Author: Papa Giorgio

Allie Beth Stuckey: Kat Von D on Becoming a Christian

Published by Papa Giorgio

Today we’re joined by tattoo artist and entrepreneur Kat Von D to discuss her incredible testimony of coming to faith in Christ and her ongoing faith journey. Kat explains her upbringing and how she initially rebelled against going to church because it was only something she was told to do. We take a look at her rise to fame through the shows “Miami Ink” and “LA Ink” and her interest in spiritual practices that were just methods of putting Band-Aids on a sinking ship. She recalls her journey to sobriety and how her husband helped her readjust her thinking on not just her faith but also some political topics. We discuss her viral baptism video, some of the backlash she’s gotten from both non-Christians and Christians, and how she can actually use certain aspects of her life and style to reach those who may feel ostracized by Christianity or “Christian culture.” Then, what would Kat tell those who have questions about Christianity as she did?

Dr. Deborah Birx Admits To Not Following the Science

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Hat-tip to Anthony C. for the topic)

Dr. Deborah Birx , who served as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under President Donald Trump , shared some new revelations about the COVID-19 vaccine .

In an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored , she said we’ve “done wrong in public health” by not explaining the COVID vaccine is unlike childhood vaccines.

“The childhood vaccines, like many of the diseases, you get it once, you don’t get it again,” she explained. “And this is getting the children to have that disease without getting the deadly consequences. That is not what the COVID vaccine was designed to do. It wasn’t designed to prevent infection, and if you look at the vaccine hesitancy rates, they’ve doubled since COVID.

She went on to insist we “have to start addressing these things” and cannot “just ignore” them.

Morgan then asked her if she was concerned about the long-term impact of the COVID vaccine, to which she admitted the shots were given to the wrong people. “The messenger RNA vaccine should have been rolled out for the people that were at risk for severe disease,” she stated, “because that’s what the vaccine was developed for. When we say that we’re following the science and the data, we need to follow the science and the data. And the science and the data said people primarily over 65 or people with significant co-morbidities were at risk for severe disease. Those are the individuals that should have been immunized first. And we should have put our science behind our immunization schedule and protected those most at risk.”

She  went on to share the vaccines ended up going into “young people at hospitals” before going into “elderly people in nursing homes.” “That is not following the science and data,” she reiterated. “So I am all for following the science and the data, but it shouldn’t just be a statement. It should be a reality. And when we don’t match what we do in public health to the science and the data, that is when we get into trouble.”

Vivek’s Masterclass: Staying Professional In The Face Of Hostility

Published by Papa Giorgio

Originally Posted September 3, 2023

Two of my comments on THE BREAKFAST CLUB’S interview of Vivek Ramaswamy follow the video — with some additional context to the six cults studied:

RPT’s Master Class on Racist Democrats!

After hearing Ramaswamy say on the Breakfast Club, “…if there are human beings, and not god, living in a nation…” (8:05 mark) – I assume many around the show and fans think they are in fact gods. Literally. Here I refer to the Five-Percent Nation and the Nation of Islam, and the subsequent racist black nationalist New Age UFO cult and anti-Semitic history and the creation of the “devil” on the Greek island of Patmos over 6,000 years ago, an evil [big-headed] scientist, Yakub. I assume these influences, even music, is large in this audience. For instance, here are hip-hop “influencers” that are members [or were during the height of their career] of this black nationalist – racist – cult and the subsequent “Afrocentrist” history that sets up failure in fighting “the Devil” – the white man – rather than a self, which a healthy religion does:

Rakim – member of the influential duo Eric B. & Rakim; Big Daddy Kane; Lakim Shabazz; Nas; Wu-Tang Clan – Ghostface Killah and Raekwon have deep ties to the 5%’ers, as do the following: Gang Starr; MF Doom; Jay Electronica; Busta Rhymes (Raised a Five Percenter, he has since converted to traditional Islam); Black Thought – Lead MC of the Philadelphia-based hip hop group The Roots; Ras Kass; Jus Allah – Member of the underground rap duo Jedi Mind Tricks; Cormega; Allah Mathematics – Hip hop producer and DJ for the Wu-Tang Clan; Erykah Badu – Her Grammy Award-winning song “On & On” features teachings of the Five Percent Nation [my favorite is Tyron]; Pete Rock & CL Smooth; Jadakiss; Jay-Z;TDK, Xcel, Raz Fresco, World’s Famous Supreme Team DJ Crew, Brand Nubian, Poor Righteous Teachers (a group whose very name comes from Five Percent teachings), 6orn, Estee Nack, Carmelo Anthony (NBA), L.L. Cool J, Kanye West, Jay Electronica, Queen Latifah, — just to name a few.

And I say this after studied [in-depth] 6 major racist cults [religious and secular].

After watching the appearances of Larry Elder and Vivek Ramaswamy on this show, the complete lack of understanding of facts and an honest contemplation of a countering viewpoint stands out. Rather, they simply malign with racism and false history. I can see from the comments below/above that there is an already large [and growing] group of observers and thinkers that likewise show the depravity of thought on The Breakfast Club. Bravo to the commonsense commenters ?????

ADDED INFO-THE BIG “SIX”

CHRISTIAN IDENTITY (C.I.) | While in jail for my 3rd time for a decade old warrant, I was privileged to lead a young C.I. man to the Lord… he threw all his racist pamphlets from that “church” away while in Pitchess Detention Center, North – long story. It has its roots in British Israelism.

KU KLUX KLAN (KKK) | 5-to-8k members per SPLC – both the Aryan Brotherhood (a racist prison gang not much different than the BGF), the largest white power groups, and the KKK are socialists. Leftists politically. One study found that there were “4,467 total victims of lynching from 1883 to 1941. Of these victims, 4,027 were men, 99 were women, and 341 were of unidentified gender (although likely male); 3,265 were Black, 1,082 were white, 71 were Mexican or of Mexican descent, 38 were American Indian, 10 were Chinese, and 1 was Japanese.” (They were most probably ALL Republicans.)

NATION OF ISLAM (NOI) | A racist black nationalist New Age UFO cult and anti-Semitic group currently led by Louise Farrakhan – after his UFO visit, the Little Messiah. They believe they are gods who participated in the creation of this world and that over 6,000 years ago, an evil [big-headed] scientist created the devil on the Greek island of Patmos. (The “devil” is the white population, which will be enslaved or culled by black gods returning in UFOs: 

SEE “Farrakhan’s Bats*#t-Crazy UFO Sermon”

FIVE-PERCENTERS: NATIONS OF GODS AND EARTH | 5-Percenter Nation is a splinter group founded by “Allah the Father” (formerly Clarence 13X, born Clarence Edward Smith) who left NOI.

They use “science” and “math” to communicate deeper “truths” of existence – for lack of space. It is a very confusing and intricate language they think they communicate with. 

Jump to more on the FIVE-PERCENTERS

The many Black Hebrew Israelites [racist] groups

BLACK LIBERATION THEOLOGY | while I have studied its South American Marxist roots (and connection to Pope Francis), mainly my interest lies in its Black Liberation Theology. I ordered 4 books many years ago from the Akibba bookstore (the Afrocentric bookstore of Obama’s church of 20-years, Trinity United Church of Christ — now totally revamped with the Rev. Wright gone): 1. A Black Theology of Liberation, by James Cone; 2. Black Theology & Black Power, by James Cone; 3. Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology, by William R. Jones; and 4. (a book I enjoyed somewhat), The Black Christ, by Kelly Brown Douglas. I was surprised to find the amount of racism I did.

Here are three quotes from James Cone’s main thesis:

QUOTES FROM BOOK PURCHASED VIA OBAMA’ CHURCH:

  • “The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.62
  • “White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.64

“The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” – Adolf Hitler | Mein Kampf

  • “There is no place in black theology for a colorless God in a society where human beings suffer precisely because of their color. The black theologian must reject y conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples” ~ James Cone,  A Black Theology of Liberation, p.63
  • “Christianity is not alien to Black Power, Christianity is Black Power” ~ James Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, p.38
  • “In contrast to this racist view of God, black theology proclaims God’s blackness. Those who want to know who God is and what God is doing must know who black persons are and what they are doing” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.65

“I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord” – Adolf Hitler | Mein Kampf

  • “These new theologians of the Third World argue that Christians [liberation theology accepting Christians] should not shun violence but should initiate it” ~ James Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, p.32
  • “It is important to make a further distinction here among black hatred, black racism, and Black Power. Black hatred is the black man’s strong aversion to white society. No black man living in white America can escape it” ~ James Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, p.14
  • “It is this fact that makes all white churches anti-Christian in their essence. To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people!” ~ James Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, p.151
  • “It [black liberation theology] is dangerous because the true prophet of the gospel of God must become both “anti-Christian” and “unpatriotic.”…. Because whiteness by its very nature is against blackness, the black prophet is a prophet of national doom. He proclaims the end of the American Way” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.55-56

“The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!” – Adolf Hitler | Mein Kampf

This influence from Liberation Theology is a main driver to the whole “white privilege” lie we see today.

These cults are typically led by a leader who tells the people how to vote. Also note that in 2008 three-of-the-four largest supremacist groups asked their followers to vote for Obama. And the one who didn’t tell his people to vote for Obama says voting is a waste of time and that he doesn’t vote — so, essentially, of the largest 4 that told their supports to go out and…:

?. . .VOTE FOR A BLACK MAN:
  • Tom Metzger: Director, White Aryan Resistance;
  • Ron Edwards: Imperial Wizard, Imperial Klans of America;
  • Erich Gliebe: Chairman, National Alliance; Career Highlights;
  • Rocky Suhayda: Chairman, American Nazi Party.

… is?% (Or, if you wish, 3/4ers with 1/4 abstaining)

BONUS: California’s KKK Grand Dragon Endorsed Hillary

BONUS: Florida NAZI Leader of Blood Tribe: Anti-Capitalist and Pro-Biden

BONUS: Richard Spencer Admit Being A Socialist (not “Alt-Right” but “Alt-Left)

I note this myth that racist cults are “right leaning” in a comment to a friend:

  • Most of those people typically vote Democrat. Even if they wrote Trump in (who is not a conservative — he is a populist — and why 34% of Bernie Sanders voters said they will vote Trump over Hillary) they along with almost the entirety of the racist cults in America vote Democrat down ticket from there. Why, I sum up why in my post, and it is why the driver that killed that woman was involved in Occupy Wall Street (Gay Patriot h-t)…. [QUOTE from my site]

A RECAP from a large refutation of the idea that the KKK and others vote Republican for clarity on the reasoning racist/nationalists cults vote Democrat (RPT):

  • They are typically socialist in their political views, and thus support the welfare state for personal financial reasons (poor) and ideological reasoning (socialist); or for the reason that it is a way of controlling minorities (racist reasoning). A modern plantation so-to-speak; There is a shared hatred for Israel and supporting of groups wanting to exterminate the Jews (Palestinians for instance).

Again, there are about 5-to-8,000 KKK members nationwide, of which a few hundred were there. All Republicans denounce that. But no Democrat has really denounced the NAZI style church Obama went to for 20-years — see HERE and HERE.

While most Democrats publicly support BLM, who has followers that have killed people and the co-founder of on BLM radio called for lynching and hanging of white people and cops. In other places they have called for genocide, and the many other examples I could give… like this via my YouTube (to the right):

Remember, REPUBLICANSvoted for these acts at 100% or slightly less… Democrats voted against them 100% or slightly less:

  • Civil Rights Act 1866,
  • Reconstruction Act of 1867,
  • Freedman Bureau Extension Act of 1866,
  • Enforcement Act of 1870,
  • Force Act of 1871,
  • Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871,
  • Civil Rights Act of 1875,
  • Civil Rights Act of 1957,
  • Civil Rights Act of 1960,
  • 1964 Civil Rights Act,
  • 1965 Voting Rights Acts,
  • 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act

And — lest these quotes are lost to history:

  • BILL CLINTON: “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee,”
  • JOSEPH BIDEN: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” continuing he said, “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
  • DAN RATHER: “but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”

Democrats even chose a racist to be the keynote speaker at the 2012 Convention: JULIAN CASTRO is a member of La Raza… the group Cesar Chavez (founder of the founder of the United Farm Workers [UFW]) said was a supremacist group:

When I wrote a few months ago about the origins of “la raza” as a racial-surpremacist concept (developed in the ’20s and ’30s on the idea of the biological superiority of mestizos), Janet Murguia, head of the National Council of La Raza, pointed and sputtered over at the Huffington Post.

Well, while reading a memoir/history of the immigration-reform movement by retired historian Otis Graham (who’s on my board), I find out that even Cesar Chavez rejected the “la raza” idea as inherently racist. Graham quoted a 1969 New Yorkerprofile by Peter Matthiessen:

“I hear more and more Mexicans talking about la raza—to build up their pride, you know,” Chavez told me. “Some people don’t look at it as racism, but when you say ’la raza,’ you are saying an anti-gringo thing, and it won’t stop there. Today it’s anti-gringo, tomorrow it will be anti-Negro, and the day after it will be anti-Filipino, anti-Puerto Rican. And then it will be anti-poor-Mexican, and anti-darker-skinned Mexican. … La raza is a very dangerous concept. I speak very strongly against it among the chicanos.”

And in Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution, his 1970 biography, Matthiessen talked to Chavez deputy Leroy Chatfield:

“That’s one of the reasons he is so upset about la raza. The same Mexicans that ten years ago were talking about themselves as Spaniards are coming on real strong these days as Mexicans. Everyone should be proud of what they are, of course, but race is only skin-deep. It’s phony and it comes out of frustration; the la raza people are not secure. They look upon Cesar as their ‘dumb Mexican’ leader; he’s become their saint. But he doesn’t want any part of it. He said to me just the other day, ‘Can’t they understand that that’s just the way Hitler started?’ A few months ago the Ford Foundation funded a la raza group and Cesar really told them off. The foundation liked the outfit’s sense of pride or something, and Cesar tried to explain to them what the origin of the word was, that it’s related to Hitler’s concept.”

In 1968, the Ford Foundation started the Southwest Council of La Raza, presumably the “outfit” Chatfield was referring to, which five years later changed its name to the National Council of La Raza.

(NATIONAL REVIEW)

Not only that, but Julian Castro’s mother is involved deeply in the MEChA movement. That is the group that wants Mexico to take back the portion lost in the Mexican-American war. These guys/gals ACTUALLY show up in brown shirts.

International Business Times points this connection out:

  • Castro is the son of Maria “Rosie” Castro, a Chicano political activist who helped establish the Chicano political party La Raza Unida in the 1970s.

Charles Johnson puts the nail in the radical’s coffin:

…“[My mother] sees political activism as an opportunity to change people’s lives for the better. Perhaps that is because of her outspoken nature or because Chicanos in the early 1970s (and, of course, for many years before) had no other option. To make themselves heard Chicanos needed the opportunity that the political system provided. In any event, my mother’s fervor for activism affected the first years of my life, as it touches it today.

Castro wrote fondly of those early days and basked in the slogans of the day. “‘Viva La Raza!’ ‘Black and Brown United!’ ‘Accept me for who I am—Chicano.’ These and many other powerful slogans rang in my ears like war cries.” These war cries, Castro believes, advanced the interests of their political community. He sees her rabble-rousing as the cause for Latino successes, not the individual successes of those hard-working men and women who persevered despite some wrinkles in the American meritocracy.

[My mother] insisted that things were changing because of political activism, participation in the system. Maria del Rosario Castro has never held a political office. Her name is seldom mentioned in a San Antonio newspaper. However, today, years later, I read the newspapers, and I see that more Valdezes are sitting on school boards, that a greater number of Garcias are now doctors, lawyers, engineers, and, of course, teachers. And I look around me and see a few other brown faces in the crowd at [Stanford]. I also see in me a product of my mother’s diligence and her friends’ hard work. Twenty years ago I would not have been here…. My opportunities are not the gift of the majority; they are the result of a lifetime of struggle and commitment by a determined minority. My mother is one of these persons. And each year I realize more and more how much easier my life has been made by the toil of past generations. I wonder what form my service will take, since I am expected by those who know my mother to continue the family tradition. [Emphasis Castro’s]

[….]

Rosie named her first son, Julian, for his father whom she never married, and her second, who arrived a minute later, for the character in the 1967 Chicano anti-gringo movement poem, “I Am Joaquin.” She is particularly proud that they were born on Mexico’s Independence Day. And she was a fan of the Aztlan aspirations of La Raza Unida. Those aspirations were deeply radical. “As far as we got was simply to take over control in those [Texas] communities where we were the majority,” one of its founders, Jose Angel Gutierrez, told the Toronto paper. “We did think of carving out a geographic territory where we could have our own weight, and our own leverage could then be felt nation-wide.”

Removing all doubt, Gutierrez repeated himself often. “What we hoped to do back then was to create a nation within a nation,” he told the Denver Post in 2001. Gutierrez bemoaned the loss of that separatist vision among activists, but predicted that Latinos will “soon take over politically.” (“Brothers in Chicano Movement to Reunite,” Denver Post, August 16, 2001).

Gutierrez made clear his hatred for “the gringo” when he led the Mexican-American Youth Organization, the precursor to La Raza Unida. According to the Houston Chronicle, he “was denounced by many elected officials as militant and un-American.” And anti-American he was. “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to worst, we have got to kill him,” Gutierrez told a San Antonio audience in 1969. At around that time, Rosie Castro eagerly joined his cause, becoming the first chairwoman of the Bexar County Raza Unida Party. There’s no evidence of her distancing herself from Gutierrez’s comments, even today. Gutierrez even dedicated a chapter in one of his books to Ms. Castro.

…read more…

WHAT IS THE POINT!?

The BREAKFAST CLUB has it all backwards. All the hosts of the show – show their ignorance to history and facts surrounding the Democrat Party. They should be swarming to vote Republican, for the Grand Ol’ Party’s history and freedom goals!

APPENDIX

MORE 5% STUFF

The video clip below is from a 1977 movie that incorporates the racist nationalism of the Nation of Islam (and by extension, 5-Percenters). This ideology is creating a more violent generation as they get further from their true Maker (see: The Most Racist/Hateful Cult EVA! [Hint: It’s Not the Westborough Baptists!])

See my two (more serious) posts on these racist cults:

Take note as well that almost all the members of these racist cults/orgs vote a certain way:

Enjoy the clip… and for those that do not know, a portion of this was sampled in the very popular (but black nationalists [e.g., racist]) followers of the 5-Percent dogma, the Wu-Tang Clan, song — lyrics.

“Yakub, maker and creator of the devil! Swine merchant, your time is near at hand. Fuck with me, and your time will be now. Your presence here affects the mind of my people like a fever. You, yakoo, are the bearer of 9,999 diseases: evil, corrupt pork-chop-eating atrocities” — Short Eyes (1977)

Paul Washer: Freedom In The Gospel (Part 2) | Mississippi Prison

Published by Papa Giorgio

Part 2 of 7 from a prison in Mississippi. Paul Washer shares seven messages that take you through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One message of the series, “Freedom In The Gospel”, will be released every week starting Friday, January 24th, only on our YouTube channel and website.

Wisdom from Chapter 4 of “God In The Dock” | CS LEWIS

Published by Papa Giorgio

These are all from the audio version of the 4th chapter (Answers to Questions on Christianity) in CS Lewis’ collection of essays, God in the Dock. These are small clips I isolated as a group and I read through this chapter. Enjoy

CS Lewis On Being Christ Like

Christian Suffering and Relations with God | CS LEWIS

Cantankerous Christians

CS Lewis’ “Hotel of Discomfort”

Philosophical Naturalism (Self-Stultifying) | CS LEWIS

For the above video:

  • Determinism is self-stultifying. If my mental processes are totally determined, I am totally determined either to accept or to reject determinism. But if the sole reason for my believing or not believing X is that I am causally determined to believe it I have no ground for holding that my judgment is true or false.

Huw Parri Owen, Christian Theism: A Study in its Basic Principles (Edinburgh, London: T & T Clark, 1984), 118-119; originally found in, J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003) 241.

ROBOTS AND COSMIC PUPPETRY: THE SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGE TO FREEDOM

Since at least the time of Sir Isaac Newton, scientists and philosophers impressed by the march of science have offered a picture of human behavior that is not promising for a belief in freedom. All nature is viewed by them as one huge mechanism, with human beings serving as just parts of that giant machine. On this view, we live and think in accordance with the same laws and causes that move all other physical components of the universal mechanism.

According to these thinkers, everything that happens in nature has a cause. Suppose then that an event occurs, which, in context, is clearly a human action of the sort that we would normally call free. As an occurrence in this universe, it has a cause. But then that cause, in turn, has a cause. And that cause in turn has a cause, and so on, and so on [remember, reductionism].

  • “Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player” ~ Albert Einstein.

As a result of this scientific world view, we get the following picture:

  • Natural conditions outside our control…
  • cause…
  • Inner bodily and brain states,
  • which cause…
  •  mental and physical actions

But if this is true, then you are, ultimately, just a conduit or pipeline for chains of natural causation that reach far back into the past before your birth and continue far forward into the future after your death. You are not an originating cause of anything [this includes brain activity of all degrees, that is, love, pain, etc.). Nothing you ever do is due to your choices or thoughts alone. You are a puppet of nature. You are no more than a robot programmed by an unfeeling cosmos.

Psychologists talk about heredity and environment as responsible for everything you do. But then if they are, you aren’t. Does it follow that you can then do as you please, irresponsibly? Not at all. It only follows that you will do as nature and nurture please. But then, nature on this picture turns out to be just an illusory veil over a heartless, uncaring nature. You have what nature gives you. Nothing more, nothing less.

Where is human freedom in this picture? It doesn’t exist. It is one of our chief illusions. The natural belief in free will is just a monstrous falsehood. But we should not feel bad about holding on to this illusion until science corrects us. We can’t have helped it.

This reasoning is called The Challenge of Scientific Determinism. According to determinists, we are determined in every respect to do everything that we ever do.

This again is a serious challenge to human freedom. It is the reason that the early scientist Pierre Laplace (1749-1827) once said that if you could give a super-genius a total description of the universe at any given point in time, that being would be able to predict with certainty everything that would ever happen in the future relative to that moment, and retrodict with certainty anything that had ever happened in any moment before that described state. Nature, he believed, was that perfect machine. And we human beings were just cogs in the machine, deluded in our beliefs that we are free.

Tom Morris, Philosophy for Dummies (Foster City, CA: IDG Books; 1999), 133-134.

The Democrat Modus Operandi: Lawfare

Published by Papa Giorgio

In a previous post I excerpted the article from POWERLINE noting the real Constitutional Crisis!

LAWFARE is the Left’s way forward:

Here is another wonderful telling of it:

Democrats have launched a pre-planned, well-organized lawfare campaign against the Trump administration.

The NY Times reported in late November 2024 on the massive effort which was two-years in the making and in the immediate post-election period focused heavily on finding plaintiffs and lining up legal groups to challenge expected Trump policies:

More than 800 lawyers at 280 organizations have begun developing cases and workshopping specific challenges to what the group has identified as 600 “priority legal threats” — potential regulations, laws and other administrative actions that could require a legal response, its leaders said. The project, called Democracy 2025, aims to be a hub of opposition to the new Trump administration….

Democracy Forward has spent the last two years working to identify the possible actions the new Trump administration could take on issues they see as key priorities to defend, the group’s leaders said, using as a blueprint Mr. Trump’s first-term actions, his campaign promises and plans released by his allies, including the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 agenda….

The flotilla of lawyers is preparing to challenge new regulations released by the Trump administration, even beginning the process of recruiting potential plaintiffs who would have legal standing in court.

We have seen the fruits of the lawfare planning in the opening three weeks of the Trump administration, with several dozen lawsuits filed, and many (not all) district court judges willing at least to grant temporary restraining orders, incuding one ex parte TRO issued by an emergency duty judge at 1 a.m. last Saturday morning that by its terms removed political appointee control of Treasury payment systems. (That TRO was scaled back by the judge permanently assigned to the case, and is under review by her in a ruling expected soon.) It may be that the short-term TROs are not extended to longer-term preliminary injunctions, and if that happens the “crisis” may solve itself, but I’m not hopeful.

Here is my ‘hot take’ on how the lawfare, not the Trump administration, is creating the real ‘constitutional crisis’. This is a short excerpt from my much longer (almost 20 minute) explanation as part of the podcast we just posted….

HERE IT IS! Via RPT:

Taxation Is Theft

Published by Papa Giorgio

Yes, taxes in an abusive system are theft. A great analogy that explains the dilemma of our “redistribution program” here in America (welfare, food stamps, or Medicaid, etc.) is one of a triplex.  I must thank Neal Boortz for this analogy (in his book, The Terrible Truth About Liberals):

Our government, as our Constitution says, derives its powers “from the consent of the governed.” The idea here is that we cannot and should not ask the government to do anything for us that we cannot legally or morally do for ourselves. Sounds logical, doesn’t it?  With that premise in mind, lets build the following scenario.

You live in a triplex.  You are in apartment No. 1, Johnson is in apartment No. 2, and Wilson lives in No. 3.  You discover that Wilson is ill and cannot work.  He never bothered to buy a health insurance policy because he just didn’t believe he would need it for quite some time.  Wilson, it seems, is not good at making rational decisions.  He has no savings because it was more important to use that money for bondo on his Camaro and a good Panama City Beach vacation every summer.

You believe that Wilson is about to starve to death.  His electricity is going to be cut off, and he can’t afford to buy his blood pressure medication.  You decide to help, charitable soul that you are.  You scrounge through your bank account and find $200 to help your neighbor out.

Good for you.  What a guy!

A month later Wilson is still in trouble.  Your $200 wasn’t enough.  It turns out that he spent $20 for a case of beer and at least another $100 or so at the horse races.  Things may not be all that desperate, though.  One of the thirty-five Lotto tickets he bought with that carton of cigarettes might pan out.

You decide to visit Johnson in apartment No. 2 to see if he can chip in.  Johnson tells you that, while he certainly understands the seriousness of Wilson’s situation, he needs his money to send his daughter to college in the fall and to pay some of his own medical bills.  Besides, he’s trying to save up some cash for a down payment on a house so he can get out of this weird apartment building.

You make the determination that it is far more important for Wilson to have some of Johnson’s money than it is for Johnson to keep it and spend it on his own daughter’s education and a new home.  So, here’s the question:

Do you have the right to pull out a gun and point it at the middle of Johnson’s forehead? Can you use that gun to compel Johnson to hand over a few hundred dollars for Wilson’s care, and then tell Johnson that you’ll be back for more next month?

Obviously, when put like this, you won’t run into too many people who will tell you that they have the right to take Johnson’s money by force and give it to Wilson.  They might say that they would try to talk Johnson into being a bit more charitable, but they don’t think that they have the right to just rob him at gunpoint.  But this is the next question:

QUESTION

“Well, if our government derives its powers from the consent of the governed, how can you ask your government to do something for you that, if you did it for yourself, would be a crime?  Why would it not be OK for you to take that money from Johnson by force and give it to Wilson, but it would be perfectly OK with you if the government went ahead and did it?”

Last time I checked, IRS agents were armed.

Another way to put this is an example from J. Budziszewski’s book, The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man:

On a dark street, a man draws a knife and demands my money for drugs.

  1. Instead of demanding my money for drugs, he demands it for the Church.
  2. Instead of being alone, he is with a bishop of the Church who act as bagman.
  3. Instead of drawing a knife, he produces a policeman who says I must do as he says.
  4. Instead of meeting me on the street, he mails me his demand as an official agent of the government.

If the first is theft, it is difficult to see why the other four are not also theft.

The Argument from Reason | David Wood (PLUS: Greg Bahnsen)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Originally posted in March of 2016

(H/T ~ Debunking Atheists)

…. Darwin thought that, had the circumstances for reproductive fitness been different, then the deliverances of conscience might have been radically different. “If . . . men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill  their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think of interfering” (Darwin, Descent, 82). As it happens, we weren’t “reared” after the manner of hive bees, and so we have widespread and strong beliefs about the sanctity of human life and its implications for how we should treat our siblings and our offspring.

But this strongly suggests that we would have had whatever beliefs were ultimately fitness producing given the circumstances of survival. Given the background belief of naturalism, there appears to be no plausible Darwinian reason for thinking that the fitness-producing predispositions that set the parameters for moral reflection have anything whatsoever to do with the truth of the resulting moral beliefs. One might be able to make a case for thinking that having true beliefs about, say, the predatory behaviors of tigers would, when combined with the understandable desire not to be eaten, be fitness producing. But the account would be far from straightforward in the case of moral beliefs.” And so the Darwinian explanation undercuts whatever reason the naturalist might have had for thinking that any of our moral beliefs is true. The result is moral skepticism.

If our pretheoretical moral convictions are largely the product of natural selection, as Darwin’s theory implies, then the moral theories we find plausible are an indirect result of that same evolutionary process. How, after all, do we come to settle upon a proposed moral theory and its principles as being true? What methodology is available to us?

  • Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, eds., Contending With Christianity’s Critics: Answering the New Atheists & Other Objections (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2009), 70.

A few of my resources:

Laws of Logic | Greg Bahnsen VS. Gordon Stein
I played with the audio a lot. About the best on the WWW:

The full debate can be found here (FULL DEBATE). This is a classic back-n-forth showing that in order to deny God’s existence based on the immaterial nature of God, non-physical laws of logic [reasoning that crosses all cultures, time, and space] are used. The video portion/graphics are not my creation. I note that YouTube Channel in the video. I merely enhanced the audio:

In a short [and excellent] article, Dr. J.P. Moreland notes the BIG THREE:

There are three fundamental laws of logic. Suppose P is any indicative sentence, say, “It is raining.”

The law of identity: P is P.
The law of noncontradiction: P is not non-P.
The law of the excluded middle: Either P or non-P.

The law of identity says that if a statement such as “It is raining” is true, then the statement is true. More generally, it says that the statement P is the same thing as itself and its different from everyhting else. Applied to all realty, the law of identity says that everything is itself and not something else.

The law of noncontradiction says that a statement such as “It is raining” cannot be both true and false in the same sense. Of course it could be raining in Missouri and not raining in Arizona, but the principle says that it cannot be raining and not raining at the same time in the same place.

The law of the excluded middle says that a statement such as “It is raining” is either true or false. There is no other alternative.

These fundamental laws are true principles governing reality and thought and are assumed by Scripture. Some claim they are arbitrary Western constructions, but this is false. The basic laws of logic govern all reality and thought and are known to be true for at least two reasons: (1) They are intuitively obvious and self-evident. Once one understands a basic law of logic (see below), one can see that it is true. (2) Those who deny them use these principles in their denial, demonstrating that those laws are unavoidable and that it is self-refuting to deny them.

The basic laws of logic are neither arbitrary inventions of God nor principles that exist completely outside God’s being. Obviously, the laws of logic are not like the laws of nature. God may violate the latter(say, suspend gravity), but He cannot violate the former. Those laws are rooted in God’s own nature. Indeed, some scholars think the passage “In the beginning was the Word [logos]” (Jn 1:1) is accurately translated, “In the beginning was Logic (a divine, rational mind).” For example, even God cannot exist and not exist at the same time, and even God cannot validly believe that red is a color and red is not a color. When people say that God need not behave “logically,” they are using the term in a loose sense to mean “the sensible thing from my point of vew.” Often God does not act in ways that people understand or judge to be what they would do in the circumstances. But God never behaves illogically in the proper sense. He does not violate in His being or thought the fundamental laws of logic.

Paul Washer: Freedom In The Gospel (Part 1) | Mississippi Prison

Published by Papa Giorgio

Part 1 of 7 from a prison in Mississippi. Paul Washer shares seven messages that take you through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One message of the series, “Freedom In The Gospel”, will be released every week starting Friday, January 24th, only on our YouTube channel and website.

Throwing Gold Bars Off the Titanic |Lee Zeldin (plus: Constitutional Crisis)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Criminal!

I wanna set up the following wonderful article by POWERLINE with the latest “Constitutional Crisis” in the iteration of them in the Left’s eye. NEWSBUSTERS has this:

… As far back as 2017, the media were seeing constitutional crises around every corner. Nancy Pelosi once remarked in 2019 that Trump had triggered one, and the cable (CNN, MSNBC) and broadcast (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks eagerly parroted that claim 386 times in five days.

The journalists are very frustrated that nobody’s taking their protestations seriously anymore. But it was their own overuse of the term that caused it to lose whatever potency it once had. After all, what does a journalist really expect of you when he bursts into your bedroom at 11 p.m., sobbing about the constitutional crisis lurking under his bed? And really, what can you  do — except get him a glass of water, tuck him back in, and make a show of checking under his bed before you return to your room? ….

POWERLINE has this excellent commentary on what the Democrats are calling a “Constitutional Crisis”

[….] In my view, we are indeed experiencing a constitutional crisis. But it is not the one the Democrats have in mind. For President Trump to assert control over the executive branch is not only proper, it is long overdue. Under Article II of the Constitution, the President doesn’t just run the executive branch. He is the executive branch. All employees of federal agencies are members of the executive branch, and as such, ultimately report to the president. Their job is to carry out his policies.

The fact that this, to many, is not self-evident illustrates the real constitutional crisis that we face–the slow-moving crisis that has been underway now for close to a century. That crisis is the growth of the administrative state, the fourth branch of government that is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution. There is a strong argument that the administrative state is unconstitutional. What is incontrovertibly unconstitutional is the concept of an executive branch that is independent of the president.

But that is exactly what the Democrats want–a fourth branch that is not accountable to the president, but for which, at the same time, Congress need not take responsibility. Take the case of USAID. Trump and his minions have brought to light that USAID has been spending money on a transgender opera in Colombia, a transgender comic book in Peru, and so on. Beyond such obviously inappropriate expenditures, it has also come to light that USAID functions largely as a slush fund for politically-connected NGOs. Thus:

Since 2010, USAID has disbursed at least $2.13 billion in contracts and grants for Haiti-related work. Overall, just $48.6 million has gone directly to Haitian organizations or firms, just over 2 percent. Comparatively, more than $1.2 billion has gone to firms located in DC, Maryland or Virginia.

So what is the Trump administration supposed to do when it finds that an executive branch agency is wasting money, engaging in corrupt practices, or spending resources in ways that actually undercut the administration’s policies? According to the Democrats, nothing. Once Congress has appropriated money to USAID or any other agency, the Trump administration has no option but to spend it–and, apparently, to spend it in the ways that the unelected bureaucrats in that agency choose.

Of course, if you look at the appropriations bill that covers USAID, you will see no reference to transgender operas. Nor will the phrase “transgender comic book” appear. USAID’s funding is allocated in broad categories that sound noble. But where the money actually goes, Congress has no idea.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has talked about this. When he was in the Senate he tried to exercise oversight over USAID. Employees of that agency would appear before his committee, and he would ask them how money is a particular category was being spent. Where is this money going? Who is being paid, and for what purpose? And the USAID witnesses would refuse to answer. They didn’t have to say; they were independent.

That is a constitutional absurdity and a policy outrage. And it also is one of the reasons why Democrats love the fourth branch. They use vague appropriations to enable spending for which they would never want to take responsibility. Can you imagine a Democratic House member trying to explain to constituents why he voted to fund a transgender opera in a foreign country? But no such explanation ever becomes necessary. The fourth branch is shrouded in secrecy and “independence.”

If you take seriously the fact that the President runs the executive branch–indisputable, under Article II–then, if the president learns that money is being wasted, that an agency has gone rogue, that its officials are pursuing policies that contradict those of the administration they serve–the president’s duty is to stop it. Stop the spending, fire the employees, neuter the rogue agency.

Of course it is true, as the Democrats say, that the President doesn’t have the power to abolish an agency that Congress has created. Thus, for example, President Trump cannot, by executive order, abolish the Department of Education. But he can run the Department of Education, and if that department is spending resources in ways that are wasteful or that contradict his administration’s policy goals, he can stop or redirect that spending.

The Democratic Party press has the current crisis exactly backward. The fact that President Trump is asserting control over the federal employees who work for him is a natural, if long-overdue, return to constitutional norms. The idea that the executive branch is somehow beyond the control of the president is the real crisis, one that has been long in the making. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will sort out the respective powers of Congress and the President with regard to the agencies that are established by Congress. In the meantime, President Trump needs to continue to assert his constitutional responsibility for the executive branch.