US Gives Ukraine $800 Million More in Military Aid, Adds Heavy Weapons
President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday announced an additional $800 million in U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, expanding the scope of the systems provided ahead of a wider Russian assault expected in eastern Ukraine.
Epoch Times, April 13, 2022
The president of the United States needs to get off the escalator before it’s too late. Mr. Biden will become an octogenarian this fall, so we can’t blame him for not being sure of foot. But, by the same token, he is not mentally sure of foot either. Biden is obviously senile and shouldn’t be trusted alone with our foreign policy. There may soon come a time when the president will be urged to resign from office and allow the vice president to take the helm. Kamala Harris is hardly ready for prime time and her accession to the presidency may be like our country jumping from the frying pan into the fire. However, that is a separate issue, even though it is intimately related. If Biden doesn’t step down of his own accord, the shadow cabinet that surrounds him may whisper in his ear that he may be removed through the implementation of the twenty-fifth amendment to the Constitution. It’s never been done before, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be first time. It is my concerted opinion that Joe Biden is no longer fit for office due to mental incapacity. It’s obvious that a large and growing number of Americans hold the same opinion.
The president of the United States stumbles up the flight steps to Air Force One.
Biden’s economic sanctions against Russia are not working, except to cripple our American and other Western economies. Now, today, this decision of his to escalate the military stakes in Ukraine will only serve to postpone the inevitable. Vladimir Putin will prosecute this war relentlessly until he has achieved the objectives that he stated at the beginning of the invasion on February 24. Joseph Biden’s gift of armaments to Ukraine will lead to more dead Ukrainian soldiers, more displaced Ukrainian citizens and more destruction to Ukraine’s infrastructure. All of that is unnecessary, and if Biden weren’t senile he might have a better grip on reality.
Mr. Biden, for the love of God, get off the escalator!
This winter-spring session of the Hawai’i State Legislature dealt with hundreds of bills for acts as it always does. On Sunday, March 13 Honolulu Star-Advertiser listed on page A10 the bills that were passing and failing in the bicameral legislature. One of the bills stood out to this writer: HB1649., which “Would require the Department of Education to train school staff to represent in a positive way health topics related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual and other sexual orientations and general identities as well as persons of color and the disabled.” That is a lot of bases to cover!
Imagine my alarm at the insanity of such a bill. Despite that, the bill was actually advancing in the House of Representatives and ultimately passed over to the Senate. How can anyone “represent in a positive way” this smorgasbord of sexual choices to be presented to our children in government schools? Middle school and high school pupils in the throes of puberty have enough trouble dealing with the rapid changes in their bodies. They don’t need to have the state school bureaucrats assault them with perverse sexual choices as though the choices were all equally legitimate. Giving them the choices listed here only invites confusion to kids in an unprecedentedly wickèd age.
How can these perverse forms of sexuality be presented in a positive light? Lesbian sex is a barren snub at the male sex. Gay sex is a disgusting snub at the female sex. Bisexual sex is indulgence in lasciviousness. Transexuality is the most monstrous because it leads to a frightening introduction to chemical interruption of puberty and surgical mutilation of the God-given body. There are puzzling questions: Queer sex hasn’t been covered? What’s intersex? A chameleon switcheroo between the two sexes? Asexuality I get: volunteer celibacy. “Other sexual orientations?” How could there be any more? Are they suggesting incest? Or perhaps bestiality? Maybe it’s necrophilia. God save our children and grandchildren!
Oh, stop the train. I want to get off!
The Hawai’i Dept. of Education actually promoted this stuff. What sort of numbskulls run that bureaucracy? They requested $2.2 million to implement it. Swell. More money down the hole to reëducate our children. Note to parents: It may be time for you to yank your kids out of the public schools and take their education into your own hands.
There was another repugnant bill introduced in the House: HB2125 “Would establish a misdemeanor offense for disrupting or interfering with the function of a school, school administration office or school board.” Witness the Loudon County, VA school board proceedings. The arrogant response of the leftist school board to concerned parents there helped elect Glenn Youngkin, the new Republican governor of Virginia. It’s clear from the wording of this bill that the Hawaii Board of Education was planning a preëmptive strike against any uppity parents who might think that indoctrinating our kids with sexual perversion was a thing to protest against. It’s likely that the Board wanted to fend off any parental defense against instruction in critical race theory.
Thankfully, a group of parents got whiff of the bills and decided to respond in protest. Rep. Bob McDermott, a former Marine and one of the few Republicans in the House, stood strong in the open-air capitol rotunda and addressed a rally of parents opposed to the controversial bills. That movement put a blessèd end to the rot as both bills very quietly died in the Senate. Phew!
from KITV coverage
Hawai’i is the most Democratic -with a capital D- state in the Union, believe it or not. Ours is the victim of one-party rule and has been for a very long time. The blue beast which is California is half and ocean away, but only in miles, not in consciousness. The psychological influence of that socialist state is unseen but certainly sensed here in our erstwhile paradise. While your state may still be immune from this sort of sexual insanity, be on your guard, for surely it won’t be long before it rears its ugly head in a capital near you.
I’ve just returned from an annual meeting and I’m miffed. I know that as an Orthodox Christian I shouldn’t get miffed. “Glory to God for all things”, I know. But you’ll have to forgive me.
What sort of annual meeting was it? I’m glad you asked that question. Let me set the stage. I live in the middle of a medium-sized city, the biggest one in my little state. My wife and I own and occupy a condo in that city. The AOAO – no, that isn’t a cheer, it’s association of apartment owners – is obligated to hold a meeting every year. Ours was this evening. We always hold it in the Methodist church hall next door to the condominium complex. Well, during the seemingly interminable pandemic there was a hiatus. During that time, apparently a new pastor was called to the church. He graciously hosted our meeting tonight, welcoming us all and helping with the sound system.
Then he gave a (non-) invocation, “since this is a church”, he said. But he did not address the (non-) prayer to any higher being, nor did he end it by saying “in the name of Jesus” or of the Trinity, as Western Christians are accustomed to doing. He just abruptly said “Amen”. Oh, please! If you are concerned about stepping on atheist toes by praying a Christian prayer, then don’t pray at all except in silence.
There are only two sexes, but there are many genders?
The young pastor also told us where the bathrooms were. The ladies’ room is over here and the men’s room is over there. And then came the kicker – “Sorry, we don’t have a non-binary restroom, but we’re working on it.” Sitting in the front row, I couldn’t help but blurt out loud, “Oh, stop it! Enough with this insanity!” Certain members of the board of directors took note. I hope that that young pastor was able to hear me loud and clear. God save him from his delusion, or God save his congregation from his influence. Amen.
This article written two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine was just too good to leave read but not shared. I won’t cut and paste Mr. Ertl’s entire article, but I will put the two penultimate paragraphs below. And I’ll put the link underneath them so that the reader can go and read the whole thing.
The vanguard of Christian political discourse may be leading us in a more righteous direction. Thanks be to God. American Christians have supported our bloodthirsty warmongers for far too long. It’s past time for us to wake up and realize that our government is not the world’s friend. Now that the Russo-Ukrainian war is a month old, that fact should be eminently clear. Lord, have mercy.)
America, let Russia finish its recovery. Let her new destiny run its course. A destiny that will once again bring her to a place as one of the great Christian nations of the world.
As for post-Christian Europe and America, all that remains is judgment. I believe it to be irreversible. The West has squandered its Christian heritage and blessings. Its 100 years of unending wars, state-sponsored terror, and institutionalized decadence has reaped the whirlwind. The collapse is not coming; it is already upon us.
(I started to write a comment in response to another comment on the Monomachos weblog, but it burgeoned into a short essay, as often happens, so I decided to present it here as a stand-alone.)
Forgive me; I’m still trying to wrap my head and heart around the Orthodox phronema. Our spiritual discipline is painfully introspective, yet most of those who comment here are focused on external events since we are in the midst of a new crisis. For that reason, some Orthodox may wonder why George and Gail have worked so hard to maintain this weblog.
We in the United States have been betrayed by our own country for the last two years. Once we thought that we could put the so-called pandemic in the rearview mirror, war broke out in Ukraine. The two most populous Orthodox countries in the world are shooting at each other. Lord, have mercy.
I’ve vaguely been waiting for someone to say something akin to what Mr. B. has said: That is that all political ideologies are essentially “moralistic nihilisms”. I’ll grant him that the United States’ belligerent adventures have turned out to be nihilistic indeed. My count starts from Vietnam, the war that made so many young Americans of the time to question their government’s motives. And their own. Our generation may never quite get over that one. I was hoping to think that the War on Terror would prove to have been fought with greater honor and success. Now, I have gravely ambivalent feelings about both recent wars and the surveillance state that they spawned.
Where will the new borders be drawn?
“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2) Nihilism is a rejection of the motivation that makes us live, work and pray. Political nihilism, if I am to understand Mr. B. correctly, is a negation of the purpose for a nation-state. In other words, for Americans, America is no longer a country worth fighting to preserve. For the Russian people, the Russian lands are not worth fighting for. Where the national boundaries of the Russian lands fall, I am not sure. I’m trying to understand the vast topographical expanses and the long history of that empire, but I’m having trouble drawing lines. I suspect that Mr. Putin will soon be drawing new lines on an old map.
One thing I can say, though, is that all peoples have a country that they call home, even those who remind themselves that they are citizens of heaven who place more emphasis on their loyalty to God’s kingdom than any man’s. (Phil. 3:20) Our Lord was born a Jew and offered a new way of life to the Jews first and then to the Greeks. I’m trying to say that our lives are bound by time and space into which the Holy Spirit steps with exquisite particularity.
St. James’ Church, Skaneateles, New York
For the last half century, I have lived apart from the region of the country where I was born and bred, but the desktop picture on my computer is the nineteenth-century lakeside church where I first caught the wistful glimpses and heard the lofty melodies of the mystery which lifted my soul and transcended all physicality.
Especially in troubled times like this, many of us wish that we could go back to a time when our world was quieter. I almost wish that I weren’t witnessing the period in history when our nation is ruled by charlatans who supposedly represent us but who, in many cases, represent nothing but their own lust for power. It can make you bitter. Oh, how betrayed by tenfold the Ukrainians must feel about their recent government and about the violent intrusion by the Russian army! Many of them now wish they had never even been born, to be sure.
Ukrainian soldiers
There’s a bond that both draws the Russian peoples together and tears them apart. I don’t understand it. God help them all. What I am trying to understand is the root of attachment that I have to my own country. Due in part to the fact that my own son was twice deployed to the Middle East, and in part to the fact that I lived outside this country for many years, the attachment is very strong indeed. There is a fury in my soul that has no outlet and deepens ever further as I see the way that the black dog bites and tears at the fabric of our society, once so new and vigorous.
Maybe Mr. B. is right. Maybe all of us should just turn off our electronic devises and create little monasteries in our icon corners. Maybe I should just repent in sackcloth and ashes, knowing that my fellow man’s sin is my fault. After all, it is Lent.
Autumn in New England
But, I can’t just let it go. I love my country too much to sit back and watch it go to hell without saying something about it. It’s that old “not-on-my-watch” fury. I trust that most of us here feel the same way. Deeply. Some of us have an attachment to another country, like Ukraine or Russia. Or Greece. Without that sense of a homeland, especially for those who have been separated from theirs as the millions of Ukrainian refugees have been, then we are nothing but nomads. Listless.
I’m proud of the America whose ideal I hold close to my heart: God-fearing, hard-working, generous, and strong. I suppose the Russians peoples have a similar pride in the Russkiy mir. and I suppose those adjectives describe them as well.
In that sense, and if I haven’t misunderstood Mr. B., I would say that a political philosophy that longs for what one’s homeland once was and fights to regain it and retain it is not a nihilistic pursuit. It’s what one does without second guessing when one’s country comes under attack from enemies both foreign and domestic.
Handwritings on the Wall 