An Old Time (circa 2019) Christmas in Baton Rouge

Gary McCoy, Shiloh, IL

Pastor Tony Spell is a man who takes his texts seriously. He believes in the plain truth of the Bible and the First Amendment. And that’s why Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, LA will be having Christmas services as usual this year.

In person. In the presence of God.

Pastor Spell told me this weekend 31 buses from Life Tabernacle will leave the parking lot and bring poor children from an 80–mile radius back to church for a Christmas service and gift–giving event. On a typical Sunday 647 children participate, but Christmas is expected to be much larger since every other church in the area has canceled the celebration of the birth of Christ on orders from Caesar.

These pastors rationalize their weakness and soothe their conscience by claiming “virtual church” is a breakthrough harnessing technology to reach the Body of Christ. The truth is “virtual church” is as worthless as “virtual learning.” It atomizes the congregation, leaving it distanced, isolated and abandoned.

In a shocking testimony of just how pastors have failed their flocks, a Parade magazine poll found only 9 percent of Christians plan to attend Christmas services.

Many pastors outsourced the defense of their rights and hired lawyers to convince judges to allow them to do what Christ has commanded. California’s John MacArthur, who began the year by complying with the Flu Fuhrers, finally had enough and reopened his church. There are other isolated outbreaks of Christians standing up to Caesar, but most pastors are happy to keep their heads down, embracing meek and mild.

Meek doesn’t come to mind with Pastor Spell. He’s willing to pay the price for his refusal to bow to Caesar.

The chief of police arrested him in front of the entire Life Tabernacle congregation last March when he refused to close the church. Since then Pastor Spell been arrested or given a summons a total of 33 times. “I keep the paperwork framed on the wall of my office,” he said.

One Sunday Spell stepped from behind the pulpit to reveal the ankle monitor a judge forced him to wear when he was sentenced to house arrest. That defiance earned him an arrest warrant for contempt of court.

Sentenced to 90 days in jail for the offense, Spell asked to preach one more Sunday before going to prison. The judge agreed and then backed down. He claimed since Pastor Spell was no doubt exposed to the Flu Manchu from all his unauthorized preaching, the judge didn’t want to risk exposing convicts to this one–man disease vector.

During the 10 months Life Tabernacle has been open Spell says, “There have been no virus deaths in the congregation. We have a religious conviction against doing things that make no sense.”

Worshipers are not forced to run a Death Gauntlet of thermometer–wielding, disinfectant–spraying nannies. Spell trusts his congregation to exercise common sense. If members are vulnerable or sick, they should stay home.

Louisiana authorities have not produced any numbers on Kung Flu cases traced to the church. Instead, Gov. John Bel Edwards went on Jake Tapper’s show and announced he is doing everything in his power to shut Pastor Spell down.

It isn’t working. There have been 350 baptisms this year and Spell explains, “Attendance has grown. While other churches are closed down, their membership has come to our services. People from 50 states have come to attend. A federal judge from Indiana flew down to join us. Life Tabernacle is thriving spiritually, numerically and financially.”

A telling commentary on religious leadership in the area is that while pastors have privately told Spell they support him, not one has publically followed his example and opened their church. Prominent elected ‘conservatives’ are also remarkably shy. Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy has plenty of time to appear on Tucker Carlson to criticize government overreach, but he has never found time for so much as a phone call to Pastor Spell.

Spell is sustained in his fight against unconstitutional and ungodly edicts by his congregation, which regularly votes to continue to stay open and stay preaching.

I’m struck by the difference between Christian pastors in China and in the USA. In China, these courageous men risk imprisonment and torture to preach the Gospel. Their churches are bulldozed. The congregations monitored by state security.

Here weak shepherds take refuge in their government–approved, electronic ersatz religion. It’s stunning that they abandoned Easter and are now surrendering Christmas.

Pastor Spell has some advice for these uncertain trumpets, “It’s time to open. None of us individually are as strong as all of us. There are not enough jails to stop Christians in America from worshiping if we all go to church. If [pastors] had joined with me, by now we would have beaten this.”

Long Past Time for Conservatives to Abandon the GOP

Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune, UT

It’s my fervent hope the two Georgia Senate runoff elections are the last time conservatives will be forced to vote for Republicans because no conservative alternatives exist. For over 30 years conservatives have been told by the rich who run the Republican party that we have no choice but to hold our nose and vote for candidates who will turn on us immediately after they’re sworn into office.

Republican election victories don’t mean conservatives will win anything. It only means conservatives will lose slower. Compare what Obama did for his base during his eight years in office with what Republicans have done through the decades.

William Voegeli, senior editor of the Claremont Review, refreshes our memory: “Since 1994 Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency for 12 years, and never once during that time did the party ever zero out funding for the National Endowment for the Arts or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“If the low–hanging fruit in Washington is always higher than the tallest Republican ladder, then something is fundamentally wrong. If the conservative high priests don’t take limited government seriously, why should the voters?”

GOP government is only limited when it comes to issues conservatives care about.

The conservative base cares about immigration, jobs, culture and family. Donald Trump beat a field of candidates former Republican George Will called the most talented since 1980 because Trump ran on issues relevant to the conservative base.

And the GOP establishment hated him for it. Trump had two years with complete control of Congress. And what did Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell do? They looked smug, superior and blocked Trump at every opportunity.

Now that Trump may be leaving office it’s business as usual. Republicans can hardly wait to repudiate Trump’s issues and his voters. Senators John Cornyn and Susan Collins, who both just rode the Trump re–election wave, want to grant amnesty to DACA illegals as a first step toward “immigration reform.” What that means is total amnesty for up to 30 million illegals.

Republican Cong. Tom Reed says now “pragmatic” lawmakers will rise to the top, which is code for big–spending RINOs sponsoring corporate pork bills.

And last week I wrote about how every single Republican in the Senate voted unanimously to let US corporations import more low–wage foreign tech workers to take the jobs of middle class US citizens.

After that final outrage Pedro Gonzalez, assistant editor of American Greatness, tweeted, “Burn the GOP down.”

Yes, and I’ll supply the $2.00–a–gallon Trump gasoline.

The Republican party is beyond reform. It is too entrenched. Too corrupt. And too wealthy. I used to think over time conservatives could beat RINOs in primaries. I was wrong.

Republicans are wholly owned by large corporate donors who are leftists socially and tax Scrooges. Incumbents cannot be beaten in Republican primaries because there are no large conservative billionaires to fund challengers. We don’t have a George Soros or a Tom Steyer.

Two years ago I had hope for a free market primary solution from the innovative Norbert Richter. He founded FireYourCongressman.com. Richter’s fund pooled money from small contributors and when a qualified challenger arose donations were made in the form of a direct contributions and independent expenditures. It was the first free market effort to fund term limits. It was a great idea. And it failed because Richter wasn’t rich.

In the 2018 cycle FireYourCongressman raised $103,306.00. In the 2020 cycle he raised $16,655.00. The failure wasn’t because the conservative base is cheap.

Near the mid–point of the 2020 campaign the cocktail conservatives in Congress were outraged that small–donors had provided more than half of Trump’s billion–dollar war chest and 56 percent of those contributions were in grocery–money sized checks of less than $200. Conservatives will contribute to conservative candidates if they are aware they exist.

It’s Curator of the Senate Mitch McConnell’s mission to make sure genuine conservatives stay unknown and unfunded.

One conservative Trump supporter even tried a lawsuit. Bob Heghmann, a Virginia Beach, VA retired lawyer sued the national and Virginia GOP contending Republicans “[have] been engaged in a pattern of Racketeering which involves massive fraud perpetrated on Republican voters.”

Heghmann added, “Republicans could have repealed and replaced Obamacare with two–page bill. But the leadership never intended to do it.”

That didn’t work either.

The Republican party is a collection of morally corrupt corporate tools who protect their donors at the expense of their voters. It cannot be reformed. A double RINO victory in Georgia will buy conservatives enough time to start building their own conservative party from the ground up.

Let’s send a message in January: This one and we’re done.

Traitorous Republicans Betray Their Base Again

Gary McCoy, Cagle Cartoons

Joe Biden was briefly infamous for telling coal miners they should “learn to code” after Obama administration Global Warming punishment rendered them jobless. What he didn’t tell the miners was going to school in pursuit of a STEM degree wouldn’t guarantee a job either.

But the former miners would have the distinction of being forced out of two careers by government policy.

Here are the facts regarding US citizens who graduate with ‘cutting–edge’ STEM degrees (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). U.S. News and World Report found, “Overall, US colleges produce twice the number of STEM graduates annually as find jobs in those fields [and] only about one in four STEM bachelor’s degree holders has a STEM job.”

Instead foreign workers imported into the USA on H1–B visas by so–called American tech companies comprise two–thirds of all new STEM employees. These human imports are willing to trade lower wages now for the chance to gain a Green card and become a US citizen in the future.

As a result, average wage rates in the tech sector are unchanged from Bill Clinton’s presidency. Even citizens who manage to land a STEM job are often working on borrowed time. Companies like Disney, Eversource Energy, and Southern California Edison contract with a turnkey outsourcing firm frequently based in India. The firm hires the workers, pays them in local currency — sheep, goats, whatever — and then delivers the brand new, entirely untrained staff to their new U.S. jobs.

And to prove how soulless these tech HR departments really are, the citizens being fired are required to train their replacements if they want to receive severance pay. This is like requiring ISIS captives to sharpen swords.

One of the few times these career walking dead were able to fight back was when 200 citizens working for the Tennessee Valley Authority — a federally–chartered corporation created by FDR — decided to go public when TVA CEO Jeff Lyash decided he was tired of creating jobs in Tennessee and wanted to start growing careers in Thiruvananthapuram.

This is cruel corporate arrogance at its most corrupt. An organization created by Congress to aid Americans has no more business importing foreign serfs to replace citizens than the USPS has hiring drug mules to deliver the mail.

Instead of meekly training their Indian H1–B replacements, these brave patriots met with President Trump who promptly fired two TVA board members and said he would continue firing board members until the imports were returned to sender.

The response of Republicans in the Senate to this small ripple in the avalanche of foreigners taking jobs from citizens was telling. Instead of supporting the American citizens who elect them and mistakenly thought the GOP had their best interests at heart, every last Republican senator agreed unanimously this week that the US economy needs even more low–wage STEM workers.

Sen. Mike Lee’s (R–Google) SB 386 passed without a formal vote because not a single Republican had a problem with making it harder for citizens to get a job and depressing the wages of those who do.

And to add contempt to callous, Lee called the bill the Fairness for High–Skilled Immigrants Act.

These cocktail conservatives had a choice between supporting the citizens who vote for them and the tech companies who gave all their political donations to Biden. They chose Big Tech and betrayed Big Tex.

They listened to paid liars like Mile Hansen — a Lee lackey — who claims, “many business leaders share a common challenge in realizing their global potential. The problem isn’t a lack of innovative ideas. It’s a lack of high-skilled labor.”

Yeah, these fat, lazy, hillbilly elegy–looking Trump voters just can’t cut it in Big Tech America, in spite of the fact there are two US graduates every year for each open STEM job.

 “In Utah,” he whines, “like many places around the country, tech CEOs have maxed out their local talent pool.” So instead of flying in applicants from Pennsylvania these cheap–labor plutocrats prefer flying in serfs from Punjab.

As Breitbart said, “Every Republican and Democratic senator has let Lee pass a bill through the Senate that will supercharge the outsourcing of the white-collar jobs needed by America’s professional class and its college-educated children.”

And the Republicans conservatives foolishly elect are just fine with that.

Remember that stab–in–the–back the next time any of them ask you for a contribution. Ask you to volunteer for their campaign. And worst of all, ask you for your vote.

The only job these wretches care about is their own.

Trump has threated to veto the defense appropriation bill if it doesn’t include a provision to remove Section 230 protections from Big Tech. Trump should remember the TVA workers and add SB 386 to his veto list.