Outrun Change – We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.

A few thoughts on the poem “The Gift of Peace.”

Part of the right kingdom: Inside view of Prague cathedral. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

A few thoughts about the next post, “The Gift of Peace.”

Part of the left kingdom: United States Supreme Court. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The poem is a tribute to the U.S. Air Force officers and enlisted crew in the field on Christmas day 2023. Many launch crews, security staff, maintainers, facility managers, and cooks were on duty December 25.

Actually those teams are on duty 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Currently, each team is in the field for a week at a time.

This has been ongoing at Minuteman bases since the early 1960s. Teams have been in the field continuously for 60 years defending the United States.

You may think it odd to see a post thanking members of USAF that have kept nuclear tipped ICBMs on alert around the clock for half a century showing up a couple days after I have four posts celebrating the birth of the Christ child.

There is no contradiction at all between celebrating Christ’s arrival in the world to then be killed in order to pay the penalty for sin at the same time as I celebrate those who stand alert with nuclear weapons to defend my homeland and the Western world.

A moments explanation of doctrine will show why there is no contradiction.

Left kingdom and right kingdom

“The Gift of Peace” – A thank you to all the missileers in the field today and every day for the last 60 years.

South Dakota, USA: Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The Gift of Peace

Quenten Thomas

The season now is Christmas,

A time of thankful cheer.

Peace our gift is given,

Its silence you can hear.

For way up in the north tier,

On plains of snowy white.

Deterrence still is working,

Each day and through the night.

While seldom they’re remembered,

And often times ignored.

The peace they’ve long provided,

For decades past and more.

Through dry heat days of summer,

And the bitter winters gale.

The peace on earth defended,

For years it has prevailed.

The work of oh so many,

Throughout these long past years.

Their standard yet unequaled,

By all their other peers.

While children all are nestled,

So snug and very warm.

Some troop is there protecting,

Their life from evils harm.

It’s quiet on these winter nights,

The northern lights will shine.

Another blessed Christmas,

There’s Peace for all Mankind.

First appeared in newsletter of Association of Air Force Missileers. Used with permission of author and AAFM.

See previous post here, for a few thoughts on this poem.

Out of the ordinary renditions of traditional Christmas songs, or when I finally understood “The Little Drummer Boy.”

It was not until about a decade ago that I finally understood the song “The Little Drummer Boy,” which is a fictional story of a little boy who could bring no gift to the newborn baby Jesus than playing on his drum.

Took me decades of listening to the song before I realized that every talent, offering, service, activity, positive action, and good deed I could ever bring to Jesus as an offering is nothing more to the creator of the universe than a little boy playing a drum.

I can give nothing, absolutely nothing, to Jesus other than my heart.

Strangely as it seems, that is all He ever wants from me.

That little thing is all He wants from you. Give Jesus your heart. He will give you riches unimaginable.

“The Little Drummer Boy” as you have not heard it before:

for KING + COUNTRY – Little Drummer Boy | LIVE from Phoenix

Not quite sure why this variation of O Come All Ye Faithful and O Holy Night moves my heart so much. I wish it could be heard by the entire world after the gospel good news is explained and the lyrics of the songs described.

If you have heard the good news of Jesus being born so he could then die on the cross, this will bring tears to your eyes.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra – O’ Come All Ye Faithful / O’ Holy Night

“Joy to the World” – We celebrate again that Jesus bodily entered into our lives.

Joy to the World (2017) – Gabriel Trumpet Ensemble & The Tabernacle Choir

Joy to the world, the Lord is come
Let Earth receive her King
Let every heart prepare Him room
And Heaven and nature sing
And Heaven and nature sing
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing

Joy to the Earth, the Savior reigns
Let all their songs employ
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy

“Silent night, Holy Night”

Another joy filled Christmas song which brings peace as we ponder and reflect in preparation of celebrating Christ’s birth in the morning.

Bravely Gray

The video will make you weep in joy. Watch the visible poverty of Mary & Joseph, reactions of the shepherds, and especially the wise man when he finds the object of his long search.

Lyrics:

Silent night, holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother and Child.
Holy Infant, so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent night, holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight;
Glories stream from heaven afar,
Heav’nly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ the Savior is born,
Christ the Savior is born!

“O Holy Night” – the night of our dear Savior’s birth

https://youtu.be/62o4i0gSiaU

Melvin Crispell III & Mav City Gospel Choir / Maverick City Music

Lyrics:

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth;
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
‘Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn;

Chorus
Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices!
O night divine! O night when Christ was born.
O night, O holy night, O night divine.

Update on US nuclear weapons

Training B61-12 (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Devan Halstead)

The new B61-12 tactical nuclear gravity bomb has been approved for deployment on the B-2A Spirit bomber.

Article in The Warzone on 11/27/23 provided this news and background on other tactical nukes: B-2 Spirit Now Operational With New B61-12 Nuclear Bombs.

Oh great. The mask foolishness is back.

Go ahead and wear your mask that way.
Given that it won’t work, doesn’t matter how you wear it.
Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Alleged health care experts are at it again in California.

11/1/23 – Fox 2 KTVU – Masks required in certain settings again in California – Several counties in the San Francisco Bay Area will start requiring masks in hospitals and skilled nursing facilities.

Everyone going into any medical facility in Marin County and Santa Clara counties now has to have a mask. The diktat in Alameda, Sonoma, San Mateo, and Contra Costa counties only demand healthcare workers be masked up when there are around patients.

Destruction from lockdowns is becoming more obvious, education impact – part 4

Earlier post reported chronic absenteeism rate for students in California tripled as a result of the pandemic shutdowns.

Two more articles describe the skyrocketing rate of chronic absenteeism in Minnesota and across the nation.

What could possibly be driving this? On twitter, Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) said:

“We told the kids that school wasn’t essential. They listened.”

That’s about right. Schools were shuttered anywhere from six to eighteen months in most places around the country.

In terms of the so-called remote learning, there wasn’t much teaching going on. In one district near me in California, teaching time during the pandemic was 45 minutes in the morning and then 45 minutes in the afternoon. Class time was merely 90 minutes a day.

Yeah, our education leaders, political leaders, religious leaders, and public health leaders all said school wasn’t important. A whole bunch of kids got the message: school is optional.

I hope against hope that the allegedly educated educators someday will be held accountable for the destruction they willfully caused.

New reports describe widespread chronic absenteeism:

9/15/23 – Washington Examiner – Chronic absenteeism skyrockets in Minnesota public schools – Before the pandemic, chronic absenteeism in Minnesota public schools was 15%. That is the number of students who were missing 10 or more days in the school year.

The most recent data for 2022?

Updates of efforts by California county to crush local church and the church’s efforts to stand up for the rights of all Christians.

…closed due to government violation of First Amendment. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Santa Clara County in California has been putting pressure on Calvary Chapel San Jose for daring to hold worship services during the pandemic.

We now know the efforts to suppress Christian worship were a flagrant violation of the First Amendment, as determined by the Supreme Court in multiple rulings. See end of this discussion for list of posts describing the rebukes from the Supreme Court. (If you want to see the results when ideologues write feeble legal briefs, I heartily encourage you to read the dissents from the Supreme Court’s rulings.)

The county levied plenty of fines and a temporary injunction against the church. Previous article describing Calvary Chapel San Jose’s efforts to exercise their first amendment right to free expression of religion:

11/13/20 – Continued pressure on churches in California to restrict worship as strip clubs open their doors in San Diego under protection of First Amendment.

Since my post back in November 2020, we have learned the county was allegedly conducting surreptitious surveillance on the church during the pandemic. A neighboring church allegedly assisted with the surveillance. Fines issued by the county have been dismissed at the appellate level.

Now the church has filed suit against the county for their surveillance. They are standing up for the rights of all Christians to gather in worship.

This discussion is posted here on Nonprofit Update blog, as well as Outrun Change, because this affects the freedom of many in this audience.

By the way, if you see an above average amount of ridicule and sarcasm in this post, it is here in the hope that out-loud, belly laughter directed at officials will encourage said officials to reconsider their foolish ways. Supreme Court rulings don’t seem to have had that effect yet.

3/16/23 – The Christian Post – California church denies working with gov’t officials to surveil lockdown-defying Calvary Chapel

9/11: Never Forget

For my remembrance of the 9/11 attacks during which 2,996 Americans were slaughtered by 19 terrorists, my family watched 9/11: The Filmmakers’ Commemorative Edition.

The movie started as a documentary following one rookie New York firefighter through training and his nine months of probation. In doing so, the two filmmakers were following an engine company on a call when the first hijacked airplane hit. The strike was on camera.

Destruction from lockdowns is becoming more obvious – part 3

Visual illustration of what lockdowns did to our health, perception of time, and our children’s education. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The destruction caused by government imposed pandemic restrictions, especially lockdowns is becoming more obvious as researchers look at the damage.

Articles discussed below:

Increased illness from alcohol abuse.
Chronic absenteeism in California schools tripled after the pandemic shutdowns.
High portions of colleges that are closed since the pandemic are Christian.
The lockdowns actually did affect your perception of time.

8/3/23 – SciTechDaily – Lockdowns and Liquor: Surging Severe, Alcohol-Related Liver Injury During Covid Pandemic – One study quantifies what was obvious at the time of the government ordered shutdowns. Sales of booze accelerated and abuse of alcohol skyrocketed.

Getting a Covid booster shot makes you more likely to get sick. Imagine that.

As our alleged experts in the so-called public health sector lay groundwork to impose another round of Covid restrictions, it might be worth paying attention to the research demonstrating ineffectiveness of the vaccinations.

In fact, looks like the bivalent booster is dangerous because it increases your risk of infection.

Destruction from lockdowns is becoming more obvious – part 2 – Did government policies drive up the number of deaths during the pandemic?

When the negatives outweigh the positives, it was not a good decision. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

The damage caused by government imposed Covid restrictions and lockdowns is beginning to be quantified.

The following pair of studies suggest restrictions caused far more deaths than lives saved. If this research holds after further study, government policies increased the number of deaths during the pandemic.

Clean energy isn’t clean.

Wind turbines and solar panels don’t grow on trees.

By Joshua Antonini.

Reprinted with permission of Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Wind and solar energy do not generate much electricity, but they have a great power to cloud people’s minds. It is now fairly well known that wind and solar can pose serious threats to the nation’s wildlife — from endangered right whales to tens of thousands of bird deaths each year from solar. But optimistic green energy advocates still don’t realize the many environmental impacts associated with manufacturing, maintaining, and disposing of solar panels and wind turbines.

It takes a great deal of material to produce solar panels and wind turbines. Wind and solar energy technologies collect diffuse and intermittent gusts of wind and rays of sunlight to generate electricity, which means they have a very low energy density in comparison to other generation technologies, like fossil fuels or nuclear.

Because of the diffuse nature of their fuel sources, renewables consume orders of magnitude more materials for the same electricity output, thereby causing greater environmental burdens than do more dense energy sources.

A single 100-megawatt natural gas-fired turbine about as large as a residential house will power 75,000 homes. Replacing that energy output with wind requires 20 wind turbines that occupy around 10 square miles of land, and it also needs “enormous quantities of conventional materials, including concrete, steel, and fiberglass, along with less common materials, including ‘rare earth’ elements such as dysprosium,” Mark Mills, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in a 2020 report.

Increased demands for materials leads to the first major impact: Wind and solar require massive increases in mining.