Archive for the 'Survival' Category

On July 3, Raul Mendez was celebrating freedom with his family and friends when a man walked in and opened fire.

Raul was shot through the head, but still got up, pulled his concealed carry, and took out the shooter.

The media never covered his story. And we all know why. pic.twitter.com/fjWe8tlvcP

— NRA (@NRA) September 7, 2022

Full story is here.

This is yet another reason to have a gun close at hand, perhaps on your person, even at home.

The article at the Hill is here. Ed Driscoll at Instapundit has this to say:

Nope, not even close.

A record heat wave is pushing California’s electric grid up against the point of failure this week, with officials pointing to climate change for putting continued stress on the system.

The California grid is only overworked because leftist politicians have been pushing toward energy policies that make zero sense for decades.

• Shut down nuclear plants? Check.
• Push solar and wind infrastructure that can’t sustain diddly squat in order to appear hip and cool? Check.
• Disincentivize the repair of aging power lines that tends to fail or spark and cause hundreds of wildfires by pushing companies to invest in green energy instead of maintaining current infrastructure? Check.

The California energy problem is man-made. It has nothing to do with climate change.

But it does have much to do with “California’s Potemkin Environmentalism:” No State Imports More Electricity Than California.

Even during the Schwarzenegger era, Max Schultz of City Journal,who coined the above phrase, noted that California’s “celebrated green economy produces pollution elsewhere, ongoing power shortages, and business-crippling costs.” And California’s man-made energy woes have only gotten worse since.

All famines are man-made! That article at the Hill is flat out communist green revolution propaganda. I, for one, don’t find it particularly funny. Real lives will be lost due to these mass murdering evil antichrist communists.

NPR:

For years, residents of the majority-Black city have endured everything from service disruptions and recurring boil-water advisories to concerns over contaminants like lead and E. coli bacteria, thanks to failures to upgrade Jackson’s aging infrastructure.

With the city now under a state of emergency, officials are scrambling to distribute bottled water to tens of thousands of people in a city where roughly 1 in 4 people live in poverty. Amid the fledgling response, officials have sent mixed signals about how long it may take to restore service. City officials have said it could be “days,” but Gov. Tate Reeves has said it is unclear exactly how long it will take.

I appreciate Herschel allowing the leeway to post items about the economy. Instead of posting articles about the sky falling and The Big Crash that’s always about to happen any day now (one day, those folks will be correct), we’ve tried to provide actionable forward-looking information to give you an indicator of what’s around the corner for the markets that affect you and your family. The object is to offer education and insight into the next several months so you can plan and prepare.

We’ve written a few posts, two here and here, using technical market analysis that pointed to the current recession. This recession we warned you about in the spring is underway (despite the fascists ‘official’ pronouncements to the contrary) and will worsen in the coming months. We predicted the current market downturn and recession based on the analysis of inflation and the formation of technical market patterns.

This time we’re looking at historical information. We’re predicting a stock market second leg lower soon, coupled with a marked economic downturn in the coming four to six months, give or take. The history is boring, and only wonks care, but the fed has been raising interest rates in recent months from the floor of near zero. This will cause a sharper downturn in the coming months into next year. Of course, everything could change tomorrow, but lower stocks and a deeper recession loom.

We think the last month or so in the stock markets have only been a short-term bounce in the ongoing drawdown, and new lows will be seen in the coming several months. As we’ve mentioned here at TCJ, these things create a feedback loop. Cause and effect get muddled, but the trend remains downward, as far as we can tell.

So far, the housing market has remained strong. We don’t think this will hold, again, using historical information. In my area, the housing market has been white hot. I know one gentleman who got 50k over asking before listing. The housing market has been pretty exuberant for the past couple of years in the country’s growing regions. That can’t last indefinitely. Housing is very likely to fall soon as well. Note: often, housing as a market falls relative to itself, which means that it levels off or goes to near zero growth in either existing home sales, new home builds, or both.

We just thought you should know so you can prepare.

———————-

More items of interest in economics:

This article at CNBC constitutes an informal pre-announcement from government outlets of the deepening recession.

Steve Hanke [Johns Hopkins University Economist ] says we’re going to have one ‘whopper’ of a recession in 2023

This article was first seen at WRSA. Admittedly it’s a little lengthy, but it is peppered with truths, so it’s worth sharing. Dr. Baldwin of Liberty Fellowship has an article published at Lew Rockwell in which he elaborates his take on the article’s spiritual death portion(s). Pastor Baldwin blames the pastors of America’s churches. Indeed, they are at fault in many cases, but no believer gets off that easy; it’s your fault, dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

Kneissel [the author of a book on this topic], who is from Central Europe, makes it sound as if Europe is living in the past, before 1914, when it was politically central to the world, instead of being a more or less irrelevant political backwater as it is in 2022. What is certain is that the physical fall of an empire is always preceded by its spiritual fall. What did this spiritual fall consist of?

[…]

The extraordinary thing is the self-justification of the Western world for its own suicide and its refusal to admit that anything is wrong with it. On the contrary, only its ‘values’ of ‘freedom, democracy and human rights’ are correct and must therefore be spread throughout the ‘free world’. All who do not accept its ‘values’, which in fact are anti-values because they are destructive, not constructive like real values, must be mocked, slandered and, if necessary, bombed into submission. Today’s Western world is visibly coming to resemble medieval frescoes showing the torments of hell, which are what spiritual death is. The Western world has been demonised, the demons have been called up from the bowels of hell to occupy it and visibly and mockingly inflict its ‘Western values’.

Unless God is well pleased, He withdraws His blessings. YES, devils are very real and actually exist (I know, I’m repeating myself but do you understand?) and inhabit the workers of inequity at all levels and types within a society as the Lord allows. When the Lord allows, many more devils may begin to overwhelm a people. This is scriptural; the point is that evil abounds unto destruction.

The failure of the churches in the West is the root cause; doing nothing about abortion and supporting endless wars are two of the glaring sins. The article makes this point well. And without a very learned understanding of what God requires in His Law-word, separating the causes (sins) and results (evil abounding) is challenging. We’ll neither parse the article nor establish the Law here. But we know for certain that abortion and war without just cause are both murdering the innocent, of which particular sin is listed sixth in the top ten. And we’ll state that murder, by default, means that you have set other gods before you, for the one true and living God is the God of life and life eternal, the first commandment.

We’ll say plainly, only in Christ does salvation live for the individual, the marriage, the family, a church body, your town, county, state, and country. Nobody, and surely not a politician, is coming to save you.

Frankly I don’t think we’re even nine meals from anarchy.  If the situation deteriorates, most people know whether they’re prepared.  If they’re not, that’s when they become anarchists.

You may be familiar with the headline or others similar. But this article is data-rich, with charts and graphs. Folks here at TCJ may find it useful.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attempted to delay the release of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine safety data for 75 years despite approving the injection after only 108 days of safety review on December 11th, 2020.

But in early January 2022, Federal Judge Mark Pittman ordered them to release 55,000 pages per month. They released 12,000 pages by the end of January.

Read it and try not to weep, or weep, then get angry, perhaps.

This post is about how deeply life has changed for me in the last two years because of Covid-19. Nah, just kidding; I haven’t done anything differently than before or now. But I am joyful and thankful toward the Almighty for the last two years. What’s been revealed is very instructive.

Those known of God should be serious, cataloging what they’ve learned about how the spirit of antichrist moves among the Godless, affecting their minds and every action. Although that lab-created virus was unpleasant and killed like a tough flu strain, even most of those who knew the whole thing was bunk succumbed to the spirit of fear, in one form or another, through adapting to the new normal as evil attempted to impose its will. Make note of it all.

We tend to focus on the people who brought the new normal, but we, born again by the Spirit of God, know they are merely agents. You got to witness firsthand something westerners have not seen since perhaps the Middle Ages; God allowing a grave evil to sweep through the land. You should pray to the Almighty and consider what you’ve seen; moreover, consider your ways in light of what you now know.

Secularists will use the term mass psychosis, but what we saw was that spirit of fear by the devil as the blessings of God are being withdrawn. You witnessed the power of evil through men to affect whole masses to do their bidding. You should now know what it is and how to recognize it.

Sin, and evil thereby, are very real, tangible. These are not philosophical conceptualizations to be pondered in a mountaintop monastery, nor are they ancient lore to be dismissed as the superstitions of our ancestors. You’ve now witnessed it, don’t deny it again.

You, too, should thank God, for that was quite a treat. The enemy gave away battle plans, means, motives, personnel positions and movements, tools, and sources and methods. Yes, it’s a war, and you should understand it as such. The enemy revealed many battlefield tactics. It would be wise to understand what you saw over the last two years in the context of war. God is merciful even in His judgments.

The “supply chain disruptions” should have made you serious about doing things yourself, the local way, among the trusted, moving closer to self-sufficiency. Again, thank God for the warnings, repent and act upon your new knowledge of the enemy.

And it isn’t over. If we read our Bible correctly, the last two years were just a remote storm cloud on the horizon of what’s likely coming. The explosion in depravity is not a sign of God’s judgment; it is God’s judgment. The horrendous and even audaciously flagrant wickedness of governments is not a sign of the judicial determination of God; it’s the result.

Christians Soldiers must know the Word of God. Your life depends upon it, or you will be led astray. If you got taken up in fear or have submitted to evil the last two years, that’s a good thing. Praise the Lord for this also; it’s why God sends warnings to His people in the mercy of His grace by longsuffering. Don’t lament but repent and make ready.

You should know by now where you are supposed to be, with what group of people in common you are to serve God while seeking to make yourself both versed and experienced in hard skills and hands-on doing. Pray for God to raise up a just leader, but you train the next generation, teaching them to be just men and women, righteous in Christ, forsaking all evil. Virtuous women and skilled men will matter most. It’s a separate post perhaps but we’ll mention that men will fight for a civilization populated by virtuous women.

Contact with the enemy has arrived. Please, I beseech you by the blood of Jesus Christ to hear and heed the warnings. Fear not for these two reasons: God is in control, and you were born for this very moment. God is sovereign, all is ordained, and you are here now for a reason. Be the light of Christ to those around you. Shed truth with all those you know. Spread the hope of coming victory for those that are righteous. And train for the other side of the coming conflagration(s). Dear Christian Brothers and Sisters, welcome to the war; it’s a pleasure to serve with you, repent toward God and prepare for the next battle. Pray that you not be deceived again.

It’s a spiritual conflict waged in the heavens played out among nations and men. Seek ye the Lord.

“Evil men understand not judgment: but they that seek the LORD understand all things.” – Proverbs 28:5

From WRSA  comes an article about “assisted suicide.” As morality decays, it’s incumbent upon those maturing in Christ to be able to argue, from the Holy Writ, why these things are wrong. You must teach your family to both understand why and be able to articulate the reasoning using the text of the Holy Bible as the grounds for their argument. It’s not enough to intuit that killing is wrong; the basis must come from God’s Law-word, that His law being the ultimate authority, the laws of just men would again one day prevail.

American Christianity is woefully ill-prepared for what’s coming. You are the very best Christian that somebody knows, and if you have no answer for the cause of God by Jesus Christ, then you’re part of the problem with the Church.

The first man, Adam, sinned against God. Adam is the “one man” in Romans 5:12 below. When sin, by Adams’s transgression, entered the paradise of the Garden of Eden, death also entered in. From that moment forward, all men were born sinners; therefore, it is appointed unto men once to die (Hebrews 9:27).

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” – Romans 5:12

Beyond our scope here, still, it’s necessary to note that the sin curse affects everything; from that day, our planet with all its systems, gifted by God in precious dominion, is dying and with it all living things. No, it’s not global warming.

Since last year, Canadian law, in all its majesty, has allowed both the rich as well as the poor to kill themselves if they are too poor to continue living with dignity. In fact, the ever-generous Canadian state will even pay for their deaths. What it will not do is spend money to allow them to live instead of killing themselves.

[…]

It only took five years for the proverbial slope to come into view, when the Canadian parliament enacted Bill C-7, a sweeping euthanasia law which repealed the ‘reasonably foreseeable’ requirement – and the requirement that the condition should be ‘terminal’. Now, as long as someone is suffering from an illness or disability which ‘cannot be relieved under conditions that you consider acceptable’, they can take advantage of what is now known euphemistically as ‘medical assistance in dying’ (MAID for short) for free.

I have bad news for you all; it’s well beyond reasonably foreseeable: your condition is indeed terminal. The simple answer to the headline is sin. If you don’t accept that sin is real, a violation of God’s law, then you’re not a Christian. Man is totally depraved, each one a sinner. For this sin, the consequences (Wages – Romans 6:23) are death. Your Sin has earned you death. Sin is the cause of death. Not that you could have kept yourself from sinning; you’re a sinner, born that way. Perhaps it’s not your fault, but like your eye color, tough cookies, that’s the way it is. Rejecting these doctrines means, to you, that Jesus was crucified for nothing. Your theology is wrong; you remain in your sin without Christ and are headed to eternal damnation.

“Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” – Ezekiel 18:4

Holy God created every soul; they are His; none aren’t under His jurisdiction to do with as He pleases. Those in their sin, not reconciled to God by Christ, die eternally.

Not coincidentally, Canada has some of the lowest social care spending of any industrialised country, palliative care is only accessible to a minority, and waiting times in the public healthcare sector can be unbearable, to the point where the same Supreme Court which legalised euthanasia declared those waiting times to be a violation of the right to life back in 2005.

The article fails to point out that the government has travel restrictions for those that might seek healthcare abroad. The report also fails to note that the government withholds cheap and readily available medications that save lives.

Back in the old days when grandma was dying, the church and family pitching in financially, the local doctor also having accomplished some charitable effort would simply say there was nothing more to be done. The government was nowhere in this, and that’s as it should be.

But why would anybody be surprised by what’s become of Western Civilization? Unable to make the connection between the mass murder of those yet to draw their first breath to now killing of the old and infirm will lead to the government ridding themselves of all those they deem, Undesirables. This is headed to America.

Many in the healthcare sector came to the same conclusion. Even before Bill C-7 was enacted, reports of abuse were rife. A man with a neurodegenerative disease testified to Parliament that nurses and a medical ethicist at a hospital tried to coerce him into killing himself by threatening to bankrupt him with extra costs or by kicking him out of the hospital, and by withholding water from him for 20 days.

A “Medical Ethicist.” Perhaps the medical ethicist could tell us what the “final solution” is for these undesirables. You can read the article. Canada is a communist country, plain and simple. There is no other term for it, none.

Ultimately God is the Judge of the quick and the dead. All men face judgment (Hebrews 9:27). The Canadian government sees itself as a god and arbiter of good and evil. The problem, circling back to the beginning, is that man is totally depraved, each one a sinner, only evil and wicked. There is no other conclusion to man as his own god than mass murder.

Being unable to state the cause and consequences of something makes one frustrated and angry. It’s far better, dear Christian, to know the truth and be able to articulate it so that you don’t react in anger but in the love of Christ to reestablish justice by His Law-word.

Source: (Italics and Bold in the original)

Events may show that there are no winners, only survivors and those who failed to adapt.

Some recessions are brief, necessary cleansings in which extremes of leverage and speculation are unwound via painful defaults, reductions of risk and bear markets.

Some are reactions to exogenous shocks such as war or pandemic. The uncertainty triggers a mass reduction of risk which recedes once the worst is known and priced in.

Far less frequently, structural recessions are lengthy, tumultuous upheavals that can set the stage for excellent long-term expansion or unraveling and collapse. In these structural recessions, 10% to 20% of the workforce loses their jobs as entire sectors are obsoleted and jobs that depend on excesses of debt and speculation go away.

In the U.S. economy of today, this would translate into a minimum of 14 million jobs vanishing, never to return in their previous form and compensation.

The old jobs don’t come back and new jobs demand different enterprises, training and skills. Unemployment remains elevated, spending is weak and productivity is low for years as enterprises and workers have to adjust to radically different conditions. If the economy and society persevere through this transition, the stage is set for the reworked economy to enjoy an era of renewed prosperity and opportunity.

If an economy and society can’t complete this transition, stagnation decays into collapse.

I’ve annotated a St. Louis Federal Reserve chart of U.S. recessions since 1970 to show the taxonomy described above.

The drive to never have any pain through natural times of pruning economic inefficiencies will cause the final and total collapse of the system. This article is a pretty good background as a way to understand the economic environment, the crises created by trying to fix problems, and the worse pain of never wanting any difficulties. Of course, we’re a little more jaded about the motivations of those claiming they are just trying to help. You can see the chart and analysis on that website.