Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

 “You will be saved if you want to be.“

St. Thomas Aquinas

“Thy damnation comes from thee,” 

St. Leonard of Port Maurice quoting the Prophet Osee (Hosea)

Today is Easter Sunday the Holiest day of the year where we celebrate the resurrection of Christ and our own that will follow. It started at the Easter Vigil mass where the great “Alleluia” returns to the mass and converts to the faith are baptized (if they have not been before) and confirmed (in the faith) and receive their 1st Holy Communion (if they were Catholics in their youth but never confirmed then they return to the Sacrament). This makes a lot of sense as what better day to welcome someone to salvation then the day it was completed.

Good Friday is the day our debt was paid and Easter Sunday is the day that we were told that we were free to go.

But while we are free to go, it’s worth noting that while we are promised life we are not promised an easy time of it. As Jesus told the disciples just before he went into the garden:

“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.

Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but as it is they have no excuse for their sin.

Whoever hates me also hates my Father. If I had not done works among them that no one else ever did, they would not have sin; but as it is, they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But in order that the word written in their law might be fulfilled, ‘They hated me without cause.’

“When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me. And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.

“I have told you this so that you may not fall away.

They will expel you from the synagogues; in fact, the hour ¹ is coming when everyone who kills you will think he is offering worship to God. They will do this because they have not known either the Father or me.

John 15:18-16:3

Those words are particularly relevant today. While the United States has been a Christian Country for most of its existence historically it was not all that friendly to Catholics, (quite understandable our nation came from English colonies who had very little use for Catholics and where constantly at war with Catholic France who used the Indians as pawns in that fight for a century.) It wasn’t until the wave of Irish that the Catholic faith gained a modicum of power in the country and while the church is much more powerful then it was in 1776 or 1850 or even 1920 we are in an era where believing Christians of all stripes are in disfavor by our media, by our leadership and by our culture.

That’s why I respect those who joined the Church at the Easter vigil. Such people are doing so in the face of our Catholic “President” and the leadership that has a greater hatred for actual practicing and believing Catholics who follow the faith as it is then most prior administrations.

This is not a surprise nothing is a bigger indictment for one who is false then one who is true and those who are coming to the faith at a time when it is a target are the truest of the true. If they came a century or even a half century earlier that act would have been still been celebrated by civil authorities and by to some degree by the culture. In fact I’m sure there were many during that time when one without faith was less likely to advance who repeated those vows in the spirit of Michael Corleone’s saying the words because it suited him even as he tossed them away:

In fact I am sure that there is more than a few “conservatives” in deep red states that are Michael Corleone who give lip service to the faith for their own purposes. I find such people even more despicable than those who in a blue state like mine when given the choice between faith and power and prestige drop the faith for put on the false fig leaf of “personally opposed” to things. They like Pilate are merciful until it becomes inconvenient or dangerous.

But those who came in yesterday are doing so in the face of all of this knowing all these things and also knowing that with the exception of St. John the Evangelist every single one of those disciples who the risen Lord would greet in that locked room would die a violent death at the hands of authorities all over the world.

Yet they still come because they understand that two thousand years later those dead are still alive today, members of the Communion of Saints that they have just entered and that they are venerated and remembered on earth Millenia later and will be till the world takes its final turn, while those who sought to kill them (and did not repent of this crime) are largely forgotten, and if remembered on earth remembered as villain’s while more importantly find themselves today in a position that I would not want my worst enemy to be in.

Those busy running from or attacking Christianity in general and the Catholic faith in particular for fun, power and profit should keep that in mind.

Those who came in yesterday show the 1st and most vital of the virtues courage, the courage that Don Surber wrote of a few days ago when he noted this story:

The Guardian ran a story on October 2, 2015, which began, “Details have begun to emerge of the terrifying experience of students and staff at the Umpqua community college, where 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer shot and killed nine people and injured at least seven others.
“Harper Mercer died in a shootout with police who responded to calls about an active shooter at 10.38 am on Thursday.”
The headline read, “Oregon college shooting: ‘He asked are you Christian? Then he shot and killed them.’ “
I ask myself sometimes if I were the second person he asked would I be brave enough to say yes? 
Sometimes I answer correctly, and other times I am ashamed of myself.

I am very lucky. I had very devout parents who brought me up in the faith and when to a Catholic grade school for seven years when such schools were actually Catholic, even with that advantage it was a hard slog to get to where I am. They managed to get here without the advantages I had. I’m in awe of them.

Pray for them, they’ll need it.

Yesterday MLB who I was prepared to forgive for last season decided to throw in with the left and thus has lost me as a potential customer to go to games, watch games listen to games and or buy any MLB paraphernalia over Georgia’s new elections law.

In their haste to please and appease the left and throw away a good chunk of their customer base they have neglected to answer a most important question, one that the Democrat left has not answered either, concerning this law: Here it is:

How does the new Georgia Law actually stop any voter who legally voted in 2020 from casting a legal vote in any election that follows?

Now as a person who believes that election 2020 in Georgia was stolen and that hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots were counted I will readily concede that this will law will help prevent false votes from :

• People who didn’t actually vote
• People trying to cast multiple ballots
• People who are not legally allowed to vote (out of state residents, illegal aliens)
• People who don’t exist

What I want to know however is how it stops a legal voter from casting a ballot.

Now note that the question isn’t a question of convenience, for example if a drop box is 1 mile away vs 100 yards away that doesn’t prevent a person from voting any more than a Wendy’s 1 mile away prevents a person from getting there, particularly with the full power and resources of the Democrat party to get a person that mile and the number of days allowed for a person to vote. I’m asking how does it actually stop a person who voted legally last time from doing so again?

The answer to that question is really easy:

It Doesn’t!

If I was a person on the left and believed that the last election was clean, I’d welcome the scrutiny this law provides because it would prove their win was legit and silence folks like me who maintain that Joe Biden is only president due to magic ballots provided by corrupt democrats in the dead of night in multiple states.

But I submit and suggest that the dirty little open secret is that the left knows they can only win if they cheat and this law makes cheating more difficult, which is why they are screaming bloody murder. I further submit that once enforced some of the offices they have held for a very long time in the state in districts considered unwinnable by the GOP might not be so secure once votes are counted honestly.

I challenge the left in general and MLB in particular to prove me wrong by answering the question I just asked.

Oh and if you want to ask MLB to answer that question and / or to offer your objection to their move the phone number for MLB off their web site is: 866-800-1275. Why not take the time to give them a call and let them know what you think.

Oh and when you call be nice, none of this nonsense was the idea of the person answering the phone.

Politics continues to infect every facet of American life, with Major League Baseball now chiming in on the “controversial” Georgia election law by removing its All Star Game and 2022 Draft from Atlanta. This comes just days after MLB announced a partnership with Chinese conglomerate Tencent. Apparently MLB is fine with doing business in China, where they systematically rape Uyghur women, and also fine with punishing fellow Americans in Georgia, where they require you show ID to vote. Just like they do in pretty much every other democracy in the world.

And most other European democracies ban mail-in ballots, too. Will MLB also be boycotting the Toronto Blue Jays? It’s always striking how the Left, which loves little more than to pine for European-style socialism, ignores European levelheadedness.

But that’s the state of things. Corporations continue to choose the woke Left’s call to politicize everything over middle America’s cry to shut up and play ball. Writer Roger Simon argues that it’s time for conservatives to build an alternate world, and there’s something to be said for that.  It’s unfortunate, because it further divides Americans when that’s the last thing we need, but to otherwise surrender to emotional bullying is likewise unacceptable.

Which makes what investor Balaji Srinivasan recently launched sort of interesting.  Srinivasan is the former Chief Technology Officer of major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, and a founder of multiple startups. He also holds a MS in Chemical Engineering and an MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering, all from Stanford University.

One of those guys.

But he recently launched a project called 1729, which he calls “the first newsletter that pays you.” And that’s what it is — a newsletter. Its goal is to create a “cloud community” of “technological progressives” — people interested in “cryptocurrencies, startup cities, mathematics, transhumanism, space travel, reversing aging, and initially-crazy-seeming-but-technologically-feasible ideas.” And with the newsletter, he provides incentives – typically, cryptocurrency, at least so far — for subscribers to achieve goals based around certain concepts, such as new business ideas, health-oriented goals, educational goals (subscribers could earn $100 in crypto by learning some computer coding).

It’s an interesting attempt at creating a unique community, and as the online and virtual worlds make remote or cloud communities possible, there will likely be more of them.

Worth keeping an eye on, perhaps especially as an example for conservatives.

At least, so long as the overlords allow it.

Today is Good Friday the single most solemn day in the Calendar of the church and one of only two days when the Holy Sacrifice of the mass is not celebrated.

It’s also the best example of the importance not making instant judgments.

Consider the situation. On Good Friday what would someday be called “Christianity” found it’s founder under arrest by the Jewish authorities and elders who where in charge of religious worship for the entire Jewish race. The primary officers had all fled, one killed himself and the leader of the group had publicly denied even knowing said leader multiple times. And if that wasn’t enough the single greatest power in the known world publicly had said leader executed and to put an exclamation point on it, had his tomb sealed and put a roman guard on it to make sure it stayed that way.

Any objective observer seeing this situation would naturally conclude that the small sect of followers of Jesus Christ would soon disperse back into the population and to their former lives expect perhaps for Matthew the tax collector , who was unlikely to get his former position back. He and they would be a footnote in history if he was remembered at all.

What a different a few days, and then a few years would make.

Within three days Christ would be alive and the tomb would be empty. Within two months the cowardly apostles of Christ would suddenly become fearless, defying the Jewish elders, escaping from prison and preaching all over the the place. Within several ,month Romans soldiers were being baptized. Within a year one of their greatest foes in Judaism would not only convert after Christ appeared to him but would travel throughout the Roman Empire spreading the faith even to Rome itself. Soon the man who denied Christ in public the day of his arrest would be leading the Church in Rome itself. Even when threatened with execution adherents would suffer death rather than renounce their faith. Within a few centuries the faith would be the official faith of the empire. It would spread education, medicine, and be the basis for western civilization and, in my opinion become, along with British Common Law the single most beneficial social change in the entire world.

No person seeing Christ pierced by a Roman lance with blood and water with his mother wailing at its foot would have anticipated this.

The lesson that is often taught from this is that the glory of Easter is always preceded by the horror of Good Friday.

And that brings us to Coke and Delta.

As you know by now Joe Biden is President of the United States. the Democrats hold, however tenuously the majority in both the house and the senate and are currently pushing their agenda. The left holds the media, the tech giants, people from Steven Crowder to Donald Trump are being pushed off platform after platform and the voices of the woke are being amplified.

So when Georgia which was unwilling to stop the steal in their state decided to pass a laws to make sure that elections are decided by actual votes rather than by magic ballot, the left took a fit and things being how they are they put pressure on companies.

Coke-cola’s CEO, based in Atlanta came out against the law, Delta Airlines spoke against it and now Major league Baseball is considering moving this years All Star Game from Atlanta.

Now if you think of the events of the last two months this might seem a rational move. The left currently has power, the right is being silenced, all the public media and platforms keep proclaiming their strength and power and with the brazen steal of the last election there is every reason to believe that the next one will be stolen as well.

These corporations as well as those on the right who have given into despair would do well to remember the lesson of Holy Week and Good Friday before they associate themselves with the left throwing away the tens of Millions of Trump votes who unlike the mythical Biden voters who cast their magic ballots in the dead of night when no one could see these people actually exist.

They should recall that conventional wisdom is always correct…right up until the moment it isn’t.