What to do when you see someone wearing a mask improperly

 Seen in Knights group, changed to be more generic and make a point:

If you see an older American not wearing a mask, or wearing a mask improperly (mouth and nose need to be covered), do not immediately assume selfishness or ill will. Instead, especially if the mask is visible but merely not being worn correctly, take this as a sign of distress. Your mask, if you are wearing a real mask and not just some virtue signal fake mask, will protect you enough to approach them to ask what is wrong.

If they say they cannot breathe, escort them to a place where they can sit down for a bit. Ask them why they are there, offer to help them with their shopping.

This is charity. This is kindness. This is how we should ALL be acting.

Quarantine the sick, not the healthy

 As of Today, November 9, 2020, COVID-19 has infected over 50 million people worldwide, killed 1.2 million, and 35 million have already recovered from the illness.

Out of 7.8 billion human beings, more children were both born and died of abortion in 2020 than people will be killed by COVID-19.    

Now Pfizer comes along with a vaccine that is 90% effective.  For a disease that already human beings seem to have a 99.995% resistance to, for a disease that 96% of patients recover from.

Ours is not to reason why....

I am anti-choice

 I am against the choice of a man to drink and drive.

I am against the choice of anybody to take illicit substances.

As a man who has experienced the temptation of suicide, I'm damned glad that it was illegal at the time, and I'm against the choice for euthanasia.

I'm against the choice for war.

I'm against the choice to sit in a hotel room and spray bullets down at random at a crowd at a jazz festival.

I am indeed against choice for abortion.

I am not against using a caesarian when a woman can no longer medically maintain a pregnancy, as long as *every effort is made to also save the child*, EVEN WHEN all current science says the child can't be saved. But that operation is NEVER by choice- only by triage. A pregnant woman is TWO patients, not one, and both need to be respected, and that is what a personhood amendment correctly written, will bring about.

So yes, I am anti-choice.

But it goes further than that.

I'm against the choice to underpay a worker.

I'm against the choice to fail to feed somebody when you could make a difference.

I'm against the choice to have a 2nd vacation home while there is still somebody sleeping in the street.

I'm against the choice to charge high interest rates because you don't like the color of a person's skin, or fail to extend credit for home ownership because too many of the neighbors are dark.

I'm against a lot of choices. And I think the history of these untied states, has proven beyond any shadow of doubt that when you give a human being the capability to be immoral and harm their neighbor, they will.

And that is why we need a Personhood Amendment, regardless of the outcome of this election.

Found on the "unofficial" Knights of Columbus Regalia Page

 

‎Leo Marinak‎ to Knights of Columbus

Tempus Fugit Memento Mori!

Do you remember receiving the first degree?

I have a question.

Who are you to judge me!?

I have been reading and commenting on the recent posts here on the Knights of Columbus page over the past month or so, and I am so very disappointed in some of our Catholic brethren, who claim to call themselves, "Knights of Columbus." In fact, I think they are actually masons in the costume. How about that!

First of all, to those of us, who cast judgments. There's a HUGE difference between judging and righteous judgment. We have to know the difference between them. Righteous judgment is when you see your brethren worshiping Moloch, and you don't do everything you can to stop them.

• Matthew 7:1-5

1 'Do not judge, and you will not be judged;

2 because the judgements you give are the judgements you will get, and the standard you use will be the standard used for you.

3 Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the great log in your own?

4 And how dare you say to your brother, "Let me take that splinter out of your eye," when, look, there is a great log in your own?

5 Hypocrite! Take the log out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.

• John 7:21-24

21 Jesus answered, and said to them: One work I have done; and you all wonder:

[22] Therefore, Moses gave you circumcision (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;) and on the sabbath day you circumcise a man.

[23] If a man receive circumcision on the sabbath day, that the law of Moses may not be broken; are you angry at me because I have healed the whole man on the sabbath day? [24] Judge not according to the appearance, but judge just judgment.

• Ephesians 5: 1-16

[1] Be ye therefore followers of God, as most dear children; [2] And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath delivered himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odour of sweetness. [3] But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not so much as be named among you, as becometh saints: [4] Or obscenity, or foolish talking, or scurrility, which is to no purpose; but rather giving of thanks. [5] For know you this and understand, that no fornicator, or unclean, or covetous person (which is a serving of idols), hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

[6] Let no man deceive you with vain words. For because of these things cometh the anger of God upon the children of unbelief. [7] Be ye not therefore partakers with them. [8] For you were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk then as children of the light. [9] For the fruit of the light is in all goodness, and justice, and truth; [10] Proving what is well pleasing to God:

[11] And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. [12] For the things that are done by them in secret, it is a shame even to speak of. [13] But all things that are reproved, are made manifest by the light; for all that is made manifest is light. [14] Wherefore he saith: Rise thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead: and Christ shall enlighten thee. [15] See therefore, brethren, how you walk circumspectly: not as unwise,

[16] But as wise: redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

1. There are two prime candidates for this presidential election. One, who is a man of principle,

• Who runs many business' employing people of every race and nationality around the world, taking the time to meet every one of them.
• Who won a presidential election despite all of the fake news media and their polls.
• Who fights to protect our borders from being overrun with human trafficking, drug smugglers, and murderers.
• Who is the first president to attend and speak at a pro-life rally, while recognizing our Catholic sisters.
• Who donates every single presidential paycheck.
• Who was able to negotiate the freedom from the psychopathic tyranny of the dictator in North Korea.
• Who tried to stop people from coming in the USA from foreign lands containing this new virus.
• Who is not afraid to say, "God bless you all, and God bless America."
• Who knelt down in front of the Sacred Heart and Our Lady.
• Who supports the Knights of Columbus.
• I am certain we can certainly name a lot others, as Archbishop Vigano did.

The other presidential candidate,

• Claims to be a devote Catholic.
• Who is pro-abortion up to and even after the baby is born, masking it as "Women's Healthcare."
• Who supported, Bill Clinton's DADT, Don't Ask Don't Tell, in the USA military.
• Who in 1996, voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act.
• Today, is Pro LGBT, and has ministered as a JP to a gay marriage.
• Who has openly expressed his notions for pedophile activities, and has been seen on video doing questionable things.
• Who has made his profession as a career politician, since he held office in 1973, which is 47 years.

Brother Knights. We can only but serve one God.

I would strongly recommend reading The Consecration to St. Joseph, the Wonders of our Spiritual Father.

This novena will help you distinguish how Our Heavenly Father wants us to live...according to His Divine Will, and not our own.

Kyrie eleison!

Vivat Jesus!

May Almighty God Bless us in the Name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit Amen.

Based on the *results* of the protest in Portland, is Black Lives Matter a Leninist Group?

 Ok, let's look at the BLM protests closest to me in Portland, OR through  Leninist lens:

- dismisses political reform and compromise: Yep, they're demanding a complete abolition of the police department and are rejecting any reform
- advocates violently overthrowing capitalist regimes, in order to create an authoritarian state that controls the economy: I give you the firebombing of the Federal Building, Police Union, and Police Precincts after blocking the doors to prevent escape.
-class racism is the only correct lens through which to understand society: Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility is the textbook of the movement, despite being rather racist in and of itself.
-uncompromisingly materialist and, yes, atheistic: The attacks on Catholic Churches speak for their atheism and the demand of reparations is materialism.

so, I give them a 4/4 for being Leninist Bolsheviks ready to kill their neighbor rather than compromise.

The current numbers and where all this COVID-19 stuff is headed

In America, we crossed 5 million cases yesterday, and will likely hit 10-15 million cases by the end of the year.

That means one out of every 35 Americans, minimum, is going to get this. Shut down the churches, but unless you also shut down the protests, that means nothing. When you fail to treat the sick differently from the well- when you fail to segregate based on actually having the virus, nothing else you do matters. Masks don't matter, shutdowns don't matter. One in 35 Americans will get this, and it looks like after all the people over the age of 80 who get it are dead, the rest have less than a 1% chance of dying.
Let's bump this up. Go worldwide. 20 million cases out of 7.5 billion people so far. Double that. Heck, let's multiply it by 5- say we hit 100 million people by the end of the year. Worldwide that means 98.6% will not even get sick.
We're now closing in on 720,000 deaths. Worldwide, dying "with COVID" , because nobody dies FROM COVID without other underlying issues of some sort, known or unknown. So far, that's .0096% of humanity has died. A horrid number, but not nearly as bad as say, WWII when there were only 2.3 billion people in the world and we lost 85,000,000 of them- about 3%.

Still, with all of that perspective- I'll admit COVID is bad and we should do something about it.
So let's take it actually seriously. We live in a day and age of total information awareness, at least in the first world. The data exists to track every adult American, to within 3 meters, for the last 18 months. The data already exists, we don't have to recreate it. So let's do away with the outdated concept of privacy entirely, and actually feed into the google search engine to build a tree of everybody who has had even the slightest contact with any known patient- and everybody who has had contact with them- down 4 levels deep.
Let's quarantine all of them. Commandeer those empty offices and hotel rooms, and make sure everybody who could possibly get this, spends the next 12 months in quarantine.
Until NONE of them test positive.
Then they can rejoin the human race.
That is how you deal with a true health emergency. But I think if you did that- you'd have people pointing out what I did at the beginning of this post.

Still not White Privilege, BUT

Here are some racist assumptions that I've heard from the purveyors of White Supremacy/White Privilege/White Fragility that I believe are not only erroneous assumptions about minorities, but that actively create and build upon the illusion of systemic racism.  I will add to this post slowly over the next week, but here are a few that have sprung up lately:

1. All minorities are held back by the "wind resistance" of historic racism.  Oddly enough, almost all the minority people claiming this have wealth far in advance of what I'll ever see, and if wealth is material privilege, then they are way more privileged than most white people I know.
2. It's not possible for a minority or poor person to carry proper photo id.  And yet, every minority person I know over the age of 18 has a driver's license, a Costco card, and usually one to three forms of photobadge for work.
3. Minorities are less able to succeed at paying off real estate mortgage.  This one is largely due to racists in the banking industry and a credit rating method that was in use from 1905-2010 that modifies credit rating for housing loans based on the history (and diversity) of your neighborhood.  It can cost you thousands in housing value and percentage points on your mortgage, and it's what black folks mean when they complain of "white flight" and "gentrification".
4. It's not possible for an interracial couple or a minority couple to stay married (and thus the excuse for the high "fatherless family" rate among certain minority populations).  I say hogwash to this.  Marriage takes only two things:  Commitment and work.  That's it.  You too can succeed at heterosexual marriage.  The fear of heterosexuality in its full form, drives far to many into hopeless and poverty producing forms of the family.
5. It is not possible for minority people to be individuals (thus the "internationalist identity politics", which never sees human beings as people, only collections of the stereotypes they belong to) .  The truth is, everybody, including minorities, are all really a minority of one.  Each of us is unique, each of us is a real person able to make our own decisions.  This especially hits hard in the disabled community quite often.
   
6. Violent people are violent because they are genetically predisposed to violence.  This is one that affects the majority populations as well as minority populations.  It is not true in the slightest.  ANYBODY can become violent when their fight-or-flight mechanism is triggered in their brain, for any reason.  People who are victims of violence when they are young, become purveyors of violence when they are old.
   
   
   The people who believe in these fallacies aren't evil people, but they are racist people- especially those who claim to be anti-racist.  The existence of these beliefs in our society means we still have work to do to eliminate even the hint of systemic racism.

Avoiding Orwell's Law in a time of Civil War.

I had an idea today for a truly peaceful protest against racism, and it would make it impossible for anybody to oppose it.

How about Saturday morning, both black lives matter and all lives matter people commit to putting lawn chairs and tables in OWN their front lawns, signs on the tables, and spend their morning actually talking to their neighbors from a socially distanced 6 feet?

THAT is what a truly nonviolent protest looks like. Not invading other people's spaces, but having conversations with your neighbors for real grass roots change. In my case, crabgrass change.

Speaking truth to power in Oregon involves ballot measures, not protest signs and denying your fellow citizens the right to speak. Let alone destroying private businesses, stopping traffic on major streets, and burning down buildings with people still inside them.
Orwell's law states that any violent rebellion against a tyranny will create an even worse tyranny. All that ever happens when you get violent is some pigs are more equal than other pigs.

Child Safe Environment Training

Here is the link for the Knights of Columbus Safe Environment training.  

There are two ways to make sure you are updated on this training.  If you are in the REQUIRED TRAINING officer and service program list, you need to press the green button and log in with the userID of your member # combined with your last name, for instance Ted's username is 4253418seeber .  Yours can of course be found on your membership card.

If you are not in the list, you should click on the BLUE button and the registration code is KofC safe.

Both buttons are halfway down the page.

For our council, this is the list of people who need to pass Safe Environment training:

Grand Knights

Deputy Grand Knights

Program Directors
Community Directors
Family Directors
Youth Directors

The problem with identity politics

Is that there really is no law against segregation today, as long as it is chosen voluntarily.

There is NOTHING keeping sexist or racist protesters from moving elsewhere and building their own city to their liking.

In fact, there are plenty of small towns in Kansas, Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, and Minnesota that would be willing to host such a project, no matter what color you are.

Censorship is never valid

An ethical hacker point of view of the cancel culture:

First they came for the conservatives- banning their posts and videos, canceling voices they could not stand.

Then they came for the statues and paintings and works of art- the Iconoclasm. Every hint that the past ever existed, must be destroyed.

Next they will come for the books, burning any that give a hint that any other way of life than theirs existed.

After that they'll be writing memory hole worms to edit the internet to their liking so that no post can be made without approved speech and thought codes applied.

At what level of historical revisionism are you comfortable with?

Because I am not comfortable with any of it.

If you must practice historical revision, add data, don't delete it.

Write your own point of view on a plaque to attach to the base of a statue or the frame of that painting so that future inhabitants of the city can get both sides.

Don't burn books, write books!

Don't edit the internet, start your own web page or social media service.

Censorship is NEVER valid.

14 episodes from The Original Series that prove Star Trek does not NEED to be "Woke"

1. “Charlie X” (Ep. 2, Season 1)

What happens when a young man (Robert Walker), dizzy from hormones and zero family ties, can literally make anything he wishes a reality? His emotions take over, with disaster and death the natural byproduct.

Enter Captain James T. Kirk (Shatner), the Alpha Male figure poor Charlie needs.

Kirk can’t fully control Charlie, but he commands the lad’s respect and buys the crew time to deal with his god-like powers. The unchecked Charlie has no one to explain life to him, let alone place vital boundaries in his path. Without a father figure he revolts, not unlike what we’re seeing nationwide as the spoiled children who make up the Antifa crowd drag statues to the ground.

Kirk’s uber-masculine guidance can’t prevent a sad ending for Charlie, but the captain ensures no more Starfleet personnel will die by Charlie’s hands.

2. “The City on the Edge of Forever” (Ep. 28, Season 1)

Kirk falls in love, hard, during this time travel episode considered the series’ zenith. His crush is a budding pacifist (Joan Collins) who delays the U.S. from entering the second World War after Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) saves her from a life-threatening accident.

Now, Kirk and Spock must make sure that doesn’t happen again … or the Germans will develop the atomic bomb first and change the course of history.

“Star Trek’s” level-headed approach to war, when to wage it and under what terms, can be both admirable and deeply conservative.

3. “Balance of Terror” (Ep. 14, Season 1)

Spock is no war monger, but he takes a neo-con-like stand in this tense episode. Some enemies, like the Romulans threatening war along the Neutral Zone, cannot be talked out of combat. They must be defeated at all costs.

A battle between two shrewd captains ensues, leaving just enough time for a lecture on bigotry. The takeaway? Sometimes a good offense is the best defense.

4. “Space Seed” (Ep. 22, Season 1)

The episode that set the stage for “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” introduced us to a swaggering, super-human Ricardo Montalban. The episode has aged as well as the 1982 film, but a deeper look into the story reveals something else.

Khan represented a misguided attempt to perfect humanity, granting some with extra strength and intelligence. Khan and his ilk felt they knew better than everyone else, and therefore must lead by any means necessary. One wonders what Fidel Castro thought of this episode… Another problematic element for a feminist audience: the female lead (Madlyn Rhue) initially finds herself swept away by Khan’s masculine appeal.

5. “The Enemy Within” (Ep. 5, Season 1)

Modern progressives would recoil at the core of this potboiler. Kirk is split into two distinct selves, a calm, compassionate soul and a raging Id. The latter causes chaos on the ship, including a tough to watch assault on Yeoman Rand (Grace Lee Whitney). Still, we learn that Kirk isn’t the strong, capable leader we’ve come to know without a dose of “toxic masculinity.”

Removing that element would cripple the Enterprise and turn Kirk into just another, lesser captain.

6. “Dagger of the Mind” (Ep. 9, Season 1)

The unmissable message of this anti-progressive episode: “Curing” mankind of our sinful behavior and errant thoughts through science and forced rehabilitation is not just futile. It’s inhumane.

7. “Mudd’s Women” (Ep. 6, Season 1)

Gloria Steinem must loathe this episode.

Women want to feel beautiful, or at least have a man who views them that way.  The cartoonish Harry Mudd (Roger C. Carmel) knows this all too well, and he exploits it to keep himself one step ahead of the law.

The episode assumes distinct gender roles in male-female relationships while acknowledging how men’s visual senses can be overloaded by beauty and grace. And, shockingly, that isn’t deemed disastrous by the episode’s ending.

8. “The Return of the Archons” (Ep. 21, Season 1)

The first of several “Trek” tales where people are considered part of one “body” — a la the Borg — and stripped of their individuality to create a more harmonious society. Kirk talks the machinery behind this “perfect order” into destroying itself, reminding it why free will matters.

It’s a similar story with  Once again Kirk realizes the folly of living in an Edenic state and wrecks the gadgetry that makes it all possible.

9. “Arena” (Ep. 18, Season 1)

Kirk must battle a lizard creature with great strength and lousy mobility in this essential “Trek” tale. The Kirk/Gorn battle is epic by “Trek” standards, but the intriguing element arrives when we learn why Gorn’s comrades attacked Kirk’s landing team. Starfleet encroached on their territory, and they viewed the incursion as an unprovoked attack.

The un-woke lesson: People have a right to defend their territory, be it via a man-made wall or military means.

10. “Amok Time” (Ep. 1, Season 2)

It’s mating season for Leonard Nimoy’s pointy-eared hero, Mr. Spock, and it couldn’t come at a worse time for Kirk and company.

It leads to a wild fight between the show’s main players, after which Spock echoes a philosophy with a whiff of social conservatism.

“Having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting,” Spock notes.

11. “This Side of Paradise” (Ep. 24, Season 1)

Kirk and the landing party encounter a settlement teeming with contentment. There’s a catch, of course. Their bliss is provided by alien spores which keep them healthy and devoid of negative emotions.

It’s utopia — and it’s antithetical to the human condition. The society’s leader learns that the hard way after waking from his spore-driven stupor.

“Three years, no accomplishments,” he mutters.

The episode’s portrait of a biologist (Jill Ireland) who just isn’t complete without Spock by her side might drive feminists up a wall. Let’s not forget the drab, gray uniforms the settlers where, right out of the Communist Gift Guide.

Later, Kirk muses on the trouble with so-called paradise.

“Maybe we weren’t meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through, struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can’t stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums.”

Not a bad definition of capitalism.

12. “What Little Girls Are Made Of” (Ep. 7, Season 1).

Prototype Borg.  This episode would be canceled on the title alone, let alone the female android that uses cisgendered female wiles to trick Kirk into being replaced with an android duplicate.

The earliest science fiction version of the singularity I know of- and why it would be an awful mistake to replace human beings with machines.

13. “The Apple” (Ep. 5. Season 2).

Another stupid machine-forced Utopia, and like all Utopias, has resulted in the stagnation of the culture that is influenced by it.  That's the problem with Utopias- it takes vice to learn virtue, it takes sin to be forgiven to be holy.  There are NO shortcuts.

14. “Patterns Of Force" (Ep.21, Season 2).  

Antifa would like you to believe only violence in the streets can stop fascism.  Antifa would like you to believe that only the totalitarian control of communism can stop the totalitarian control of fascism.  But what about libertarian freedom and a decision to have a strong ethic against prejudice and bigotry?  That is Kirk's solution when he finds his old history professor, now a first contact researcher, breaking the Prime Directive.

Wonko the Sane

One fictional autistic I have always admired is Wonko the Sane, from Life, the Universe, and Everything By Douglas Adams.   I've linked to my blog in a post where somebody said they feel like they were living in a giant asylum, and I thought I'd post this link. 

Wonko the Sane- and the inner meaning of being Outside the Asylum

For want of a Father

For George Floyd, based on this description of his life
For want of a father, security is lost,
For want of security, victimhood is assured,
For the sense of being a victim, loyalty to the law is lost,
For want of loyalty to the law, the crime is commuted,
For want of justice, following police orders is lost,
For want of following police orders, a life is lost,
For want of a life, the protest for justice began,
For want of justice, the riot began,
For want of a riot, the looting began,
For want of the looting, an zone was created,
For want of the zone, a private army was created,
For the private army, citizens were beaten.
All for want of a father.

The movie I want all anti-racists to see

I am only providing a link to this, because it's a pirated copy, but the copyright owner seems to have absolutely zero interest in it anymore due to "racism" and "the most racist movie we ever made".

But I think it needs a re-think.  I'm not even going to name it publicly for fear of the more violent racists attacking this post.  But it is a movie I think everybody with children, of any skin color, need to watch.  

Some hints on why I think this movie is EXTREMELY important to any honest study on racism, the sexual revolution, and an understanding of the massive contribution that African Americans made to the pre-civil-war south.

In no particular order:

• This movie is based on a book that wasn't actually what it seemed to be.  It was put forth as a children's book, but it was the first book to record the mythology, wisdom, and learning brought from West Africa by people that even the anti-racists today think of as slaves.
• The main character is white, but going through the trauma and destruction of the divorce of his parents.  It is only the tales of the African Americans that help.
• The only other white human beings in the movie are the father and the mother (the father skips out early) and the grandmother.  Grandpa is dead- and one of the African Americans has very much taken over, not as an overseer, but as a wise father figure.
• The three most important secondary characters- in fact the majority of characters in the movie- are African American.  
• Once the main character starts in listening to the African Americans- so do all the other white children they meet.  In fact, very much, the most caring parent figure in the entire movie is African American.
• It's a musical.  I don't know how much the songs in it are anything close to what you would have heard on a cotton plantation in the 1840s, but for a movie from right after WWII, it's as wonderful as you'd expect from any musical from that era- full orchestras and lyrics that actually fit the story line quite well.
• Ebonics.  The original antebellum Ebonics is completely preserved in both this movie and the series of books it was based on.  That is part of the reason why the copyright owner hasn't touched it with a ten foot pole since the mid 1980s, and it never got released on DVD.  Some people back in the 1980s thought it made all the African American characters sound ignorant- but it's a very important creole language to preserve.
• This version you can download and burn to DVD yourself- it's a fresh digitization from an original 35mm reel that somebody found in the closet of a closed theater in full HD.
• Only people over the age of 35 will remember the last time this was on television- and even then....they were quite small.  I suspect most people reading this post heard that this movie was censored due to racism- without ever seeing it.
• Grandma is a stubborn old woman and a bit of a racist- she is in charge of the plantation after all- but she tries to remind Grandpa African American that he has power too- and is helping as best he can to get the family back together.
• The simple pleasures of bringing a frog into the house.
• Uncomfortable fancy clothes on a 6 year old.
• Riding horses on sticks.