CIEMR: Have you heard the buzz?

We have all noticed the high prices for everything from Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, and Jeep this year and last. Stellantis Jacked up prices in 2023 and had a record sales year. They took most of that profit and paid their executives. The CEO earned a record $700 million dollars!!!!!!!!!!

But folks were straining to keep up. I mean, who can afford trucks around $100K? I saw that many new car loans have payments of $1500-$1800 a month! Additionally, inventory has built up so much that many dealerships have new 2023, 2024, and 2025 units of the same car sitting side by side. Ever heard the term, "Lot-Rot?" Inventory of some models is sitting around 405 days, and there are many reports of dealerships allowing some of their cars to actually be repossessed by the bank holding their floor plans! This is unprecedented!

They are in the process of closing down some plants, going down to just two shifts in others and just this week someone exposed plans by Stellantis to move all of their plants to Mexico except for the one in Windsor! Thousands of workers are being laid off and a good percentage of the senior leadership has retired, quit, or been fired.

It looks like they are considering selling off the whole kit and kaboodle, and it looks like BYD is looking to purchase it. Who is BYD, you ask? Well they are the largest manufacturer of automobiles in the world and they are a Chinese company. That's way bad news.

Looking forward, Stellantis has not tossed any life preservers to their dealership network. Incentives are seen to be too small, no price reduction is being talked about and they continue to push out unsellable vehicles to their dealerships. We used to have affordable cars from Chrysler. You could buy a basic tradesman 1500, with a hemi for around $42K. Now that vehicle starts around $59, and I saw one example listing at a hypoxic $71K. Now which middle-class worker paying high taxes, double for their food, and lofty health insurance premiums can afford that? The answer, of course,  is no one and the Finance industry is my proof.

I read that now fully 25% of new car loans are denied. The numbers simply do not add up. Further, the number of cars being repossessed is also at an all-time high. Do you see a pattern here? Another point to take note of is the Biden Administration and the UAW all had prior knowledge of this. Is this one of their hammer strokes to kill the US working middle class? Sure looks like it to me!

Looking forward as a certain political party likes to say, there is only bad news on the horizon. Gone are the Hemi Challengers and V8 pickup trucks. Instead, they electrified an iconic American muscle car! And they put two speakers in the rear to simulate engine sounds! Have you ever heard of anything so stupid? They won't sell a single one of those things. And the V8-powered trucks now get a twin-turbocharged six-cylinder engine that sounds like a swarm of drunken beetles. Dealers are complaining that some of them won't even start! The engine problems have not been sorted out either, with this new tree-hugger-friendly power plant, but none of that is making headline news.

Our precious Jeeps are mostly all becoming electrified for 2025. Let me see if I got this right. You placed a battery pack that explodes when it comes into contact with water into a Jeep???!!! Is anyone left over there at Jeep with a brain? Does anyone at Stallantis actually know what we do with those Jeeps? I have had water over the fenders in mine twice so far. Oh, and you are now paying north of $70,000 to buy one. Did I mention that the batteries actually lose charge over time and will arrive at a point sometime when they don't work anymore? When a gas engine does that, you go to the junkyard and buy a used engine for $1,000, spend two weekends swapping it out, and send your teenager with his fresh driver's permit off for another five years of driving.

Americans, except for a few do not want electric cars. We don't want to wait at a charger station for thirty minutes just to get a spot to then charge for an hour, at 1 AM just so we can drive it to work the next day. Almost no one can do that. So, in full confession mode, I bought a new Tesla some years ago. About two months later when I realized that other than the fact it was as fast as an F-22 Raptor, well the love affair was over. I sold it and bought my Jeep which I still have years later. I couldn't drive that Tesla to a park in Ohio and make it back without diverting 50 miles to the north to recharge, so I realized it was just a cool novelty, not a serious car.

Should Stellantis implode and it sure looks like it will, a lot of people are going to be washing your windshield at the intersection for tips. Tens of thousands of factory workers, and workers from parts suppliers from a hundred different industries will be out of a good paying job. What then? What happens when they can't afford to make their health insurance payments? Well, the folks in Springfield, Ohio at least can borrow money from the Haitian immigrants, they seem to be flushed with cash. But most of them will get caught standing with no chair when the music stops.

The CEO, by the way, is European. Has a small European brain with, apparently, zero understanding of what the US market looks like. And his plans for the company? Instead of being true to the blue-collar roots folks who have kept Chrysler corporation going for 100 years by building affordable cars, he wants to transition the company to a Land Rover. See any Land Rovers parked in the street near your home? I didn't think so.

This is just another example of poor elitist leadership sailing the USS America into another rocky shoal. How many leaks can we take and still remain afloat?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6nrYL-pTKQ

This is the largest bronze statue in the western hemisphere depicting a single soldier from "Doughboy" through various phases of WW1 and ending with him coming home to his family

A masterful work, sure to be one of the greats of human artistry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVPtxDS3o5U

Yep!

Depending on how much you believe the US can reign in its spending and fiscal policies, are we headed for stability or falling off the cliff? Nothing I have seen in the last half dozen administrations harkens to any real fixes. Therefore, a time approaches when the US Dollar is just another currency, and when we start downhill the fall will look like WW3 for our nation. Common sense dictates we should build in some measure of self-preservation. A prudent man will have a plan, and set aside for coming perilous times. I believe the Lord our God will protect his people, but as we have witnessed the Jewish people suffer over all of recorded history, we Gentiles who call ourselves Christians will not go unscathed. We need to humble ourselves and repent as a nation and a people, and even as families. I believe in the idea of an America, but charlatans and fools have coopted our Moral and Christian nation.


The Coming Shift in World Trade
By Jeffrey A. Tucker
9/9/2024

In July of 1944, a year and some months before the official end to the Second World War, allied powers gathered at the Bretton Woods Hotel in New Hampshire to hammer out a new economic order that would dominate the world at war’s end. The meeting alone expressed great confidence in a coming victory. They were not wrong.

As part of the new plan for the world, a new monetary system would take shape. It would be based in gold, with the dollar convertibility guaranteed at 1/35 an ounce. The right to convert would not be available to average people. It was something guaranteed by nation states and central banks alone, at least those allowed to participate.

In the early days of the conference, the New York Times (NYT) editorialized against the scheme. The pen behind the unsigned editorials was the great economist Henry Hazlitt, who would later gain fame for his book “Economics In One Lesson,” which became one of the best-selling economics books of the century. In fact, it still sells well today.

Hazlitt criticized the proposed new monetary system. He said that by making the dollar the world reserve currency, and guaranteeing convertibility into gold only by large trading nations, the new system could not last. This is because there was no mechanism to police nations’ fiscal and monetary policies. The new system would enable endless expansion of money and credit abroad without consequence. The United States would experience, eventually, a devastating gold outflow. At some point in the future, he predicted, the United States would have to suspend convertibility.

This is precisely what happened, not right away but eventually. In 1971, Richard Nixon stopped the system whereby the United States shipped out gold. He did so to save the system, and bring about a new one. The expectation was that gold would fall in price. The opposite happened. Eight years later, the price had reached $850. The people who bet against the monetary elites were the winners.

There is a backstory to Hazlitt’s writing at the NYT. His brilliant editorials against the Bretton Woods system appeared weekly, and were later collected in a book called “From Bretton Woods to World Inflation.” The publisher of the NYT at some point in 1944, just before the system was ratified, came to Hazlitt and said that the paper would change its editorial stance. It would need to favor and not oppose the new system. At that point, Hazlitt realized that his 10-year tenure at the paper was at an end. He packed up, went home, and started working on a new book that became “Economics in One Lesson.” Writing it took not even two weeks.

I’ve been visiting Hazlitt’s writing from this period as a way to understand the present moment. It’s clear that the elites in those days were setting up a new global machinery. In designing such a system—John Maynard Keynes from the UK was the primary influence—there were several moving parts. There was the monetary system as described above. There was to be a transaction clearing system administered by a new World Bank, the remnants of which survive in the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) today. There was a financing system in the form of the International Monetary Fund. And there was a new trade system called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which later became the World Trade Organization.

These four moving parts—money, clearing, lending, and trading—were designed to work together as if this entire world economy was a machine to be managed, which is precisely how Keynes thought of it. Hazlitt’s objection was that the system was too clever by half, because it could not account for market and political exigencies. It’s one thing for something to work on paper; it’s something else for it to work in reality.

He saw through the problem that the new system did nothing to discipline governments that were party to the deal. He predicted that all governments would take advantage of the opportunity to exchange in reckless fiscal and monetary policies while free riding against the rich nations that were guaranteeing the system against failure.

He was right about this eventually but, in the meantime, the world economy did take a new direction toward what was later called neoliberalism, a managed system that exalted freedom in international trade and fiscal and monetary liquidity above all else.

Why was the system set up this way? The reason is that an entire generation of what were known as enlightened diplomats had become convinced that depression and war (1930s and 1940s) stemmed from trade protectionism and too many monetary guardrails that prevented states from flooding the system in times of crisis.

In other words, the system of 1944 was established mainly to backwards fix what its architects saw as the main problems of the previous two decades. This is human nature. If you live through a house fire caused by an electrical spark, you are going to be extra careful about the soundness of wiring in the future. If your health has failed you for reasons of a bad diet, you are going to be more careful in the future to eat right. And so on. They were more focused on fixing old problems than anticipating new ones.

Thus did the world of the 1950s and 1960s proceed with these fixes in place. The results were spectacular by any historical standard, especially for the United States. But remember Hazlitt’s prediction that the new system would not provide discipline to states in the matter of fiscal and monetary policy. As it turned out, the leading offender in this regard was the United States, which embarked on the Vietnam War at the same time it blew out its provisions in the welfare state. That led to unsustainable economic tensions.

Meanwhile, the trading system that depended entirely on a gold-based settlement system started to flow only one way, which was out. That system broke down as the welfare-warfare state blew up, and finally Nixon put an end to it. In making that decision, he also made a choice to preserve the low-tariff global trading order over the monetary shackles that had hemmed in some element of monetary discipline.

With all limits now removed, inflation took its toll, exactly as Hazlitt predicted. The United States experienced three successive waves in the 1970s, each worse than the last. That excess was finally stopped with the reign of Paul Volcker at the Fed and the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who had promised to control the fiscal side. And yet: there was a Cold War to win, and the Reagan administration too had to make a choice between a balanced budget and its foreign-policy priorities.

Without marching through the policy errors of the following three decades, let us jump ahead to 2016 during a time when (as could have been predicted) the United States has lost vast amounts of its manufacturing sector to foreign competition due to the very system set up in the Nixon era, not to mention victory in the Cold War which opened up a new swath of the world to productive competition with the United States. The new president Donald Trump swore to end the problem, and how? By blowing up the GATT which had been newly labeled the World Trade Organization.

In other words, Trump took a different tact from Nixon: he sought to patch a trade problem with a very old-fashioned system that had been wholly rejected back in 1944. Again, Hazlitt predicted something exactly like this in his writings, as he explained that nations with undisciplined fiscal and monetary problems, operating in a world without domestic convertibility, are bound to suffer monetary outflows and a deprecation of their production base due to foreign competition.

As a result of Trump’s efforts, which were not reversed by the Biden administration, the system of 1944 now lies in ruins with governments around the world newly experimenting with regional trading systems, tariff policies, and even new systems of settlement that could someday unseat the dollar as the world-reserve currency.

In the meantime, the United States has a major problem. Without dramatic domestic reform, it simply cannot compete on the world stage. This is because the U.S. debt avalanche has assisted in boosting the industrial buildup around the world even as the high-value international dollar makes imports cheap and exports expensive with no settlement system in place. This not only leads to perpetual trade deficits but massively subsidizes imports over domestic goods.

In the last four years of inflation, the U.S. dollar has maintained its strength internationally while decaying domestically. As a result, imports have not suffered nearly as much in inflation as domestic goods, which only entrenches the problem.

What we are watching now is the final unraveling of the system of 1944 in all its parts, including the tweak of 1971, which introduces grave dangers to the world of both depression and war. The way out of this predicament is not another cockamamie world order constructed by another globalist economic guru like Keynes.

We need a simple return to fiscal and monetary soundness. Above all else, the United States must get its own house in order, with balanced budgets and sound money, even if that means letting go of its imperial ambitions abroad. That is the best and probably only path to restarting the beautiful ambition of a free-trade world.

Amid Public, Shareholder Backlash, Some Major Corporations Drop DEI Policies
Since 2021, 25 companies have been notified by shareholders that their DEI programs constitute illegal discrimination and a breach of fiduciary duty.

By Kevin Stocklin
September 04, 2024
Updated:
September 05, 2024

As Ford took steps last week to distance itself from the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) movement that has swept the corporate world in recent years, it became just one of a number of companies that are rethinking their commitments to race-based ideology.

In an Aug. 28 memo to employees, Ford CEO Jim Farley said he is “mindful that our employees and customers hold a wide range of beliefs,” and that the company is taking “a fresh look” at its DEI program.
Ford’s reversal on DEI follows that of other major corporations, including Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Polaris, Indian Motorcycle, Lowe’s, and most recently Molson Coors, which have reportedly revised their DEI policies, either due to public pressure or legal challenges.

In addition, 25 companies have been formally notified by shareholders since 2021 that their DEI programs constitute illegal discrimination under federal and state civil rights laws, as well as a breach of fiduciary duty to investors.

“This is a trend, for sure,” Jerry Bowyer, president of Bowyer Research, a conservative investment consulting firm, told The Epoch Times. “The rapid succession, the way it’s occurred, there’s almost a cascade effect going on.

“That whole world of ESG, stakeholder capitalism, DEI—the whole idea of companies as social engineers rather than as value producing business—had just gotten so far ahead of what customers wanted,” Bowyer said. “Shareholders were not asking for this.”

According to conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who has been posting on social media regarding his investigation of “woke” policies at numerous companies, Ford confirmed to him that it would end its participation in a number of DEI related efforts.
“One by one we WILL bring sanity back to corporate America,” Starbuck stated.

In response to a request by The Epoch Times for comment, a Ford spokesperson stated: “The communication to our global employees speaks for itself. We have nothing further to add.”

Starbuck’s postings went viral when they were supported by people such as SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, who stated on X that “DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it.”
Taking on Customer Feedback
A number of companies that pursued DEI and other progressive programs have come under pressure from activists, shareholders, customers, and state attorneys general to end them.
Responding to consumer backlash, Tractor Supply issued a statement in June that said, “We have heard from customers that we have disappointed them. We have taken this feedback to heart.”

The company stated that it would no longer participate in the Human Rights Campaign rating system but instead “focus on rural America priorities including ag education, animal welfare, veteran causes and being a good neighbor, and stop sponsoring nonbusiness activities like pride festivals and voting campaigns.”

It further pledged to eliminate DEI roles within the company and drop CO2 emission goals, focusing instead on land and water conservation.

Law firms are also stepping back from DEI programs. Legal suits by conservative nonprofit American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) have compelled some major law firms to allow people of all races to apply for fellowships previously reserved for people of color.

“Using someone’s race as a factor in employment decisions is unfair, polarizing, and illegal,” Edward Blum, president of AAER, told The Epoch Times.

“Significant majorities of Americans of all races do not believe someone’s race should be used by any employer to hire or promote any individual. Corporations are at risk of being sued for their DEI practices.”

“Harley-Davidson’s choice to back away from the Corporate Equality Index is an impulsive decision,” Human Rights Campaign Vice President Eric Bloem said in a statement on Aug. 20. The group introduced the Corporate Equality Index as a social credit rating system for corporations.
Bloem said that activists who are pushing against DEI “believe they can bully their way into dismantling initiatives that help everyone thrive in the workplace.”

Bloem said with the LGBT community “wielding $1.4 trillion in spending power, retreating from these principles undermines both consumer trust and employee success.”

Advocates of DEI programs say that they are legal and beneficial.

“The purpose of DEI and other remedial workplace programs is to improve the process by which employment decisions are made and close the gap in opportunities among workers,” Ming-Qi Chu, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project, said in a statement.
“They do not disadvantage any particular worker. This is why they have long been held lawful.”

And many companies, such as Microsoft, have reiterated their commitment to DEI programs.

“Our focus on diversity and inclusion is unwavering,” Microsoft spokesperson Jeff Jones stated in July, disputing news reports that Microsoft had fired its entire DEI staff.
Some experts say that companies are assuming legal risks by setting corporate policy according to gender or race.
“Two recent rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court cast serious doubt on the legality of racial or gender-based quotas in employment,” Jeremy Tedesco, senior vice president of Corporate Engagement for the Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Epoch Times.

In the 2022 case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the court ruled that any universities that receive government funding could not discriminate in their admissions criteria.
“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” the court stated in its majority opinion. This was a reversal of prior court decisions, which ruled that racial discrimination at universities was permissible, provided that it was carried out as a remedy and for a limited time.

“Many companies were relying on the Supreme Court jurisprudence allowing racial bias in university admissions to justify their flagrant violations of labor law prohibitions on race and sex-based discrimination,” Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, told The Epoch Times.

“This reasoning was always dubious, but now that SCOTUS has made clear that discrimination in university admissions is illegal, they no longer even have the fantasy that their actions are legal.”

Subsequent court decisions clarified that the Harvard decision, which applied to school admissions under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, also applied to employers under Title VII of the Act.

“In 2024, in Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, the Supreme Court clarified that Title VII protects against many different kinds of discrimination in the workplace, not just hiring and firing,” Tedesco stated.

In an April interview with law firm Jackson Lewis, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Commissioner Andrea Lucas stated that under Title VII there is no such thing as permissible “reverse” race or sex discrimination.
“There’s just discrimination,” said Lucas, who is tasked with educating employers on federal employment law.

“Employers in general are not permitted to take any employment actions motivated by race or sex,” Lucas stated, and she urged employers to have their legal counsels review “every single piece of diversity work product.”

In July 2023, attorneys general from 13 states issued a letter to the CEOs of Fortune 100 companies “to remind you of your obligations as an employer under federal and state law to refrain from discriminating on the basis of race, whether under the label of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or otherwise.”
Signers were from Kansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa, South Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, Mississippi, Missouri, and Montana.

“Treating people differently because of the color of their skin, even for benign purposes, is unlawful and wrong,” the attorneys general stated. “Companies that engage in racial discrimination should and will face serious legal consequences.”

The letter cited numerous cases in federal and state courts that ruled that race-based quotas and preferences are illegal.
Studies Questioned
“Companies need to rethink their embrace of DEI,” Tedesco stated. “As legal requirements raise the cost and risk of DEI, recent academic work has shown that there is little if any benefit to the practice.”
A series of studies put out by McKinsey, a management consultancy, say that companies that have higher percentages of women or people of various skin colors perform better than those who have a higher percentage of a single gender or race. These studies were titled “Why Diversity Matters” (2015), “Delivering Through Diversity” (2018), and “Diversity Wins” (2020).

The latest of studies, titled “Diversity Matters Even More,” says that “companies with representation of women exceeding 30 percent (and thus in the top quartile) are significantly more likely to financially outperform those with 30 percent or fewer. Similarly, companies in our top quartile for ethnic diversity show an average 27 percent financial advantage over others.”

These studies have been cited not only by private companies but also by the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense, to justify instituting race-based and gender-based hiring and promotion programs.
However, a study published in March by Econ Journal Watch, authored by accounting professors Jeremiah Green at Texas A&M and John Hand at the University of North Carolina, examined the methodology used in the McKinsey studies and concluded that the reports were “erroneous” and “should not be relied on to support the view that U.S. publicly traded firms can expect to deliver improved financial performance if they increase the racial/ethnic diversity of their executives.”
Based on the performance of companies in the S&P 500 index, Hand and Green found no statistically significant relationship between companies’ racial diversity and their sales, profits, or equity performance.

Outside of the private sector, the Biden administration has been actively implementing DEI programs for government employees.

Upon taking office, President Joe Biden issued a series of executive orders mandating that “as the Nation’s largest employer, the Federal Government must be a model for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, where all employees are treated with dignity and respect.”
“A growing body of evidence demonstrates that diverse, equitable, inclusive, and accessible workplaces yield higher-performing organizations,” the White House memorandum stated.

This effort, too, has sparked opposition.

In June, Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) introduced the Dismantle DEI Act, which would eliminate all DEI programs for federal employees.
“The DEI agenda is a destructive ideology that breeds hatred and racial division,” Vance stated. “It has no place in our federal government or anywhere else in our society.”

The Epoch Times reached out to John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Polaris, Indian Motorcycle, Molson Coors, and Lowe’s for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.

It was back in March that I noted we had surpassed thirty million views.

A few months later and we are well over 45,000,000! We are knocking on the door of fifty million views!!!

So what is happening? I know I prayed for God to use us for his kingdom and if the site was about me or men, then I asked for God to destroy it.
Let us always serve God and each other in fellowship in accordance with Kingdom principles.

So is it that simple or have we been attacked by web spiders or web crawlers or whatever they are called? Are we just being sorted and added to search engines all over the world or is it something else?

Surely a portion of the views are real people. And of all those references in search engines, some of that is God's word, or prayer requests, or a hint of the fellowship here, right?

Matt has published a scripture to read and ponder every day, for years now. He tosses Gopd's word out there into the vastness of the interweb and much like the lucky cast that places that Mepps spinner bait right in front of a hungry bass, some of those scriptures fall on fertile ground...Surely it has to be.

So, what are we a part of here? more than 45,500,000 views as of this morning. Some 12,400 average a day when averaged over the entire life of this site, now over 10 years.

CIEMR: Tim Waltz has a problem with truthfulness, but at least is a friend with China.

Tim Waltz has my soldier heckles standing on end. This matter of him retiring before his unit deployed to a combat post. A soldier's purpose is to close with and destroy the enemy of our nation. I know of very few who turned from the sound of gunfire or sought to get out of a "hairy" assignment. Most of us are just plain stupid if you define such as avoiding danger.

Any member of senior leadership would have known well before the actual orders were published that they were going, "Over there." He knew his unit would go to war for 12-15 months before he decided to retire, or in his words, chose to serve his country in another way.

Next, there is this matter of calling himself a Sergeant Major, when he only acted in that position for a short time. It takes away from the men and women who rightfully earned and wore that lofty rank to place himself with them when he was a Master Sergeant. Now, I know many master sergeants and they are all honorable men. But none of them call themselves a sergeant major, although they may have been serving in that billet, and none of them turned away from battle, none.

Then we have this matter of master sergeant Waltz talking about the weapons he carried in combat that should not be allowed into the hands of American Citizens. Pardon me, but first of all, he never made it to any combat theater. He does not wear the right shoulder patch many of us earned the hard way. Secondly, how does a governor not align himself with the Constitution's Second Amendment? Although I think it may be a poor idea to allow a drunken hillbilly to rake the wood line with a M249SAW, I do fundamentally believe he has the right to own such a weapon.
However, in the current context, this man who has a problem with the truth and the facts in a similar fashion to the Bidens seems to also have a history of rubbing elbows with the Chinese

https://ijr.com/exclusive-tim-walz-has-a-history-of-rubbing-elbows-with-nonprofit-linked-to-chinese-intel-and-influence-agency/

I am currently attending a discipleship class.

What is that, you ask? Well if we desire to follow Jesus and to honor God, then we become one of his disciples to one extent or another. I believe that someone who truly loves Christ and surrenders to him loves him. Really, you love him. No matter how the conversation begins, given enough time, it will evolve into talking about Jesus and God and sharing experiences. It's as if that's what you'd really rather be doing.

Ok, well I started this discipleship class and we were talking about how God speaks to us.

Obviously, he speaks to us through his word, the bible...In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Another way is through creation. Psalm 19:1-4 expresses this very well. It states:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.

Another member observed that God will answer prayer and then confirm it through two or three others leaving no doubt that it is God who is speaking.

We talked about the "Still, small voice" that some can hear and others are aware of. You know the one that suddenly states, "Stop," and you do just to see a car suddenly speeding past the spot we would have been had we kept walking. Those experiences seem to be commonplace in the Christian world.

And then came that moment of profound truth. Every once in a while someone says something that is just so right, so true, so undeniable, and yet it never occurred to you. Ever had a moment like that?

Well we were talking about actually hearing God's audible voice and a young man spoke up.

He said:

If you want to hear God speak

Wait for it...


Read the bible out loud!

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Co4QQhInibY

Your November choice has been made clear. To me, it seems as though the beast has come out into the light of day, but to many the effectiveness of the feint still has them hypnotized.

What is a feint you ask? a movement made in order to deceive an adversary; an attack aimed at one place or point merely as a distraction from the real place or point of attack.

The feint, of course, is Donald Trump, and God knows, he sure makes it easy for the Harris crowd. But what if Donald Trump did not exist? What if during this election the Republicans simply ran an anonymous, “Citizen X,” who simply ran on the party’s platform? What then? Well in that theoretical case, we could simply read the platform and decide if that person could serve in the office for which he/she was vying, right?

If that was the case, perhaps we could then focus more clearly on the actual candidate of one Vice President Kamala Harris. Yep, wipe all the vile hatred and disgusting and incessant beating of a dead horse named Trump and we might have a few minutes to consider the case for Harris as our next president.
When I get to know somebody, I like to know something about their past, and in particular, their parents. Did you notice that when KH accepted the nomination as the Democratic candidate for president, her whole family was not present? Nope her father was conspicuously absent. If you’re wondering why, well the man is a Marxist economist. In short, he is a communist, a step or two past the Socialist. Yep, she was raised in a communist household. Is anyone betting that she does not hold Marxist values near and dear to her heart? Don’t women grow up endearing themselves to their fathers, isn’t that a human trait?

Looking at her platform, it is easy to see she is appealing to the youth. Let me see, she is proposing $25K free money to first-time homeowners. That’s the 25-30’s demographic. Oh and by the way, all fifty states were blue last election when considering the 25-40 age group. Alternatively, 100% of the states went red for the 45 and older demographic. (Mature adults). She proposed 4 million new homes which she also believes should be owned and not rented. Well, heck, I agree with her if that plan did not have a caveat. Yup, I’m laying odds that those “Dreamers” and the host of illegal invaders, err, aliens will get the lion's share of those homes. They will get those homes and become loyal democratic voters for as long as it takes to flip the US of A over to being a fully communist country where there will no longer be a vote (For those who survive a nasty civil war).

The democrats have a host of other goals and few of them make any sense or harken back to the days when we were a young nation full of national pride. But there is one thing about that DEI appeasing, LBGT worshiping, gun-hating convention that I really, and I mean, really don’t like. They had vans parked around the convention offering abortions and vasectomies! Now why in the red white and blue would you have such a thing?

It’s not a political point, the killing of babies…Or is it? The devil is bold and out in the open here. The democratic party is openly exposed with its evil spine in plain view. Those vans that performed abortions were altars to ancient Gods. Read about Bahl in your bible. I can think of no other reason to incorporate the death of children as a part of your convention than to show you are against God and evil and willing to do anything. That anything, of course, includes lying, which of course the Harris endorsement is full of. I mean, “Most accomplished vice president of all time,” is going a bit too far. Has she actually accomplished anything?

Back to my original premise, would you consider a person and a platform that hosted a mobile abortion clinic during the “festivities,”? Please do not call, nor even think you are a Christian or a follower of God if you do. Brothers and sisters, it is time to swing both legs to one side of that fence and jump off. Land on solid ground that has the assurance of Romans 10:9, or John 5:29 and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.

Choose carefully. Do not get caught up in the feint, but take a hard look at what is really happening.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1255537808762323

Facebook has some useful attributes such as allowing us to share in each other's lives.

An old Colonel friend of mine was sharing over on his page.

I noticed a group of pictures. First up was a crashed Huey, then a Crashed Cobra with the tail boom ripped off. A couple photos later you could see him lying on the floor of a slick with a bullet hole in his right arm.

We called him "Coach." He was one of the fiercest guys I knew and the only Night Stalker bigger than me. I often wanted to test myself against him, but suspected he could beat me. I respected him because he never bragged and was always ready to get into a fight, whether it was in the middle of the Persian Gulf or some biker bar in Savannah.

Looking further at his photos there was an X-ray of his spine. There was a metal plate, a few screws, and some other metal parts. The screws mended the broken spine he picked up in that Huey, and the other metal I think was parts of a bullet that came out the end of an AK-47 and still resides where it stopped.

Still further along is an X-ray of his cervical spine. That too had the lower two vertebrae screw together. That happened when he hit hard enough to toss the tail boom of that AH-1 a hundred feet from the rest of the aircraft. The bullet hole happened one day when he was flying along on an Ass and trash mission as we called them. Someone decided to shoot him for no particular reason, so he flew to some place called Can-Tow, I think, and landed, the peeps there decided to take him to a hospital before the whole darned flight suit got stained with his blood.

And then we have people like Tim Waltz. A guy who lied about his rank and departed senior leadership of his unit just before they departed for a combat deployment. On one hand, I feel I cannot stand beside the Colonel who is now just a patchwork of work from doctors because of ancient combat injuries. On the other, it sickens me that that coward, Waltz wore the same uniform as I did.

If America has any honor left she must sweep this democratic ticket into the trash where it rightly belongs.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/7504531696291080

https://www.facebook.com/reel/827281376042560

Anyone not love the sound of:

The National Anthem
A Harley Davidson
A cammed big block
A Huey

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1527401224875805

idid

Sabin Howard sculpted this masterpiece now on display in Washington DC. It depicts a soldier saying goodbye to his daughter, marching off with his fellow warriors, seeing the horrors of battle, and then returning to her in the end. There she looks at his helmet and ponders the inevitably of coming war...

As the sun dips below the horizon, its last rays illuminate the figure of a solemn, uniformed soldier as he kneels at the feet of his young daughter.

She hands him his helmet and they say their goodbyes for what could be the last time.

It’s a familiar but heart-wrenching scene for the thousands of Americans who have sent their loved ones off to war, unsure if they will ever return. On Sept. 13 in Washington, a similar scene will be depicted with the unveiling of the National World War I Memorial, nearly a decade after its conceptualization.

The monument will be unveiled at 7:19 p.m. as the sun sets during a candlelight vigil.

The relief sculpture, dubbed “A Soldier’s Journey,” follows the story of one American soldier as he leaves his family to join his brothers in arms on the front lines of “the war to end all wars” in Europe.

Resolute, the soldier leads the charge into battle, only to come face to face with the soul-crushing realities of war. Transformed, he returns home to his daughter and hands her his helmet once more, from which she divines the inevitability of another world war.

“I wanted to make an art form that would be understandable by all, no matter what their socioeconomic level or education or beliefs,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s a piece that really hearkens back to what the Renaissance art did, which is, it speaks about our potential, about what we can be, and in so doing, I think it’s a great unifier.”

A Big Leap
From the start, Mr. Howard had a unique perspective on the world that was informed by his bicultural background.
As both an American and an Italian, he split his time growing up between the modern, fast-paced streets of New York and the museums and architectural landmarks of Turin, Italy.

With those two cultural powerhouses serving as the backdrop for his childhood, it may be unsurprising to those on the outside looking in that Mr. Howard eventually decided at age 19 to become an artist. But for the man himself, the decision was not quite so clear.

“I couldn’t draw at all,” he recalled. “I started at zero, and now I’m making a monument that’s probably the biggest classical figurative sculpture in the last 200 years. It’s a big leap.”

He began his foray into the arts in the early 1980s at the Philadelphia College of Art and went on to earn his master of fine arts from the New York Academy of Art.

In the decades since, he has received numerous commissions, taught classes at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and sold his works to museums and private collectors around the world.

Mr. Howard’s works have included life-size statues of the Greek gods Hermes, Aphrodite, and Apollo, as well as many smaller pieces. By the time he entered the global competition in 2015 to sculpt the National World War I Memorial, he had spent 75,000 hours sculpting from live models.

A Radical Return to Realism
Standing 10 feet high and 58 feet long, “A Soldier’s Journey” and the life-like figures it immortalizes reflect Mr. Howard’s traditional arts education studying the works of such Renaissance masters as Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael.
That fact alone sets it apart from the works of Mr. Howard’s contemporaries.

“It’s a very radical sculpture for these days. It goes completely against the art narrative,” he said.

Mr. Howard noted that artists today have largely abandoned the realism of the Renaissance in favor of more abstract concepts and media. But in his view, the modern style isn’t so much art as a “giant scam.”


“We don’t have great artists in our country anymore. Everything has gone to crap,” he said, attributing the change to a politicization of the public education system.

He noted that public schools have shifted away from teaching American greatness toward highlighting America’s imperfections. That change, he contends, has led to increasing public disinterest in art—which has traditionally served as a unifier—and a heightened focus on divisive political issues.

But with his piece, Mr. Howard said he hopes to unite the country.

“These soldiers were all Americans—they all bled the color red. And they were neither Democrats nor Republicans, they were just Americans. And so, this is really different than what’s going on today.”

Monument Destruction
“A Soldier’s Journey” will soon be installed in Pershing Park, less than half-mile from the statues that protesters defaced in Lafayette Square in June.
Armed with smoke bombs and spray-paint, pro-Palestinian demonstrators swarmed the square on June 8 in protest of Israel’s war with the Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas. When they left, such messages as “Death to Amerikkka” and “Free Palestine” were emblazoned on statues honoring the Marquis de Lafayette and the Comte de Rochambeau, two Frenchmen who served as generals in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

None of the protesters were arrested—a fact Mr. Howard lamented.

“If I were to go out and destroy public property, I would have a nice dinner in jail tonight,” he noted. “But a pro-Hamas supporter spray-paints on a sculpture that was done in the 1800s in front of the White House and nothing happens? I am very, very concerned.”


Attacks on public monuments have become a popular form of protest since the May 2020 death of George Floyd in police custody. In the ensuing unrest, demonstrators defaced and sometimes even toppled statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Columbus, and other prominent figures, all in the name of social justice.
Now, pro-Palestinian protesters have resurrected those tactics in a high-stakes election year.

“I think that it is very interesting that we are having this happening in an election year, and last time this happened was in an election year,” Mr. Howard said. “So, I would ask the public to look at that and ask, ‘What are their true motives here?’”

“History is the cultural umbrella that binds us all together,” he said. “So, when you destroy that, you create a void. And I believe that this void is being created on purpose to rewrite history.”

He pointed to the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project, which aims to change the national monument landscape to “convey the truth about our history” and “shift who has the power to shape our present and our future.”
As part of that initiative, the Philadelphia-based Monument Lab conducted a national monument audit to assess the nature of the current commemorative landscape, concluding that it is “overwhelmingly white and male.”

To remedy that, the audit’s directors go beyond calling for new memorials telling previously untold stories. They also say that existing monuments should be “held accountable to history.”

“Monuments that perpetuate harmful myths and that portray conquest and oppression as acts of valor require honest reckoning, conceptual dismantling, and active repair,” the audit report states.
The Mellon Foundation did not respond to a request for comment, while a spokesperson for Monument Lab declined to comment.

But to Mr. Howard, this “dismantling” of historical artwork appears to be a politically driven attempt to denigrate and destroy the nation’s founding principles and values.

“I see this as a subjugation of ideas,” he said. “And the subjugation of ideas that we’re seeing right now with the destruction of sculptures and Western civilization is an attack against things that are sacred and have had traditional value.”
‘Construct, Build’
In Mr. Howard’s eyes—the eyes of an artist—history does not need to be “repaired” but learned from.
“I could never have made the piece of art that I made unless I had studied the history of art that came before me—so that I could take from it, I could draw from that circle, and reapply it to my contemporary standards,” he said.

Praising his own traditional arts education, the sculptor said ideas should be debated, not forced on others.

As for those who feel underrepresented, he suggested that they raise the funds to commission the art they wish to see rather than destroy others’ hard work.

Mr. Howard noted that he made an effort to ensure veterans of various backgrounds were represented in “A Soldier’s Journey.”

As the soldier’s story progresses from left to right, his face changes to reflect those of the real-life veterans he was modeled after—individuals of all races who put their lives on the line for their country.

In seeking those models out, Mr. Howard said his goal was not to “virtue signal” but to showcase “the rich fabric of our country”—a fabric that he warned could be shredded by continued attacks on American history and tradition.

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire,” he said, quoting composer Gustav Mahler.

“To conserve things of great value is imperative to watch a civilization continue to prosper. Shooting ourselves in the foot is a great way to go down in flames.”


In a way, Mr. Howard’s sculpture depicts the preservation of the fire of the American spirit.

After the soldier has battled his way to victory, he passes the torch—his helmet—on to the next generation to preserve and defend. And generations to come will no doubt bear that same burden.

“This project taught me something of tremendous importance, and it is to be in service of something bigger than yourself,” Mr. Howard said, expressing the hope that all Americans, regardless of their differences, will find value in his art.

As for those who might want to tear it down, he advised a different path.

“Do not destroy. Construct. Build. Because when you build, you are doing something positive that elevates consciousness, rather than destroying consciousness.”

Yep, only my second cowboy hat in 50 years!

So this one is important.

I have my shop all picked out. A little one in Pinedale Wyoming. Duane is taking me there next week. He has known the owner (tall, lanky cowboy of some age who married a high-heel wearin' New Your City lady.)

Anyway he sells hats and forms them. Damm the cost, I'm gonna get one, probably my last one.

I need to learn (from you all) something about hat wearin' and buyin' so that I don't look like a moron when I go in there to purchase.

Suggestions? Things I should know?

I did an AI hat simulator...What I'd look like as a cowboy, and it did this, which I think is my perfect hat!

Widely Used and Deemed Safe, These Food Additives Are More Harmful Than Thought

June 22, 2024
On her first day after moving from Australia to the United States, Elizabeth Dunford walked into a supermarket to buy bread. As a researcher of food additives, she instinctively glanced at the ingredients label.

“Why are there so many additives?” she exclaimed in surprise. Nearly every loaf she picked up contained ingredients that made her uneasy. After lingering by the shelves, she reluctantly chose a bag.

“At that moment, I thought: It looks like I will have to choose the best from the worst when shopping in the future,” Ms. Dunford, project consultant for The George Institute for Global Health and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina, told The Epoch Times.

Today, over 73 percent of the U.S. food supply is ultra-processed. While both natural and ultra-processed foods are referred to as “food,” there is a vast difference between them. For instance, ultra-processed foods are not grown in soil but manufactured in factories, using many ingredients that cannot be found in the average home pantry.

Beyond conventional additives such as preservatives, colors, and flavorings, many new additives are emerging. Stabilizers, emulsifiers, firming agents, leavening agents, anti-caking agents, humectants, and more have been invented to modify and improve the taste and texture of food.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lists at least 3,972 substances added to food.
Perhaps driven by a growing desire for richer and more varied flavors or by the pressures of fast-paced living, people have become accustomed to these substances, even considering them a natural part of the modern diet.

Then and Now
In the old days, families used salt and vinegar to preserve food. But with the advent of the industrial age, people became increasingly reliant on ready-made foods available on supermarket shelves.
“By the mid-20th century, more and more food additives were being used,” said Mona Calvo, who has a doctorate in nutritional sciences and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Only recently have people begun to pay closer attention to what goes into the foods they eat.

In the 1950s to 1970s, the FDA began evaluating the safety of common food additives, Ms. Calvo told The Epoch Times.

“A safety assessment involves the scientific review of all relevant data, including toxicology and dietary exposure information,” an FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times. These include tests conducted on rodents and cells. The ingredients will be added to food after the FDA gives its approval.

Consumers can identify what is in their packaged foods by the nutrition facts and ingredient labels, said Ms. Calvo.

Among the most widely used FDA-approved substances added to food, many have a safety classification known as “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) based on their extensive historical use before 1958 or their safety evaluation in the 1970s or more recently.

However, many people may not realize that substances classified as GRAS often lack an upper limit on the amount that can be added to food. In many cases, the quantity added is based on Current Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP) guidelines. Ms. Calvo explained that if a manufacturer adds an excessive amount of an additive during production, which makes it unpopular among consumers, it could affect product sales. In other words, the amount of substances added is left to the manufacturer’s discretion.

Over time, GRAS classification may be withdrawn for certain substances if the FDA is presented with compelling evidence of safety concerns associated with its use. A notable example is the official removal of trans fats from the GRAS list in 2015.
Ms. Calvo pointed out another unresolved issue: There is no oversight on how much of these additive-containing foods people actually consume.

“Many of the commonly used food additives were granted GRAS approval between 1970 and 1975, when people could not foresee the situation today,” she said. During that era, fewer women worked outside the home, and people consumed more home-cooked meals made from natural ingredients. With the prevalence of ultra-processed foods in today’s diet, the consumption of certain additives has naturally exceeded initial expectations.

The FDA officially removed trans fats from the GRAS list in 2015. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
After an additive is approved for a specific function, food manufacturers often quickly incorporate it into a wide range of products, including breads, cookies, instant soups, sausages, and frozen, prepackaged meals.

Dr. Jaime Uribarri, a nephrology specialist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who has long been concerned about specific food additives, told The Epoch Times that “once an additive-containing packaged food is in the marketplace, the FDA does not have a mechanism for regularly testing its safety, such as through periodic sampling checks.”
The Useful and the Unnecessary

Objectively speaking, some food additives may offer more benefits than drawbacks, said Ms. Dunford.
Preservatives, for example, help extend the shelf life of food. Adding a moderate amount of nitrites to cured meats can prevent botulism, a serious condition.

However, she pointed out that many additives that enhance color, flavor, and other sensory aspects are “essentially not necessary.”

Scientists have demonstrated in various studies the health hazards of consuming ultra-processed foods, including their close association with early death, cardiovascular diseases, mental disorders, respiratory diseases, metabolic syndrome, and cancer.
Specifically, a cohort study involving nearly 45,000 middle-aged and older individuals in France found that for every 10 percent increase in the intake of ultra-processed foods, the risk of all-cause mortality increased by 14 percent. According to a 2024 umbrella review published in the BMJ, convincing evidence has been found linking ultra-processed food to a 50 percent increase in cardiovascular disease mortality, a 53 percent increase in common mental disorder outcomes, and a dose-dependent 12 percent increase in diabetes risk.

Ultra-processed food is linked to significant increases in cardiovascular disease mortality, mental disorder outcomes, and diabetes risks. (The Epoch Times)
While part of the increased risks can be attributed to the use of high-sugar, high-salt, high-fat, and low-fiber ingredients, some additives previously thought to be safe also warrant attention.

“Phosphate additives is one that I’m very wary of,” said Ms. Dunford.
Phosphate Additives
A 2023 study published in the Journal of Renal Nutrition found that of all the 3,466 U.S. packaged foods tested, over half contained phosphate additives.
Phosphate additives encompass a range of substances with various functions, such as stabilizing, thickening, emulsifying, adjusting acidity and alkalinity, improving texture, enhancing flavor, providing antioxidant properties, preserving, and coloring. Some phosphates serve multiple functions simultaneously.

Multiple studies have shown that the health hazards associated with consuming ultra-processed foods are linked to a high intake of inorganic phosphates.

The body’s absorption rate and utilization efficiency for phosphorus vary depending on the source. When a person eats natural foods, the release of phosphorus is relatively slow, and not all of it is absorbed. In contrast, inorganic phosphate food additives are quickly absorbed into the bloodstream, significantly increasing blood phosphate levels and releasing hormones that promote phosphate excretion. These hormones can have a range of adverse effects on the cardiovascular system, kidneys, and bones, resulting in reduced vitamin D levels, bone loss, vascular calcification, and impaired kidney filtration capacity.
Using inorganic phosphate additives in animal or cell experiments results in immediate side effects. “That gives you enough rationale to suspect that these may happen also in humans,” said Dr. Uribarri.

Over 50 types of phosphate additives, including around 30 types of inorganic phosphates, have been approved by the FDA and are frequently used. These additives are classified as GRAS, meaning their quantity allowance and types are largely unregulated. According to a 2023 study published in Nutrients, 59 percent of ready-made meals and 47 percent of processed meats contain inorganic phosphates.
The daily recommended intake of phosphorus is 700 milligrams. Most Americans consume a significantly higher amount, with adult women consuming an average of 1,189 milligrams per day and men consuming 1,596 milligrams.
One study tracking adult Swedish women for nine years showed that those with higher phosphorus levels in their bodies, attributed to consuming more phosphorus-rich ultra-processed foods, had a 57 percent higher risk of developing cardiovascular diseases. Another study involving nearly 10,000 American adults indicated that one’s mortality rate began to increase significantly at a daily phosphorus intake exceeding 1,400 milligrams.

Mortality rate increases significantly when one's daily phosphorus intake exceeds 1,400 milligrams. (The Epoch Times)

Emulsifiers
Emulsifiers are another category of substances previously thought to be harmless but now shown to have adverse effects.
Emulsifiers, known for their ability to thicken and combine resistant ingredients, can improve food texture. For example, it can prevent peanut butter from separating. They are among the most commonly used additives in industrial foods, and multiple emulsifiers are often used in a single product.

The FDA has approved 171 emulsifiers, while the European Union (EU) allows only 63. A French study found that seven of the 10 food additives most consumed by adults were emulsifiers. A 2024 study published in The Lancet Regional Health Americas showed that over half of the over 33 million packaged foods purchased by American households contained emulsifiers, including 81 percent of candy and gum, 88 percent of puddings and ice creams, and 87 percent of frozen entrees and pizzas.

A study published in Nature investigated the effects of two common emulsifiers, carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) and polysorbate-80 (P80). Researchers added these emulsifiers to mice’s drinking water at a 1 percent concentration. These mice showed harmed gut microbiota, intestinal inflammation, and increased toxin translocation into the bloodstream. Furthermore, the emulsifiers also induced increased appetite and obesity. These effects persisted for at least six weeks after discontinuing the emulsifiers.
The FDA permits a maximum addition of 1 percent for P80, while CMC—classified as GRAS—has an allowable addition of up to 2 percent.

In a controlled human study published in Gastroenterology, 16 healthy adult volunteers were randomly divided into two groups. Both groups consumed the same diet, but one group’s meals included 15 grams of CMC per day—a dose comparable to that consumed by people who eat many processed foods. The results showed that CMC intake increased instances of reduced gut microbiota diversity and depleted beneficial short-chain fatty acids. Further tests revealed erosion of the intestinal mucus layer and bacterial infiltration.
The researchers noted that the widespread use of emulsifiers in food “may have contributed to increased incidence of chronic inflammatory diseases.”

The emulsifier carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) alters the gut microbiome. (The Epoch Times)
The French study mentioned above also found that people who consumed a lot of emulsifiers had a higher risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease and overall cancer.

Authors of the Nature study noted that many of the additives consumed were granted GRAS status early on and “have not been carefully tested.” Additionally, the tests on food additives have typically used animal models designed to assess acute toxicity and cancer promotion risks, and “such testing may be inadequate.”

Unpredictable Long-Term Effects
Ms. Dunford explained that the issue with additives does not arise from consuming them once or twice. “The problem is that you have it in large amounts over a long period of time,” she said.

When looking at these epidemiologic effects, the causation is hard to prove, Dr. Uribarri noted. For example, to demonstrate conclusively that a specific additive affects human health, the researcher would need to divide tens of thousands of people into two groups randomly, have one group consume the additive while the other group does not, and continue this for five years, he explained. This is hard to achieve—in a way similar to why it took scientists so long to establish the harmful effects of smoking on the lungs.
Ms. Dunford stated that the difficulty of conducting such experiments also lies in the fact that people eat a variety of foods every day. Even the same food item, such as white bread, may contain different ingredients and additives depending on the brand or bakery.

Another issue is that additives that are safe individually might exhibit unexpected interactions when combined.
“We do not really know what happens when you put all that (different additives) together,” Ms. Dunford said. “There are no safety studies on that.

“It is this additive effect of additives that potentially can become toxic,” she explained, drawing an analogy to a familiar children’s experiment: A bottle of cola will spray violently when several Mentos candies are dropped into it.

Mindful Choices
“We were not designed to eat processed food,” Dr. Nathan Goodyear, medical director of Arizona’s integrative cancer treatment center Brio-Medical, told The Epoch Times.
The human body is better equipped to handle foods that exist in nature rather than those that are artificial, said Ms. Dunford.

Dr. Uribarri said that busy workers cannot always prepare food from scratch and may need to use some convenience items, which is unavoidable. “But it is a matter of quantity and being more selective.”

“I am a very time-limited mother with young children. And I choose processed foods a lot of the time, but I do try my best to make sure my children balance with more natural foods,” Ms. Dunford said. She added that she ensures her children eat berries, fruits, and vegetables daily, along with less-processed proteins whenever possible.

However, Dr. Goodyear said it’s getting harder to find real food today. He describes the whole population as participating in an epidemiological trial of food additives. “None are excluded,”

Those who are following this truck on its build thread can already see the suspension modifications thanks to Carli

You can also review the swap to a slightly larger Toyo all-terrain tire.

My hope is not to make a dually into an off-roader, but just to make it possible for it to safely carry a 4,000 truck bed camper up a two-track road or on unimproved surfaces.

Today I added better headlights and I will be bolting on a bumper capable of moving a mule deer out of the way and also mount a self-recovery winch.

I just went over to Home Depot to buy a 1/2" drill bit

Just one mind you

You know the gold-colored, titanium-coated ones?

Yeah, $25.87 for just one!!!!!!!!!!

I passed

I'll sharpen an old one

Ridiculous...

New Louisiana Law Requires Ten Commandments Be Displayed in All Classrooms
Louisiana is now the first state to mandate that the text be displayed at all public schools and colleges.
Friends Read Free

New Louisiana Law Requires Ten Commandments Be Displayed in All Classrooms
By Bill Pan
6/19/2024

Louisiana has become the first state to enact a law mandating that the Ten Commandments be prominently displayed at all public schools and colleges.

Under legislation that became law on June 18, Louisiana schools that receive state funds will have to display the Ten Commandments “in each building it uses and classroom in each school under its jurisdiction.”

The bill specifies that the text must be presented at the main focal point of a poster or framed document measuring at least 11 inches by 14 inches and printed in a “large and easily readable font.”

It also requires a 200-word “context statement” explaining that the Ten Commandments were “a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.”

According to the context statement, the Ten Commandments had been included in some of the most popular textbooks in U.S. history, published by prominent public education pioneers such as William McGuffey and Noah Webster.

For example, Webster’s “The American Spelling Book” contained the Ten Commandments and sold more than 100 million copies for use by public school children all across the nation. It was still available for use in U.S. public schools as recently as 1975.

The Republican-backed measure was approved by the Louisiana state Senate on a 30–8 margin on May 16. It reached Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s desk after receiving a final House approval in a 79–16 vote on May 28.

The measure was spearheaded by Republican state Rep. Dodie Horton. Last year, she successfully led a legislative effort to require the national motto “In God We Trust” to be displayed in classrooms across the state.

Aspirin May Prevent Colorectal Cancer by Revving Up Immunity
Aspirin’s cancer-fighting prowess hinges on rallying the body’s immunity to combat malignant cells.

By George Citroner
5/23/2024

For years, scientists have said that aspirin has the potential to protect people from the deadly grip of colorectal cancer. But only now are they unlocking just how this common pain reliever may pull off such a feat.

Researchers have discovered that aspirin’s cancer-fighting prowess hinges on rallying the body’s immunity to combat malignant cells.
Aspirin Heightens Immune Surveillance of Tumors
Colorectal cancer is a type of cancer that affects either the large intestine or the rectum. Globally, it is the third most common type of cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related death. Colorectal cancer accounts for roughly one in 10 of all cancer cases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2020, there were nearly 2 million new cases of colorectal cancer—frequently detected late, limiting treatment possibilities—worldwide, and it caused more than 930,000 deaths, according to WHO.
A recent study published in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, suggested that aspirin might prevent colorectal cancer by boosting certain aspects of the natural immune response against malignant cells. Researchers analyzed 238 colorectal cancer patients who underwent surgery between 2015 and 2020, with 12 percent being regular aspirin users. Tissue samples revealed aspirin users had less cancer spread and higher tumor immune cell infiltration than non-users.

Further lab analysis showed aspirin exposure increased the expression of the CD80 protein on certain immune cells. CD80 is known for regulating cell activity, and its increased expression enhanced the immune cells’ ability to detect tumor-associated proteins.

Rectal cancer patients using aspirin exhibited higher CD80 levels in healthy rectal tissue, suggesting aspirin stimulated increased immune surveillance.

“Our study shows a complementary mechanism of cancer prevention or therapy with aspirin besides its classical drug mechanism involving inhibition of inflammation,” Dr. Marco Scarpa, a general surgeon at the University of Padova Hospital in Italy and the study’s principal investigator, said in a press release.

Further research is needed to understand the full implications of new treatments or prevention strategies.
From Pain Relief to Disease Prevention

Aspirin’s history dates back around 3,500 years to ancient Egyptians using willow bark, a natural source of the compound. However, it wasn’t synthesized as a drug until 1897 by Bayer chemist Felix Hoffmann, eventually becoming one of the world’s most widely used medications.
Evidence shows this naturally occurring substance is proving effective against significant health threats.

One study linked low-dose aspirin use (81 milligrams at least three times weekly) to significantly reduced risk of a certain type of hormone-fueled breast cancer in over 57,000 women followed for eight years. “This is the first report to suggest that the reduction in risk occurs for low-dose aspirin and not for regular-dose aspirin and only among women with the hormone receptor-positive/HER2-negative subtype,” the authors wrote.
In low 75- to 100-milligram doses, aspirin can reduce heart attack risk by decreasing blood clot formation in diseased arteries. Thus, those who’ve had a heart attack or stroke are often advised to take daily aspirin to prevent blood clots.

Despite the benefits, all medications, including aspirin, carry potential risks. Though typically safe, aspirin can cause gastrointestinal ulcers, increased bleeding risk from blood thinning, and allergic reactions like hives and asthma in some people.

Along time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was working on many "activities" with another non-DOD kinetic action group. These guys were professionals, and I talked and got to know over one hundred of them to some extent. One thing that stood out in our conversations was their poor opinions of the ATF. I heard things like thugs, terrible cops, killers, bullies, and stuff like that. I recall standing up for the ATF guys but was called out. They asked me how many of my ex-Alma Mader I knew who joined the FBI, C__, DEA, Federal Marshals, Air Marshals, and the like. Sure enough, I know guys in all those groups Just like there were ex-Army/Marines in this group I was within a certain stinky country. Then they asked me to name one of our people in ATF...And yep, I can't. I left those days and a certain mission with the impression that the ATF just might be a bunch of thugs like all these special operators had said. That caused me to pay more attention. This article popped up, and as a concerned patriot, I think we need to look at these guys and get their leadership back on course through our elected leaders and proper procedures.
No one is above the law. If these officers or anyone else barges into the home of a man who is armed, especially with doors coming down and people yelling is going to protect his family. Who's to tell if it isn't some violent gang members that Biden gave free passage across the border?

No Charges in Deadly ATF Arkansas Home Raid

‘This is not over,’ said the attorney for the family of Bryan Malinowski, former executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.
Friends Read Free

No Charges in Deadly ATF Arkansas Home Raid

An armed ATF agent reaches toward the doorbell camera at the home of Bryan Malinowski, moments before disabling the video and breaching the door with a tactical team, in a predawn raid March 19, 2024. (Malinowski Family via Bud Cummins)
Beth Brelje
By Beth Brelje

The use of deadly force was legal and justified in the ATF’s March 19, early morning shooting death in the West Little Rock, Arkansas home of Bryan Malinowski, according to Pulaski County Prosecutor Will Jones. In a June 14 letter, Mr. Jones announced there would be no charges in the case.

Mr. Malinowski was executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock until that morning, when a convoy of 10 law enforcement vehicles rolled into his upscale neighborhood and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), holding automatic rifles in the ready position, placed tape on his video doorbell, announced their presence, and in less than one minute, broke into the home while he was sleeping. Mr. Malinowski, a gun collector, woke up, grabbed his gun, exchanged gunfire with the ATF, and Mr. Malinowski was shot dead in front of his wife.

The ATF had obtained a warrant to search his home for guns and evidence. The agency believed Mr. Malinowski was selling guns without a $200 Federal Firearms License (FFL) and without asking buyers for the proper information. According to an affidavit of probable cause, some of the guns he had sold were recovered during the commission of a crime, although the crimes did not involve the direct use of guns.

It is unclear why the ATF did not contact Mr. Malinowski at his workplace or during normal waking hours.
Timeline
Mr. Jones said the incident was recorded by a Little Rock Police Department mobile video recorder and from that he shared the timeline in his letter.

6:02:58 a.m.—The Little Rock patrol officer employed his vehicle’s emergency lights and siren to announce the presence of law enforcement.

6:03:27 a.m.—Agents use a ram to breach the door.

6:03:43 a.m.—Mr. Malinowski fires the first of four shots from his Colt Defender .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun.

6:03:44 a.m.—ATF agent returns fire; discharging three shots.

Mr. Jones also included a summary of the witness statements and evidence, although he did not identify the witnesses.

“The first agent (Agent 1) to enter the residence looked to his left and saw Mr. Malinowski at the end of the hallway pointing the handgun at him. The agent immediately dropped to the ground and rolled to avoid potential gunfire. The second agent to enter (Agent 2) saw Mr. Malinowski firing downwards at Agent 1. At this time, Agent 2 was struck in the foot. As Mr. Malinowski raised his gun towards Agent 2, Agent 2 fired, striking Mr. Malinowski. Immediately after the shooting, officers requested emergency personnel and begin [sic] administering medical aid to Mr. Malinowski.”

A law enforcement officer is justified in using deadly physical force if the officer reasonably believes force is necessary to defend himself or another person from the use of deadly force, according to the Arkansas code Mr. Jones cited.

“Prior to entering the residence, the officers identified themselves as police by initiating the lights and siren of a patrol vehicle that was parked in front of the residence” and knocking on the front door, he said. Agents also wore clothing marked ATF or Police on large letters.

According to previous statements from Mr. Malinowski’s wife, the couple was sleeping when the ATF knocked.

“The state’s investigation didn’t attempt to make independent judgments about whether ATF violated the law when they broke down Mr. and Mrs. Malinowski’s front door. But that question should be a matter of grave concern for the rest of us,” Bud Cummins, the Malinowski family attorney told The Epoch Times in a statement.

He noted Mr. Jones’s letter shows armed agents waited “a mere 28 seconds” after knocking and before breaking down the front door of Mr. Malinowski’s home. Mr. Jones said legally, law enforcement must give the person inside a reasonable amount of time to get to the door and to admit them voluntarily before forcibly entering.

A search warrant, Mr. Cummins said, is not automatically a license for a home invasion.

“How long is it reasonable to wait for someone to answer their front door at 6 a.m. in response to unexplained loud pounding in a 3,000 square foot fully insulated home? Let’s pray the answer isn’t 28 seconds. The Fourth Amendment means more than that to every single one of us,” Mr. Cummins said. “This is not over.”