The Scam of Mail-in Rebates

The thing to remember is these rebate companies don’t get much money for running the rebate. They basically get paid on the degree of rebate failure by the consumers.

Mail-In Rebates (MIRs) are a noxious scam that have infested the tech and software markets, and it is time we put an end to them by refusing to buy products based on a MIR.

Forget about boycotting businesses because you disagree with their politics, or because you think their corporate logo shows they are in league with Satan. Let’s boycott the truly evil companies that use rebates to entice you to buy their product when their plan is to cheat you out of some of your money.

Mail-In Rebates are a scam, and not just for the obvious reasons. You already know that the manufacturers do everything they can to reduce how much they have to pay out, a practice known in the industry as “breakage.” It’s not that they are intending to commit fraud – they just know that if they make the process difficult in the slightest possible way, only about half of the people who buy the products will even bother.

No, that’s not the fraud part. This is the fraud part:

Companies commit fraud with their consumers when they deliberately complicate the submission rules, including overly restrictive times to mail in the rebates or arbitrary reasons to deny rebate requests. In fact, companies that manage rebates on behalf of manufacturing companies compete with one another to see who can achieve the highest rejection rates – and use these rates to pitch their services.

Hardware and software companies don’t start out wanting to defraud their own customers. They just want to market their products. But sooner or later, the allure of saving money gets to them, and they hire the companies that get the lowest rebate rates. Usually by making it nearly impossible to meet all of the requirements stated on the rebate form.

Top of the list: requiring an original copy of the purchase receipt, copies not acceptable. You know. The same original receipt you have to save for the IRS and submit to your company to get reimbursement. They know you can’t give them an original…and that’s fraud.

There are ways around all of this. You can get five or six copies of the receipt for every purchase, follow the rules to the letter, send everything by certified mail, and have an attorney on hand to sue if you need to. But is it really worth your time and money to do this?

If you do get ripped off by a MIR scheme, you can always complain to the Federal Trade Commission. It’s not as if this is something new for them, as they have successfully forced dozens of companies to halt this deceptive practice.

But a far better approach is to refuse to do business with companies that sell their products through mail-in rebates, and let them know why you think their fraud is an unacceptable business practice.

The thing to remember is these rebate companies don’t get much money for running the rebate. They basically get paid on the degree of rebate failure by the consumers. They sweeten the pot to the manufacturer by offering to sell them the buyer metrics they obtain for a low additional fee. Then they turn around and sell that same info to various info gathering outfits.

That money you try to save is aggressively fought against in any way that avoids a fraud charge against them and they sell your personal residence and shopping data to anyone that will pay for it to boot.

As Robert Heinlein said; “There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Prayer for Saturday, 12/7/2019

So it is obvious to me that the New Testament life was not going to succeed by imposing or encouraging a new set of laws even if they were sanctioned by someone who rose from the dead.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11

9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

The meaning of the verses look so clear it seems to be a loaded question. It means exactly what it says, but as with everything, some context will clarify some issues.

Paul is very explicit in chapter 6 that unrighteousness will not inherit the kingdom of God. He then gives some very explicit examples, which I am sure are representative and not a complete list, of the type of lifestyle or behavior typical of unrighteousness.

The good news is he says in vs 11

And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

You were like this and now you are not. How did they change? They appeared to be out of a very hedonistic community which seem to regard such actions as normal and every man for himself, anything goes. How could they possibly transform?

The question goes to the heart of becoming a believer. Since God first began nurturing his relationship with man, it was obvious that man could not keep a law no matter how good its intention was. The nature of mankind was against the law. This is well spoken about in both Galatians and Romans.

So it is obvious to me that the New Testament life was not going to succeed by imposing or encouraging a new set of laws even if they were sanctioned by someone who rose from the dead.

The only way a believer could live a righteous life especially coming out of such a hedonistic society was to have a complete change of heart or nature.

That is the gospel. Paul wrote as stated above

And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

What happened to them?

They were washed, they were sanctified, separated by God, for God. Accepting the blood of Jesus and the work of God to wash away their sins, their nature was changed. They were like that but no more.

Were they accepted even though they had a sordid (normal!) history? Absolutely!

Why accepted? Because their heart change gave them a different nature. They were no longer the same.

The question posed brings me to the issue of how many people view salvation. They have no faith in the power of the blood. They have no respect for the cross and its power.

All they see is what they feel or what they have done or what they are labelled. The focus is on them and what they feel powerless to change.

So the focus shifts to a fight for tolerance instead of faith in the blood. The church becomes challenged to be inclusive by those who are unwilling to exercise faith in the blood. The message of the cross is watered down so it becomes a symbol only instead the doorway to the power of God.

Paul wrote in chapter 1 of 1 Corinthians

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

So what does 1Cor 6:9–11 mean?

It means that the power of God is both necessary and sufficient to change a life no matter what their past. The change that ensues in a life makes one a new creation, able to inherit the kingdom of God.

Even though belief is a choice, choosing opens one to the power of God for change. One is not left with self motivation or will power to effect a change. It is God who makes the difference and it is entirely supernatural.

How the Sheep are Fleeced

Tell the bleeding hearts, until we cant find a hungry or homeless child in America, until we have provided for our damaged or indigent war fighters, until we have addressed the influx of criminals and criminal enterprises across our borders, not a penny should be spent on foreign aid. It is time for US taxpayers to stop paying the tab for the entire world.

SOURCE: https://results.usaid.gov/results

” On behalf of the American people, we promote and demonstrate democratic values abroad, and advance a free, peaceful, and prosperous world. In support of America’s foreign policy, the U.S. Agency for International Development leads the U.S. Government’s international development and disaster assistance through partnerships and investments that save lives, reduce poverty, strengthen democratic governance, and help people emerge from humanitarian crises and progress beyond assistance.”

Handing out money to countries that honestly hate us must stop this year.

Our VETERANS and HOMELESS here at home could use ever penny of that money.

Sample US Foreign Aid 2000-16:

Nigeria: $6.2 billion

Ethiopia: $11.7 billion

Jordan: $15.9 billion

Egypt: $33.3 billion

Lebanon: $3.6 billion

Pakistan: $17.9 billion

Colombia: $13.6 billion

South Africa: $6.2 billion

Countries with nuclear militaries, oil wells, space programs, propaganda/lobbying offices, holocaust monuments & museums in every major city all over the world don’t need handouts from American taxpayers.

How much of that goes into the pockets of people like Hunter Biden or their own crooked politicians? I’d go even further. We should stop all payment to the UN and tell them they have 1 yr. to find another place for their headquarters. That would destroy the nest of spies and save us more money.

I love how the Deep Staters use the word “invests” when they mean bribe. And it’s less than 1% of the federal budget as if that makes it Ok. Using that logic, building the domestic wall should have been simple.

I would demand that we have a complete an audit of all foreign aid.

And to those who constantly cry about saving the children in these countries I respond;

Pushing the FEDS Money Button

The laergest shareowners of the New York Fed are the following five Wall Street banks: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of New York Mellon.

The New York Fed has now pumped out upwards of $3 trillion in a period of 63 days to unnamed trading houses on Wall Street to ease a liquidity crisis that has yet to be credibly explained. In addition, it has launched a new asset purchase program, buying up $60 billion each month in U.S. Treasury bills. Based on the continuing escalation of its plans, it appears to be testing the limits of what the public will tolerate. We thought it was time to answer the question: who exactly owns the New York Fed and its magical money spigot that can pump trillions of dollars into Wall Street at the press of a button.

The largest shareowners of the New York Fed are the following five Wall Street banks: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of New York Mellon. Those five banks represent two-thirds of the eight Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) in the United States. The other three G-SIBs are Bank of America, a shareowner in the Richmond Fed; Wells Fargo, a shareowner of the San Francisco Fed; and State Street, a shareowner in the Boston Fed.

G-SIBs have the ability to inflict systemic contagion on the entire global banking system (as happened in 2008) and thus must be monitored closely for financial stability. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley are also four of the five largest holders of high-risk derivatives. (Bank of America is the fifth.)

The five mega banks that are the major shareowners of the New York Fed are also supervised by the New York Fed, despite participating in the election of two-thirds of its Board of Directors. James Gorman, Chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley, currently sits on the New York Fed Board. Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, previously served two three-year terms on the Board.

These same Wall Street banks also participate in various advisory groups with the New York Fed where they hash out “best practices” for their industry. Those “best practices” were not sufficient to prevent JPMorgan Chase from becoming a three-count felon, Citigroup a one-count felon, and four of the banks (all but Bank of New York Mellon) from actively engaging in creating and selling subprime investments that blew up the U.S. financial system, the nation’s economy and a good swath of Wall Street in 2008.

There are 12 regional Federal Reserve banks of which the New York Fed is only one. But during the financial crisis, the New York Fed was given unprecedented powers by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. to create over $29 trillion in electronically-engineered money to bail out Wall Street. A significant portion of the $29 trillion went to loans that were collateralized by stocks and junk bonds – an unprecedented action for the Federal Reserve. In some instances, the Fed threw its rule book under the bus and didn’t make loans at all, opting instead to buy up toxic assets outright through Special Purpose Vehicles it created. And despite its mandate to make properly collateralized loans to only solvent banks, it made over $2.5 trillion in loans to Citigroup, much of that after the bank was clearly insolvent.

The $29 trillion created electronically by the New York Fed from 2007 to the middle of 2010 is astronomical compared to the loans made by the Federal Reserve following the 1929 financial crash and early years of the Great Depression. Those Fed loans aggregated to only $1.5 million or approximately $25.5 million in today’s dollars.

Consider that $25.5 million in today’s dollars that was distributed by the Fed from 1932 to 1936 to just one day in 2008. On September 24, 2008 the New York Fed pounded away on its money button to pump out $110 billion to the miscreants of Wall Street. (See chart below: where Bank of New York Mellon and JPMorgan Chase are listed in capitalized letters, they were acting as intermediaries for the New York Fed to disburse Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) money to the securities firms listed directly below each entry.) The $25.3 billion that Morgan Stanley received on just that one day is 1,000 times all the money the Fed disbursed during the 1930s.

The listing below came directly from the Federal Reserve when it was forced to hand over its Discount Window documents on March 31, 2011 after losing a multi-year court battle with the media to keep its money spigot secret.

A Sampling of Loans Made on Just One Day, September 24, 2008, by the New York Fed (Source: Federal Reserve Board of Governors)

The banks of New York and their foreign derivatives counterparties were the largest beneficiaries of the $29 trillion bailout and yet Congress has allowed the New York Fed to continue to supervise these Wall Street banking behemoths just as if the collapse in 2008 never occurred.

Unlike the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., which is considered an independent federal agency, the regional Federal Reserve banks are owned by their members banks. They are private institutions.

According to the December 31, 2018 financial statement for the New York Fed, the banks in its region owned 205,202,792 shares of stock in the New York Fed, which represented $10.26 billion of paid-in capital. This is how the New York Fed explains who its largest shareholders are:

“The Federal Reserve Act requires that each member bank subscribe to the capital stock of the Reserve Bank in an amount equal to 6 percent of the capital and surplus of the member bank. These shares are nonvoting, with a par value of $100, and may not be transferred or hypothecated. As a member bank’s capital and surplus changes, its holdings of Reserve Bank stock must be adjusted. Currently, only one-half of the subscription is paid in, and the remainder is subject to call. A member bank is liable for Reserve Bank liabilities up to twice the par value of stock subscribed by it.”

While the shares are non-voting in terms of quantity of shares held, the banks do get a vote in electing the Board of Directors of their regional Fed bank. Each regional Fed board has nine members. Six of the directors are elected by member banks. Three of the directors are appointed by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C.. From among these three, the Board of Governors selects a chairman and a deputy chairman of the given Bank’s board.

That might help to explain why Tim Geithner, when he was President of the New York Fed, was wining and dining Sandy Weill, the Chairman and CEO of Citigroup, who had sat on his Board, instead of reining in Citigroup’s wild gambles before it blew itself up. (Geithner failed up to become U.S. Treasury Secretary, where he continued to coddle the Wall Street banks.) Or it might help to explain why Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, hasn’t been booted out of the bank despite presiding over three criminal felony charges, to which the bank pleaded guilty, and the current, ongoing prosecutions of its traders for turning the JPMorgan Chase precious metals trading desk into a racketeering enterprise according to the U.S. Department of Justice. (While Dimon was defending his bank against losing $6.2 billion of its depositors’ money in derivative gambles in London in 2012, he was actually sitting as a member of the Board of Directors at the New York Fed, his regulator.)

It’s long past the time to remove the money button from the New York Fed along with its Wall Street cop badge. As it is currently structured, it’s more dangerous than the banks in its district.

Down the financial rabbit hole.

“If you take just one piece of what they are going to have to bail out, which is going to start with the State of Illinois, which is probably going to be the first state that is going to collapse. It will renege on its pension obligations.

On the first day of Christmas the Deep State gave to me…

Financial writer and professional trader Rick Ackerman says don’t expect a replay of the 2008-2009 financial crisis where the Federal Reserve bailed out almost everything in sight. Ackerman explains, “It ended up Lehman Brothers went under, and they needed a couple of sacrificial lambs, along with Bear Stearns. It could have just as easily been, and it might be the next time, Goldman Sachs. So, in that way, the Fed is kind of out of bailout bullets. We’ve already been through a bailout where it took a big hunk of the financial system. Each one takes more bailing out to get to that critical threshold of credibility where the bailout itself works.”

Ackerman sees bailout needs everywhere and gives the example of underwater state pensions across the country. Ackerman points out, “If you take just one piece of what they are going to have to bail out, which is going to start with the State of Illinois, which is probably going to be the first state that is going to collapse. It will renege on its pension obligations. So, if you picture the federal government riding to the rescue, the minute they bail out the Illinois pension system, California is there, along with New Jersey, Kentucky and a lot of other states, maybe 19 or 20 of them that have pension systems almost as insolvent as Illinois. . . . This means they are going to have to mail out checks to Illinois and then expand it to California, and all the other states that go under is to court hyperinflation. Of course, hyperinflation, in that sense, you can see where it has to collapse into deflation because . . . printing so much money that it is not going to buy the pensioner anything close to what it would have bought before the bailout. . . . So, a bailout is really self-defeating. . . . We can never inflate our way out of this abyss. . . .So, there is no bailout coming. . . . The debts will always be paid by either the borrower or the lender.”

Some people see a “Mad Max” scenario might be coming because of the enormous unpayable global debt. Ackerman contends, “I am a little more bearish than that. I see a Mad Max scenario as inevitable. . . . I try not to think about it because we’ve all got lives to live and kids to raise. . . . When you go back to the calculous of deflation and that every penny of every debt must be paid, if not by the borrower then by the lender, we have already put ourselves into a condition where Social Security is going to fail. Medicare is going to fail. All the ‘just-in-time’ deliveries are going to be in jeopardy. Food from the grocery stores, one day shipping from Amazon, I don’t see how all these thing s can continue to operate in a condition other than in the false prosperity that we have now. We are at the pinnacle of affluence.”

More explanation on the Deep State

All of these things were generally dismissed as “conspiracy theory” until very recently

The long-term outlook for the USA really started getting depressing in the late 80’s, and continued until the gigantic Dem meltdown in 2016. Why?

Because all of these things:
* export of US wealth to other countries
*control of our media and politics by foreign and domestic enemies of freedom
* transformation of the US Government bureaucracy into an army of unaccountable activist criminals
* subversion of our public education system
* debt-financed investment in welfare at a massive scale
* perversion of the Justice Industry from courts to prisons
*perfection of mechanisms to heavily interfere with true local and state level representation
* personal enrichment by a significant percentage of politicians using manipulation of “non-profits”, law enforcement, the “drug war”, and pay-to-play
have been accelerating at the catastrophic expense of the Working American, the Working American’s family, and the Working American’s future.

All of these things were generally dismissed as “conspiracy theory” until very recently, because if accepted as possible/likely……then collective faith is massively shaken in national financial/political/legal/media/military/justice systems. As long as you have good credit, new car, a travel trailer, and a great vacation, everything must be OK, right?

These treasonous acts and policies have always been done opaquely, such that folks at all levels of government “service” could participate and rarely be directly associated in the public eye. Because information was highly controlled, and the system took care of its own. Mavericks ended up with concrete shoes, figuratively or literally. The United States government had fully morphed into the world’s richest/largest Mafia organization, and the Don’s are generally not U.S. citizens.

Except these things are no longer “conspiracy theory”, they are “conspiracy fact”. Nobody can point to any of those bullet points above, and say “that’s not true”, or “that’s not the case” anymore. Too many single facts are out in the open now, and people who cannot connect the dots to see the larger picture are either willfully ignorant or flat out lying.

The “slow roll” since election 2016 of exposing these facts at the national scale has certainly forced everyone in the public eye (media individuals, politicians, corporate marketing, CEOs, judges) to take a position that cannot be easily concealed.

The more that the media personalities, true believers, and political heads melt down in public, are exposed in their blatant lies, and are forced to make increasingly outlandish and extreme statements, the better.

The really difficult choices for all of you (us) are going to be whether or not we are willing to associate local organizations and politicians with the national corruption. Corruption doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and significant resources have been used in your hometown/state over decades to destroy the democratic process and balance of republic representation, without you realizing it, in order to assume control of your life and resources under false color of national consensus.

Bottom line, the facts are now in the open. We know, in general, what has been happening to our country and who has been funding it. We know how our politicians enrich themselves in office. We know that the media are 100% complicit and part of the organization.

We know that our local processes have been subverted and corrupted. Problem is, this doesn’t get immediately exposed at the local level, because the evidence for such is part of process/results, not individual names being tied to national investigations (unless there is a helluva lot more to the indictments). The longer this drags out, the more that our local politicians, agencies, and bureaucrats will be forced to take a public position by their actions. Mayors, sheriffs, judges, reps, and agents. They prefer to operate in the grey, it protects them and provides plausible deniability.

To those chomping at the bit and demanding “something” be done:

Let the national game continue until there is serious definition from a watching public perspective that there is a black-and-white struggle going on, and personal freedom (and revitalization of the Republic enterprise) or government control (and fundamental national transformation to de facto oligarchy) are the options. Then you can demand that your local rulers take a position, however you interact with them. The legal foundations of our country provide plenty of guidance for your response.

Noah’s Ark-preparing for the worst

what nation in the history of humanity has been so blessed, has been so presumptuous, and has so provoked God to wrath?

Before I begin this article, I should clarify that I believe that Noah’s flood is a historical fact, not an allegorical myth. It actually happened; a flood that covered the whole earth and destroyed all humanity and all animals on the earth, with the exception of one man, his family, and those animals with him. As I see it, if one can’t believe the Bible about the flood, one can’t believe it about the resurrection either. Noah is included in the ‘cloud of witnesses’ in Hebrews 11:7. These witnesses are to encourage us to ‘lay aside every encumberance and the sin which so easily entangles us, etc.’ (Hebrews 12:1). Hardly the place for a fictional character and story. And I also note that Christ Himself spoke of the flood as an actual historical event (Matthew 24:38-39). So if you share with me the belief that flood did indeed happen, then please read on.

I must also note that much of what we ‘know’ as a culture about Noah’s ark comes from children’s books and songs (“The Loooord, told Noah, to build him an arky-arky”). Noah is usually portrayed as an elderly man with white hair and beard (rather chubby) in a bathrobe, happily enjoying a sail with a bunch of happy animals on deck. The story of Noah always seems to find it’s way into children’s Bible books, while stories about Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19) or the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19) are avoided for being too ‘dark’ for a children’s book. This puzzles me. Apart from the fall and the crucifixion, there has not been a darker day in human history than the day the flood began.

This was not a rainstorm, or even a hurricane. The ‘fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened’ (Genesis 7:11). Enough water was released to cover the tallest mountains on earth. Cataclysm. All of humanity was destroyed. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just a few people were lost because the earth was so young and people hadn’t multiplied. There were nine generations between Adam and Noah. And if a typical married woman today, living say 75 years, would be pregnant 10-20 times (without birth control), how many children could a woman living 900 years bear? By my reckoning, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives were lost. And Noah did NOT resemble a chubby Santa Claus. Given that he lived 900 years and was 600 years old when the flood came (we don’t what age he began building the ark), in appearance he would resemble a modern day 50 year old the day he entered the ark. And if he built, by hand, a ship the size of the ark, Noah was NOT chubby. Think: chiseled, scarred, and hard as nails.

As It Was in the Days of Noah

But why write an article about Noah’s flood? First, because Noah’s time is so like our own. Noah’s story really begins in Genesis 6:1 (though most sermons skip to verse 5): “Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose . . . the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them.” Demons having children with women. The presence of the demonic was visible on the earth. How does this relate to our day? Have you not wondered why there are so many mass murders lately, perpetrated by men with no real explicable motive? Demonic. Why the increasing pressure and influence of drug cartels no longer motivated solely by profit but by a desire for rape, murder, and enslavement? Demonic. Still not convinced? According to the CDC, more than 45,000,000 babies have been murdered in their own mother’s wombs from 1970-2015 in the USA alone. Demonic.

Note also Genesis 6:5: “then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Watch the first episode of the Game of Thrones and imagine playing this show for a theater audience in, say, the 1930s. Imagine the audience’s response. Hysterical screaming, vomiting, and a rush from the theater (followed, no doubt, by a torch-bearing march on the studio). And yet the average American watches five hours of shows like these a day.

And then there is the epidemic of pornography. There is an article in Forbes titled ‘Pornhub 2017 Year in Review Insights Report Reveals Statistical Proof We Love Porn’ that you can Google if you want some insight into American’s use of porn. Fair warning: I couldn’t make it halfway through the article. Just take my word for it: it’s bad, and it’s everywhere. Surely, the thoughts of our hearts are increasingly only evil continually (Genesis 6:5) as they were in Noah’s time.

Finally, though ‘the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence’ (Genesis 6:11), Jesus notes that ‘in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away’ (Matthew 24: 38-39). The culture around Noah saw neither the corruption, nor the impending judgment. Neither does ours.

Noah: The Ultimate Prepper

Second, Noah was the ultimate prepper. Want to save your family from TEOTWAWKI? Noah saved his family from TEOTW (forget the AWKI). Want to provide for your people in tough times? Noah provided for his family and for all land animals on earth for over a year! Want to partner in rebuilding society when the storm passes? Noah did that too.

Let’s take a closer look at lessons from Noah’s story.

Noah received direction from God. It wasn’t his plan, it was His plan. This lesson can’t be overstated. Take Jim’s advice and pray before you prepare. And don’t think that God’s message to Noah was a ‘bolt from the blue.’ It flowed from his intimacy with God: ‘Noah walked with God’ (Genesis 6:9). Dear reader, I implore you to walk with God and receive His plan for you.
Noah lived a holy life. ‘Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time’ (Genesis 6:9). Let us follow his example and ‘lay aside every encumberance and the sin which so easily entangles us’ (Hebrews 12:1). Search for sin in your life for sin and ask the Lord to set you free from it. Or, better yet, ask the Lord to ‘search [you] … and see if there be any hurtful way in [you]’ (Psalm 139: 23-24).
Noah did what he was told. From his introduction in the text to the point where God’s rainbow appears in the sky, Noah doesn’t say a thing. But ‘thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did.’ Obedience is what God rewards.
Noah had a heart of worship. What is the first thing he does once he gets out of the ark? He builds an altar before the Lord (Genesis 8:20). In response, the Lord promises to never again destroy the earth with a flood. He also promised to preserve ‘seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night.’ All that, in response to one man’s worship. I believe that worship is overlooked in our lives and that it brings peace, joy, thankfulness, alignment with God, and a powerful response from the Lord.
Noah gave up all his earthly existence to follow God. I’m sure that Noah took tools (as many as he could afford!), tents, extra clothes, etc. with him. I’m also sure that his godly life and long hours building the ark left him few (if any) friends. But he lost his farm, his extended family, his neighbors and community (including all the skills they had and he didn’t). Think on this for a moment. Imagine that tomorrow you wake up and all the world has been washed away. All of it. No house, no cars, no buildings, no power, no grocery store, no pharmacy, no hospital, no doctors, no dentists, no Costco, no Walmart, no restaurants, no hardware store, no Starbucks (!), no internet, no phone, no computers, no tablets. Gone. Far worse than an EMP. Just you, your family, and whatever you have in your suitcases. Noah lost his whole existence, with the exception of his nuclear family and his God. But he preserved his life and the lives of his family through a time of God’s judgment. Let me repeat that: all that Noah got was his life, his family’s lives, and the chance to start over. And believe me, God’s judgment is coming again. Do you hope to preserve your family? Then remember the words of Christ: “He who wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will keep it’ (Luke 9:24). Do not cling to anything that God calls you to give up. Or it may cost you your life, and the lives of those you love. When He says ‘let go,’ let go.

Noah’s Accomplishments

What did Noah accomplish with this foundation? “Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did” (Genesis 6:22). What, exactly, did Noah do? First, he had to design the ark. My best guess, based on Genesis 9:20, is that Noah was a farmer by profession, not a ship builder. He certainly had no experience building a ship of this size. And while the Lord gives Noah the basic dimensions, the number of decks required, the number of doors and windows, and the types of building materials to use, the rest of the design appears to have been up to Noah. He would have had to determine the latitudinal and longitudinal curvature of the ship and the exact curvature of each board in the hull. Each board would have to be carefully catalogued based on its exact position in the ship.

He had to pick (and procure?) a build site close enough to the forest of trees needed for the raw materials. Some system would have had to be designed to move the heavier materials. Can you imagine the size of the beams needed for the girders of a ship this big? Tools would need to be procured en masse. How many pens (and of what type) would be needed to hold every type of animal on earth (mammals, lizards, birds)? For that matter, how many types are there? How much food would be needed for humans and animals? And of what type? And the Lord didn’t tell him how long he would be in the ark. What should he take with him to restart society with only the skills he and his immediate family had? What would you take? What skills would Noah and his family have been scrambling to learn so that those skills would not be lost? Think on this for a moment.

Then it was time to gather raw materials. According to Genesis 6:15, the ark was 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. Estimating a cubit at 18” (roughly the length of a man’s forearm and fist), that’s 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. I realize that the ark was probably not rectangular in shape, but for easy figures, that’s a surface area of 114,750 square feet. Adding in the first, second, and third decks (Genesis 6:16), that’s 216,000 square feet. That’s about 81,000 2x4s. With, at best, bronze really era hand tools, Noah had to cut down and mill 81,000 2x4s. Just for fun, try cutting down one tree and producing 1 good 2×4 using only an axe and a hand plane. Noah then had to manufacture or procure enough fasteners for those 81,000 2x4s. He also had to produce enough pitch to cover the surface of the hull (114,750 square feet) inside and out. How many buckets of roofing tar would it take to cover 2×114,750 = 229,500 square feet?

And then the work really began. Noah built the ark. We don’t know what sort of divine assistance Noah received, or how long the construction took, but the Lord did not build the ark for him. Noah did according all that the Lord had commanded him. Beasts of burden might have been used to move the bulk materials or to lower especially heavy materials into position, but for the most part, the ark was built by hand. 81,000 2x4s people. Fastened together. By hand. Followed by covering the surface with nasty, foul smelling, and very dangerous pitch.

How long did this take? And let’s not forget that Noah still needed to provide for the daily needs of his family during construction. And in a world filled with violence (Genesis 6:11), security would have been a constant concern. Imagine the physical and emotional exhaustion. Imagine the constant fight against discouragement and despair. Will this thing ever get built? Is there really a flood coming? “Doesn’t look like rain to me.” Why are we doing this Dad/Honey? And then there was the spiritual struggle. Do you think Satan wanted that ark built?

Does all of this seem exhausting? It was. But let us take heart. What the Lord calls for, He provides for. Noah did it. And we can do what He asks too.

I stated previously that the Lord’s judgment is coming. Why do I believe this? Because the Lord said so: “the Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.” (Psalm 145:20). The Lord gave the founders of our nation the knowledge of His Son when much of the world was still in darkness. He gave them a virgin country with vast resources and endless opportunity. He gave us a democratically-elected republican form of government and a new birth of freedom and success over our enemies. And what did we do with it? We greedily devoured the resources, took the credit for our success and our victories, turned our back on God, and now seek hastily after every form of wickedness. President Obama was right: we are no longer a Christian nation. Tell me: what nation in the history of humanity has been so blessed, has been so presumptuous, and has so provoked God to wrath?

A new storm is coming, my brothers and sisters. Build quickly.

Prayer for Saturday 11/30/2019

Why would a righteous person believe God was punishing him? In one sense, it is easy to reach such a conclusion because in our calling we are educated to see sin in ourselves. Why? If we do not first see our sins, how can we repent of them?

Psalm 73: 12-14

¹²Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.

¹³Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.

¹⁴For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning.

The author’s distress is evident. At this point, he was clearly puzzled too. How quickly he seemed to have forgotten earlier outpourings of God’s benefits. Did he allow his anguish to lead him into believing that he was being picked on unfairly? In this state of mind, a person can easily come to a wrong judgment about how he should respond.

In addition, at the same time we are also being educated about the holiness of God. Together, the two of them serve to emphasize how wide the contrast is between Him and us, sharpening our awareness of our sinfulness. How can we possibly live up to that standard? We conclude, then, that we are being punished. The apostle Paul’s statement in Romans 7:24 about his own sinfulness seems to confirm our conclusion: “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

However, this is not the end of the story on making this judgment, for it is indisputably unbalanced. We must emphasize and believe another characteristic of God’s nature more profoundly. Exodus 34:4-9 records an episode following the Israelites’ rebellion after receiving the law at Mount Sinai. Moses returned to the mountain and asked to see God, that is, literally see Him in person with his own eyes. God granted His request, permitting him to see His back. When God passed by, He proclaimed:

The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.

God emphasizes His mercy, patience, goodness, truth, and forgiveness. Why do we not think first of His grace and run to Him, rather than fear His justice, accuse Him, and run from Him? He is our help. He gives us salvation. He provides us with a Savior. He called us and gives us His Holy Spirit, empowering us to learn and grow. He is creating us in His image.

The author of Psalm 73 used this positive insight to come to a better solution. He went to the sanctuary and prayed, and God gave him a balanced, quiet, faithful spirit. The accusations stopped and praise for God began because he could now understand the entire picture in a more sound-minded, less self-centered way.

We are in a Cold Civil War

(The Left) wants to end government of the people, by the people and for the people. That’s what they’re fighting for. That’s what we’re fighting against. The stakes are as big as they’re ever going to get. Do elections matter anymore?

Not a hyperbole: We really are in a civil war

Posted on November 23, 2019 by Dr. Eowyn | Leave a comment

You may have received an email claiming the essay below as the work of Professor Jack Minzey of Eastern Michigan University, who passed away 0n April 8, 2018.

The email is actually a shortened version of a speech delivered by conservative author Daniel Greenfield at the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention on January 26, 2018.

It’s a must read.

Read it, then disseminate it widely via social media and email.

Below is Greenfield’s speech from his blog, Sultan Knish:

This is a civil war.
There aren’t any soldiers marching on Charleston… or Myrtle Beach. Nobody’s getting shot in the streets. Except in Chicago… and Baltimore, Detroit and Washington D.C.
But that’s not a civil war. It’s just what happens when Democrats run a city into the ground. And then they dig a hole in the ground so they can bury it even deeper.
If you look deep enough into that great big Democrat hole, you might even see where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.
But it’s not guns that make a civil war. It’s politics.
Guns are how a civil war ends. Politics is how it begins.
How do civil wars happen?
Two or more sides disagree on who runs the country. And they can’t settle the question through elections because they don’t even agree that elections are how you decide who’s in charge.
That’s the basic issue here. Who decides who runs the country? When you hate each other but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war.
I know you’re all thinking about President Trump.
He won and the establishment, the media, the democrats, rejected the results. They came up with a whole bunch of conspiracy theories to explain why he didn’t really win. It was the Russians. And the FBI. And sexism, Obama, Bernie Sanders and white people.
It’s easier to make a list of the things that Hillary Clinton doesn’t blame for losing the election. It’s going to be a short list.
A really short list. Herself.
The Mueller investigation is about removing President Trump from office and overturning the results of an election. We all know that. But it’s not the first time they’ve done this.
The first time a Republican president was elected this century, they said he didn’t really win. The Supreme Court gave him the election. There’s a pattern here.
Trump didn’t really win the election. Bush didn’t really win the election. Every time a Republican president won an election this century, the Democrats insist he didn’t really win.
Now say a third Republican president wins an election in say, 2024.
What are the odds that they’ll say that he didn’t really win? Right now, it looks like 100 percent.
What do sure odds of the Dems rejecting the next Republican president really mean? It means they don’t accept the results of any election that they don’t win.
It means they don’t believe that transfers of power in this country are determined by elections.
That’s a civil war.
There’s no shooting. At least not unless you count the attempt to kill a bunch of Republicans at a charity baseball game practice. But the Democrats have rejected our system of government.
This isn’t dissent. It’s not disagreement.
You can hate the other party. You can think they’re the worst thing that ever happened to the country. But then you work harder to win the next election. When you consistently reject the results of elections that you don’t win, what you want is a dictatorship.
Your very own dictatorship.
The only legitimate exercise of power in this country, according to the left, is its own. Whenever Republicans exercise power, it’s inherently illegitimate.
The attacks on Trump show that elections don’t matter to the left.
Republicans can win an election, but they have a major flaw. They’re not leftists.
That’s what the leftist dictatorship looks like.
The left lost Congress. They lost the White House. So what did they do? They began trying to run the country through Federal judges and bureaucrats.
Every time that a Federal judge issues an order saying that the President of the United States can’t scratch his own back without his say so, that’s the civil war.
Our system of government is based on the constitution, but that’s not the system that runs this country.
The left’s system is that any part of government that it runs gets total and unlimited power over the country.
If it’s in the White House, then the president can do anything. And I mean anything. He can have his own amnesty for illegal aliens. He can fine you for not having health insurance. His power is unlimited.
He’s a dictator.
But when Republicans get into the White House, suddenly the President can’t do anything. He isn’t even allowed to undo the illegal alien amnesty that his predecessor illegally invented.
A Democrat in the White House has “discretion” to completely decide every aspect of immigration policy. A Republican doesn’t even have the “discretion” to reverse him.
That’s how the game is played. That’s how our country is run.
When Democrats control the Senate, then Harry Reid and his boys and girls are the sane, wise heads that keep the crazy guys in the House in check.
But when Republicans control the Senate, then it’s an outmoded body inspired by racism.
When Democrats run the Supreme Court, then it has the power to decide everything in the country. But when Republicans control the Supreme Court, it’s a dangerous body that no one should pay attention to.
When a Democrat is in the White House, states aren’t even allowed to enforce immigration law. But when a Republican is in the White House, states can create their own immigration laws.
Under Obama, a state wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom without asking permission. But under Trump, Jerry Brown can go around saying that California is an independent republic and sign treaties with other countries.
The Constitution has something to say about that.
Whether it’s Federal or State, Executive, Legislative or Judiciary, the left moves power around to run the country. If it controls an institution, then that institution is suddenly the supreme power in the land.
This is what I call a moving dictatorship.
There isn’t one guy in a room somewhere issuing the orders. Instead there’s a network of them. And the network moves around.
If the guys and girls in the network win elections, they can do it from the White House. If they lose the White House, they’ll do it from Congress. If they don’t have either one, they’ll use the Supreme Court.
If they don’t have either the White House, Congress or the Supreme Court, they’re screwed. Right?
Nope.
They just go on issuing them through circuit courts and the bureaucracy. State governments announce that they’re independent republics. Corporations begin threatening and suing the government.
There’s no consistent legal standard. Only a political one.
Under Obama, states weren’t allowed to enforce immigration laws. That was the job of the Federal government. And the states weren’t allowed to interfere with the job that the Feds weren’t doing.
Okay.
Now Trump comes into office and starts enforcing immigration laws again. And California announces it’s a sanctuary state and passes a law punishing businesses that cooperate with Federal immigration enforcement.
So what do we have here?
It’s illegal for states to enforce immigration law because that’s the province of the Federal government. But it’s legal for states to ban the Federal government from enforcing immigration law.
The only consistent pattern here is that the left decided to make it illegal to enforce immigration law.
It may do that sometimes under the guise of Federal power or states rights. But those are just fronts. The only consistent thing is that leftist policies are mandatory and opposing them is illegal.
Everything else is just a song and dance routine.
That’s how it works. It’s the moving dictatorship. It’s the tyranny of the network.
You can’t pin it down. There’s no one office or one guy. It’s a network of them. It’s an ideological dictatorship. Some people call it the deep state. But that doesn’t even begin to capture what it is.
To understand it, you have to think about things like the Cold War and Communist infiltration.
A better term than Deep State is Shadow Government.
Parts of the Shadow Government aren’t even in the government. They are wherever the left holds power.It can be in the non-profit sector and among major corporations. Power gets moved around like a New York City shell game. Where’s the quarter? Nope, it’s not there anymore.
The shadow government is an ideological network. These days it calls itself by a hashtag #Resistance. Under any name, it runs the country. Most of the time we don’t realize that. When things are normal, when there’s a Democrat in the White House or a bunch of Democrats in Congress, it’s business as usual.
Even with most Republican presidents, you didn’t notice anything too out of the ordinary. Sure, the Democrats got their way most of the time. But that’s how the game is usually played.
It’s only when someone came on the scene who didn’t play the game by the same rules, that the network exposed itself. The shadow government emerged out of hiding and came for Trump.
And that’s the civil war.
This is a war over who runs the country. Do the people who vote run the country or does this network that can lose an election, but still get its agenda through, run the country?
We’ve been having this fight for a while. But this century things have escalated.
They escalated a whole lot after Trump’s win because the network isn’t pretending anymore. It sees the opportunity to delegitimize the whole idea of elections.
Now the network isn’t running the country from cover. It’s actually out here trying to overturn the results of an election and remove the president from office.
It’s rejected the victories of two Republican presidents this century.
And if we don’t stand up and confront it, and expose it for what it is, it’s going to go on doing it in every election. And eventually Federal judges are going to gain enough power that they really will overturn elections.
It happens in other countries. If you think it can’t happen here, you haven’t been paying attention to the left.
Right now, Federal judges are declaring that President Trump isn’t allowed to govern because his Tweets show he’s a racist. How long until they say that a president isn’t even allowed to take office because they don’t like his views?
That’s where we’re headed.
Civil wars swing around a very basic question. The most basic question of them all. Who runs the country?
Is it me? Is it you? Is it Grandma? Or is it bunch of people who made running the government into their career?
America was founded on getting away from professional government. The British monarchy was a professional government. Like all professional governments, it was hereditary. Professional classes eventually decide to pass down their privileges to their kids.
America was different. We had a volunteer government. That’s what the Founding Fathers built.
This is a civil war between volunteer governments elected by the people and professional governments elected by… well… uh… themselves.
Of the establishment, by the establishment and for the establishment.
You know, the people who always say they know better, no matter how many times they screw up, because they’re the professionals. They’ve been in Washington D.C. politics since they were in diapers.
Freedom can only exist under a volunteer government. Because everyone is in charge. Power belongs to the people.
A professional government is going to have to stamp out freedom sooner or later. Freedom under a professional government can only be a fiction. Whenever the people disagree with the professionals, they’re going to have to get put down. That’s just how it is. No matter how it’s disguised, a professional government is tyranny.
Ours is really well disguised, but if it walks like a duck and locks you up like a duck, it’s a tyranny.
Now what’s the left.
Forget all the deep answers. The left is a professional government.
It’s whole idea is that everything needs to be controlled by a big central government to make society just. That means everything from your soda sizes to whether you can mow your lawn needs to be decided in Washington D.C.
Volunteer governments are unjust. Professional governments are fair. That’s the credo of the left.
Its network, the one we were just discussing, it takes over professional governments because it shares their basic ideas. Professional governments, no matter who runs them, are convinced that everything should run through the professionals. And the professionals are usually lefties. If they aren’t, they will be.
Just ask Mueller and establishment guys like him.
What infuriates professional government more than anything else? An amateur, someone like President Trump who didn’t spend his entire adult life practicing to be president, taking over the job.
President Trump is what volunteer government is all about.
When you’re a government professional, you’re invested in keeping the system going. But when you’re a volunteer, you can do all the things that the experts tell you can’t be done. You can look at the mess we’re in with fresh eyes and do the common sense things that President Trump is doing.
And common sense is the enemy of government professionals. It’s why Trump is such a threat.
A Republican government professional would be bad enough. But a Republican government volunteer does that thing you’re not supposed to do in government… think differently.
Professional government is a guild.Like medieval guilds. You can’t serve in if you’re not a member. If you haven’t been indoctrinated into its arcane rituals. If you aren’t in the club.
And Trump isn’t in the club. He brought in a bunch of people who aren’t in the club with him.
Now we’re seeing what the pros do when amateurs try to walk in on them. They spy on them, they investigate them and they send them to jail. They use the tools of power to bring them down.
That’s not a free country.
It’s not a free country when FBI agents who support Hillary take out an “insurance policy” against Trump winning the election. It’s not a free country when Obama officials engage in massive unmasking of the opposition. It’s not a free country when the media responds to the other guy winning by trying to ban the conservative media that supported him from social media. It’s not a free country when all of the above collude together to overturn an election because the guy who wasn’t supposed to win, won.
We’re in a civil war between conservative volunteer government and leftist professional government.
The pros have made it clear that they’re not going to accept election results anymore. They’re just going to make us do whatever they want. They’re in charge and we better do what they say.
That’s the war we’re in. And it’s important that we understand that.
Because this isn’t a shooting war yet. And I don’t want to see it become one.
And before the shooting starts, civil wars are fought with arguments. To win, you have to understand what the big picture argument is. It’s easy to get bogged down in arguments that don’t matter or won’t really change anything.
This is the argument that changes everything.
Do we have a government of the people and by the people? Or do we have a tyranny of the professionals?
The Democrats try to dress up this argument in leftist social justice babble. Those fights are worth having. But sometimes we need to pull back the curtain on what this is really about.
They’ve tried to rig the system. They’ve done it by gerrymandering, by changing the demographics of entire states through immigration, by abusing the judiciary and by a thousand different tricks.
But civil wars come down to an easy question. Who runs the country?
They’ve given us their answer and we need to give them our answer.
Both sides talk about taking back the country. But who are they taking it back for?
The left uses identity politics. It puts supposed representatives of entire identity groups up front. We’re taking the country back for women and for black people, and so on and so forth…
But nobody elected their representatives.
Identity groups don’t vote for leaders. All the black people in the country never voted to make Shaun King al Al Sharpton their representative. And women sure as hell didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton.
What we have in America is a representative government. A representative government makes freedom possible because it actually represents people, instead of representing ideas.
The left’s identity politics only represents ideas. Nobody gets to vote on them.
Instead the left puts out representatives from different identity politics groups, there’s your gay guy, there’s three women, there’s a black man, as fronts for their professional government system.
When they’re taking back the country, it’s always for professional government. It’s never for the people.
When conservatives fight to take back the country, it’s for the people. It’s for volunteer government the way that the Founding Fathers wanted it to be.
This is a civil war over whether the American people are going to govern themselves. Or are they going to be governed.
Are we going to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people… or are we going to have a government.
The kind of government that most countries have where a few special people decide what’s best for everyone.
We tried that kind of government under the British monarchy. And we had a revolution because we didn’t like it.
But that revolution was met with a counterrevolution by the left. The left wants a monarchy. It wants King Obama or Queen Oprah.
It wants to end government of the people, by the people and for the people. That’s what they’re fighting for. That’s what we’re fighting against. The stakes are as big as they’re ever going to get. Do elections matter anymore?
I live in the state of Ronald Reagan. I can go visit the Ronald Reagan Library any time I want to. But today California has one party elections. There are lots of elections and propositions. There’s all the theater of democracy, but none of the substance. Its political system is as free and open as the Soviet Union.
And that can be America.
The Trump years are going to decide if America survives. When his time in office is done, we’re either going to be California or a free nation once again.
The civil war is out in the open now and we need to fight the good fight. And we must fight to win.

I just wish Greenfield told us HOW we are to fight this war, other than what you and I are doing — inform of ourselves and others. Alas, the Left have made sure they have the ammunition in this civil war through their control of every institution in America.

Thanksgiving, what you weren’t taught in school

Appreciate your freedoms, AND DEFEND THEM WITH EVERY OUNCE OF YOUR BEING….

Start watching at 3:08

Life is suffering, and then overcoming that suffering. Then, looking back, appreciating what is achieved through the sacrifices made.

Quit asking where is mine, what do I get, or why should I.

Start doing,… Get up early, show up early, work diligently towards the goal.
Stay late, spend less, save more.

Help those in need with a hand UP.

BE THANKFUL FOR YOUR LIFE

Appreciate your freedoms, AND DEFEND THEM WITH EVERY OUNCE OF YOUR BEING….

Because they are not yours alone, they were fought for by those who came before you, and it is your solemn duty to protect them for those who will come after you.

They aren’t yours to squander. To do such a thing makes you responsible for the enslavement of mankind that comes after you have gone.

The government is not the source of your happiness, your creator is.