Lindsey Grahamnesty epitomizes everything that's gone wrong with the GOP and America generally: America's interests abroad are purely about money, not at all about freedom

 

John McCain would not be happy with his old friend. McCain was a main agitator for freedom in Ukraine and its alliance with the West. The policy wisdom of that was controversial, but it wasn't framed as purely economic.

Lindsey used to be for freedom in Ukraine like McCain. Lindsey used to be an immigration liberal who advocated for amnesty. Now he's a suck-up to Trump as bad as Marco Rubio, who also used to talk about the old American values preached by Ronald Reagan.

They are shapeshifters all, just like the formerly NeverTrump J. D. Vance.

You cannot trust any of these people any more than we can trust Vladimir Putin. 

Lindsey Graham here:

I told Zelensky we'll talk about security guarantees. We'll talk about ceasefires and how the war ends. This is a process. You have a new relationship with America, a 500 billion, half trillion, dollar deal that President Trump is proud of that gives us an interest worth defending.      

In other words, if it's not about money it's not worth defending.

 

Thy money perish with thee.

-- Acts 8:20

Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, pompous, and behaving like an ass

 

Three House Republican chuckleheads, but I repeat myself, want to waste everyone's time impeaching Trump's enemy judges

 Pure grand-standing from:

Republican Eli Crane (AZ-2)

Republican Andrew Clyde (GA-9)

Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14).

 

House GOP leaders have not weighed in on the calls to impeach the judges — and the chances of such an effort succeeding in their removal is close to zero.

It would take near-unanimous support from House Republicans to impeach a judge if Democrats do not support the measure, and support from Democrats would be required to clear the two-thirds threshold to convict on impeachment articles in the Senate.

More.

  

Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?  

-- Luke 14:31

J6er: Who he pardoned, he pardoned

 

“I’ve been asked, you know, I’ve been pardoned, how do I feel about people that may have done other things, and they got pardoned. Well, that’s President Trump’s decision. Who he pardoned, he pardoned.

More.

For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.  

-- Romans 9:15

Stocks remain wildly overvalued and seriously underperforming

 The S&P 500 averaged 5,792.32 in October 2024 (the all-time high was on 10/18 at 5,864.67).

Nominal GDP was updated on Oct 30th at $29.349924 trillion for 3Q2024.

That yields a ratio of SPX/GDP of 197.35 vs. median of 81.

Stocks remain wildly, obscenely, off-the-chart overvalued.

The formula is GDPx = SPX.

29.35(81) = 2,377.

The market would have to fall 3,415 points just to hit median valuation at current GDP, or about 59%.

You can see a similar analysis here, where the median is 79.7 vs. current 200.7.

Real return from SPX since Aug 2000 is now about 5.1% per annum vs. 7.4% before that (including the Great Depression, the depression of 1920, and every collapse before that going back to 1871), 31% worse.

We are living through developments echoing the lunatic era of the 1920s, which ended in tears.

Owe no man anything . . ..

 

 

 

The Dynamic Duo of Phony Baloney: Kamala Harris quotes Ecclesiastics like Joe Biden quotes The Palmist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Have they ever read a word of it?

Petronella Wyatt, 54, is single, childless, and depressed, and blames her feminism on Protestantism lol

 

 It was among Protestant communities that feminism first emerged, and it is in Protestant countries such as America and Britain in which feminist beliefs have been at their most vocal and strident in tone, like a religion with no dilution of agnosticism. Margaret Thatcher, though she would have denied it, was a feminist de facto, and no Catholic country could have produced her like.

 

More.

 

No one dares blame the crazy old Pharisee. That would be a bridge too far.

 

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.  

 

-- Galatians 3:28

My candidate in the Michigan GOP presidential primary finished in the top 1.2% of the field lol

Yes, I'm well aware he dropped out and endorsed Trump.

Turn out was pretty pathetic in Michigan, despite mail-in voting and early in person voting up to 29 days in advance.

Combined turnout for the two parties was less than 23% of the 8.275 million registered voters.

The Hamas vote racked up a big protest vote against Joe Biden of more than 100k.

Uncommitted Republican votes of 33k+ must be the small L libertarians? Social conservatives could vote happily for Ron DeSantis.

Meanwhile Nikki Haley attracted 293k of the AWFLs, most of whom were Democrat voters.

The primary is well nigh useless as an indicator of much of anything since all you have to do is check the Republican box or the Democrat box when you appear and you are given the appropriate ballot. There is no party "registration". You are what you say you are, but every man is a liar (Romans 3:4).

 

They were led as sheep to the slaughter, like lambs dumb before the inflation shearer, so opened they not their mouths

 

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: There cometh one mightier than I after me

 

Contra Matthew Rose: It's kind of hard to ask a nation of immigrants to be loyal, who are here because they are by definition disloyal

... what is needed is loyalty to one’s nation and people tied to, and measured by, “truths that transcend them".

If, with the Pope, the nation is properly viewed as a natural human community, there is little either natural or communal about this one.  

America, sorry to say it, was doomed from the start. We are a nation of treasonous bastards.

And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men.

More.

COVID-19 in the largest countries by population: Update for Sun 5/2/21

Countries with 200 million population or more: China, India, United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria.

Data isn't available in all categories for all countries, and data quality varies dramatically.

One should assume figures in the Big Seven are more or less gross underestimations except in the USA. 

China in particular is a JOKE. Why anyone takes them seriously as a "global partner" is beyond me. Show me an honest communist and I will give you six free winning lotto numbers.

Hospital reporting is the worst. Very few countries report the data at all, which tells you they are neither motivated nor equipped to do so even though this is a pretty serious situation which is over one year old. Given how important that data is in judging the progress and severity of the pandemic, it is more than discouraging. The top five for hospitalizations are all US and Europe, the difference between true civilization and the rest being that we know the numbers at all.

The situations in Brazil and especially India are alarming given the high positivity rate in India and the high death rate in Brazil. Reports concentrating on India underreporting deaths (from Reuters and the like) in recent weeks are a sick joke compared with neighboring China which the charts say is a COVID utopia. India is a developing nation struggling to cope under an enormous strain while still remaining part of the free world, but journalists would rather criticize it than question China's glaring effrontery. The myopia is damning.

These Big Seven represent 4.065 billion of the world's population of 7.79 billion, 52.2%, and we don't have a clear picture of what's really going on with them.

What reason would there be to think positively?

Daily new cases, and deaths, per million in the US are still at last summer levels and have not made new lows. Same with hospitalizations. Case positivity is rising again and is actually at 5.8%, provisionally, in this data. Previous very recent levels in the 7s, however, have simply vanished from the record. Why? Johns Hopkins is currently showing 4%. What to believe?

Vaccinations still can't be pointed to for lowering the US numbers because the numbers remain too high. I'm sure they'll point to them once they decline as evidence for vaccine efficacy. Seasonality will be ignored. I will leave a vaccination horror story update for a separate, future post.

Why have cases and deaths and hospitalizations ebbed and flowed in the past in the absence of vaccines? I predict they'll never really say, same as we hear no good explanation for why H1N1 from 2009 simply dropped off the radar. Why did it go away despite the vaccine against it turning into a giant flop? 

They can't predict pandemics' comings and goings anymore than they can predict global cooling in the 1970s, global warming in the 2000s, the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 or the end of the Reagan Bull in 2000.

Man is a worm, according to the Bible, a poor player upon the stage, according to Shakespeare, an idiot whose tale is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Nothing!

 

daily new cases per million

daily new deaths per million

case positivity rate

share of population vaccinated usa v world

Top five countries for C19 hospitalizations

share vaccinated in the largest countries by population

 

daily new deaths/million

daily new cases/million

Everyone's a phony, except for Nathaniel

Even if everyone else is a liar, God is true.

-- Romans 3:4

Jesus saw Nathan'a-el coming to him, and said of him, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" 

-- John 1:47

 

After holding out for $2k/person, the vote for which was supposed to be tomorrow, instead of the $600 in the current COVID relief bill waiting for him to sign, true to form Trump folds like a cheap suit and signs the thing anyway, warts and all

 Along with the inability to appoint the right personnel from the beginning, Trump's inability to negotiate for what he claims he wants has to be the biggest tell that THE ART OF THE DEAL was purely aspirational for him, kind of like following what THE BIBLE says is merely aspirational for Christians.

He's the biggest phony we've seen in a long time, and appropriately now the biggest loser.

Sad!

You'll recognize the conservatism of Russell Kirk in James M. Patterson's description of the American founding, but you'll never learn about it from dimwits like Rush Limbaugh or dilettantes like Mark Levin

The Dogmatic Rivalry at the Heart of America:

'In the American context, “liberalism” was not the term used to define the political foundations of the Declaration of Independence or the American Constitution. These documents were understood to be the extension of an older British tradition, even if the British themselves had failed to keep it. American colonists had, by 1776, over one hundred and fifty years of experience of self-government in covenanted and compacted governments, and the language of individual consent to government and rights reserved by individuals against the government were there at the very moment the colonies were chartered.

'Hence, as Donald S. Lutz finds that it is not right to call the Founding “Lockean” because the colonial origins of the Founding preceded Locke by decades. Rather, the Founders found in Locke something that articulated what their forebears already knew and understood when hewing logs to build a cabin in 1611. Moreover, during the Founding, Locke received attention only in the lead up to American Independence but faded into the background as matters of constitutional design arose upon the revolution’s success. During that period, jurist William Blackstone and republican theorist Montesquieu dominated the discourse, with David Hume, Samuel von Pufendorf, and Edward Coke each receiving more attention than Locke from 1780 onward. All were dwarfed by references to the Bible, especially, as Lutz discovered, to the book of Deuteronomy. One would only be surprised by this if one believed that the Founders were liberals. Some were, of a kind, but they were primarily republicans. Their appeal to “liberal” principles was, as James W. Ceaser, has argued, primarily to insist that the “rights of Englishmen” to which Americans, being no longer Englishmen, could no longer appeal. Rather, what made the rights of Englishmen truly rights was how they were grounded in nature, accessible by reason, and endowed by God. In addition, Paul DeHart has shown how this effort involved a combination of classical, Christian, and modern sources with the diverse and extensive experience in statecraft.

'For these reasons, it is simply ahistorical to apply a prefabricated concept of liberalism onto the American Founding or attribute it to a rather complicated mix of ideas and influences expressed among the leaders at the time.'

A nation of brothers, a nation of usurers

Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury: Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

-- Deuteronomy 23:19f.

That's funny, that's what Jesus said

But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

-- Matthew 15:24

Hank Paulson, who championed the crackpot TARP as Treasury Secretary under Bush 43, is a Christian Scientist

From the story:

But the reality of the existential crisis remained elusive to church officials. In 2005, Nathan Talbot and J Thomas Black, longtime church leaders who had promoted recklessly irresponsible policies encouraging the medical neglect of children, endorsed ambitious plans for raising the dead. Black argued that Eddy wanted to keep alive the possibility of defeating mortality, saying, “What would set us apart as a denomination more than raising the dead?” What indeed? Black himself has had ample opportunity to demonstrate it: he died in December 2011, and hasn’t been seen since. ...

 

So did the softening of some Christian Science attitudes suggest that the church was undergoing a genuine change of heart? Or were they trying to save their jobs, their pride and the institution? At that time, officials were grasping at relationships with ecumenical groups and New Age alternative healers – anything to boost membership. Shirley Paulson, for example, sister-in-law of former US treasury secretary Hank Paulson (also a Christian Scientist, taught by Nathan Talbot), contributed to a series of summit meetings – known as “Church Alive” – which sought to jazz up services with ideas fresh from the 1950s: reading from recent translations of the Bible (more recent than the King James version, that is), singing hymns a cappella, and urging Sunday School students to rap their narcotic weekly “Lesson Sermons”.

Rush The Ridiculous must be reading online again, claims Aristippus of Cyrene was the first to say "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die"

The line quoted here is not actually attributed to Aristippus as a quotation, but rather as a conclusion of his philosophy, which in its turn goes too far. As usual Rush reads the first hit on Al Gore's amazing internet, reads it badly, and believes it.

Skull full of mush much?

Epicurus is traditionally credited with the idea because we have an actual line which is similar, but it is so widespread in antiquity it is difficult to know who first came up with it.

At any rate the ethical hedonism taught by both Aristippus and Epicurus involved self-mastery, not license.   

Not that the licentious sense was unknown in antiquity.

The Greek geographer Strabo (64BC-24AD) knew it, purportedly from an Assyrian inscription on the tomb of Sardanapallus, legendary last king of Assyria, who was legendarily decadent:

Sardanapallus, the son of Anacyndaraxes, built Anchiale and Tarsus in one day. 'Eat, drink, be merry, because all things else are not worth this,' meaning the snapping of the fingers. -- Strabo, Geographica, 14.5.9f.

Isaiah the prophet knew it in the 8th century BC, antedating any Greek knowledge by hundreds of years:

And behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink; for to morrow we shall die. -- Isaiah 22:13.

And of course Paul of Tarsus knew it in the middle of the 1st century AD, which is how most of us in the Christian West know the lines:

If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die.  -- I Corinthians 15:32.

Here endeth the lesson.

 

Like millions of Christians, Justin Amash has read the Bible, too, but is the member of a sect with just 75,000 members in the US

Most people who have read the Mueller report have reached a different conclusion, including Robert Mueller.

Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America