and the odd burst of mass insanity. It's no surprise then that people with an agenda, facing a system that blocks them at most every turn would want to alter the Constitution or simply ignore it and do what they want. So far the venerable document has managed to hold on, balancing power to kind of hold at bay the principal articulate by Frank Herbert. "It's not that power corrupts, but that power attracts the corruptible." 

So long as we can make the urge to tyrannical power too difficult to accomplish within the arena, we'll be okay. But beware of those who would tear down the cage that holds them in. They are not your friends. They are enemies of America as it is.

© 2023 by Tom King

What's the Actual Number One Cause of Death in Children?

Is the right to bear arms responsible for
being the #1 cause of child gun deaths?
Is it time to abolish the 2nd Amendment?

Some people I like today said on camera that the number one cause of death of children was guns. First off, I would think that the number one cause of death was shooters. Secondly, it's a deceptive, manipulative lied. That's because the statistics are manipulated by changing the definition of "children".

Benjamin Disraeli, 19th Century Prime Minister of England, once opined, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." In this case, the number one cause of death in children requires some serious manipulation of the numbers and definition. If you look it up in most anti-gun websites, gun related deaths in children top motor vehicle accidents, other sorts of accidents and individually each other cause of death such as illness, poisoning, murder, and manslaughter. Here's how you do it.

Infants seldom die of gun violence, so
they are not included in the child death
rate by guns statistics to avoid bringing
down the "numbers" of child gun deaths.

If you define a "child" as aged from one to nineteen you arguably get somewhere between 4 and 5 thousand. The reason they don't include age 0 to 1 numbers is because it would remove gun deaths from the number one spot. The death from natural causes is significantly higher as babies are fragile creature and we caregivers don't get a lot of training before they are born. Meanwhile, even with the age of children being extended to include 18 to 19 years old the 0-12 month death rate from "other than guns" is pretty significant and not many babies often die from being shot. 

These guys have inordinate numbers of gun deaths,
so they are counted as children to inflate the
child gun deaths numbers.

The reason the definition doesn't exclude 18 to 19 year olds from being counted as children is that leaving them out would cut the number of child gun death numbers in half. Including murders and suicide by depressed teens and teenage gang members from Chicago, LA and Detroit, runs up the numbers of so-called deaths by gun violence. The inflated numbers glomed onto the child death stats makes no allowance for kids killed in mass shootings in "gun-free" zones by 18 to 26 year olds using illegally obtained guns nor for the cops shooting the shooter. He gets counted as a child gun death. I don't know about you, but "children" age 18 and up don't seem much like children at that age. If you can be tried as an adult, I believe you ARE an adult. Don't be blowing smoke up my skirt by telling me that someone who shaves (face or legs I don't care) is a child. 

And yet well-meaning people get all in a twitter because they believe that toddlers are shooting each other in droves based on this statistical picture being painted by the anti-gun lobby. This is the picture such statistical manipulation is supposed to create in your mind. It's the same with adult gun death statistics. When our progressive friends talk about "victims" of gun violence, they cite statistics that are deliberately skewed to make you believe these are people who died at the hands of criminals or in gun accidents. What they don't tell you is that whenever a cop shoots a criminal caught in the act, when a homeowner shoots a home invader in self-defense, when a citizen with a gun puts a stop to a mass shooter, or when a father shoots a farm hand who is raping his daughter in the barn (true story), it is recorded as a death by "gun violence."  No one records statistics when a Florida grandmother chases off a pair of home invaders by waving her shotgun at them or when a young mother with toddlers fires a shot at thieves ransacking her home or when an 89 year old man is charged by a 20 year old thief intent on looting the house next door and cops are an hour away according to the 911 operator. In Texas, charges against the old guy are dismissed automatically based on the "he needed killin'" principle.

The thing is that half of the gun-violence-against-children gun death numbers are created by "kids" who look like the picture above on the right. It's not a true picture of those "gun deaths" but it certainly distracts Mom & Pop America from the true purpose of all the talk about massive gun confiscation going on in the halls of power and in the media these days. 

It's important to note that every tyrannical government in history first finds an excuse to disarm the citizenry. The Nazis disarmed the Jews. The Communists disarmed the proletariat, the Chinese under Mao disarmed the peasants. Then they piled up the guns and burned them and came back the next day and piled up anyone who owned more than one ox and burned them. 

I'm not mad at the people who believe the lies, though. They think they understand and are appalled, accepting the lies that the politicians and media spoon feed them. Who can blame them for  trusting that they are being told the truth? The sad thing is that the political party that has long claimed to be the party of the people, the party of the working man, has made common cause with wealthy individuals and corporations and conspired to dump the rest of us into a heap they call the collective. And they want to make sure we won't be troublesome or able to resist when our betters decide they need to visit a "reeducation" facility because they disagree with the new order and won't shut up about it.

Someone I respect described these collectives or "unions" as bound up in bundles to be burned at the end of time. Statistics like the phony gun death statistics are the matches and make no mistake. They will not hesitate to light the pyres.

And the number one cause of death for children 0 through 17 is motor vehicle accidents by a good bit. Oddly, enough no one has called for private citizens not being licensed to drive cars an activity demonstrably more dangerous to actual children 

As I'm wont to say, "I believe Jesus is loading up the bus to come get us from this crazy place and take us home."

© 2023 by Tom King

Peter, Paul & Mary Banned on Facebook?

 

You may not recognize the three folksingers above if you were born after the Bicentennial. They are Peter, Paul & Mary, three left-leaning folk singers who sang Woody Guthrie songs, songs by Gordon Lightfoot, Pete Seeger and even such radicals as John Denver. They were big during the great folk-music scare of the 50s and 60s. These guys waltzed the line between being patriotic Americans and card-carrying communists. I loved their music. Their hearts were in the right place and I could actually play along with their songs as a fledgling guitarist. 

Imagine my shock when the Facebook Gestapo (FBG) took down my post in which I linked to one of their songs on Youtube. They said the post violated "Community Standards" and could pose a danger to the delicate sensibilities of Facebook readers. The song was about playing right field in elementary school. I suppose they thought if you played right field, a baseball might fall on your head and give you a concussion or predispose you to grow up to be a conservative. To be fair, I did play right field and did grow up to be a conservative. Best to avoid such dangerous and patriotic pastimes as baseball, then. And Baseball is undoubtedly a racist and fascist sport.~

After much searching I found the secret "notifications" page where I was "informed" of my violations of "community standards." Below is a list of my posts that the FBG took down over the past year. Apparently, these posts were so egregiously shocking that ordinary members of the Proletariat could not be safely exposed to this material. 

My posts that Facebook has blocked in the past year:

1.  Glen Campbell - Playing the Theme From The Lone Ranger ( aka “The William Tell Overture) on guitar.
2. Steve Martin & Edie Brickell  -  Pretty Little One
   The Martins – Out of His Great Love
3. Peter, Paul & Mary – Right Field
4. Mercy Me – Just As I Am
5. The Minions – YMCA
   Riders in the Sky – The Cowboy Yodel
6. A picture of me and my daughter singing
7. The Blues Brothers – Theme from Rawhide
8. Jill Paquette – Sometimes Yes and Sometimes No
9. Burl Ives – Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown
10. Kathy Ryan – The Coal Quay Market Song
11. Wendy Francisco – God & Dog
12. Steve Goodman – The City of New Orleans (he wrote it)
13. Connie Dover – Where Shall I Go (cowboy folk song)
14. Anthem Lights – My Jesus I Love Thee
15. John Fogarty – Center Field
16. Lizzy Hoyt – V’la L’bon Vent (French voyageur folk song 150 years old or so)
17. Clip from Junebug – I Surrender All
18. Picture of Hillary Clinton on the phone calling the suicide hotline to place an order (ironically when I demanded a review on the grounds that it was satire, they reposted it, and I’m sure the fact checker on that one isn’t working for the FBG anymore, probably doing time in whatever passes for Progressive Siberia).
    

I noticed in going down the list that the FBG not only blocked the song "Right Field", they also blocked John Fogarty's "Center Field". Apparently the snowflakes working for the Book of Face, believe the game of baseball must only have left fielders. 

It would be interesting to watch them play a team with only left-handed batters. What with no one in right or center to field the barrage of hits sent into that part of the outfield by left-handed batters, the final score would be all kind of lop-sided. My bet is that the League of Communist Athletes would have the all-lefty team canceled.

It must be confusing to live in that headspace.

© 2023 by Tom King

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