China was a major player in the Panama Papers scandal, including Hong Kong offices. British Prime Minister Cameron was involved. The British foreign secretary warned of threats to Hong Kong freedoms. Hong Kong’s CEO, Leung, hit back at calls for independence in the face of Hong Kong’s brand-new “National” party. China continues to crack down on corruption.
Japan send a sub and two destroyers to dock in Manila in the wake of the new Japan-Philipines defense pact. The US and Taiwan are drafting stronger ties affecting visitors. As Taiwan’s rising DPP political party gains popularity, the lame duck KMT-Nationalist party plays power against the DPP to the bitter end. North Korea tested a long-range nuclear missile engine to “guarantee” a strike on the continental US.
Friends and enemies are everywhere and everyone has a motive for everything.
Polls aren’t lying. The divisive wind from Wisconsin blows through Indiana. The State GOP is already stacking anti-Trump delegates in hopes of a contested convention; this, despite the fact that polls—which aren’t lying—show 1/3 of Republican voters will turn on the party if Trump leads, but isn’t nominated. The Boston Globe borders on faux news over the border, in an unabashed snowball of anti-Trump efforts. It all perfectly mirrors stage three of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, negotiating, depression, acceptance.
How should we make sense of it all? Of all States, militia-friendly Indiana should be fond of the say-it-in-yer-face Donald. The dissents, however, parallel those of the Bible.
To review: The Bible has over 42,000 documented manuscripts supporting that the original writings are as they were. The only peer that comes close is Homer’s Iliad, with about 500 documented manuscripts. Surmountable archaeological evidence collaborates, enumerates, and elaborates the events of the Bible without contradiction. Jesus’s death and resurrection could not be faked or misreported given the documented witnesses, cohesive accounting of events, and the events as they are reportedly agreed to have happened. All these can be researched as the information is widely available to the public. If the Bible is not real, then novelists should find out how fiction became perfectly cohesive with history without a single footprint of tampering. How many authors do that?
Though dissidents overlook the evidence in their academic-sounding explanations for the Bible as having been allegedly fabricated, they seem to overlook one thing: If the Bible is the first perfectly fake document, shouldn’t academics also focus on uncovering whatever brilliant methods led to a manuscript that can’t be proven false?
Usually, when competent people give high-grade arguments against an idea, but don’t pursue the brilliance their own arguments imply, this indicates that they know their arguments are phony. And usually, this indicates stages three and four of the grief process. It’s like a mother saying to her five year old, “The dog did this? Then we need to call American Idol and audition the first dog who can draw stick figures on the wall.”
The reason people provide convincing arguments against the Bible—even though they don’t pursue those ideas as they would if their arguments were true—is simple. People refuse to believe the Bible, despite the evidence, because, like five-year-olds who don’t know they will get caught blaming their mischief on the dog, they don’t want to change how they live.
The Bible teaches that we should forgive our enemies, remembering that we need no grudges since God is sovereign. It tells us to look after our neighbors just as we look after ourselves. It teaches against breaking wedding vows. And the entire debate on sexual orientation is eclipsed by the Bible’s teaching that we should love God more than anyone else—usually “Christian homosexuals” give arguments that talk more about their desire for human love than their abounding love for God, rendering their “Christian-homosexual” argument irrelevant before it can receive a fair debate. Christians love God first—or did they forget that part?
The Bible is only one example. People reject many ideas and virtues, not because they disagree, but because they don’t want to change their unvirtuous behavior.
What is Indiana hiding? Why is the should-be pro-Trump State so set against the Donald? Consider the agricultural numbers published by the Indiana State government.
According to the report in 2012 from the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, 19.4M of Indiana’s 23.3M acres is farm and forest land, 83%. Indiana’s population at the time was 6,537,344; 245,000 worked in the $11.2B agriculture industry. The industry stacks up to $4B in corn, $2.9B in soybeans, $1.2B in pigs, $1.1B in chickens, and $660M in dairy. Each farm averaged 245 acres. According to Statista, Indiana’s GDP that year was $280.49B; according to Indiana University, only about half of the population was working (est. approx. 3.3M in the labor force). Indiana’s produce ranked well in the nation, their staple products often in the top ten.
Do those numbers make sense?
That’s a lot of land and money. If true, 7.4% of Indiana’s labor force contributed to only 3.9% of the economy on 83% of the land, each person bringing $45,700 in revenue. That’s labor union bargaining power! The Democratic lobbyists should be all over Indiana agriculture like fire ants on a sandwich. Yet, according to this, Indiana farming is half as efficient per person as the rest of the State, but makes a lot of money. The remaining jobs in Indiana should bring in an average of $88K per capita per year, on only 17% of the remaining land! Everyone in the USA should be scrambling to work in Indiana where non-farming jobs are worth an average of almost $90K to each employer. So, why aren’t they?
Remember, the reported agriculture jobs were rounded to the nearest thousand while the population figures measure to the ones’ place. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, 40% of Wisconsin dairy farms are Latino workers. Were Indiana farm jobs an estimate? Could numbers given to the State Department of Agriculture been somehow incomplete or difficult to verify?
Let’s re-work some numbers. Let’s say that half of the agricultural labor force is from out of State, not being counted in the stats. And, lets say that farm labor is actually half a million. That would mean that each person brings under $22K in revenue each year, which seems more realistic. Now, each worker costs less money to the big farms. Accordingly, the rest of the unions, lobbyists, and work force doesn’t want to flock to Indiana—except for people from a country with a lower cost of living than the US. 12% of Indiana’s work force contributing to 3.9% of the economy—try putting that in the next State of the Union Address—easy to believe, difficult to prove, unlikely to report.
At least two farming States and the Boston Globe are all in a tizzy about losing the illegals. But, no one seems to be able to figure out why farming States don’t like Trump.
Will the IRS investigate? Probably not. That whole taxation and representation part of history seems to be making an encore, along with America’s next and fast-approaching Bible study renaissance.
Last was definitely a week of over-reaching. Asian Communist leaders, like American second-place primary candidates, clearly don’t know when they are losing. They just keep going, no matter the dangers, no matter the doom.
China’s hardline is beyond hardline. This came out so clearly as an ambassador explained that there is no negotiation with China. Beijing truly sees itself as entitled to everything; any discussion serves to inform China of how to get it and to help others discover that the world is as much wrong as it is China’s birthright. So, when the US plans another sail-by, the US isn’t just wrong, it’s ignorant and needs to learn. Right.
North Korean sabre rattling is normal each spring, as are the US and UN responses. It always has a different flavor, year by year. The difference this particular time was that the same “beyond hardline” stance of Bejing also became annoyingly glaringly apparent from Pyongyang.
Wisconsin’s primary will set the tone for the remainder of the election and even the transition into the next president. The principal question of this primary is about the people’s ability to see through deception. This year’s second-place candidates don’t seem to know when they are losing. Perhaps, they actually don’t care, since winning may not be their goal. Their supporters don’t seem to see any of this.
Cruz supporters say that Trump is also a hypocrite, having changed his views, but they don’t seem to see the difference between a civilian having a change of heart, then running for office vs an elected politician contradicting his campaign promises with his past voting record in Congress. The Sunday morning subculture really can’t recognize that difference any more than they can recognize when they are losing. This is because most of their history as Sunday morning Christians is filled with unfulfilled hopes and daily forgiveness of broken promises from pathological apologizers in church leadership.
Cruz’s well-rehearsed facade of the phony Sunday morning genre has hypnotized that Sunday morning subculture into ignoring Cruz’s money from lobbyists, voting for what they hate and he says he hates, and strikingly similar track record of high-effort failure. Walker oversaw an increase in State debt, then endorsed Cruz. When people spend large amounts of money on negative results, such as Sunday morning—declining as it is costly—they have to pull the wool over their own eyes and keep telling themselves they aren’t not doing the right thing. So, Cruz’ failures and Walker’s debt fit their definition of “good results”.
Put in simple terms, neither Cruz nor Churchianity know when they are losing. They always go down swinging, never winning. Churchianity can’t not trust Cruz, a fake who only has credibility from his ability to impersonate their Sunday morning show.
Trump, by contrast, visited St. Norbert College and spoke more about the students’ future. He told his story of encountering the famous William Levitt—of the Levitt towns—and shared what the then bankrupt William told him: He failed because he lost momentum. This is something that Cruz and Walker have neither the likelihood nor the experience to speak about. They are focused on campaign games while Trump speaks to the need of his audience, even in the closest and most critical primary yet and yet to come.
As goes Wisconsin’s wind, so will go the nation’s. The polls could change after Wisconsin, but the atmosphere won’t. The 2016 question asks whether Americans can see the difference between phony smoke, mirrors, puppets, and flip-flops and the real McCoy of results, leadership, and repentance unto hope. And, the answer will be foreshadowed in Wisconsin, tomorrow.
